Archive for March, 2011

Monday, March 14th, 2011

PAX East comes to Boston.  Video gamers delight!

205. That’s how many times the word “nerd” was used. This is just one piece of data I pulled from the tweets of a three day video game conference in Boston called PAX East. The event started at 10 AM on Friday morning and continued through to 6 PM Sunday evening. In that time I captured 10, 256 tweets from 3, 109 twitterers.

Based on some of the top words that appeared in the #PAXeast twitterverse, you could say something like the following to summarize the event:

“I had an awesome (410) time at PAX East this year. While there was way too much waiting (230) in line (565) to play (295) my favorite game (462) I did have a lot of fun (289)! I sat in on many a panel (723) discussion and every night there was a great party (219). The late night Jenga (93) was excellent. The new Portal (112) game was on display as well as the new Poke (78) games. The Ubisoft (34) booth was amazing! The new Duke (106) Nukem booth was crowded too, but attendees were upset that this exhibitor broke with PAX East policy and had numerous booth babes (51). The highlight for me was seeing Curt (15) Schilling from 38 Studios (2) walking the floor. When PAX East returns next year I think I’ll wear my kilt (45)!

A few choice nuggets of data include which devices attendees used to tweet from most (below):


Device Use count
Apple iPhone 2, 674
Android 1, 137
BlackBerry 247
Apple iPad 220
Windows Phone 93

Of the 123 different Twitter tools used, here were the top 10 (below):


Application Use count
Twitter 4, 185
TweetDeck 1, 548
web 1, 080
Echofon 615
txt 493
Seesmic 278
HootSuite 211
Twitterrific 195
ÃœberSocial 180
TwitPic 150

The Top 20 Tweeters accounted for about 10% of the tweet traffic (below):


Twitter Name Tweets
@retconning 126
@KCoxDC 80
@TheD6Generation 75
@GermanCityGirl 58
@CelestialAxis 56
@caseyayers 52
@SagesOfRPG 51
@crimsong19 50
@adarel 45
@snoogans 42
@Espiox 39
@jkalli3 39
@Halfazedninja 38
@Reetesh 38
@carolinexsun 37
@HaroldLi 37
@OneOfSwords 37
@pwnophobia 35
@PlayXBLA 34
@ryvvn 34

Approximately 1, 901 URLs were shared, with 1, 701 of those being unique. The Top 20 links that made the rounds include (below):


URL Count
http://yfrog.com/h2przhdj 8
http://bit.ly/hMa72u
Booth Babe Petition
6
http://t.co/4OGEJtX 6
http://twitpic.com/48t7ai 6
http://bit.ly/dWevnN 5
http://bit.ly/gHcM1b 5
http://bit.ly/hBBDZc 5
http://ow.ly/4dhmu 5
http://t.co/RPTvI0h 5
http://twitpic.com/48lfa3 5
http://www.facebook.com/FireHoseGames 5
http://yfrog.com/h0pysnnj 5
http://bit.ly/hGgvX0 4
http://t.co/Znpd9sE 4
http://twitpic.com/48hct7 4
http://twitpic.com/48uzb1 4
http://www.thatgamerhub.com/pax 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZliZfhCZbm8 3
http://bit.ly/gFgk9J
Booth Babe Petition
3
http://t.co/HeStyza 3

It was great to see such a popular event like this in Boston. I heard over 60, 000 attendees joined in from all over the globe. I just hope the show’s organizers don’t schedule next year’s PAX during the same time as SXSW (250). 😉

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