Smaller will definitely be better!
E3 is dead! Er, no, it isn’t.
E3 as the big, noisy, glitzy games show where 300 stands all clamour for your attention is dead, yes, but E3 itself isn’t dead, it’s just gotten smaller.
Is this a bad thing? Is size important or is it really true that it’s not how big it is but what you do with it that counts?
Being both a gaming journo and bloke, I’d have to answer yes to that question, from the both the journo point of view and as one of 50% of the human race who nature has allowed to pee standing up.
Now normally I’d go off on a rant about how E3 was too big, too noisy and too short etc blah blah blah, but I realise that the oprganizers, with this downsizing move, have targeted the exact reason why E3 was the big, noisy show it had grown to be and, in one swift move defter than a top surgeon on speed, they removed the source of the big, noisy brashness.
But what have they removed?
Inflatable swords.
Yep, you read that right. Swords. Inflatable ones.
And inflatable body-boards. And flashing baseball caps. And rotating badges, stick on tattoos, flashing pens, branded CD wallets, stuffed toys, stickers, postcards, mousemats and all the other complete crap that gets given away at these shows. And let’s not forget the simply bloody enormous glossy paper carrier bags so big you could hide a Cambodian family in.
Before I headed to this year’s E3 I was a tad concerned over the press accreditation procedure as it was certainly the strictest I’d come across and I’ve attended press shows all over the globe. We even had to present a copy of the damn company license from Companies House!
So I was more than a little disheartened when, as the doors opened for the early press preview session, hundreds of people literally sprinted into the hall… I don’t mean ran, I mean SPRINTED, knocking and barging into each other in a completely undignified and utterly unprofessional attempt to be the first to play on the Wii. Bloody pathetic.
And you know what? It was at that moment that I realised that perhaps all these several thousand people weren’t actually journalists. Sure, they’d somehow blagged it that they were and managed to get in, but they weren’t ever going to write a single line about anything they’d seen, other than to boast on some obscure forum that they’d played on the Wii or gotten a semi over the PS3…
And it’s these self-same people that I saw strolling around with a dozen bags, each with a game or publisher’s name slapped across it. These were the people blocking my way as I tried to get to my next meeting as they clamoured to either have their picture taken with a bored booth babe in faux leather armour or to win a freebie inflatable sword tossed out into the crowd from the booth.
A gaming journo doesn’t want all this crud. A gaming journo wants to get in, get the story, perhaps have a cold coke and a chat and then get the hell out and write it up.
E3 saw massive attendances this year but you know what? The press center was never so busy that you couldn’t get a spot with at least 3 empty seats either side. The private viewing areas for behind-closed-doors stuff was never so busy that you couldn’t walk in and get a seat even if you’d not booked for that session. In short, if the thousands of so called journos there were actually journos, they’d have all been doing exactly what I was doing… but they weren’t. They were freebie scammers.
But to lay all the blame on them isn’t 100% fair. After all, you only get wasps if you leave the lid off the jam jar.
So the publishers, who’ve been pleading that E3 is too costly, and the organizers, who’re saying that they don’t make any money, must also take some of the blame.
A real gaming journo is the easiest and cheapest person to entertain at the show. You don’t need a big stand with flashy lights, dancing girls and a Formula 1 car suspended from the roof. Don’t bother with huge posters, massive widescreens and intricately sculpted water gardens. Rip up that order for 4 squillion branded t-shirts, 10 squillion branded pens and 50 bazillion inflatable keyrings with built in MP3 players… all that crap is what the public and timewasters want and THAT’S what makes E3 so bloody expensive.
A gaming journo just wants the info, a play on the game in question and access to a developer would be nice too. Oh, and a press DISK. Not a sheet of paper, but an actual disk with all the screens and info on it so we can get back to the press room or the hotel and write up with the minimum of fuss.
That's not much to ask, is it? Especially seeing as if a publisher spends some time going through their line-up, the only decent thing to do is give that publisher some expsoure. But some spotty goit, interupting with "Wow man, that looks incredible, is it coming out on the Dreamcast?" whilst his inflatable sword wafts his B.O. my way does nothing but make me want to get the hell out and go someplace else...
Somehow, somewhere publishers lost sight of who their target audience is at these ‘press only’ events… so rather than forgoing the massive stands and instead using the money to get more personnel on the booth to allow more journos to meet them, publishers spend huge sums on the stands and freebies in the mistaken belief that this will get them exposure. That’s fine for a public event and I fully expect to see it at GC 2006, but E3 is supposed to be all about professional journalists, publishers and developers… It’s not about standing in a queue behind a line of tits, each with an inflatable sword stuffed in their backpacks as tit is turned away from the behind closed doors sessions as they don’t even have a business card!
The organizers must also take some of the blame. Even though E3 appeared to have the toughest requirements for proving your press credentials, I personally know of three people who gained access to the show despite the fact that they never write any kind of games related articles and never will. Luckily for them, they weren’t tempted by the inflatable swords or I might have shown each one an uncomfortable and embarrassing place to ‘sheath’ the bloody thing.
So, am I sorry that E3 has, to put it in someone else’s words, “collapsed”?
No, not at all. Because I don’t believe that E3 has collapsed at all. I reckon E3 has now become what it should have been in the first place, before the glam of Hollywood warped it.
Let’s face it, if you’ve got a game to show off, all you need is a half a dozen consoles or PCs and screens and you’re away. You could fit that many stations into my dining room and still have enough room to swing a cat… okay, the cat might have mild concussion afterwards but the idea is good enough.
A lower key event is fine by me. It cuts away all that bullshit that attracts the freebie mongers who do nothing but increase costs and get in the way of the guy who is actually trying to do a job. Without all that showbiz crud we can just focus on the games themselves and get some decent coverage up. And, because publishers don’t have to have massive stands and loads of freebies, they can spend a fraction of the money they’ve saved on sending more reps to the show so more journos can get a meeting, giving more exposure to the publisher’s games.
And finally, without massive stands, the whole thing will need less space, meaning the event is less of a slog to get around so journos won’t be thoroughly knackered for their last meetings each day and will still be able to give some decent exposure to the games.
Now I know that this all sounds like an elitist rant but it really isn’t. It’s a standing ovation for whoever it was that finally had the balls to stand up and say enough to the escalating costs versus the diminishing returns.
Sure, let’s still have public shows because the UK is sorely missing any sort of large, glitzy games show along the lines of E3 or GC 2006. Sure, if you want you can still give out inflatable telephones that play the Dallas theme tune for all I care… just make sure that a public show is a public show and a press show is a press show… And by all means, charge entry for the public shows, that way you can charge exhibitors less for the floor space meaning they can invest more in wowing the attendees…
And in the meantime, we journos can have some quiet time giving those self same attendees something to get excited about before the shows…
