When you see something interesting at PAX South, there’s a real good chance you can walk right up to it and interact with it immediately, and then turn around and find the person who made it standing there watching you, excited to answer all of your questions. Whereas attending the presentations the Big Name developers and publishers put on at other shows isn’t much less impersonal than just reading about their stuff on a news site later – having a physical presence at their press events isn’t really worth the effort.

I can’t remember the last time one of those bigger shows sold me on something I wasn’t already enthusiastic about, but every single PAX South sends me home with a watch list of a dozen or more small indy titles to investigate further, assuming I didn’t just buy it all on the show floor and overload the heck out of my luggage.