Thousands of gamers will be descending on the Seaport District tomorrow — many dressed as their favorite characters — as the highly anticipated PAX East extravaganza kicks off, offering a glimpse of the latest video games while giving independent developers unparalleled exposure and a chance to make it big in a rapidly changing $67 billion industry.
Nearly 80,000 people from around the world are expected to attend the three-day expo at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, making it the largest trade show in New England and the largest gaming industry event on the East Coast.
"The audience at PAX matters," said Monty Sharma of the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute, or MassDiGi. "When it comes to connecting with fans, PAX is really it. Indie developers — small guys — don't have large marketing budgets. So you get 80,000 people walking past your game, and that's a huge boost."
This year's PAX East comes at a time when the marketplace for video games has been expanding to include more women, but shifting away from big games for consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation and toward games for mobile devices including iPads and iPhones, MassDiGi execs noted.
The most high-profile indication of that shift was this week's departure of John Riccitiello as chief executive of Electronic Arts after the big console game producer's recent disappointing financial returns.
"Fifteen years ago, you couldn't play a game on your cellphone. There's a revolution that's been happening in the last five years in the industry with the rise of Facebook games and mobile," said Trevor Stricker, president of Boston-based developer Disco Pixel. Another major shift is toward digital distribution — meaning people can download games without going to a store.
In the past 18 months, Erik Asmussen, the founder of 82 Apps, a Cambridge-based independent developer, has launched three games, including "PWN: Combat Hacking," which was released March 14 and will be showcased at PAX.
"Games that cost $50 million to make means they're riskier," Asmussen said. "The advantage to being a small developer is I'm giving my own time, and I'm not incurring massive debt. It allows me to be a little more risky, a little more nimble. I can go to shows like PAX and talk directly to the audience and hear what they want."
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