This year we stayed with the rest of the Mesa Mundi team in Norwood (about 25 miles out of town) and rode with them to and from the convention. We got to spend a lot more time with them this year and even met Toby and Rebecca’s kids. It felt more like we were members of the team.

See all the pictures of the Mesa Mundi booth.

As usual, we had one touch table and 1/4 of the booth to use to run our games. We were busy all the time. Convention goers were always quick to step up to play a game though lines were rare. It is hard to describe how big this convention is. The expo hall was expanded this year and there are 255 exhibitors. When the convention is running it takes 5-10 minutes just to walk from one end to the other and there are always people walking by or checking out the booth.

We mostly played Pair Soup and Dungeon Raiders along with quite a bit of Fas Jack and Got It. But we played most of our quick games at some point during the weekend. The new games – 20 Questions Wrong and Egyptian Ratslap, were popular among the competitive groups. We also had some very competitive Pair Soup groups. One group from 2014 came back to set a high score. They set a great score, but they were blown away by a new group that stopped by a couple times on Sunday.

This year we had a new game launcher that was full screen and looked more professional. A combination of that and having eight new games changed people’s reaction to our table. After finishing an intro game and dropping back to the launcher, people often commented at the quantity of games available. I don’t know if that will turn into any touch table sales but it did seem to help people’s opinion of spending $4000 on a gaming system.

We didn’t get out to see much of the rest of the convention. Bill got a ring from CritSuccess. Also nearby was a board game booth selling Pixel Glory. Bill bought the game and talked to the creator about making a touch conversion. He was familiar with Mesa Mundi and our other board game conversions from Gen Con, and was excited to see his game converted. I guess it wasn’t new this year, but this was the first time we saw the “Condom against Humanity” from the “Cards against Humanity” booth.

While it didn’t snow much at while we were in town, Boston was still recovering from the blizzards. The parking lot at PAX had a 20-30 ft mountain of snow, but more impressive was the ubiquitous hedge of snow next to the roads. It was around 6 feet tall all along every road we saw. There were cut outs for the driveways and parking lot entrances. It was difficult to spot the entrances to stores and to see traffic when pulling out onto the roads.

I always feel a little out of place in the exhibit hall at PAX. The exhibit space is not cheap and the exhibitors, including Mesa Mundi, have spent a lot of money to be there. While we are selling games, we aren’t really expecting/needing to make a living from it. So there is a dissonance between how the other exhibitors are behaving/feeling, what the convention goers are expecting, and what we are doing. This year, one of the other exhibitors openly expressed confusion about why we had created so many games – many of them freeware or not for sale – for such a small market. We are excited to just get some positive feedback from attendees and one or two sales, while other booths are trying to sell some number of units to break even, and other booths are just staffed by employees of a big company.

We were on a 60″ table using the new SensaTouch IR sensor and modular wooden table frame. It did mean that we were standing all weekend, but it was actually easier than sitting and leaving over to touch the coffee-table sized screen we were on last year.

From the time the hall opened at 10, till it closed at 6, we were always busy playing games. We mostly played Pair Soup because it is super easy and cooperative. People could walk up and join a game any time. By the end of the weekend we had played 160 games of Pair Soup. That adds up to about 13 hours! We were really glad to have the new tile sets.

There was an overhead walkway above us, and many people stopped at our booth saying that they had seen the game from above and had to try it out. We also played quite a bit of Fas’Jack, Dungeon Raiders, Got It and Yacht with people who stuck around for a second or third game.

We played several games of Fire Platoon and people seemed to enjoy it. People didn’t have trouble learning the game and controls and the tablets worked well. The WiFi was much better than last year, but it was still hard for some people to connect to the game.

The other quadrants of the booth were occupied by d20 Pro; a system for running a role playing game, another game table running a fast paced competitive game called WhackIt, and a demo of the modular table system.

There are lots more pictures of PAX and a few of Boston in my gallery.

We are planning to show off the new mini-games, which are on sale now at Mesa Mundi’s site, along with Hansa Teutonica and a new game in development where players can control the action with a web browser on their phone.

D20Pro will also be on hand at Mesa Mundi’s booth to show off their role playing system. It should be an exciting weekend where we can see how people react to the touch tables and our games. Mesa Mundi has a short write up about PAX here.