For those not familiar, PAX stands for Penny Arcade Expo, a convention of sort for gamers that was started by the website/web comic Penny Arcade. Starting in 2004, it’s grown every year, and even added a PAX East hosted in Boston in the Spring of 2010.

For me, this’ll be my first PAX. I’ll be hanging probably with the ASTRO Gaming crew and a bunch of the Destructoid guys (BTW: As a plug for Destructoid, if you’ve haven’t visited their site yet, you should. They do a great job of bringing in people into a gaming community close to you with NARPS (No Apparent Reason Parties). Going to one this weekend. ). Being that I haven’t been to a PAX before, I’ll probably be like a kid in a candy store, only this “store” has tons of great free play stations with the games that are coming out this Fall and in 2011. I’m probably most excited to see Halo: Reach (Bungie should be in attendance as they’re close to Seattle and Reach will most likely be complete by then), Gears of War 3 (Hoping the bring out Beast Mode!), and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (which looks really bad ass. C’mon, Invisibility AND a mechanical robot-turret?).

Other things I’m looking forward to is hanging out with the community that I’ve been following over twitter (well, if they’ll let me, haha). I’ve been privileged to converse with a bunch of movers and shakers in the SF Bay Area in the gaming industry (most of which are involved with the DToidSF group) and they’re a nice bunch. Let the drinking and partying begin?