Do Trade Shows Benefit Gamers?

Posted by simoniker on Wednesday July 21, 2004 @12:01AM from the free-tee-shirt-shuffle dept.

Thanks to The Adrenaline Vault for its article discussing the actual significance of videogame trade shows, now that "e-mail, Internet press releases, cell phones, faxes, personal digital assistants and the like make communication and transmission of information virtually instantaneous among developers and vendors." The piece makes the suggestion, with regard to "trade shows like Comdex, CES and E3", that: "In earlier days, people were attracted to attend the national conventions because of all the novelty present. Now, new software and hardware products seem more evolutionary than revolutionary, with a lot of copycat items that differ from what is already out there just through cosmetic differentiation." Do shows like E3 matter as much as they used to?

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E3--Great Networking Opportunity by DaFlusha · 2004-07-21 02:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

E3 provides a single, physical place where people developers, publishers, distributors, retailers, and even press can meet face-to-face and have discussions. This kind of thing is invaluabe to the industry. The whole public-spectacle thing may be outdated (it is, in fact, my least favorite part of these events) but events like E3 are still 100% necessary for the growth of the industry.

That and a lot of developers spend all their time making their own games; they're too busy to really follow every game in development via the Internet. E3 is a great way for developers to see what other folks are doing and to kind of, you know, party a little. Though in my opinion, the Game Developers Conference is a better place for that than E3...