As the fourth annual Penny Arcade Expo — PAX, for short — kicks off today in Seattle, MSNBC.com profiles Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, whose nine-year-old webcomic has served as a launching pad for the trade show, a children’s charity, merchandising and more.
Tell me how you conceived of the conference. What made you think you could make it fly?
Holkins: I never thought we could make it fly. Much like our other endeavors that have turned out OK, I always expect them to crash and explode. Or, just as the Challenger, explode in midair.
Krahulik: That’s powerful imagery.
Holkins: Basically, the way that it has come together has sort of been a surprise to us, and I think it’s probably an indication that something like this needed to occur. It’s unfortunate that we’ve needed to do it, because it’s been a tremendous amount of work.
Krahulik: You’d asked about what prompted it. … We’d gone to a lot of different conventions …comic book conventions, tabletop conventions … and our fans would come to the show and come right to our table and then leave, because they really didn’t care about comic books. These were gamers. The fit was never quite right. So we thought: Let’s take all of the things that we like about these different shows, and try to make one show — the show that we would go to, and that our fans would go to. And it just so happens that no one had really made that show yet. So I think we got lucky.
PAX, which runs through Sunday, is expected to draw 30,000 attendees, up from 19,000 last year.
Related: Seattle Times’ PAX preview
Related: Extensive Wired magazine coverage
