The story of PAX. How a 'misunderstanding' led to one of the largest video game conventions around

It could be said that PAX — the international convention that draws tens of thousands of video game fans — all happened because of an accident, some miscommunication.

"There was a fundamental misunderstanding in that conversation that I think has changed the entire course of my life,” said Jerry Holkins, cofounder of Penny Arcade and PAX, though he refers to himself as "Storm Wizard" of the organization.

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The conversation happened in 1998. Holkins and his friend Mike Krahulik were having fun drawing cartoons. They submitted one such cartoon, which they felt was quite funny, to a contest. They didn’t win.

"We actually really liked making these comics … we had a bunch of these comic images, and we found a site that we enjoyed, and we asked them if they wanted to run the comics that we had done for this contest. We just figured they would never see the light of day otherwise."

The website, Looney Games, was interested. This was in the early days of internet culture, when websites often published content only on certain days of the week (unlike today, when websites often publish news as it is happening).

"But they wanted to know, like, what day of the week they should expect more comics," Holkins said. "And that was never our intention. That sounds, you know, suspiciously like work."

Despite the "work" vibe, the two opted to produce more comics. They were akin to political cartoons but were more for their niche video game fans and internet culture — geeky stuff they thought was funny.

"We were talking about how long something might take to load, you know, just really silly stuff that is relatable to a very particular audience."

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Fast forward nearly 26 years, and the result of that endeavor has grown into PAX, a pop culture convention focused on video games that floods Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, and Melbourne, Australia, with fans each year (PAX 2024 is the event's 20th convention). PAX organizers don't say how many attendees they usually expect but do say it is in the tens of thousands.

Visit Seattle estimates PAX West 2024 will produce $21.9 million in local economic impact when it takes over the Seattle Convention Center over Labor Day Weekend. That includes money spent at local restaurants, shops, and hotels. (That's on par with Emerald City Comic Con, which was estimated to produce $26.5 million in February 2024.)

"For over a decade, PAX West has been a Labor Day Weekend tradition in Seattle, and our city has grown along with this event," said Kelly Saling, senior vice president and chief sales officer of Visit Seattle. She added that sizable events like PAX West necessitated the expansion of the convention center in recent years.

It's a point that is not lost on Holkins, who noted that the pandemic caused parts of downtown Seattle to feel like a "ghost town," but PAX packs them in.

"Over the lifespan of the show, there's no question that it has provided an economic impact and a benefit," Holkins said.

PAX West 2024 is the event's 20th anniversary. Expect plenty of cosplay to show up downtown. The convention offers PC gaming events, live Dungeons & Dragons, video game tournaments, and tabletop game features. Game companies use the event as an opportunity to promote their latest releases. Local vendors craft one-of-a-kind wares. Panels range from video game industry networking to wellness advice. Guests include voice actors, streamers, and industry leaders. There's even a debate club. A concert series will present Triforce Quartet and The OneUps performing video game scores.

Holkins said the convention adds up to an annual "ritual" for fans.

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"Part of the fascinating opportunity of this ritual is that it exposes the lie that we are in isolation when we engage with this medium," he said. "Whenever we have a chance to have a touchpoint, whenever there's an opportunity to be together, there's just a lot you don't have to explain to that person. You know the baseline exists. That's a really important part of what conventions do, generally, is to situate you inside the continuum of the culture."

The story of PAX

While the origins of what would become PAX go back to 1998 (in apartment number 26 in a building on the northside of Spokane, to be exact). It didn't grow in to the mega event that it is overnight. PAX's first event in Seattle wouldn't happen until 2004.

With the success of their online cartoons, Holkins and Krahulik decided to start their own website with comic strips for gamers and the like. They called it Penny Arcade, implying that it's cheap thrills and sometimes filled with what Holkins describes as "low or even subterranean brow" humor. They learned on the spot how to manage a website, register a domain name, or handle server space. In the early days, part of the business involved taking time to click on their own website to produce click-based ad revenue.

"Mike and I would feverishly click to generate revenue, because they weren't checking at all," he said. "They were just paying you per click, and so, we would just take turns clicking our own ads until it generated about $100. It's a little bit more sophisticated [now]."

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"It took a year and a half to get to the point with Penny Arcade where it could pay the rent, but keep in mind, those were Spokane rents. And they were Spokane rents before the turn of the millennium, so you could get by on not very much," Holkins said. "And being able to have your work be online, we were sort of ahead of that curve. It was possible for me to, basically, pick up stakes."

Which Holkins did. He moved to Western Washington where the next phase of their business began. They got the idea while attending UberCon in New Jersey. It was a convention at a small hotel. Holkins said it had a gaming area in a corner that was roughly the size of a storage closet.

"And what we thought was, 'Well, why not?' … just take this room and expand it, just, like, grab one of the corners of the image, maintain the ratio, obviously, click the box, and then stretch out the gaming part until it was an equal participant in the rest of the show."

Penny Arcade organized its first Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, at Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center in 2004. About 3,000 people showed up. Around this same time, Emerald City Comic Con was starting its own event in Seattle, and the two events shared a lot of the same organizers. Holkins said he considers ECCC as a sister convention to PAX.

By 2007, PAX grew out of the Meydenbauer Center and moved into the Seattle Convention Center.

In 2008, PAX East started performing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns live on stage.

"My suspicion is that might have been the first time, or certainly one of the first times, Dungeons & Dragons has been performed, in the modern concept of actual play, or live-action role-playing [on stage]," Holkins said. "It's essentially role-playing games as a form of live theater. And it's arguable that art form got its start at PAX East …essentially, we perform at what is more or less a movie-length game. And it has been an ongoing campaign that has been running for about 15 years."

In 2009, the princess arrived. Holkins' daughter Ronia Quinn was born amid PAX weekend.

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"They grew up together, they really did. And when she was young, it was a typical sibling relationship. … There was this other entity that was constantly stealing attention," Holkins said. "Her whole life, PAX has been something of a scourge, because it essentially devoured her birthday weekend in perpetuity. … Now, Pax is like a birthday party for her, and she is called the ‘Princess of PAX’ by some."

The convention has grown over the years. Seattle's PAX is now called "PAX West." PAX East is in Boston during spring. There’s PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia in winter, which is dedicated to tabletop games. Then there’s PAX Aus in Melbourne, Australia during fall.

"The very first year of PAX Aus was at something called the Melbourne Showgrounds, which is a horse track. I'm not being euphemistic. We were there in the rainy season, so we had to invent hallways outside to keep people from being soaked. Some portions of it took place in open-air barns. Feed was all you could smell, the rich feed everywhere you look, and the show was still PAX somehow. It was still amazing, it was still incredibly fun. And if you ask [fans] now, they laugh about it, but they remember it being PAX. They remember it still working somehow.

"Last year we celebrated the 10th year of that show [in Australia]," Holkins said. "I just, I can't believe that that even in a barn, whatever the spirit of PAX is, endures."

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An endeavor that started because of a misunderstanding, and accidently resulted in a job, continues to this day, with even more work.

"And then, we accidentally started several other jobs attached to that one, and they both happened relatively close to each other," Holkins said. "One of them was, and continues to be, a charity whose purpose is to get games and toys into the hands of young people in the Child Life centers of hospitals and violence shelters. That's ChildsPlayCharity.org."