PAX East 2023

Going to PAX East is an honor we earn through hard effort: planning, organization, and complex execution. Many vendors of all types register as early as they can. PAX’s various conventions have limited spots. We have to strike early to make sure we get one of the coveted slots at this exciting venue. Of course, this year Japanese: The Game was one of those vendors—we were lucky enough to secure a booth this year for PAX East 2023! We were very excited for this opportunity to bring our game to a larger stage again, to show our fans how far we have come, and to introduce our game to a new set of customers during this convention.

There is a chaotic level of energy at every convention, and it has been this way since the very first gaming or fan conventions started happening. This energy starts with the initial sign up and doesn’t flag even a little bit until the very last vendor has left and their booth has been taken down. Located in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boston Convention and Entertainment Center, PAX East is by far one of the largest gaming conventions held in the United States. It includes four days of raw energy and excitement, which kept the Japanese: The Game team on their feet in order to remain ready for action.

After signing in and getting our coveted Exhibitor Badges, the JTG team headed out into the chaos of the Exposition Hall! The “Expo Hall,” for short, is where the vendors all have booth space they can decorate how they wish in order to share their products. The JTG team was able to secure a small, one-table booth at this wonderful venue this year. On day 1, the biggest excitement is watching all of the empty booths fill up and fill out as the vendors arrive and set up their displays. We were all very interested in watching as everything that was going on at PAX East this year got set up on the first day around our humble booth. The aerial view coming into the hall from the main entrance was packed with sights to see and definitely gave our grand entrance a bigger sense of excitement. There were already big names set up in the Expo Hall when we arrived, including the amazing Pokemon Labs area and the GIgabyte display – both large names we were honored to be sharing the limelight with among the many others.

Our first task upon arrival was to find the proper booth. Even with a map it was a little disorienting for us! For perspective, the Exhibit Hall B – where the Expo Hall was held – is quoted at 184,000 square feet with a capacity to hold up to 26,285 guests safely. Our tasks as we spent four days within this area was to bring in as many new visitors to our booth to tell them about the unique way our game has been designed to help engage learners that don’t always fare well with the vocabulary dumps that most language learning programs provide. This interactive learning style makes the game a powerful tool to improve grammar skills without making it seem like the chore it comes across as in a classroom. Here’s a picture of our fearless leader David and our super saleslady Anna as they puzzle over the Expo Hall map!

Luckily, with an event this large in a venue as big as the Boston Convention and Entertainment Center, we were working with the wonderful people from PAX: a long-running convention that was once known simply as Penny Arcade Expo and featured arcade games! PAX has a long history of running these huge conventions to get new games out to the fans. They employ a wonderful team of “Enforcers” who work as a form of security within the Expo Hall to help vendors and fans have a safe experience. One of their jobs this year was ensuring that all attendees – vendor and customer alike – were wearing their masks for safety. One Enforcer stood out above the others for our small team, and we were sad to see the end of the convention time we got to spend together. Huge shoutout for “Mr. 100%” aka Matt, who kept our booth running smoothly, answered all our questions, and engaged in many jokes and “elbow bumps” to keep spirits up on both sides.

Thank you PAX East, for having such wonderful people on your team! We loved all our Enforcers.

Setting up was a sort of managed chaos. As a small company, we had far less to do than some of our bigger vendor neighbors! However, it seems like the largest amount of chaos came once the people started arriving and the real business started. Thursday afternoon into the evening was a wild ride of sales, teamwork, and playing JTG. The sales team had so much fun teaching people how to play the game, how to use all the features of the cards, and just generally talking about the importance of how we teach language in general and why our approach can help make the transition into multilingualism much easier for people of all ages. Watching the superstar, David, play games with other people was definitely an enlightening experience, especially when someone was able to beat him “at his own game.” Familiar with the ins and outs of the game, Anna was also a sight to be seen when playing against customers. Her delightful personality makes her an excellent, perennial part of the JTG team.

Not only did the Expo Hall host a multitude of vendors, there were also interactive games to play within he Expo Hall. One of the games was about hunting down geese at various vendor stalls; but by far the favorite of the convention was a game called Pinny Arcade: a play on the old name, Penny Arcade Expo. Many of the vendors had special pins that could be earned through various activities, such as playing the demo at the Pokemon Lab, or were just up for purchase at other vendors. Unfortunately, we were not able to participate in this game for PAX East 2023, but there’s definitely room for improvement with our setup, which will hopefully include custom pins we can add to that list! Here are a few of the pins I collected on Sunday:

One of the main draws to the Japanese: The Game booth was a LIVE demonstration, where you were able to play against a team member or one of your own friends (or a random stranger!) to learn how to play the game before making the commitment to purchasing. One of the biggest perks of buying Japanese: The Game is definitely the wonderful art that has been used on the cards, providing a very vibrant backdrop to the black felt that was used on our table. The cards show up wonderfully and it really helps to highlight the hard work that went into the art on the cards, the color differences between the types of cards, and the silhouettes that help players learn card placement. Here, we have our beautiful hand model Anna showing off the Core Deck with a sample sentence laid out next to the basic rules of the game. The second picture is a game in action where both sides have played sentences and are working to figure out what points to steal from their opponent.

While it may look daunting at first, the rules of Japanese: The Game are actually quite straight forward, and playing a few games is all that will be needed to get the better part of the rules down. Luckily, these are based on the rules of Japanese grammar, and so learning the rules of the game also awards players the knowledge of working Japanese grammar so they are better armed to create sentences when speaking Japanese. This is an excellent point in favor of the game as even a linguist (such as myself!) must admit that learning the grammar of a language by actually putting it into practice is an excellent way to get the basics down. Teaching customers about the importance of the word types that are specific to Japanese that we do not have in English was a very exciting part of telling customers about the benefits of Japanese: The Game!

Of course, no convention is complete without a healthy dose of costume play, or as it is called for short: cosplay. At PAX East we got to enjoy some really amazing costumes! Although there were children cosplaying at the convention, their pictures will not be included; however, we were very happy to see a new generation of cosplayers coming up with a supportive family that was willing to participate in their costumes! One small child was dressed as a Jedi and their adult counterpart was also wearing a Jedi costume, and it was very exciting to see the level of energy the child was radiating out into the crowd as they learned the fun of convention life and how exciting it is to engage in this wonderful hobby! Here are some of the best costumes we were able to see and photograph from the JTG booth!

Unfortunately, as with all good things, not even PAX East lasts forever. On Sunday at 6pm the Expo Hall closed down, and JTG as well as other vendors had to pack up and leave for the year. With luck, we will be back next year with new things to buy and more ways to entertain our wonderful customers. We at Japanese: The Game would like to thank each and every person who stopped by our booth to chat, play, or just listen to us talk about this game. We are all quite crazy for! You guys are the reason we do this, the lifeblood of our company, and our favorite people! So, thank you very much for making PAX East 2023 a smashing success that is going to help launch us into our most productive year yet!

We look forward to meeting new people at our next event, and visiting with with those we’ve already met, as we roll out new expansions and explore making new languages available! Thank you for taking time to revisit the fun and excitement of PAX East 2023, we hope the pictures were as fun to view as they were to take.