In case you haven’t heard already, all badges, three-day, single-day, and otherwise, have sold out for PAX 2012. If that wasn’t surreal enough, Gabe wrote this heartfelt apology to the fans who couldn’t go. While it’s nice, I’m not sure that he needed to do that. Same-day sell outs have existed at big-name concerts for years, and for an event like this you need to manage your expectations. As big as PAX is, North America is in dire need of space like Tokyo Big Sight, where the 500,000 strong Comiket is held twice a year. You know those numbers are coming. But then I think, hold on! I’ve been going to conventions since they were nothing more than glorified band camps. How did we go from that to having enough numbers to literally storm Normandy Beach? What exactly happened here? Was it all the superhero movies? The invention of good video game graphics? Failures in institutions like school, religion, and major league sports franchises? All of those things I just mentioned had points in their history when they were only practiced by few and eccentric, just like video games, comics, and their ilk. Perhaps we’re on the verge of another such great expansion, but now we have the privilege of seeing it first hand.

Source: Penny Arcade