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Not to boast, but I have a pretty great job all things considered: I get to write about cool stuff, I get to work with some amazing writers, and I get to attend some of the finest pop culture conventions in North America on a regular basis. Despite this, there is only one thing that my now-13-year-old kid has ever been openly jealous about: my attending PAX West back in 2024.

There’s good reason for this, mostly around the fact that PAX West is one of the longest-lived gaming shows around and he’s very much a gamer. That he was heavily into Among Us and Five Nights at Freddy’s at the time, and both were at the show, only sealed the deal; I got to talk to visit the booths of two of his then-favorite games, although he’d definitely like the world to know that he’s since moved on entirely. (He’s all about Red Dead Redemption now.) Still, the fact that he declared how jealous he was, and the fact that we live relatively close to Seattle, meant that we decided at the time that, if he was still into the idea the next year, maybe he could come to PAX West 2025 and see the show for himself.

Cut to this year’s show, and the reaction he had to entering the Expo Hall for the first time and seeing everything that was there: turning to me slowly and saying, at once purposefully melodramatically and entirely seriously as only a 13-year-old could manage: “I have found my people.”

PAX turns gaming into a communal event, and a community

Going into his first PAX West experience, I’d made more than a few assumptions about what the kid would want to do: the game demos on the expo hall floor felt like a no-brainer, I told myself, and maybe he’d look at some of the merch booths and pick up some t-shirts for his favorite games. Turns out, I was pretty much entirely wrong, and maybe thinking too much like an adult: while he was excited to demo some games — although he declared that the line for the Nintendo booth was too long for him, even though the lure of a new Kirby game was strong — it was the hardware displays at Alienware that blew his mind (and convinced him that, all things considered, he’d like a gaming PC as soon as possible, please).

Similarly, merch booths were fun, but it was gaming accessories that he was really interested in exploring, in part because they were full of things he’d seen online but never in person and now felt utterly obsessed with. T-shirts, it turns out, are fine and everything, but how could it compare to anything from Fangamer or Gauntlet Gaming?

Perhaps more importantly, I didn’t expect how much he’d want to share everything at the show: walking through the expo hall, he wanted to me to see everything he got excited about, from the massive displays of upcoming releases to games he recognized only because his favorite streamers had played them, or even just characters from something he’d played years ago but suddenly saw on someone’s screen as we walked past. Later, we hit up the Arcade Freeplay and he made it clear that he wanted to play games with me because, simply, this was something he loved and he wanted to share that with someone he loved, and he’d found a space where that felt not only okay, but encouraged. He could see that everywhere he looked, because everyone else around him was doing the same thing too.

A new home away from home

The thing is, he really wasn’t wrong about having found his people. It’s not just that he was in a place where everyone loved gaming as well; he was in a place — probably for the first time — where almost everyone he spoke to literally got it: they had the same references and spoke the same language. He could talk about the VR games he played to a vendor and they’d know what he was talking about; he could talk about why he preferred the feel of a particular mechanical keyboard, and people might not agree but they’d know what he was talking about and have opinions of their own.

Not for nothing, he was also in a place where vendors, enforcers — the PAX name for volunteers, in case you didn’t know that — and booth workers alike all talked to him as an equal, instead of a kid, which is a big deal at any age, but especially when you’re 13. I loved seeing that for him, just as much as I loved seeing his quietly surprised, excited response every time it happened. There’s a slogan PAX has — “Welcome Home” — that speaks to this feeling he was feeling, even on his first visit: a sense of belonging.

This first visit was just an afternoon, once travel time and other practicalities had been factored in. (It was also only his second con ever, and there was a concern that he might have been overwhelmed by a longer visit.) After he’d left the show, I asked what his favorite part of the show was — Alienware, and the discovery that he was a PC gamer at heart — and his least favorite part. He got indignant: “I didn’t have a least favorite part. There were no negatives about this whole thing,” he said. How dare I think any different?

Then he asked if he could come back for PAX West 2026. Of course he could, I said. He paused, then asked, “Okay, but… could I do multiple days?”

(When last seen, he was already brainstorming how to cosplay at next year’s show to show his newly-discovered community who he is even more clearly.)

The gaming industry has come a long way since Pong blew all our minds in the 70s. We've got everything you need to know about the next big thing in games. Of course, Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be the big game of 2026, but there are plenty of other games coming out between now and then. Here is our starter guide for every gamer:

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