Big is in at the Penny Arcade Expo.

The celebration of all thing gaming, better known as PAX East, opens Friday at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. With over 75,000 people expected, the sold-out show is the convention center’s largest annual event. It will feature an array of blockbuster titles from big- name game publishers such as Square Enix, 2K, Blizzard, and Riot.

Included in the roster of exhibitors are some well-known Boston-area game companies such as Harmonix, which will be showing off “Rock Band 4” and “Harmonix Music VR”; Proletariat Inc., which will be demoing its latest game, “Streamline,” the first in a new genre of games that uses live-streaming as a platform; and The Molasses Flood with its critically acclaimed title “The Flame in the Flood.”

But PAX East is not just for the big and the well-known.

“What’s really great about PAX East is that it’s accessible to every kind of game developer,” said exhibitor Ryan Canuel, founder and CEO of Worcester-based startup Petricore Inc. “We’re a small team but being here makes us feel like we are part of something much bigger.”

“Sixty-hour epics from AAA publishers definitely scratch an itch, but indie titles satisfy a different kind of craving,” said Robert Khoo, president of Penny Arcade.

In addition to PAX East, Penny Arcade runs PAX Prime in Seattle, PAX South in San Antonio, and PAX Australia. PAX East returns again to Boston next March.

Timothy Loew is the executive director of the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) based at Becker College. Follow him on Twitter @TimothyLoew.

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