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."
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.