Mark B. – Studio Artist, Plants vs. Zombies

I had a total blast but oh my gosh did it wipe me out. Between what seemed like hundreds of boxes of swag to get out, running the “Test Your Strength” machine, keeping the booth tidy, and trying to contain Wall-nut hat mania, it was hard to find time just to get a bite to eat. Saturday afternoon, in the chaos, my lunch order didn’t come through. It was 2 or 2:30, and I was STARVING! Jeff saw the situation and came over, “Hey man, you can have half my sandwich.” Then, Philip came in and shared his lunch as well. I had a lot of fun being on panels, seeing all the amazing cos-players, and mingling with people who love PopCap games. But a small act of kindness when you need it the most, it stays with you. Thanks for having my back guys. It was awesome to have the opportunity to be at PAX East with ya.

Dana S. – Customer Service Content Manager

First of all, I sustained some major hits on this trip. I came back with a touch of con crud, and I got so dehydrated throughout the weekend that my hands cracked and bled, and then my nose started bleeding as well. On the way back to Seattle, I broke a tooth on airport food, and when I picked up my suitcase at baggage claim, it looked like this:

American Airlines customer support is awesome though, so I got a new bag. However, my Batman belt was lost along the way. Circle of life.

So, all that said, it really says something that I am so completely happy with my PAX East experience! I loved every minute of it (in retrospect, I guess — I mean, in the moment, I do remember never wanting to hear that hammer strike/bell ding sound combination again). I made some awesome new friends, saw a couple of cool panels, brought home a pile of card games to start playing, and best of all, hung out with the coolest group of friends I could have hoped for.

I also especially dug getting to talk to Peggle fans, as ever. Between the Peggle Master plushies we were giving out and the free Peggle download offer, that game was on everyone’s mind, and I love that. Extreme Fever forever!

Tara T. – Community Manager, Core Franchise

Couldn’t agree more with Mark. You were all so fun, amazing, and wonderful to work with. Even in the frustrating, starving, tired moments.

My favorite memories of the booth were the kiddos for sure. Each lil’ smile just from a simple plushy was worth every effort! The magic show was a highlight for me too. He brought a nice crowd and was super engaging. The strong man never-ending line was the biggest surprise for me. The popularity of that activity was crazy cool! The worst part of the whole event were the greedy folks who took 10 of everything without thinking twice. Seeing the inflation on ebay today is just slightly annoying. I’m still exhausted and sore, but all in all I can’t wait for the next event and can only hope we have a group as great as this one was! Thanks so much, everyone!

The gang's mostly all here!

Philip S. (hey, that’s me!) – Copywriter

Quick impressions: super noisy and I can’t believe how popular our decidedly analog High Striker hammer game was. Beyond that, I didn’t get out of our own booth too much (except to escort our zombie to and from his Kissing Booth) so I missed most of what I’m sure was a lot of great stuff on the floor. But what I took away from the whole event was that there are tons of great people in this business. From the groovy cats on my own team who worked hard and stayed loose the whole weekend, to the thousands of fans who stopped by to grab some swag or just to say ‘hey’ and ‘thanks,’ plus the two indie developers I ran into repeatedly in the break room (what up Ackk Studios and ClutchPlay Games?), and the dynamite crew of Enforcers including our most-awesome “XA” (Exhibitor Assistant) Laura, who was traffic cop, civil engineer, valet and den mother, and who we all agreed should come home with us. I spend a lot of time online where some days it seems like endless negativity. It was great to be face-to-face with so many fans and colleagues and to see how much passion and enthusiasm still exists in our industry. Oh, and the back-room swag deals with other developers was fun and sort of hilarious.

We killed it good.

