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The Death of E3 in Quotes
Kyle Orland's always interesting Video Game Media Watch site has up a post condensing the reaction to the death of E3 into soundbites. A few quotes from the article: "I don't know whether to be shocked or relieved -- it's no secret that many game editors detest E3. Why? Because it's so loud, garish, and overwhelming that it's hard to even hold a decent conversation with anybody. I see this is a positive step. Publishers will benefit because fewer games will get lost in the shuffle. Editors will win because they'll have more opportunities to cover more games without all the traditional E3 distractions." -ViciousSid at GamePro "What does this mean for gameblogs like Kotaku and Joystiq? If publishers and platform manufacturers don't like the site's messages will they be excluded? The slope here is as slippery as its ever been." -Luke Smith, on 1up
Smaller publishers who are getting left out of the loop by this. At least in an expo setting, you had to walk by the small guys to get to the big guys. Now, no one will see them at all.
Even if you were worried there are still lots of other conventions.
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I present to you The Death of E3 in Quotes:
"The Death of E3"
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
The penny arcade expo seems to be taking over where E3 is leaving off. It's a place for gamers to come game, and for the publishers to connect with the gamers. I went last year and had a blast. I played at the LAN party, I watched a nintendo presentation, I did some table top gaming, and wandered around the exhibit hall. It was actually alot more entertaining then E3, because it's for the gamer, instead of trying to cater to both the press and the gamers.
I am full of goo... black evil goo
There were three problems with E3.
1.Shitty booths. This includes booth babes, DJs, loud music, and annoying lights. Shit like EA would blow 10 million on to make their booth the best
2.Indie Developers. Yes you got more exposure there than anywhere, but you also paid way too much for it, and for the most part if they wanted to talk to indies, they would. But if IGN writer has to write 8 stories on 8 games, they might not have time to look at your game. It was better than nothing, but worse than a expo for independants.
3. Small time magazines. You weren't invited to very private showing inside the boothes themselves, instead you had to go get to games, but what's that? Some loser who pretended to be in the business is infront of you in line and has been playing for 30 minutes, wasting your time? You have to play the game write an article or reaction and go to the next game and do your job.
1. at least gives shwag, but definatly doesn't help when your hung over. 2 never did that well at E3 as it was, but at least they had a hand in the expo. 3 however is the ones who really got shafted because they weren't part of the invited groups they had to fight every way.
Personally E3 should have been more closed doors than it was, I'm hopeful that E3 becomes an Expo where Indies can get the same attention that big names do. It's certainly not going to hurt the big names to go smaller because now they don't have to deal with annoying non-industry professionals wasting their time and resources.
Personally I think the most helpful would be a Indie trade show, perhaps produced by a small group. Basically your company has to be under 25 people and not owned by a parent company to join, the only people who could come in are verified media or people at those companies in it for 2 days, and on the third day, industry people can go, on the fourth day open it up to the crowds.
At the same time a month or two later or before have a TGS style show. TGS is aimed at the consumers, not the media, just have a huge game show. We're almost there with PAX, so go in that vein.
But E3 as it was, was as bloated and horrid as it comes.
This video contains enough damning commentary to forever change the landscape of e3, and insight on why change was needed.
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...since developers won't be devoting time to putting together tech demos and other crap for the E3 booths, they'll be able to continue their regular work. A lot of game companies have to drop everything to focus on their E3 presentation.
It'll also be nice for the developers to not have an extra round of Crunch Time just for the marketing department....
The Game Developers' Conference seems like a logical successor to E3. Plus, the more professional/industry oriented atmosphere of GDC dovetails nicely into the industry's emergence as a "serious" and "artistic" medium (or at least all the talk about it).
Wanna know how to downscale E3 and make it MUCH more professional than it has been so far? Easy.... Don't let G4 into the Expo :-P
As well as the Wannabes, those journalists who do not get paid for writing reviews, etc. because they just mess it up for those who do and then you have those who get in because 'they know a guy'.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
The serious show in the industry is now the Game Developer's Conference. While there are a few talks that fans might like, like "Half Weasel, Half Otter, All Trouble: a Postmortem of Daxter for the Sony PSP", those are rare. Most of the content is more like "High Performance Physics Solver Design for Next Generation Consoles" or "Practical Parallax Occlusion Mapping for Highly Detailed Surface Rendering".
It's not all about programming. There's theory of gameplay: "Tomorrow's Military Shooter: Challenges in Next-Gen Wargaming", and "Fun versus Offensive - Balancing the Cultural Edge of Content for Global Games". And business issues, like "How to Outsource Art Successfully", and "Bigger AND More Creative: Building a Better Developer Through Mergers and Acquisitions".
Over the last few years, GDC has grown, moved to bigger convention centers, added business and production sessions, and has become the place where work gets done and deals get made.
Losing E3 is no great loss.
5000 invite only participants.
3000 retailers.
Figure in all the publisher represenatives, and kiss the small press good bye.
(Like most of them do more than rehash IGN anyway....)
Maybe some techie philanthropist could sponsor a conference and invite the participants, $5000 fee for exhibiter plus a $10K deposit to make sure they show up, the sponsor books the hall and sets up the booths. It would be low key all the way. Probably in a second tier convention city like (say) Houston or Cleveland to hold down costs, but the sponsor would basically absorb nearly all the costs. But the techie gets naming and bragging rights.
E3 is valuable because it has "scantily-clad women"? That's what nightclubs are for.
A few years back, I went to GDC with an animator I was dating. She dressed as a video game warrior: boots, fingerless gloves, web belt with pouches, short leather skirt, skimpy top. We stopped by the Alias/Wavefront booth and, since she used Maya for animation, she grilled the booth guys intensely about the new release of Maya. She wanted to know whether some troublesome bugs were fixed and half-finished features implemented. She asked tough questions and tried out the pre-release version on display. The booth guys had a hard time dealing with that from a sexily dressed woman.
Just because they're hot doesn't mean they're dumb.
I know the death of E3 has come as a hard hit to many gamers, including myself. Personally, I loved all the hype that surrounded E3. Even though I was never able to actually go there, I always cherished the time I spent in front of my computer gaining updates from the people who were there. And when I first read that it was gone, I was crushed.
But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was probably for the better. E3 (before the change) was fun, though the large amount of people clamoring to play games made it hard for companies to get their full message out. I also realized that the part of E3 I enjoyed the most were the press conferences. They were calm, simple, and they showed exactly what the companies had in store. The rest of E3 was mostly chaos.
In fact, the other day one of the Nintendo of America staff was talking about it on the Nintendo NSider forums. He said he was very glad for the change, because in the past, anybody could get in as long as they had what appeared to be a good website. As a joke, he even said that someone could register a site with a name like MyNintendoSystemIsMyBestFriend.com and get in. There was little selectivity, which led to massive lines and little real press information.
While many people who previously attended E3 might not be so keen on the change, I think it may actually be a good thing. By making E3 smaller, it will make the group of attendees more elite, and it will probably be easier to hand out gaming information. Granted, another major event will probably rise up to take E3's place, but I am in support of what ESA is doing at E3.
It will be interesting to see what gaming companies do next year.