'It feels like home' — a PAX West audio postcard

Soundside producer Jason Burrows spent the weekend at PAX West 2022, wandering the exhibition floor, playing games, and reconnecting with friends. He brings us this snippet of how people feel about PAX.

The Penny-Arcade Expo started at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue back in 2004, and has since grown to fill the Seattle Convention Center, its annex, along with multiple hotel conference rooms and ballrooms in the surrounding area.

In 2010, PAX expanded to the East Coast with a show in Boston called PAX East. It now spans the globe with a convention in Melbourne, Australia, along with an event completely dedicated to tabletop gaming in Philadelphia called PAX Unplugged.

While exploring the show floor with friends, Burrows met up with PAX luminaries like Kate Welch, who plays Rosie Beestinger in the Acquisitions Inc "C" Team, and Kris Straub, a cartoonist, animator and longtime member of the Penny Arcade family. Straub plays K-Thriss Drow'b on the "C" Team.

Acquisition Inc started the first Dungeons & Dragons "actual play" podcast which became a live show at PAX. The "C" Team was a side game with different characters broadcast on Twitch, a video live streaming service that focuses on gaming.

The general consensus among PAX West attendees waiting in line for panels, events, and games – "It feels like home."

"Every single person that is here, we have this thing in common," Welch said. "And that's kind of how home feels."

For Straub, it's all about celebrating joy.

"I am very fond of how PAX supports and celebrates so many diverse interests and abilities and types of joy," Straub said.