Who was there: Naughty Dog community manager Arne Meyer, Insomniac Games senior community manager James Stevenson, Capcom strategic director Seth Killian, and ArenaNet community manager Regina Buenaobra.

What they talked about: The discussion began with the panelists' academic upbringings. As Killian put it, there are a lot of different paths you can take to reach this position. He started out as a philosophy teacher at the University of Illinois with a lifelong love for fighting games. After making some connections with Capcom at numerous Electronic Entertainment Expos, he...

Who was there: Penny Arcade artist Mike Krahulik and writer Jerry Holkins, better known as Gabe and Tycho, respectively.

What they said: Just like the previous Q&A session, the creators of Penny Arcade entertained a packed house in the massive main hall of the Boston Convention and Exposition Center. In roughly an hour, the duo created an entire comic. Holkins started things off by loading up a Word document and writing out the script. A silence filled the room as the hundreds of attendees followed along word for word.

The quiet was broken only when Holkins stopped to consider...

Who was there: A massive panel of ArenaNet employees, including lead content designer Colin Johanson, game designer Jon Peters, community manager Regina Buenaobra, senior vice president Randy Price, lore designer Jeff Grubb, and more.

What they said: The Guild Wars 2 panel spoke to a packed house at this year's Penny Arcade Expo East. An extensive trailer for the game preceded the discussion and highlighted several of the talking points to be covered, including the game's active combat and the focus on player choice. When the trailer finished, the room erupted into thunderous applause.
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The Penny Arcade Expo's West Coast confab may have been the first open-to-the-public gaming event organized by its eponymous webcomic creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, but it is no longer the biggest. After speaking with the creative duo's business director Robert Khoo, Big Download reports today that last weekend's PAX East drew a crowd of 69,500 attendees to the three-day event in Boston.

PAX East's attendance just edged out PAX Prime 2010, which saw more than 67,600 gamers pack into the Washington State Convention Center last September. The East Coast event's 2011 draw far outpaced the expo's maiden run last year, which drew 53,000 attendees.

"The venue we have this year is massive--it's legitimately 2-3x larger than last year's venue, so the amount of breathing room was fantastic," Khoo said of this year's event. "I didn't hear a single complaint about overcrowding. I never thought I would see the day."

This year's East...