games are important. games matter. #PAX is where we come together to celebrate that.

The adrenaline and excitement from an incredible day at PAX East is finally wearing off, and I'm on my way to sleepy time, where I am a viking.

Before I go to bed, though, I wanted to share a little bit from my keynote today. This is excerpted from my speech:

Gaming is the foundation of the best friendships I’ve ever had, and it’s the mortar that has held my group of friends together for almost 25 years. 

We are all here today because we love playing games. Some of the happiest days of our lives would not exist without games and gaming. Games are important. Games matter. PAX is where we come together to celebrate that, and today, I’m going to talk about the power games have to inspire as well as entertain us.   

When you play a game – any game – you’re using your imagination to bring a world to life, and that’s truly special, because while all destruction is essentially the same, when you create something, it’s different every single time. When you create something together, you’re building bonds with your fellow gamers that could last for your entire lives. The Venn Diagram of my best friends, my gaming group, and people from high school I still hang out with is one perfect circle. I suspect that for many gamers of my generation, that’s equally true … and I know that my kids will be saying the same thing in 20 years about people they’ve never met face to face, but interact with almost every day in an online game that will make Call of Duty look then like Pong looks today.

Andrew said that he was watching Twitter while I was giving the keynote, and the word he saw most frequently was "inspiring." He said the second most frequent word was "funny," so I'd say that, even though I initially thought I dragged a bit in the middle, everyone in the main theater (~4000!) got out of it what I hoped they would.

I'm having an amazing time here. Thank you to everyone at PAX East for being so awesome and kind to me. I can't wait to play games tomorrow!

59 thoughts on “games are important. games matter. #PAX is where we come together to celebrate that.”

  1. Wil i’ve been following the #pax and it sounds like everyone is having a blast. I moved from Maine to Oklahoma last year, and then the fabulous Penny Arcade guys decide to set up show on the east coast. Just my luck. :). Hope the rest of the weekend is as awesome as the first day. Also Anime Boston will be setting up shop in that same spot next weekend. This will be the first year in several i won’t be able to make it but they do an amazing con every year. Anyway, hope everyone has an awesome rest of the weekend.

  2. The excerpt sounds really inspiring and powerful. Do you plan on making the entire thing available for those of us unable to make it to PAX?

  3. All afternoon I have been thinking of a way to express that I love the effort you put into making an awesome presentation for your fans at PAX…in relation to how you feel about your idols at these conventions and events. Not that I can say how you feel. But from what I read in your blog. Your excitement over others in the business that you enjoy their work and efforts. I just can’t seem to say exactly what I mean. You want your presentation to be great for your fans so they react to your speeches and events the way you do to your idols….I’m so not a writer. I hope you grasp my meaning Wil. Have a wicked excellent time at PAX.

  4. Wil, my husband and I have not stopped talking about your speech. The parts that were funny were hilarious, and the part that you quoted above IS my husband’s life and was truly touching. We stopped by to have you sign my Wheaton Library and you were so kind and generous with your time. Thanks for making my first day at my first PAX absolutely amazing!

  5. I know what you said about the mortar of gaming holding friendships together is true of my group. We all game together and have amazingly strong friendships. The man I married and who I’ve loved for a decade is a person I met while playing a text based RPG online. We still play that game, just from the same room, on laptops. I have friends in age brackets I’d never have become so close to without having met through the veil of an RPG. Pax is amazing, because all these people, yourself included, understand this. For us it isn’t weird or hard to understand. For us it’s NORMAL.

  6. But are you a Robot Viking?
    Last week I was pondering writing an article with a similar theme to your keynote. I was going to call it, “Why It’s OK if Your Career Involves Making Games and Not Curing Cancer.”

  7. Wil – since we’ve been following the evolution of this speech as you wrote it, I’d love to see it in it’s entirety — any chance of this ending up on YouTube/Vimeo/etc?
    Good stuff man.

  9. Wish I could have been there. Been following PA since 2003, and have always wanted to check it out. Maybe next year I’ll get tix soon enough. Looking forward to catching a replay of the speech.
    PS Ralph Wiggum quoting FTW.

  10. Can’t wait to see the full speech online.
    Your positivity is unassailable. Given the unique struggles you’ve faced (that you’ve been fiercely open about,) I can only salute you with what? Both hands?
    A double-handed salute to you Wil. You’re on a righteous path. Keep it up. Sleep well, and dream of days without bulldozers.

