PAX is off to a brilliant start – mainly because Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) gave a fantastic keynote about how social gaming is, gaming with his kids (he was clearly an Expos fan in the early 80’s), and being proud to be a “gamer.” Great stuff I plan to build on in both my Sunday seminars. But I come not to praise Wheaton, but to bury a Seattle local news station.

On the PAX exhibition floor I ran into a camera crew. Well, they ran into me and “ran into” isn’t entirely accurate either because what I really did was sort of stepped in their way. Brandishing a card and a smile I introduced myself and hooked her almost immediately. See, reporters at these things are looking for stories. As in, more than one. I knew she was gathering film and sound bites for a story about PAX, about games, about the attendees and I figured “Gaming with Children” or “Media Violence Issues” might peak her interest.

It did. And with the timely help of Penny Arcade’s (and my old friend) Mike Fehlauer -” You should totally talk to this guy!” he said, warmly. I got the camera, and a microphone, stuck in my face. (She interviewed Fehlauer too, of course.) I acquitted myself well I think (I have some experience at this). I talked about video game issues, “going beyond the ESRB,” and about the miracle that is PAX. I mean seriously:

“Two gamer-geek cartoonists parlay success into the largest video game convention in North America (no joke) and a million dollar charity – Oh and GamerDad! – Film at 11!”

Can’t miss! Awesome, I’m going to be on TV spreading my message, PAX is going to be on TV, so my wife and I went out and celebrated a bit. We got back to the hotel in time to see the edited segment and after wading through “The Actual 911 Calls From the Falling Minnesota Bridge!” and other exploitations we get….

We got gypped. First of all, the called the convention the “Video Game Convention” – they never mentioned PAX or Penny Arcade. Second, they showed me playing “Brain Age 2” from Nintendo (which I was actually just pretending to do at their request) then they interviewed a girl in a Jenga tournament. Oh, they briefly mentioned that in the upcoming “Rock Band” – you get to play against a “Rock Band” computer.

Look, I’m a man of the world squire. I know how things are done. I know this reporter was earnest, got all her information, then zipped back to the station where a producer cobbled together the piece of garbage that aired. Leaving Wil Wheaton’s speech about how social gaming has become, leaving GamerDad’s message about gaming responsibly, leaving all the games not called “RockBand”, leaving 30,000 attendees unmentioned, and, best of all, leaving the name Penny-Arcade Expo on the cutting room floor.

But seriously… world’s largest video game convention and they talked about Jenga? Wow.

Now that’s the news! Have a pleasant tomorrow!

Tags: Misc