Out of the many many conferences, trade shows and summits I’ve attended in the past 15+ years, never had I experienced anything like the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in 2007. There only for a day, it was unlike the business-to-business events that we have all been to. Perhaps the most palatable difference was the sheer joy exuded by attendees. Even in the hay-day times of E3, the vast majority of those in attendance looked mentally and physically fatigued. Sure, there were booth babes, loud music and amazing booths showing off the latest and greatest, but the over-riding sense was that a fair amount of folks would have rather been at home with their families.

The emergence of the consumer events is itself a reflection of game culture. Execs like to parallel these events to Comic-Con, but the reality is that people flock to boat and car shows for almost exactly the same reasons. The inherent default to comics makes me concerned for where our medium remains in the view of broader society.

The ECA was in a small 10x10 booth in 2007 at PAX, unsure of what to expect and unaware of the year-on-year growth they would be experiencing. And while it was a perfect demographic fit for us, it was clear that the attendees were participating, collectively, in raising the awareness and respectability of the art form. The diversity of participants was staggering, as was their dedication to gaming.

This past show, PAX 2008, we upgraded to a 20x30 booth and again found that demand had skyrocketed, that the fit remained as strong as ever and that – perhaps most interestingly – many of the participants were already ECA members. Without breaking any news, I can tell you that it is our intention to launch a research division in the foreseeable future, but clearly there are some very interesting things going on.

This year was also different in other overt ways including the size of the booths, the new content that publishers were displaying and the growing size of the attendee base. This year reminded me of the first few E3s. It was something to behold. Where else can you see a room full of 15,000 people in line… with ear-to-ear grins on their faces?!

The importance of this all is significant to anyone who cares about gaming in that it is an emergence; one that can and will effect change simply by existing. As I explained to the reporters who we did interviews with, Generations X and Y have been negatively stereotyped as apathetic, lazy and uninvolved. And yet, by doing things such as attending these types of conferences, engaging in weighty panel discussions and becoming advocates for their passion, they disprove that label by their actions.

I’ve spent much of this past week answering colleagues questions about the show, as it has gotten such broad attention inside the industry. The thing that I think is more important than the success of PAX as a business, or the comparisons with parallel events, is the underlying cultural significance of the attendees, individually and collectively, and how they choose to harness that power. Perhaps we’re not that far away from the mass media beginning to take gaming seriously. Maybe this is only the beginning.