I have broken many things at PAX East, and I’m sorry

I have broken many things at PAX East, and I’m sorry

I knew there was something strange happening when at the end of just my third demo appointment early at the beginning of PAX East 2017 Friday, I’d already caused my third reboot of a product.

Gaming conferences are populated by products that range anywhere from 5% to 100% complete, with the usual majority falling somewhere in the late middle “Alpha” or “Beta” stage of development. There’s going to be issues — that’s understood. But, they’re always hosted on complete PC or console hardware with few modifications. That didn’t matter this year. I still managed to break a whole bunch of them.

Is it some strange power I have? Am I a meta-human destined to take on CW’s The Flash? Does technology just not like me? I decided to document all of the strange occurrences, just in case scientists will need something to reference later on for their studies. I’m sorry to all of the developers I’ve harmed.

Before the decimation

Day 1:

  • Required reboot of a PC, twice
  • Left Nintendo Switch Joy-Con kept desyncing during a demo
  • PC game had to be exited and restarted
  • PC had to be restarted, and HDMI unplugged and plugged back in
  • PC game had to be exited and restarted, and sound card restarted, to get audio to work

Total games affected: 5


Day 2:

  • PC overheated, had to be shut off, completely unplugged to cool down before rebooting
  • Xbox controller stopped working with PC game, continued with mouse & keyboard instead
  • Soft serve ice cream machine had to be restarted because it was overheating (Yes, an ice cream machine overheated, what is wrong with me).

Total games affected: 2

Total food products affected: 1


What will Day 3 bring?