PAX East 2023 Sunday Cosplay Gallery By FirstPerson Shooter Part 2
By the end of the day Sunday it was becoming clear that PAX East was both on the way to drawing attendee numbers that were similar to pre-pandemic events and transforming into something different than what it set out to be 13 years ago.
Based on the number of cosplay photos I took, and the equally large number of cosplayers who I missed but saw were in attendance via their social media posts, I would say PAX East 2023 was roughly 70 percent of its attendance numbers of 2019. I think 2020, with all the covid-related last-minute cancellations by exhibitors and guests, counts as a pandemic-era convention.
The type of exhibitors has changed since 2019, however. PAX East is almost as much a tabletop game convention and a gaming hardware convention as it is a videogame convention these days. The fact that E3 was cancelled for 2023 just days after PAX East closed this year says everything you need to know about the state of videogame conventions. To save on marketing costs, studios and publishers are moving their big announcements and reveals to self-managed online events.
I know some cosplayers who have decided to not travel to Boston for PAX East because of those changes. I also have cosplaying and gaming friends who came to PAX East for the first time this year and had a ball. As the show changes the crowds will change, but I have no doubt that PAX East will eventually return to the attendee numbers of its heyday in the mid-2010s.
Among the cosplayers in this last gallery by me (but stay tuned for galleries from one of our newest team members, Samie Wong, and from one of our stalwarts, Wonderllama Photography) are grassfedcoffeebeans, makermage, toy.split, ezrabezaliel35, jessilyncupcake, sambistew, jaredkaczynski, suitupprops, the_namaslay_cosplay, mamarobotnikcosplay, jofatecosplay, sabi__cat, hexed_ashes, mangoloo.cos, strawbloody, and many more.
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