Pax Day 1: Rated A for “Awesome”
After a day of doing the Boston shuffle, Team BBMT has arrived at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA for PAX East 2010! Time for first impressions: First of all, you would be hard-pressed to find community more passionate or excited or hyperactive than the gaming community. That was obvious right away. One of the entrances to the Hynes Center is in the end of a shopping mall. At this same end is a tiny food court where the BBMT street team chose to set up field operations. Oh, the spectacle! We could have sat and watched the river of game icon fashion-clad gamers for hours. But duty called! Onward we pressed, to Wil Wheaton’s keynote address!
Wil Wheaton is so cute
Just look at that sweet mug!
Could Wil Wheaton be cuter? Answer: No, Wil Wheaton could not be cuter. We were charmed by his good looks and poise, and even a little impressed by his cursing! (Sorry, the swears won’t be repeated here…)
Wil Wheaton is famous for the following:
- Playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: Next Generation
- Playing the part of Gordie in Stand By Me
- Being way into Twitter (spend some time with wilw)
- Being an avid blogger
- Being a self-proclaimed geeky guy.
- …and now also for being super stinkin’ cute!
Here are some highlights of Wil’s keynote…
“Welcome Home”
Wil’s initial comments were to implore the participants of PAX East 2010 to take a moment to enjoy and savor this weekend. The PAX Gaming community is special, and these folks are lucky; PAX has grown so big that one gathering in one city isn’t enough. (This is the first time that PAX has been held semiannually. Previous PAX events have been held annually on the West coast.)
Wil Wheaton’s fervor for PAX is so complete, he says he “can divide his life, and everything in it that matters into before PAX and after PAX.” He concluded his opening remarks with: “Gaming is the foundation of the best friendships I have ever had, and is the mortar that has held my group of friends together for over 25 years.”
Much of the keynote was devoted to Wil’s introduction into fantasy and imagination games, when his Aunt Val bought him Dungeons & Dragons for a gift. At first, he was sad that his siblings got cool electronic hand-held games, and he got a “box of books”, but as soon as he started it, he was hooked. Wil said “finding D&D was like finding a best friend.”
Video gaming has so permeated our culture that in a weird moment of Life Imitating Art, a football player used a common gaming trick in a real football game. Wil summarized an article he had read in WIRED.
I read a story last month in WIRED, about an NFL player who, after making an incredibly improbable fourth-quarter catch, made an equally improbable run to the end zone to put his team in the lead, when it was almost certain that they were going to lose the game. With time running down, he got to the one yard line, and ran parallel to the goal line to take precious seconds off the clock. JUST LIKE YOU DO IN MADDEN! At that moment you could divide the world into people who didn’t know what the f*** was going on and the gamers who were standing up screaming about it.
In another anecdote, Wil described being presented recently with twelve hours of family-free solitude, and after examining his options: the complete series of Dr. Who, the directors cut of Blade Runner, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and alongside all of those options on the bookshelf, a stack of Xbox games, “Dragon Age” among them. He had already invested about 70 hours into “Dragon Age”.
The final decision came down to “Dragon Age” or watching all three films in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Wil recounted the moments leading to his verdict: “As much as I love Lord of the Rings, I know what happens. So even though I could have gone to Middle Earth for the 70th time, I was more into going to Ferelden for the 71st hour.”
Wil concluded his address with the following appeal…
Please…
Take a shower every day,
As someone who left the last PAX convention with H1N1, please wash your hands frequently,
And if you only take one thing away – don’t be a d***.
Wil Wheaton is brutally honest
Michelle and Hillary of Team BBMT stood out in the lobby waiting for (stalking) Wil Wheaton to appear. He finally did, and we interviewed him about his devotion to Blueberry Muffin Tops Cereal…
“Wil Wheaton talks BBMT”
Wil, here is the BBMT product locator. It looks like you just have to drive East of LA to a Walmart to score some of this delicious, crunchy, blueberry goodness in a bag. We promise you’ll never look at “nerd chow” the same again.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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