PARTNER PINS

Finji Logo & Overland Hatchet Pins [Finji]
Available for purchase at the Finji booth #10608.

World of Horror: Old God Pin [Ysbryd]
Available for purchase at the Ysbryd booth #18108 or complete the demo of WORLD OF HORROR and receive this free pin from the game.

N1RV Ann-A Sam Pin [Ysbryd]
Available for purchase at the Ysbryd booth# 18108.

Haha Reaction & Sad Reaction Pins [Facebook Gaming]
Collect at least three tokens by participating across various activities at the Facebook Gaming booth #15055. Share Stories in the official Instagram photo booths with #FacebookGaming, meet with Gaming Creators, and experience Oculus to collect tokens.

Industries of Titan & Phantom Brigade Pins [Brace Yourself Games]
Available at the Brace Yourself Games booth #21109.

Just Shapes & Beats Pin [Berzerk Studio]
Available for purchase at the Berzerk Studio booth #16104.

The Hector Pin [Headup]
Available for purchase Headup Games booth #23078.

Insert Disk 3 Pin [Indie MEGABOOTH]
Follow Indie MEGABOOTH on Twitter or Instagram (@indiemegabooth) and post 3 selfies of yourself in front of 3 different game booths featured in our spaces (MINIBOOTH or MEGABOOTH). Include @indiemegabooth & #IMBPAXEast19 in whatever you say along with your post. Show us your post(s) at IMB HQ/booth #16070 and you’ll get a $5 discount off our pin! Limited discounts/supplies per day, first come first serve! The Insert Disk 3 pin is also available for purchase.

Mad Verse City Mic Drop Pin [Jackbox Games]
Win a game at the Jackbox Stage to get a pin, or you can get one the easy way by purchasing one.

Life Siphon Eye Pin [Lay Waste Games]
Available for purchase at the Lay Waste Games booth #TT51.

Gib Pin [LoadingReadyRun]
Available for purchase at the LoadingReadyRun table in Bandland.

Dreams Pin [Media Molecule]
Compete at the Sony booth #16019 for a chance to win a Dreams Pin.

Hamsterdam Pin [Muse Games]
Try your hand at the limited game challenges throughout the day to get a pin or you can purchase it the Muse Games booth #15012.

The Messenger Ninja Pin [Sabotage]
Available for purchase as at the Sabotage booth #16081.

Reynardo Pin [Spearhead Games]
Available for purchase at the Spearhead Games booth #15108.

Skull & Laurel Pin [Stellar Jockeys]
Available for purchase at the Stellar Jockeys booth #23097 and get a discount with a completion of a demo.

Overcooked Pin [Team 17]
Play any two games at the Team17 booth #20055 to receive a pin.

Dr. Fetus and Nugget Pin [Team Meat]
Available for purchase at the Team Meat booth #17129.

Boss Ace Pin [Three Flip Studios]
Available for purchase at the Solid human booth #17121 or be a Blobageddon Tournament Finalist.

Three 6ixty Pin [Toronto Gaymers]
Available for purchase in the Diversity Lounge.

Planeswalker Pin [Pastimes]
The Planeswalker pin can be acquired via the following methods:
1. Pins will be on sale at the Gamermats/Pastimes booth #TT61 for $20
2. Pins will be available on the Magic: the Gathering Prize Wall for 6 Tickets
3. By completing the Planeswalker Path! (Below)

Planeswalker Path
Complete four steps to Ignite your Spark (Call to Action)
-Learn about Magic at the front desk of the Magic Learn to Play area
-Enter the Magic: the Gathering Planeswalker Deck League
-Enter a Scheduled Magic: the Gathering Event
-Take a photo of your spark igniting and sharing on Twitter #pastimes and #MTG at our photo op at the Magic: the Gathering booth in the TableTop area

Complete these steps and receive a Free Planeswalker Symbol official Pinny Arcade Pin

SHOW PINS

PAX East 2019 Pin Set
Available at the Official PAX Merch Booths located in the Expo Hall and the Lobby.

