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

Comments

Not to mention...

[trogdor8667]

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.

Bad Press?

[twistedsymphony]

"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

I think your gaming news site would have to have some kind of horrible message that would cause game makers to not want you cover their stuff.

Even if you were worried there are still lots of other conventions.

Awesome title

[Anonymous Coward]

I present to you The Death of E3 in Quotes:

"The Death of E3"

PAX

[Scorpion265]

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.

Re:PAX

[MrChom]

Not going to happen. PAX is too niche and too unknown to be a good place for games companies to give out whatever message it is marketing is getting them to seel this week.

E3 is something that normal people know about right now, and for that reason alone PAX won't be coming close for some considerable years....and even then I doubt it will.

Companies will move on to the smaller, more targeted shows to get news to press. E3 lost its focus...if it was for press then why was so much money spent on each booth, why not just some standard demo pods and a desk for literature, if it was for the everyman then why in LA....why not on a few "Battlebus" type things to tour Europe, North America and Japan...

Why E3 is gone.

[kinglink]

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.

If a picture's worth a thousand words

[xenocide2]

This video contains enough damning commentary to forever change the landscape of e3, and insight on why change was needed.

We might get games faster too...

[AugstWest]

...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....

GDC?

[dgg3565]

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).

I hope they don't allow wannabes in anymore....

[madhatter256]

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'.

Real developers go to GDC

[Animats]

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.

Re:Real developers go to GDC

[Castar]

GDC and E3 are two totally different events, though. GDC is for the developers, you're right. E3 was for the retailers and the press. No one hears about GDC except for developers, and that's a good thing. It's like a medical conference, really.

But E3 was the one time of year my mother heard about the sort of things that go on in our industry. She could get interested in new hardware or games because they'd be in publications like Time and the local newspaper. Sure, the enthusiast press will cover news year-round, will attend the EA press conference, the Sony press conference, whatever else happens. But Time isn't going to bother. They'll probably still cover E3, but without the spectacle to report on, it'll have all the flavor (and get all the column space) of a press release. No one wants to hear about how men in business suits explained the market-capturing features of the latest FPS, but journalists love writing about the giant smoking demon heads, the hours-long lines, and the scantily-clad women. They provide the kind of details that make people who don't care about the game read the article.

E3 was maybe bad for the big publishers and for the attendees (well, it was great for me, I got to go down to LA on expense account...), but it was great for the industry as a whole. The spectacle was something that drew attention, and people got excited about. GDC will hopefully not become a spectacle, but something probably will... Maybe PAX.

And that's another reason why losing E3 is so stupid. Everyone's already looking for a replacement, and where ever the press and gamers go, the exhibitors will have to follow. They'll start with small booths at PAX, and then someone will build a bigger booth, and then someone will hire a former stripper, and then someone will build a giant smoking demon head, and then we'll be right back where we started, except we'll have lost a few years of the public's attention and part of the soul and history of the industry.

And that's another reason why E3 is a great loss. It's symptomatic of the transition of the gaming industry from a fun-filled, over-the-top, bizarre industry fuelled by collective love of geeky things and passion into just another business. The new E3 doesn't have to be about games, a similar conference could take place about the oil business, or medical databases, or making soft drinks. It shows that video games are becoming just another way of making money, run by people in suits who don't care whether the game involves elves or aliens or whether it's an RTS or an FPS, as long as it's whatever their research tells them will sell. That's happening regardless of E3, of course, but it was nice to see suits having to make concessions to the underlying passion of the industry. Now they can safely ignore all that messy stuff and get back to selling things.

And that's a damn shame.