The people at PAX are a friendly crew. Perhaps everyone took Wil Wheaton’s keynote advice of “Don’t be a dick” to heart. (Also being taken to heart by most so far: “For the love of God, shower. EVERY DAY.”) Perhaps it’s because we know we all share a common love of video games, making it easier to strike up conversations. All the people we’ve met have been fun and not your stereotypically nerdy gamer types. But that’s not to say there aren’t those guys. (And girls — I’d say the mix is about 70 percent guys, 30 percent girls; and they range from totally nerdy to clearly dragged here by their boyfriends/husbands.)

My first panel of the day promised to determine, once and for all, the top 10 games of all time. The hall was filled with guys who generally made The Comic Book Store guy from The Simpsons seem well-adjusted. As the list was revised throughout the panel, each deletion, insertion, change in ranking was debated among the attendees, which made it really hard to hear the panelists running the show. Everyone’s an expert. Especially if you live in your mom’s basement. (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was No. 1, by the way.)

While the vast majority of the people here are “normal” and not stereotypical, there are exceptions — particularly those dressed in costume. Some are awesome (there were two people dressed as Raziel from Soul Reaver, Princess Peach, Mario), some are disturbing (most of the anime or fighting game characters, a bikini-clad girl dressed as Pikachu) and some are completely nonsensical (dude with an inflatable killer whale on his shoulder).

So in their honor, I present the people of PAX:

This was not the only guy dressed as Isaac, the main character from Dead Space. The other guy I saw was actually cooler, but I didn’t have a chance to snap his picture.

Nothing stops the Cole Train, baby! This guy’s devotion to Gears of War is impressive.

If you play this guy, remember: Let the wookie win.

These are the guys of Rebel FM, whom we met briefly after the IGN/GameSpy podcast panel: Tyler Barber, Anthony Gallegos and Arthur Gies, plus a random fangirl. They were very cool in person.

Tyler and Reuben talked about fonts. For a while. Gamers aren’t the only kind of nerds at PAX.

Speaking of Reuben, his Fez T-shirt was very popular. And then he ran into another dude with a Fez T-shirt. They bonded.

We got a chance to demo Crackdown 2. That’s not us, by the way. Just guys we watched while waiting in line. It was a fun game; very similar to the first, though rocket multiplayer didn’t show off the real strengths of the game.

Reuben prepares to play Crackdown 2. Yes, that is a girl dressed as Street Fighter‘s Cammy. Yes, I intentionally shot it so you were not seeing the thong part of her outfit and her ass. (You’re welcome, or I’m sorry, depending on your proclivities.)

I ended the night listening to a concert by Paul and Storm, who were a couple of very funny musicians I had never heard before, but had a song in honor of the creator of chicken nuggets, which was enough to win me over. The concert ended with Jonathan Coulton, who is awesome. There’s nothing like hearing a theater full of hundreds of people sing every word of the Portal song “Still Alive.” Only able to top that is a theater full of people chanting “All we want to do is eat your brains.” This clip is from a previous PAX but it gives you the idea:

Tomorrow: I go try to see Morgan Webb.
Coming soon after that: Probably a restraining order.