Stephanie B. – Community Manager, Plants vs. Zombies

This was sent to me via the PvZ page yesterday:

Dear PopCap,

I just wanted to thank you for being the coolest booth at PAX East. I visited your booth often over the weekend but I had the best experience on Friday. I noticed people lining up to ring a bell with a mallet; I’m not sure if that game has an actual name. I’ve personally never tried those types of games before due to not having a lot of upper body strength. I normally wouldn’t attempt hitting anything with a mallet but I saw you were giving out Disco Zombie Figures and I knew I had to have one. I saw many girls fail to push their upper body strength to hit the bell and they were walking away with an energy drink. I really didn’t want an energy drink so I knew I had to give it my all for the figure! After waiting in line I got up to the green mat… and failed miserably. After three attempts I handed in my mallet. It was sad; I was sad. The guy said “Nice try” and I sighed. I was almost angry because I felt this game was really unfair for the average girl unless she had the extra muscle or had a hulky boyfriend. I didn’t have either of those things. However, after I walked away one of the the PopCap guys ran after me to give me a figure. I thanked him and I was really happy, even though I was still sad on the outside. So please thank whoever was giving out the prizes that Friday afternoon for running after the girl who was incredibly unhappy she failed at ringing the bell.     –Jennifer

Everyone did such a fantastic job. Seriously. Awesome. I heart all of you for the hard work at the event and PAX always reminds me of why I love my job and our fans. You all should feel super proud you pulled off a fantastic show! Everyone loved our booth and my favorite part was all of us working together and becoming better friends because of it.

Jeff G. – Nobody Really Knows What He Does Around Here

Other than our own booth, which we are contractually obliged to say was the best thing ever, I had a few other favorite moments at PAX East, including: Learning how to play Cards Against Humanity, being relieved that my daughter wasn’t with me while playing, attending the always hilarious Giant Bomb panel, and not breathing one molecule of clean air for three days. No, wait. That last one was awful. But overall the show was awesome, as it always is! By far my favorite gaming show, every time. And hanging out with PopCap friends outside of the office? Priceless.

“Phew!”

Okay maybe I should say a few more words, or this will be a very short blog post. The next thing we should say, most assuredly, is “thank you” to all those who attended and stopped by our booth. PopCap has been going to the PAX conventions in Seattle and Boston for the past few years, and we always have an amazing time. But this past weekend in Boston was probably the best of them all so far, as we were crushed by enthusiastic fans all weekend long, to the point where the only thing greater than our utter exhaustion was the immense feeling of gratitude we had for the response we received. So, again: Thank you!

This year was particularly stressful as far as working at a game company goes – because the booth that we had planned, around a certain unreleased game, completely fell through in the last few weeks leading up to the show. So the booth that those in Boston saw this weekend is what we might refer to as a  Hail Mary, or final act of desperation. Basically, a few of us sat in a conference room,  with flies swirling around our heads,  as we attempted to come up with a booth concept at the last minute. Someone – I don’t remember who – said, “Hey, how about a carnival?” And with lack of a better second idea, that’s what we went with.

But, hey — who doesn’t love a carnival?  With a Kiss the Zombie booth, a magician, a High Striker game, a Not-A-Lemonade Stand (loaded with free PopCap swag), and the Incredible Swag Machine itself, which dispensed our ever-popular Wall-nut caps every couple hours, we inadvertently created a three-day mob scene. Give people free entertainment and free gifts, and they’ll be happy! Who knew?

Honestly, as much fun as it is working at a game company most of the time, it really is just another office job, with all the stress, workloads, politics, compromises, and boring meetings as every other office job. So it’s easy for us to lose sight of the bigger picture. What shows like PAX East do is remind us of that bigger picture. Which is you. Spending three days with tens of thousands of happy, enthusiastic gamers, fans, and nerds of all ages, nationalities, body types, and planetary affiliations brings it back home to us just how much fun all of this is supposed to be, and how making people happy is really all we’re in it for.

We may have given you free stuff, for which you are more than welcome, but, in our eyes, you gave us the bigger gift: You showed us just how awesome it is to for us to do what we get to do. Some of you also reminded us of the importance of practicing proper hygiene, but that’s a blog post for another day.

And if you somehow didn’t make it to PAX East, you still have a chance to get the virtual goodies we were handing out at the show, including a free copy of Peggle, right here:  http://www.popcap.com/promos/pax-east-2013

Enjoy, and we’ll see you at PAX Prime in the fall! Yay!

We recently heard from a fan who wanted to share his doggy’s animated reaction to the Zombie head plushy. I don’t know about you, but I’m putting this doggy on my shortlist for companions to have along in the Zombie Apocalypse.

