Slashdot Mirror
Game Industry Commentary on the E3 Revamp
John Callaham writes "FiringSquad examines what happened to cause the Electronic Entertainment Expo to implode and retrench for 2007, and posts opinions on the expo's revamp from game industry insiders. Interviewees include 3D Realms' Scott Miller, Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford, Rusty Williams of Flying Lab Software, Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Entertainment and more."
During our interview, Scott Miller has mentioned that the company is "working within the industry to organize a better, more focused, trade show", the original date of the new event was set to fall 2007. However due to some changes the event was postponed to at least late 2008. "Our design phase has gone well, but we are having some difficulties with the new layout. For now, there is no date, it will be done when it's done."
Whats the point then?
Oh yea...videogames...
All the money the publishers save by downsizing E3 will surely be passed along to the consumers by way of lower game prices. Right?
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
On one hand, it IS true that the industry loses a ridiculous amount of time each year just sharpening up E3 demos that don't go anywhere, and a lot of dev time is wasted (on the order of MONTHS) just on this one event alone that are not productive towards the end product at all.
On the other hand, E3 was the only event that the mass media ever covered. You don't see anything about GDC on the pages of the world, you hear only about E3. Methinks they need to do two things:
- Scale back E3 to its original model: backroom shows and press conferences. More professional, less glitzy.
- Create secondary shows *with* the glitz in the same model as the car shows of the world. Publishers come in and let the public get some hands-on time with their new hardware and software. These are darlings for the mass media, without impacting the professional side of things.
In other words, one perfectly serious professionals-only conference, and another glitzy conference from the proles.
what will the booth babes do now that they no longer have jobs?
I think we should start the "One Booth Babe For Every Gamer" initiative!
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Booth babes only served to reinforce the stereotype that gamers are hopelessly clueless nerds that drool over even moderately attractive females that feign interest in videogames. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
But they'll probably end up going back to polishing chrome poles with their ass cheeks and escorting part time like they were doing before.. I could be wrong though.
Car babes reinforce the cultural stereotype that people with nice cars "get the babes". Big,powerful cars are a sign of virility in North America and I hope to God you're not pretending the same allure exists with COMPUTER GAMES.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
n/t
"Even though E3 was more strict this past May in keeping some unnecessary people out, there were still a ton of people that showed up that had no business attending the show (you know who you are)."
That hurts a lot coming from this guy: http://www.firingsquad.com/authors/author_profile. asp/44
While I understand that E3 is a trade event, I think there's something to be said for "the masses" being allowed in. We're the people who buy the games they're peddling, and for that matter support the press who cover the event. Without us neither game publishers, nor this Firing Squad goober would have a job in this industry.
I've watched a bunch of E3 keynotes that I found on Bittorrent and I found them mostly very informative. The Sony talks are by far the most professional as they have a technical slant whereas Nintendo and especially Microsoft are rah-rah sessions by marketing jerks. From what I've read about the "interactive" booth areas of E3 it sounds like it's pretty much a series of standing in long lines, unintentionally rubbing up against stinky fat people, playing alpha versions of immature software, and getting promotional freebies.
It sounds to me like much of E3 is expendable, but do we really expect Crysoft to speak for an hour on a huge stage about their next first person shooter on an island? I guess they'll have to maintain some semblance of the old expo.
Also, in the latest PC Gamer one of the editors, Logan Decker, writes a short column describing the downstairs poor man's booths where he often sees the most outlandish and exciting stuff from designers and manufacturers that can't afford the high profile upstairs freakshow. He saw stuff like H.R. Giger-inspired water cooling kits and German sex games. Will the little guy make it in to a smaller E3?
Go ahead, say it. Call me an idiot, an easily distracted consumer. Call me a prole, and feel free to trash talk my complete lack of intellect. But I'll miss E3.
Sure, it was expensive. Sure, it was over-the-top, blatant advertising. But hell, that was the point! E3 didn't exist to promote great development practices, or to help developers meet budgets or release dates. Nominally, I suppose, it was a conference for game journalists -- anything to generate some buzz.
But that's not it, either.
E3 was our focus, our main event, our one-and-only spotlight from the real world. Mainstream news took a break from its busy Iraq schedule to shine some light on what the hell those kids do all day, and, let's face it, we rolled in that spotlight. We reveled in it. Fantastic parties were thrown, drinks were opened, babes were hired (Err...the other kind) -- and we watched, and cared, because at some fundamental level, this was for us. For our benefit, megacorporations were throwing dollars into parties and fanfare, and hey, who else threw parties for gamers?
The spectacle of E3 was for us, and there's no way a conference based on meetings and boardrooms can ever really be ours. *tear*
As normal, Penny Arcade provides authoritative commentary.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/07/31
Anything else is just superfluous
living the dream
It seems that a lot of people that are in the gaming business are happy about this. I am talking about people on BOTH sides of the fence. The developers AND the journalists. I think the people missing it the most, will be the gamers. There is something cool about seeing all the insane pictures take. I know that E3 became more of a chore between the first time I went, and the last time I went. I have good friends that have attended the last few shows, and comment that the show is getting too big, though they look forward to it each year.
A more intimate E3 will really reduce the excitement of E3, but I believe that the QUALITY of the show will go up greatly.
For starters, most of the "little guys" can't DO E3 anyhow- everyone that did, however,
wasted a LOT of energy on trying to make demos to showboat there. Like Comdex that fell
before it, it became a victim of its own success and was a massive timesink rather than
a useful thing to do- but you did it anyway because "everyone else is doing it..."
There's at least a few venues picking up speed that are more for the "little" guys to
connect up with publishers and tool vendors (The Texas Independent Game Conference
is one of the most recent examples of this- and something that apparently went so well
that it's going to get repeated next year without question. The glitz probably ought
to be happening at venues like PAX or QuakeCON (Yes, QuakeCON...) and things like the
vendors and publishers meeting up with studios, etc. should probably happen at GDC, TIGC,
or similar- it'll be a better use of everybody's time and resources that way.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Last year I wrote this comment about the current state of E3. Granted, this year went a little better than I expected, but still, I couldn't help but keep having the same feeling since 2001 that companies were throwing their money away in a silly pissing contest to "win the E3". In particular, Sony was a big loser this time around, since they spent tens of millions of dollars just to be bashed and told their strategies were wrong, and leave them with more millions to spend doing damage control. I imagine it'd be very hard for them to do the same thing next year.
I'm somewhat happy that E3, as we know it, is over. I'm also grateful that I had the opportunity to be there so many times while it lasted, it was a very exciting era. It's great that it wasn't allowed to linger in agony much longer.
Now I have some concerns with the new changes. While I agree that it's generally a good thing to make it smaller and prevent illegitimate people to go there next year, the small media outlets and bloggers will be left out, so that the only people allowed are those with financial reasons to be there. My biggest concern is that the media runs the risk to become even more biased than it was, now that companies can address them directly.
It's bad for the fanboys, it's good for developers, and it's paradise for PR.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
I sure am going to miss the Sony E3 parties. I always thought to myself,"This place looks expensive, I must be wasting money just standing here."