  11. I SO wish I could have been there…very glad that the speach went well 🙂 It’s funny, when I first mentioned your writings to my then-girlfriend now-fiancee two years ago, she said “What’s the big deal? He’s just a geek like us…” When I told her you had a book called Just a Geek, she had her “aha!” moment…yes, you are just a geek like us. But you have a way of taking what our culture feels and thinks individually and transforming it into a collective thought…the spinal cord of our culture. You are a conduit by which nearly every type of geek is represented, and for that we thank you.
    http://www.livingwithanerd.com

  13. Wil, Major congrats on having yet another project that you worked so long and hard on come through successfully. Enjoy the rest of your weekend gaming and bask in the well earned pride of not being a dick.
    Also looking forward to a post of the speech online.

  14. You must be feeling a wide range of emotions, based on your continuing inability to accept that people like what you do and you are indeed good enough! Did you see the AOL homepage article yesterday about BBT – the bowling pic was included and the article reflected well upon your niceness.
    Accept that you are actually cool… and enjoy!
    Awesome!

  16. Wil, CNN pretty much called you a God of the Geeks and how your keynote was awesome. Wish I could have seen it. It was sweet reading how CNN showed proper respect for you.

  18. Yay! I really enjoyed your keynote, Wil! Your enthusiasm was such a great start to the day. It was my first con and I really felt welcomed and psyched to be among the gamer community. I only wish I had a three-day pass so I could hang out for the whole weekend! If and when PAX East returns to Beantown next year I will be attending the entire event, fer sure.
    I hope all the PAX attendees have a wonderful rest of the weekend! Have fun + stay healthy!

  19. Have you been able to hook up with any OK gamers? I moved to Oklahoma from Michigan five years ago and have had no luck in that regard. I haven’t even been able to find a decent gaming store outside of Oklahoma City, which is like 2 1/2 hours away, so not exactly readily accessible.
    Not all of us are as lucky with our Venn Diagrams. Mine for the same categories that Wil mentions above are three distinct, separate circles.

  20. It’s things like this the popular media should focus on more; instead of ostracizing video games for promoting violence, they should instead recognize that video games promote more good things than bad. I think it’s a sad tragedy that today, video games are seen as a ‘nerdist’ or ‘violent person’ type of thing instead of an ‘all kinds of people’ type of thing. Even politicians have ripped into video games to garner popular support (Hillary Clinton, Jack Thompson), making illogical accusations to the industry and hiding the true beauty of the games they criticize. I wish more people understood that.
    I only wish I could attend cons (only 15 with not viable source of income :/)

  23. Wow, this is ironic timing — I’ve been seriously envying all the fun at PAX and thinking how much the gaming climate sucks out here in OK. I’ve lived here most of my life, and while I’ve run into a few pockets here and there over the years, I really haven’t had much luck. Apparently I’m not the only one!

  25. Wil,
    Just saw the online video of your PAX East keynote.
    Well done (again), sir. You represent us well in your post as Secretary of Geek Affairs. All the hard work (that you were cool enough to keep us apprised of here on your site) definitely paid off. I’m just bummed I couldn’t go see you in person – and me being only less than an hour away. Oh well, maybe next time. [I wonder if JoCo will sing about you again.]
    Enjoy a well-deserved Guinness. (In Boston, you pretty much just have to hold out an empty glass and it magically appears.)
    And enjoy the rest of your time here on the East Coast.
    – Russe1l

  26. For those (like me) that couldn’t make it to PAX, some kind soul has posted Wil’s entire keynote to YouTube:


    Inspiring is truly the right word. Thank you Wil.

  27. I was totally bummed I couldn’t make the keynote. I’m managing the Muzzy Lane booth and we were mobbed all day–which was a good thing, but the keynote was the one event I planned to hit. One of our guys did get to see it and said it rocked. Looking forward to the last day today. PAX East was definitely a coming out party for the MA gaming community and developers. Thanks for being part of that, Wil!

  28. Thanks for the update Wil – glad to hear it went so well! I like the way you mention creativity. Games tend to be destructive and violent, and this is the content that non-players see and judge. Frankly, I think this destructive tendency comes from a will to tear down the status quo – it’s about freedom. And that’s why Hillary and the powers that be feel threatened – they would preserve the status quo. Even the violence to me has to do with letting go of the illusion of the body and the material world – busting out of the matrix by dissing it and not fearing it. I find gamers themselves to be generally peace-loving people, but also freedom-loving. They’ve certainly killed far fewer people IRL than the Hillary-types that judge them! They play games too – and very nasty ones! So you’re right – I think games are ultimately about CREATING – nice insight.