This little Zombie head plushy is limited edition, but check out the beautiful plushies available on PvZstore.com!

P.S. to Joseph: We tried replying to you and it bounced… thanks for the video, and stop by our table again next year to say hi!

Enjoy this super-sharp capture of the game itself, being enjoyed in the comfort of a swanky lounge chair in the PopCap booth. Then go find the game on

But beyond the booth, well away from the Wall-nuts, PopCap people engaged in other pursuits, namely panels! (I’m really going to stop this any moment now, I swear.) I attended any panel featuring any PopCapper, in the interest of bringing this part of PAX to you, dear BlogRiders.

On the first day, Jeff Green and Stephanie Bayer represented PopCap on a panel called “Community vs. PR: The Squabbling Siblings.”  And here I must deeply apologize for my lack of preparation. I failed to check the battery in my camera that morning so I can’t show you the image I wanted to show you for this panel — the title slide of the PowerPoint presentation that called the panel, “Community vs. PR: The Squatting Siblings.”

The panel was pretty entertaining. Jeff is someone you just hand a microphone or a keyboard (typing, not ivories… although to be fair, I don’t know he couldn’t do both!), then sit back and enjoy. Stephanie has been the Community Manager for Bejeweled Blitz for a while now, so she’s got plenty of funny stories to share as well. Right now, I’m kicking myself for one of the notes I took, because obviously I found it so hilarious or memorable that I couldn’t imagine it would require context later: pet velociraptor.

So, um, Jeff, if you remember the bit about the pet velociraptor, I’d love to hear that again; it seems the full PAX experience wiped it from my brain, leaving only that mysterious and enticing fragment of a quote on a page.

The panelists talked at length about how not to be a bad member of a community. Don’t use all caps; don’t use 47 exclamation points in a row; treat people online the same way you’d treat them if they were standing right in front of you. Which leads neatly into the Sunday morning panel that also featured Stephanie Bayer, “Snark, Cynicism, and Anonymity: How Community Managers Deal With Trolls.”

After charging my camera, I was able to capture this far kinder definition than I would ever have come up with.

The panel on trolling was early Sunday morning and competed with the need to stand in line for the Wil Wheaton Awesome Hour, so the savvy panelists advertised free doughnuts for attendees. (On Twitter, the hashtag for the panel was #FreeDoughnuts.) I sat in the audience and watched people rush toward the front of the room to claim their delicious treats, and I was a little bit envious. I could not bring myself to have a doughnut, though, because I was at PAX. Anyone remember the Swine Flu epidemic? There are still folks wandering around PAX with stickers that read “Infected” on their badges. I’m not about to pick something up at PAX and put it in my mouth, no matter how gooey and doughy it may be. Perhaps this lack of sugary goodness led to a brief lapse in goodwill toward men…

When the panelists announced that it was time for the Q&A, they said, “But we have to make it quick, so we’re going straight to the Lightning Round! That means you ask your questions as quickly as possible, and we will answer them the same way.” They also put a helpful graphic up on the screen with the words “Lightning Round” and a bright bolt of lightning.

Then the first person who went to the mic started off with a speech about how happy she was to be there, and why, and the panel’s relevance to her own life, and the reason she was glad to be able to ask the question… and I thought, man, some people have no idea what Lightning Round means.

It occurred to me that this was a troll thought, so I should be ashamed of myself. Then I thought, but no, a troll would have shouted it out loud, so I could relax in the comfort of knowing I was not a troll.

Then I tweeted it. Happy medium?

Friday night’s panel was on PvZ Pinball, and that topic will be covered for you in depth later this week. For now, though, I will leave you with an image from that panel, because I’ve learned a few things over three years of PAX:

1. Don’t put things in your mouth.
2. Never underestimate the desire for free stuff.
3. There is nothing cooler than dancing zombies.

Here we neatly combine two of the above points.

Don’t get us wrong: We love the convention as much as the next gaming dork. And, hey, this year in particular we have absolutely nothing to complain about, as our booth was overwhelmed with people the entire weekend. On the other hand, our booth was overwhelmed with people the entire weekend. So we’re tired. And our feet hurt. And our ears hurt from people yelling at us to give them a Wall-nut cap. (If they asked for a “potato cap” they were given a look of abject scorn. Pro Tip: You don’t get free stuff from us if you don’t even know what it is!)

