The gaming world is abuzz with rumours of the death, demise and downsizing of
the industries annual blow out in Los Angeles, E3. Apparently major publishers
have been talking to the organisers about the huge costs of the event versus the
low return in terms of hype generated and so on.
There is shock, anguish and a general cry of "Ohh, no!" among many fans and
journalists alike. But why, says I, should we lament the death - and make no
mistake, even if this is simply a downsizing of E3 it is the death of the event
we once knew - of E3 considering that it has surpassed its usefulness? The show
simply got too big and too loud for its own good. The fact that companies have
to spend double digit millions to get themselves seen and heard on the
epileptics nightmare of a show floor speaks volumes - there's no PR return worth
that sort of an investment.
Indeed the likes of Electronic Arts have been holding their own spectacular
press-only preview events, complete with marching bands and keynotes from
industry luminaries, after E3. These are far more effective, as the publishers
can schedule around one another and grab the limelight all to themselves for a
couple of days - unlike at E3, where time is precious and you're competing with
your major rivals for airtime (thus spiralling costs to do so.)
A lot of stuff gets missed at E3, and at best you can consider it to be a mass
human wave of PR that fills our heads and our offices so full of press kit shit
that it takes journalists until around September, when the promised games
actually start to get released en masse, to sort everything out and re-write the
press releases into neat little previews. We'd be better off spacing these
preview events out over the course of the summer, with E3 being the press event
to kick it all off still. We'd be able to sit down with developers for five
hours of a day, rather than five minutes in an hour before rushing off to the
next event.
I see the demise of E3 as a positive thing for the games industry - anyone who
knows me vaguely at this stage knows that I don't suffer PR glitz gladly, and I
much prefer the chance to be able to take a thoughtful look at the upcoming crop
of games than have to watch a preview video in a glass case (so nobody nicks the
screen); whilst the noise of the ten booths behind and around me provide
distraction, with some PR hack whose themed name badge I'm not going to bother
to read giving me a ream of features and cool notable points about the game that
I Really Hope To God are going to be in the press pack he'll inevitably hand me,
so that I may transcribe them later.
That was a long graph. Go back and read it four times without pausing for breath
and you get an idea of what E3 is all about. Play several tracks of pop, rock
and metal music together at once and at an obscenely high volume and you have an
idea of E3 in a nutshell.
Of course, inevitably, after a year or two of no major lightshows some genius
will get the idea of setting up another major tradeshow that will be E3 in
spirit. Let's just hope they put it in a more agreeable venue - either somewhere
calm and scenic, or somewhere properly dingy. LA is just too in-the-middle for
me.
