Legendary storyteller, game designer, programmer and producer Ron Gilbert has created countless classic video games, including the seminal LucasArts works Maniac Mansion and first two installments in the Monkey Island adventure series. His more than 20-year career in the games industry encompasses co-founding three game studios, creating the famous SCUMM scripting language and being inducted into the Computer Game Hall of Fame. He is currently creative director at independent development studio Hothead Games in Vancouver, Canada.

PAX is a three-day celebration of games and gamer culture. The festival includes an exhibition floor filled with playable builds of upcoming tabletop, console and computer games; a conference program of game industry speakers; music concerts; freeplay areas; industry parties; game tournaments and more. Since its inception in 2004, the show has doubled in size year over year, growing from 4,500 attendees to 58,500 in 2008, making it the largest gaming festival in North America.

"This is an unbelievable moment for us," commented Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo. "I wasted an entire family vacation one year trying to figure out how to win that stupid spitting competition." Gilbert joins an illustrious group of past PAX keynote speakers, including noted geek icon Wil Wheaton and innovative game designer Ken Levine.

In addition to the highly anticipated keynote address, numerous panels and game demonstrations, Omegathon and The PAX 10 independent games showcase, PAX 2009 will offer attendees an unparalleled musical experience with performances from Freezepop, Jonathan Coulton, MC Frontalot, Paul and Storm, Anamanaguchi and Metroid Metal. As if all of this weren't enough, PAX organizers further confirmed that this year's Exhibition Hall is down to its final availability. Prospective exhibitors interested in securing these last coveted booth spaces can write to paxsales@paxsite.com for more information.