PAX (event)

In 2010, Penny Arcade hosted its first event outside of Seattle. PAX East was held in Boston, from March 26–28, 2010, at the Hynes Convention Center. With an attendance of 52,290, PAX East rivaled the newly dubbed "PAX Prime" in Washington, which saw 67,600 attendees in 2010. This venue was moved to Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 2011. An agreement reached in early 2012 committed Boston as the home of PAX East until 2023.[5]

2013 marked the first international expansion for PAX. PAX Australia 2013 was held July 19–21, 2013, at the Melbourne Showgrounds. The following year it moved to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, where it has been confirmed to remain until at least 2022.[6]

The first PAX South was held in San Antonio, Texas at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center on January 23–25, 2015. It set a PAX record for highest attendance for an inaugural year.[7] In October 2021, ReedPop announced that PAX South would be discontinued, citing that the event had not seen significant growth since its inaugural edition.[8]

In 2011, Penny Arcade launched PAX Dev, a new event exclusive to the game developer community to "speak freely and focus entirely on their trade".[9] Differentiating itself from other game developer events like GDC, PAX Dev does not allow press. 750 people attended in 2011.

At PAX South 2017, Penny Arcade and ReedPop announced that a new event type, PAX Unplugged, would be held on November 17–19, 2017, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The event was designed as a tabletop-exclusive convention, a gaming segment which was only incidental in other PAXes.[10]

PAX was originally known as the "Penny Arcade Expo", a Seattle-only event, but quickly became known by its acronym "PAX". As part of an expansion into new cities, Seattle's PAX was renamed "PAX Prime" in 2010. On November 18, 2015, it was silently confirmed that PAX Prime was being renamed to PAX West.[11]

Each PAX features an event called the "Omegathon", a festival-long tournament consisting of a group of randomly selected attendees competing in a game bracket for a grand prize (which has varied from a large game bundle, to a trip to Japan, to a trip to any PAX in the world). The final round of the Omegathon makes up part of the closing ceremonies of PAX. Past games for the final round of the Omegathon have included Tetris, Pong, Halo 3, and skee-ball.

Early PAXes were largely run by a large group of volunteers, which the show calls "Enforcers". Now a paid role, most Enforcers are still not professional conference organizers or temps, but rather selected from an application available to attendees on the PAX website.[13]

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  PAX West (Formerly PAX Prime) has been held annually in Seattle, Washington, United States, since 2004.
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  PAX East has been held annually in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, since 2010.
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  PAX Aus has been held annually in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, since 2013.
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  PAX Unplugged has been held annually in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, since 2017.

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  PAX South was held annually in San Antonio, Texas, United States, between 2015 and 2020.
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  PAX Dev was held annually in Seattle, Washington, United States, between 2011 and 2019.
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  PAX Online was held virtually between 2020 and 2021 due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.