Limited Edition PAX East 2019 Pin Set
ONLY available at the Lobby PAX Merch booth.

Merch 7.0 Pin
Available at the Official PAX Merch Booths located in the Expo Hall and the Lobby with any purchase of $100 or more.

TRADE PINS

Penny Arcade Staff Series 7
Trade with Penny Arcade staff members for their Staff Series 7 pins.

Gabe and Tycho Flag Pins
Trade with Gabe (Mike) and Tycho (Jerry.)

PIN QUEST

Get your Pin Quest here.

-Gabe out

I’m not sure I want a new gaming platform right now, one that isn’t connected to anything I already own or any of the people that I know.  At this point in the perpetual ebb and flow of centralization and decentralization, this is just what’s happening: the real vigor is supposed to be elsewhere, and you’re supposed to borrow it forever.  I understand why it’s a good business model, but it’s so clearly a model in search of an audience that I’m content to just let their wet tentacle slap against the windowpane for a while.

I have seen Streaming Solutions that I found quite functional, they maintained the experience quite well, except for when they didn’t.  Latency can still manufacture what is colloquially called “a bad time” even if all the silicon is in your house, apportioned into little idols.  I’d be substantially more likely to consider the platforms that extend the profundity of investment I’ve already made in a machine and library, transforming my Xbox or Playstation into a huffable, remote aerosol.  I’m gonna have to see more from Stadia, and not just pricing or whatever.  I’m not going to assess it on the axes they value.  It’s going to be much more existential; much lower to the ground.

Also, the name is dumb, but the Wii wasn’t my favorite name either and my fucking grandparents own one.  I think I’m just gonna play games for awhile, for the duration it takes all these multinational behemoths to tear out each other’s throats.  Then I’m gonna look around and if I see somebody who still has a throat I’m gonna be like, “There’s something different about that one.  Something special.”

Gabriel and myself are NOT good at Sekiro but that has not kept us from liking it.  I like combat systems that are timing and defense focused, and the “posture” system Sekiro presents - one where form and focus is the only thing standing between warriors and gruesome, one-hit kills - plays into some of my favorite mechanical tropes.  We’re gonna be back in the studio playing that for a couple hours starting at 2pm PDT on the strimm.

(CW)TB out.   

This, or something very close to it, really did happen.  It’s a brand that brings people together, forging a connection between them, even if they should be discussing the infection that is - even now - gnawing at the root of his lifespan.

The thing people always said about the first Division game was that enemies were “bullet sponges.”  This wasn’t a huge surprise to me.  No matter what the metaphor is, in this case one where players constitute an elite sleeper cell of extrajudicial murderers, when you reach higher levels there will be more elite enemies and those enemies will have more hit points.  Comically so, in challenging versions of the game’s content.  But it never affected my enjoyment of the game - I ran with two light machine guns sporting over a thousand rounds between them, and I was geared so that when I stowed one and drew the other it reloaded the one I’d put away, obviating the drawback of the weapon class.  Training that twin apparatus on elites was more or less my job, for as long as it took.  It didn’t break my suspension of belief because I never believed it to begin with.  I played for months and never had to charge my watch once - that bothered me.  There should be a place in the safehouse where you can charge your watch.

What they appear to have determined here is that the “bullet sponge” issue is largely a UI/perceptual issue, and they’ve tried to counter that by visually establishing when you’re hitting an area likely to soak up a ton of damage.  Once you’ve broken through big armor, there’s typically a visual cue coupled with the fact that they just… melt, after that.  You know how when you’re installing something on iOS and you’re staring at the bar and staring at the bar until it get close to the end and then finishes super fast?  It’s like that.  This stuff didn’t bother me before, but if it bothered you, that coupled with more robust weapon feedback might advocate on its behalf.

The only thing I haven’t enjoyed so far is the story, which is so thin that - were I inclined to be charitable - I would say “it was not a priority.”

