STORYTIME KEYNOTE
Each PAX begins with our traditional opening ceremony, Storytime from an industry luminary. Leaders in gaming; be they developers, influencers, artists, designers, or other related expertise in this space, have regaled PAX attendees with the story of their lives and how they cemented their place in the annals of game culture.
OUR 2025 STORYTIME SPEAKER IS ISAAC CHILDRES
Isaac Childres is the designer of the groundbreaking Gloomhaven series of board games and the owner of the publishing company Cephalofair Games. He got his start in the industry Kickstarting his first game, Forge War, as a hobby while he was finishing physics grad school, but it quickly ballooned into a full-time thing with the runaway success of his follow-up, Gloomhaven, a card-based tactical dungeon-crawl campaign game that heavily emphasized player choice over randomness.
Cephalofair Games has since published many other highly-acclaimed titles, such as Jaws of the Lion, Frosthaven, and Buttons & Bugs. Isaac just makes the games he loves, and has been overjoyed to find out that so many other people love them, too. He lives in Pacific Grove, California with his wife, 3-year-old son, and 16-year-old dog. He continues to work on ambitious new games that he hopes will do more to push the industry in new, exciting directions.
PREVIOUS STORYTIME SPEAKERS
Elizabeth Hargrave
Matthew Mercer
McElroy Brothers
Aabria Iyengar
Eric Lang