Calm before the storm: On the morning of the first day, we were still able to have the Wall-nut hats out in the open for anyone to grab. This wouldn't last long.

Overall, of course, we were pretty thrilled with our booth. It looked great, it was in a fantastic spot, and we had all sorts of cool stuff going on, besides giving away free goodies. Most exciting for us was the debut of Plants vs. Zombies Pinball, which our friends over at Zen Studios developed, based on our original design. The game was playable in our booth and the response was great, even by those of us working in the booth, who took any spare chance we got to grab one of those chairs to sit down and play.

Our PAX booth included comfy chairs where you could relax, play our games, and even recharge your phones! It's like we thought of everything!

On Friday, the first day of the show, things were still relatively “mellow,” as far as a gaming convention with tens of thousands of people in attendance goes, but by Saturday morning, word of our knit caps must have gotten out. Plus, it was Saturday, so a lot more people were in attendance. And so what we had originally envisioned as a “relaxing lounge” kind of thing for ourselves had a different vibe to it by late morning.

HALP

Demand for the hats became so high, in fact, that the hard-working PAX “enforcers,”  as the show’s volunteers are known, soon set up an organized line for us, and a system by which we’d open up one box an hour, with folks lining up on the half-hour to start waiting.  This line ended up snaking around multiple corners of the convention hall. It was crazy.

This poor fellow is still looking for the end of our shwag line.

If it sounds like we’re either complaining or bragging about all this, we don’t mean to do either. What we’re actually doing is what is known as “processing.” Mostly, we’re overwhelmed by the response, not just to the free stuff, because everyone obviously likes free stuff, but just from the reaction and kind words from fans we received all weekend. Believe us, it’s not been the easiest few weeks around PopCap. So this kind of reception from the fans was an awesome reminder of why we all do this in the first place.

So from all of us at PopCap to everyone at the show: Thank you. Let’s do this again soon. Just not too soon.  We need to sleep for a week or two first!

Anyway, PAX starts tomorrow, and we are going to be there! Unlike past years, it should not be too hard to find us. You will not have to go chasing dancing zombies around.(Though you can if you like, because the dancing zombies will be there too!) This time, we have a big ol’ booth on the 4th floor of the North Lobby. You basically can’t miss it. It says PopCap all over it, is decorated with PopCap artwork, and will be staffed by people yelling “HEY WE’RE POPCAP.” In fact, you’ll have to actively try to avoid us, because we’re going to be all over the place. Because in addition to the booth and the dancing zombies, we’re also presenting an exciting panel Friday night!

At our booth itself, we have a plethora of exciting activities and events for you! You can sit down at one of our 8 Xboxes and play two great new releases from us — Zuma’s Revenge! on XLBA, and the brand spankin’ new SECRET PINBALL GAME done in collaboration with the awesome Zen Studios. You can recharge your smartphone at our stunningly convenient recharge station. And you can get your photo taken with one of a host of beautiful PopCap game backgrounds, perfect for framing or spamming your Facebook friends with!

And, yes, of course, there will be LOTS OF FREE STUFF for you. But we won’t spill what it is now, because that would be no fun at all. You’ll just have to come visit us!

Another PAX convention has come and gone, and boy, are we tired.  Not that we’re complaining!  As mentioned in an early post, the Penny Arcade Expo is our very favorite convention in the whole wide world.  Where else can you find 70,000 nerds happily nerding out together in total nerd bliss? Still, all that nerding out can take its toll, especially if, like us, you also had a bit of work to do.

Our “work” (and yeah, we know, this isn’t exactly graveyard shift highway construction) was on two fronts: Promoting our latest Facebook game, Solitaire Blitz, at our booth, and shepherding our dancing zombies around the show floor.  One thing we learned at the show was that our zombies don’t have much in the way of peripheral vision with those big heads on, so if we weren’t on hand to keep them corralled together, they’d end up wandering off in different directions.  The great thing about that is we can now add “zombie shepherd” to our resumes, which with the coming apocalypse can only be a good thing.