Except… the original Division had a cool story, and they told it well, with firm characters who made sense and didn’t always agree.  These characters, the ones I have just described, were performed with expertise and I bought what they were selling.  They told asynchronous stories with their ECHO system that were, in some cases, exceedingly clever.  I found things at the end of missions I didn’t truly understand were missions in the first game, borderline magical shit, little blooms of light peeking up through the martial law.  I think I like this game better, and I know why I’m doing everything, but it’s such a striking deficiency here in the first half that it makes me want to wrassle on account of bein’ all fired up.  Looking at the roadmap, the story isn’t actually complete until much later, in content that arrives as a free update.  I’d like to say they’re keeping their powder dry, which has nice synchronicity as a wartime metaphor, but I’m not holding my breath.

(CW)TB out.   

Kirby’s Epic Yarn was cute and fun back in the day, that’s a game I played with a younger iteration of my daughter Ronia, and the Extra version is similar except that it also allows you to play the game while driven by the very whips of hell.

I’ve been in The Division 2 pretty much every night since it was came out, which for me was a little early because I bought one of the dumb versions.  I’m not proud of it but that’s where we are.  I bought the one that had some kind of pass or something and I was surprised to learn that I could play it a couple days early.  I’ve never been able to parse those charts they put out where they tell you what you get at different times, like, with the grid, and to be frank if I see a grid like this there’s a chance I might not buy it at all because it creates a little vibration somewhere in my consciousness that I resent.

I went in to look at the play button so that it would be grayed out, and instead, but it said Play instead.  Then I clicked it, assuming that it would not work, and instead I was playing The Division 2. Except it was already like eleven thirty at night so I made a dude I didn’t hate too much and got to a place I wouldn’t mind starting from the next day.

It’s going to be something we talk about a few times, so I’m only going to operate the introduction here - but it’s go no right being where it’s at right now at launch.  I think The Division is one of the most underrated games out there, bar none, and they spent the back half of the entire project giving people free content while - and this is key - figuring out a legible endgame experience for itself and the franchise going forward.  I think it’s good solo, bruisingly difficult but good, but the amount of enjoyment created by each additional teammate isn’t linear - every time you add another piece, it’s like adding another floor to a building.  It changes what’s possible.  It changes what you can see.

(CW)TB out.   

One of the the things I like about Games Workshop’s 40k shit is that one of the fundamental tenets of the grim darkness of the far future is that nobody understands how anything works.  Not really.  This doesn’t mean that they are ineffective, or that they constitute non-factors in the events that surround them.  Quite the contrary; it’s just that the range of expression available to human beings is very narrow.  Society has essentially been distilled into a weapon. It describes a culture where all of its points are in one thing.

I was talking to Ryan Hartman about this, he’s been playing The Division 2 with our friend Kris Straub nightly, and he’s expressed some incredulity about the state of Washington, D.C. only seven months after the Dollar Flu.  Except I think this is about right.  Set the lethality of the Green Poison aside for a minute, even though that’s a crucial factor is this kind of breakdown.  The way it works now is that the lives we have are made possible by hours upon hours upon hours of other people’s invisible, functionally elfin labor.  I have one or two useful skills, but virtually all of them require electricity.  I buy, at a fundamental level, the idea that entropy has things to teach us about the baseline and it can offer this instruction with terrifying swiftness.  The game is functionality about reclaiming an urban ruin; the environment is doing it too, but trying to reclaim a society where the trash isn’t higher than your head is one of the things happening here.

PAX East is fast approaching, and with it a spring basket of exclusive merchandise.   

If I said there was a place where an atomized workforce toils without worker protections in sound isolated chambers they themselves pay for, their only task being to make commercials for consumer products, you’d tell me that was Cyberpunk As Hell and I would say that’s actually just regular Twitch.  I’m here to do my part:  I’ll be digging into the fascinatingly meta Baba Is You from 2 to 4pm PDT this very afternoon.  Gabriel succumbed to what can only be called a “Viral Hit” that involved a lot of shivering and sweating, so I sent him home.  That means that I - and a creature of my choosing - will jump on our stream and try to make our way in a game where the rules are physical objects you manipulate in order to find success.  See you then.

(CW)TB out.