  30. I was unfortunately in line behind closed doors when you spoke, but I just watched what I missed on video. I completely agree that gaming is so much a community and a social tie, as much as it is anything else. I have a venn diagram of friends that is not exclusive to gamers, but of them all, my undergrad gamer friends who now span from New Hampshire to Virginia have been able to stay together over the years over gaming. We have a, dare I say, a family? A family that can’t see each other often these days, but when we do get together, we don’t miss a step. We are back playing a new D&D campaign, or Rock Band, or a new board game. PAX East was a great excuse to see them all again and I wanna thank everyone who put on and participated in the event! I can’t wait for the next one!

  32. Hi Will, Can you post your speech? There were 100’s if not 1000’s of us who simply couldn’t get in the door to hear you.
    In addition, I was surprised to find absolutely no shared space where people could watch a broadcast of the keynote.
    Anyway, very sad I missed it, even though I could touch the door to the room…

  33. Wil, you were awesome.
    I wasn’t quite sure if PAX would mean as much to me as you said it would… but you were right.
    It was easily the best part of my life so far, and I did indeed feel at home when I was there… more than I’ve ever felt anywhere else.
    I hope you’re there in some shape or form next year.

  35. Truly epic speech. I have only watched this on youtube and even that made the hairs on my neck stand up. I bet it was electric there.
    Some forms of gaming will always be ridiculed by those that have never tried it (I still remember my staff days at Games Workshop where kids on bikes would ride past and shout “Geeks!”. Unfortunately for them the ever-active imaginations of the gamers in there meant that ever-more elaborate insults were hurled back at them to the point that they would freewheel up the street thinking “whats a Snotling? And how would my mum know one?”). But I’m glad to see that games such as Mass Effect and Hard Rain are making a step to breach the gap into mainstream entertainment.
    Anyway, sorry to dither on. I raised a Sheldon-esque eyebrown when so many said the keynote was insiprational and hilarious. But they were right.
    Cheers.
    Markus

  36. I’ve watched about 40 minutes of this online and, so far, you are right on the mark. Parts of it sent chills up and down my spine. Sadly, this week I went to a visitation at a funeral home for the father of one of my gaming friends. Due to differing schedules in our lives, we haven’t gamed in a month in the one game we’ve been playing and with another friend (the only person from high school I consistently kept in touch with before the Internet got big) for a lot longer. We all met up at the funeral home and vowed to get together soon. We came to support a fellow gamer in his loss and, in the end, it will probably strengthen our friendships, too. Anyway, this is exactly what you said here. I’m so glad you are our spokesperson. I know that you get it and will represent us accurately.

  37. Wil,
    You have written a great description of gaming. I am not a gamer but it seems to be another art form. Hey, keep up the great work.
    FG

  38. Regarding what you said about gaming and community, success tells a lot, but so does failure.
    An online game that I’ve been playing for almost a year died this month. It was the game that hooked me, but it was the community that kept me coming back; there were many others who felt the same way.
    So when the announcement came that it was ending, you could feel a wave of despair roll over the Philippines to Japan, to Canada, all across the States, into Mexico and across to England, Germany and other European countries. Our community was truly world-wide, and we were saddened to see it end.
    It’s been like the end of High School, where you say you’ll all see each other again, but you know the most you’ll do is stay in touch with a select few of those who you shared so much time with.
    The internets have given us gamers a gold coin. On one side, it’s gifted us with communities that could not exist otherwise, but on the other side, it’s also cursed us with their fragility.
    I’m happy to be a gamer, here in the future; but, the acid pits do still suck.

  40. In a shocking twist of fate that I’m sure none of us predicted, your speech was awesome.
    I am curious as to whether you were/are aware that “Welcome Home” is the very first thing greeters say to anyone entering Black Rock City for Burning Man. Burners get a lot of shit, particularly (oddly enough) from the type of individuals who make up the gaming community. I don’t mean this as a wholesale castigation. It’s obviously not true across the board and I know I’m not the only one who loves both worlds, but it is something I’ve personally experienced, so it meant a lot to hear you say those words. You may not have been aware of the desert analog, but the idea of community and family is the same.