Our booth was done up in a nautical theme, to fit the theme of Solitaire Blitz.  It looked pretty great! The ship’s wheel was a real ship’s wheel that you could actually spin around, if you were into that kind of thing,  and the bell was also real, though we tried not to ring it too much given how little sleep any of us got.

We had a couple items of shwag to pass out at the booth—PAX-branded Solitaire Blitz playing cards, and Otis the worm headbands, which you can see here:

We were aware going into the show that it might be a stretch to get folks to wear a headband with a worm on it on their heads, so we incentivized them by announcing that were giving away one very popular tablet device a day to someone we saw on the floor wearing the headband.  And we meant what we said! Here was the lucky winner from Day 3 of PAX:

Finally, our booth was also graced by the presence of a local Boston magician named David Hall, who performed a variety of amazing magic tricks at the booth – often conveniently using our Solitaire Blitz playing cards – throughout the weekend.  And believe us—this guy was good.  Some of us watched his tricks over and over for three days, and still couldn’t figure out how he was doing it.  Any fear we had that this was going to look like a bad 4^th –grader’s birthday party was assuaged the minute he had us baffled. Which was with the very first trick he did.

As for the dancing zombies, what can we say? They rocked, as always.  If you’ve seen them before, either in person or on YouTube, you know how awesome this troupe is.  To pull back the curtain a little, we can tell you that this is a troupe of Seattle breakdancers, who, when not earning money doing things like wearing zombie costumes, travel around the world and compete in breakdance competitions.  They worked up a great routine for us, which you can see below,  but they also indulged in a some freestyle whenever they could, which even without the zombie masks would have been amazing. With the masks, we were blown away with their endurance, timing,  and athleticism.

Finally, your humble blogger here did his very best to make an utter fool of himself throughout the show.  The following photo, taken from Harmonix’s Rock Band Night at the Brattle Theater, is merely one example  We will let it speak for itself.  Though we apologize in advance for any psychological trauma it causes.

Our humble thanks to all of you who stopped by, said hi, watched the zombies, or grabbed some cards or headbands.  We had a blast, and hope you did too.  If you didn’t make it to PAX East this year,  we hope to see you at a future show!

What started in 2004 as a fairly humble little gathering of gaming nerds (about 3,300 people attended the first PAX) has since grown into what is widely acknowledged as the premier public gaming event of the year, with attendance hitting around 70,000. PAX has become so popular, in fact, that it has now been split in two. PAX Prime takes place in Seattle in every September, and PAX East is held in Boston in April. This year’s PAX East is now just three weeks away, from April 6-8.  For three full days, gamers of all ages, nationalities, shapes, sizes, and planetary alliances gather to play games, talk about games, and just generally geek out amongst their own happy kind. And I am happy to report that PopCap will be there to meet and greet you, give you free stuff, and quite possibly even eat your brains!

I don’t want to give everything away now — because where’s the fun in that?— but I can tell you some of what we’ll be doing at the show.

First, in celebration of our great new game Solitaire Blitz, which you really should be playing if you’re not already, we are gong to be handing out special PAX-branded decks of playing cards (real ones), complete with a redemption for 25,000 free in-game Silver.  If you’re lucky enough to be attending the show, we’ll be handing those out right by the main entrance to the show floor. You won’t be able to miss us! We’re also going to have some special entertainment in this area, and, as usual, we’ll be passing out something goofy to wear. And if you’re too cool or too shy or maybe just have the proper amount of dignity to not want to wear something goofy, perhaps we can entice you with this:  At least one person every day at the show who is wearing our goofy thing will win a coveted new tablet device that shall not be named.  Yes, we are not above bribing you to wear our shwag.

And of course no PAX is really complete without a visit from the undead, so be on the lookout for our fabulous troupe of dancing zombies, who will be wandering the show, antagonizing plants, and demonstrating the kind of incredible dance moves only possible when you no longer need to breathe or have a living body you need to protect!

So we hope to see you there! If you are coming, please let us know on our Facebook Event page! And if you can’t make it, we promise to take lots of pictures. All we know is, it’s always an amazing, wonderful time at PAX, and we can’t wait to be there again!