Rest In Piss, Electronic Entertainment Expo
TheySlashThem
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
E3 is dead, for realsies this time, probably
the advertising, however, will never stop
let's talk about the history of E3 and/or dance on its grave
the advertising, however, will never stop
let's talk about the history of E3 and/or dance on its grave
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It's kind of a shame that it's going away, those few days of hype were always fun. Though someone (Keighley) will replace it, no doubt.
E3 IS DEAD!!!!!
Just give me a weeklong event of publishers eating shit on stage that we can rank in terms of competence and further fuel the flames of stupid ass consumer wars like the good old days!
Still, better than nothing. I love my dumb hype shows.
The first is the actual important one. Having tons of journalists, developers and publishers on one place to do interviews and make business deals. This was an invaluable part of E3 though it was behind the scenes a lot, and the industry is going to suffer it's loss. The Giant Bomb @ Nite interviews are a heavy blow for me, personally, as they were always a highlight of E3.
The second is the glitz, glamor and advertising. This is the part we all enjoy/suffer through. It's where we get fed all a bunch of marketing and eat it up like the good little consumerists we are. I always enjoyed taking a day or two off of work and just getting a giant newsblast into my face. It'll be a bummer this is no longer going to be a bunch of overproduced shows centered around a single date, but they won't go away entirely. They'll just be more spread out, or at stuff like Keighlies.
The third was the silliness. This had been mostly missing the last few years of E3 anyway once everyone realized this shit was streaming to the internet. Stuff like the goofier parts of Sony E3 2006, the infamous Konami presentation, Motion Control malfuctions, ridiculous presenters and etc. has gone the way of the Dodo, sadly. Really good goofs are few and far between these days.
While the ESA has and continues to suck ass, I mourn the loss of E3, but really, E3 died awhile ago. We're just now coming to terms with that loss.
Anywho, here's a playlist of Giant Bomb @ E3.
they shaved off too many rough edges
Sales diagrams are less meme-worthy
Sony was the worst for it
599 US dollars, Giant Enemy Crab, Ridge Racer, etc all live so large in that mental landscape, but they were all actually pretty low key bits in their respective presentations
E3 has been a 20+ year ritual for me. A week to talk about games, and see who was doing what. I conceptually know it was there for networking and to sell floor space to retailers, but the dream was always to sneak in as a "journalist" and check out this party.
Lately, that party has been brought to me. The first signs were Nintendo Directs, which were tailor made for the internet. Then the other big companies followed suit, with their conferences being more aimed at the home audience than the show floor. And then.. well, E3 became a place to follow Giant Bomb @ nite. And my desire to go to a place shifted to PAX (which I still haven't done).
Thanks to momentum, there'll still be "Something" around that time. But it won't be the same.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/06/16/lets-get-ready-to-rummmmbllllle
Anyway, apart from seeing Miyamoto come out wildly swinging a real Master sword I have no strong feelings re: the Life and Death of Mr. E3
Edit: hard to tell on mobile but I think those images were huge so I took them down
E3 was mostly about the Giant Bomb interviews for me for a while. The marketing pipeline has become pretty solidified, games journalists aren't that important to getting the word out, surprises are rare, and big companies make less games nowadays and take 3+ years to do so, so it's very unlikely to miss something coming up.
The one thing that is lost is getting millions of people to watch an indie game trailer montage, which is a double dice roll for creating one of those relatively rare indie hits (first you needed to get into the montage, then you need to stand out)
And behind the scenes it was a big industry network event. But it's so hard to gauge the impact of that.
$299 was a major part of that presentation - in fact, it was the only part. And that helped put E3 on the map.
The industry now has better networking events like GDC, which is literally built around developers talking shop. Which illustrates the problem E3 had - it was a show that made sense when the most important person on the floor was the lead buyer for Walmart. But that's not the case anymore.
E3 was a blight and actively harmful.
Not to mention how deleterious it was for actual game development
Hate buying things, though.
Then boy, do I have a deal for you!
Picture this: A service, like a magazine subscription.. but instead of delivering a physical paper to your mailbox every so often.. instead it lets you download games! These games aren't yours, though.. so you didn't purchase them. No, you only get access to them while you are on the subscription.. oh, and the company can pull away that access any time, for any reason. And if you want any of the add-ons, you have to pay more... and you can't use those paid add-ons without the subscription either.
But it's so convenient! Hell, if you pay the additional amount a month, they'll even give you a way to play them without needing their console or a powerful PC!
(I really do love Game Pass, though.)
BEGINS
Summer Games Fest Showcase w/ Jeff Keyley on June 9th, 11 AM PST/2 PM EST/6 PM GMT
Also Geoff