  42. The interwebs are against me and cut off my last sentence.
    As nerds or geeks or whatever you want to call us, we’re conditioned to be defensive so thank you for bringing the concept of Welcome Home to a place like PAX.

  43. Wil, your keynote speech was great! I’m really happy I got to catch it, that was my number one thing to do at PAX. Also glad I got to meet you briefly at our booth (the Digital Press booth, located behind Nintendo’s).
    Sorry I was a bit of a fangirl when I talked to you, didn’t want to take too much of your time. Funny, but I thought that if I saw you on the show floor, that you’d be followed by a long line of fans! 🙂
    Now I can tell that if you shaved, you’d get carded constantly! (this being said by someone who also passes for much younger than 34)
    Long live PAX East! I’m sure this won’t be the last time that the fine folks at Penny Arcade visit the east coast!

  44. Hey Wil,
    I caught your keynote at PAXEast and thought it was fantastic. As someone who has attended many conventions and conferences (non-nerd/work related) it was great to have someone tell us how “happy they are to be here” and really mean it! Your excitement was infectious and genuine! I could only attend Friday, so my time there was limited, but it was the one thing I had highlighted as “Do Not Miss”. The essence of your speech (“We’re all in this together”, if I may paraphrase/summarize) was made readily apparent when I came back to work this morning. I miss PAX already. I wish it were every month instead of 12 long months away (I know it’s 5 until Prime, but that’s out of my budget). Alack and alas…
    Until then, like the innards of a tauntaun, I have the Burrito to keep me warm. Keep up the good work!

  45. So I was watching the YouTube recording of your keynote on Sunday morning. I had my audio settings set up wrong, so your speech was coming out of my speakers instead of my headset.
    I apologized to my wife, who’s gaming doesn’t extend beyond Facebook, and promised to have it resolved by part 2. When I announced my sucess at the start of Part 4, she asked me to unplug my USB headset becasue she was enjoying the speech and wanted to continue listening.
    Thus I submit your speech appealed not only to those who love games, but to those who love gamers.
    Side note: I did make her lsiten to the “a part of my normal” part twice.

  46. Just finished watching… the server worked better this morning. I loved what you said about wanting to know what happens next in the story. For me this goes beyond games. When I’ve not really wanted to live in this world anymore that’s why I kept living – I just wanted to know what came next. When you don’t over-control it, life itself can take some pretty amazing turns. That’s why I keep ‘playing’.
    That was a very heart-felt and wonderful speech, Wil. You were really YOU. I think you’re amazing for being able to be that open and true to yourself with an audience of that size – it boggles my mind. You’re quite a generation bridge too – a rare capacity. Congrats on a great job!

  47. i am sorry to have missed your keynote. i’ll have to figure out where someone has it posted…
    my wifey and i were right behind sweetums in line on sunday and it was great to talk to you (especially now knowing you are a roller derby fan- thanks!). it was entirely the reason i wanted to go to paxeast and totally our favorite part of the day. thanks for being awesome. hope you had safe travels home.

  48. Wil-
    I’m not a gamer, & none of my friends are really gamers. But we have the same sort of relationship (due to Trek, MST3K, board games, just hanging out, etc.) that you do with your friends. I wanted to let you know how much I thoroughly enjoyed your speech (just watched it on YouTube), & even though I’m not a gamer, I totally grokked where you were coming from. It helps that I’m just a few months older than you, so we share lots of cultural references. 🙂 Anyway, I just wanted to say awesome job; you reach more people than you even mean to with speeches like the one you gave at PAX. Keep up the awesome work. (((hugs)))
    -Alicia (@AliciaWag)
    http://www.thewagband.com

  49. I also want to add that I always love your Venn diagram references. It’s the only time I get to use that part of my education and I’m sure you feel the same way. Your ability to put into words the way we all felt growing up and how that shapes who we are now is why I move that you should be made Secretary of Geek Affairs for life!

  50. Gotta tell ya, Wil — I design and publish tabletop RPGs for a living, and sometimes (like with any job), it’s far too easy to get wrapped up in the negatives.
    I wasn’t able to attend PAX East (although I hope to next year), but just watched a video of your keynote, and I wanted to drop you a note to say thanks. Thank you for reminding me why I do what I do, why it matters, why I love it, and why it makes me one of the luckiest SOBs in the world.
    Gareth (@GMSkarka)
    http://www.adamantentertainment.com

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