E3 Grows Up - A Little

Press the Buttons has the news that, thankfully, this year's E3 will attempt to return to the 'industry only' event it was always intended to be. From the post: "The first day of the show is only for authorized media (meaning no more paid-by-the-hour GameStop clerks roaming the floor just for fun and taking up a journalist's valuable time in line for the next big thing) and, as Portico points out, there's now a more dignified dress code in place for the 'booth babes'." I'm glad that PAX exists for everyone to attend, just as I'm glad there are events like E3 where game journos can do their thing. Update: 01/23 17:56 GMT by Z : Joystiq posits that these new guidelines may lead to censorship for mature games. Update: 01/23 22:16 GMT by Z : Additional opinions on this are available from Gamers with Jobs and Heroine Sheik. There's an official response to discussion of this decision from the E3 media relations team over at Gamecloud.

Comments

Real article

[GigsVT]

Following the maze of redundant blog posts you end up at this, which appears to be the original article.

Framed a little differently though, as it's titled "E3 Censorship".

Media was an afterthought at E3.

[daVinci1980]

It's been said a few times, but E3 wasn't about the media "in the beginning." It was about publishers selling their titles to retaillers, and developers selling their titles to publishers.

E3 is thus not returning to anything, but evolving yet again.

Game clerks

[superultra]

I worked at an EB for three years as an assistant manager (an assman, we called ourselves).

First, I know game clerks can be nerds and, even, assholes. That said, I would say that ultimately we influenced at least 30% of the purchases from our customers, especially around Christmas time when the moms come in and want something for their kids. Sometimes they have an idea that we talk them out of, like buying GTA for a 6 year old. Other times they might have a choice of three, and we'd advise them on the best for their dollar. And when it came to the hardcore gamers, we had established enough of a repore that they would walk in, literally ask us what to buy, and walk out with whatever we suggested. Myself and the staff at the store prided ourselves on knowing the games, and it always felt good to see a customer come back and ask for more of the same. I know more about the Sims demographics than anyone at EA. I know more than I care to know why people play the hell out of MMORPGs. I can tell the GameBoy cover marketers which colors attract kids' eyes more than others. Although sometimes we entertained fantastical ideas like Rez selling really well, we could generally predict the total sales of every game that came across our counter.

Excluding gamestore clerks out of the equation is a bad idea. We're too important. Usually at least one of us would hit up E3 every year, and report back to everyone else. We'd run videos on the store TVs to show off what we saw to the hardcore customers. Even in the age of up-to-the-minute E3 reporting, being at the convention was always a necessary part of the chain. It let whomever went notice games the press often passed up on. I can partially understand why E3 wants to start barring clerks, but to suggest that "industry-only" excludes one of the most important parts of the selling chain is ludicrous.

Game clerks, or at least the professionals, the ones that try to do their job well, are the kind of people the industry should be courting, not ignoring.

Re:Game clerks

[superultra]

I don't know you, but unless you're buying literally 2 or 3 games a week, I'm not sure you know what qualifies as a hardcore gamer. I'd say we had at least 15-20 people spending $200 a month - outside of fourth quarter mind you, and maybe 20-40 we saw an average of once every three weeks buying a game. I think even second tier qualifies as hardcore. They played these games out. I knew this because they'd come back and give us a very extensive review. If they didn't finish them, we knew the game sucked. And we knew these people well enough to hear from their wives when they'd found a game that was too good. All of us at the store could not figure out how they managed to play as many games as they did and still have lives. For the most part these were regular people, as in regular, normal Americans. Some, sure, were stereotypical ubergeeks. But most had wives, kids (whom they played games with), and 40+ hour a week jobs to support their "habit."

It was pretty cool, and I miss it sometimes. We had relationships with these people (and those still at this particular store still do). We played with them on Xbox Live, or invited them to LAN parties and they invited us. I often thought of it as a type of old school, Old Towne hardware store. Not only a store, but also a clearinghouse for gossip. But instead of gossip about the Rogers family down the street, this was gossip about games. It was our job to know about games, and so we did. The people who dropped $50 a week didn't have the time to go through all the sites and find trusted reviews. We were their trusted source. We had the unique advantage of networking on a person-to-person basis. We'd see Frank come in and gush about Game X, and even though Frank might never have net Joe, we knew that they shared similar tastes. So we were sort of a proxy among gamers, a trusted source filtering buying information among gamers in the city.

What I'm saying is that it was more than them walking in and saying, "WHAT IS GOOD," and us replying, "X IS GOOD" (although it did sometimes transpire like that). We had conversations with these people, and we usually gave a fairly complex rendetion of the game ("X has great graphics but is really short, but it seems that people who like Game Y really like Game X.")

Sadly, our game store was probably unique among its peers (it was an EB), and I imagine that it's becoming even more unique as Gamestop tightens its reins. Even though I really miss getting to know really interesting people and getting paid to talk about games, I'm glad I got out.