Day two of PAX Aus 2024 saw the biggest visitor numbers ever for a single PAX Aus day, all keen to learn about the newest games and hardware and build a greater understanding of the games industry and the creation of their favourite games.

Kicking off the day with ‘Getting Into Games,’ Playside Studios held a panel that explained to the audience the soft and hard skills required to get into gaming: hard skills being the technical skills required like art and engineering, but also the soft skills required like communication, problem-solving and the ability to work as a team.

This trend of collaboration and building a great team continued in the Weta Workshop panel titled ‘The Custodians of Lord of Rings: Bringing Hobbit Lore to Tales of the Shire’, their upcoming cosy sim game. The team talked about how they needed to create their own ‘Fellowship’ to produce the game, reading everything about Bywater and Hobbits, as well as having access to the whole team at Weta Workshop from prosthetics to sword designers, who could carefully direct them to ensure that every detail in Tales of the Shire will be entirely authentic, right down to the fact that they couldn’t have lemons growing in the gardens.

The new game embodies a cosy, comfortable age of innocence where characters will be building homes and growing gardens, just with no lemons.

On the Expo floor, visitors learnt about the newest hardware from the likes of Samsung, Bluemouth and their CRKD range, Aftershock. LG Electronics and Cooler Master.

Learning opportunities continued with ‘Learn to Play’ sessions with Disney Lorcana, Dungeons & Dragons, Robo Rally, and Pinball Basics, and hundreds of generous gamers who would patiently take a newcomer through the basics of any game. All this alongside panels that took the audience through Cosplay tips including Airbrushing 101, Working with EVA Foam, and a panel where visitors met the Judges of the Cosplay Championships to discover the best techniques to compete in a craftsmanship competition.

The FFXIV team held a panel called ‘Crafting Characters: The Style & Substance of FFXIV’ which showed the minute detail that goes into every character from height, hair and eye colour, the way they stand, even the length of their eyelashes. Cheers and laughs resonated around the auditorium as people heard about the development of their favourite game characters and they got to see the summer sartorial choices that their favourite characters will be sporting in the upcoming Dawntrail.

Keeping on the learning theme, the Making Music in the Games Industry panel had game music experts share their insights with James Landino (Game/ Anime Music Composer & DJ) saying, “Some of the best tracks that you hear in a game were actually smashed out within one or two days, produced under an incredible amount of pressure.

“My advice for anyone wanting to break into the industry is to start on fan projects – I started by creating Sonic fan games and it was the best way to kick start my career”.

Teddy Dief (Game Designer, Hyper Light Drifter, OFK) said,

“Take the opportunity to share your creations and watch people enjoy them, even if it’s just pushing some buttons or bopping to the music. It’s a great way to remind yourself why you do what you’re doing”.

Kevin Parker (Composer) continued saying,

“I would just advise that when you’re going through that creative process, you take more time than you need or want to so that you can figure out exactly what you want to create. Put yourself in a position where the player sees you as a creative first and everything else second.”

The day of learning was rounded out with the ‘So You Want to Be a Voice Actor’ featuring Mark Meer, Abubakar Salim, Nina Nikolic, Kevin Powe, Aimee Smith and Jessica Hutchinson who all shared their insights on how to get started in a voice acting career and the pitfalls to avoid.

And there is still heaps more to learn and enjoy with PAX Aus continuing until 11pm tonight (Saturday) featuring a Secret Video Game Night, The Dark Room featuring John Robinson and the very popular Sea Shanties.

Abubakar, a first-timer to PAX Aus, said about the experience,

“PAX has been wonderful. I’m having a great time with the people here. It’s so nourishing to see so many avid lovers of games, film and the like! The fans have been incredible. The stories they have shared of the work have been nothing but inspiring. The experience has been wonderful.”

There are still limited Sunday badges for PAX Aus that can be purchased from here.