Why Do We Keep E3 Around, Anyway?
E3 doesn't seem to matter much these days, so why do we keep it around?
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E3 doesn't seem to matter much these days, so why do we keep it around?
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Why Do We Keep E3 Around, Anyway?
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
I think Mafia 3 looks really good, I agree with you on Titanfall, I'm annoyed at publishers that try to get away with selling games with half the content they should have for full price, too many people were willing to forgive Rainbow Six Siege for being overpriced simply because they badly wanted something "hardcore". Titanfall 2 definitely looks like an improvement though and I will be checking it out.
Infinite Warfare looks pretty cool, it doesn't matter how many people downvote trailers for the game, it's still going to sell like hotcakes. Don't think BF1 will break sales records, people on the internet talking a lot about something does not guarantee it will be a hit(Snakes on a Plane anyone?).
Infinite Warfare looks pretty cool, it doesn't matter how many people downvote trailers for the game, it's still going to sell like hotcakes. Don't think BF1 will break sales records, people on the internet talking a lot about something does not guarantee it will be a hit(Snakes on a Plane anyone?).
You always need a professional source to cite from vs the extremely fickle audience you created Yahtzee. You had a hand in creating an completely jaded and bitter audience who either stick to their 90's nostalgia or join some political movement that uses game reviews as a bludgeon. There is no "consistency" for a non professional reviewer who goes from minute of being the guy who sings your praise or the bitter man who sees nothing golden in life (One only needs to look at /v/ for the final product that Yahtzee made)
E3 is the proverbial litmus test to see if you made it to the big leagues and worth being scooped up by investors who promises you money in exchange for your soul. Sure we have Nintendo Direct but the thing is with big Japanese companies is they actively resist all attempts at fan based advertising. They are highly orthodox corporation who don't want a bunch of peasants with their version of a YELP account shilling for them. They want assurance and consistency and E3 is the perfect PR medium for that special occasion. Same applies to some of the big publishers who wants to maintain a market presence to keep the investors happy at the meeting as nothing causes more panic than not being able to make it to E3 this year.
TL
R: E3 offers consistency.
E3 is the proverbial litmus test to see if you made it to the big leagues and worth being scooped up by investors who promises you money in exchange for your soul. Sure we have Nintendo Direct but the thing is with big Japanese companies is they actively resist all attempts at fan based advertising. They are highly orthodox corporation who don't want a bunch of peasants with their version of a YELP account shilling for them. They want assurance and consistency and E3 is the perfect PR medium for that special occasion. Same applies to some of the big publishers who wants to maintain a market presence to keep the investors happy at the meeting as nothing causes more panic than not being able to make it to E3 this year.
TL
R: E3 offers consistency.
And just like the Euro (*heavy sigh*) vision, it only becomes tolerable with a few glasses of wine. Surely you had to have seen that live-stream fuckup where the Jason game turned out as some 8bit joke, then the guy drank footwater while surrounded by people in animal onesies? I swear I didn't dream that! But a vigorous DIY analysis tells me they are most certainly not on a human or Earth-creature wavelength. We need our best people on this...I have a feeling these publishers are hiding alien baby farms somewhere, where they make, grow and teach these things how to behave like you us humans, ready to release into E3 all full of conditioned alien joy...greasing the excitement and wallets of the public.
I have seen things, man. Things you wouldn't believe. Alien cub pods as far as the eye can see. Petri dishes of plutonium pheromones injected into each. Lost good men (and women) to those places. Hang on, no...that was a dream. Forget I said anything. Please, continue.
I have seen things, man. Things you wouldn't believe. Alien cub pods as far as the eye can see. Petri dishes of plutonium pheromones injected into each. Lost good men (and women) to those places. Hang on, no...that was a dream. Forget I said anything. Please, continue.
Isn't it common logic to see it that way? Big commercial event with the press coming here to ask questions and try out shit with limited press conferences = big corp PR opportunity.CaitSeith said:
E3 puts me in mind of a political rally/debate where candidates take turns lying to us in order to curry favor.
That audience was around a long time before Yahtzee was. I'm not sure if you know this or not, but there were people satirically reviewing games on the interwebs long before Yahtzee. I fail to see how he had a hand in creating an audience that's been around since internet forums existed. The heaviest amount of influence I've seen Yahtzee have on the gaming community is that he coined the term PC Master Race. Occasionally he pisses off overly sensitive Nintendrones.gyrobot said:
If a jaded gaming community exists, it's the industry's fault. Negativity generated by reviewers is merely a symptom, because people wouldn't agree if they didn't also feel that way. Companies get caught miming playthroughs, bullshitting us on graphics, and announcing sequels/reboots to fuel the hype train and get preorders basically every year. Announcements are fine and all, but watching a man stand up one stage for an hour and try to sell us stuff like he's Peter Molyneux's understudy is boring as shit when I can just go to YouTube and see what matters - the announcement trailers - right there on the front page.
It's a cool event for the press, since they get to play the demos and all, but people have been cooling off on E3 ever since they closed their doors to the general public.
Hey, don't drag us into this. Croshaw was born '83. It's him and the rest of the Gen-X '80s kids that have been the cynical, self-absorbed problem as far back as the early 2000s. All '90s kids ever wanted was to enjoy themselves without having to deal with '80s kids constantly bitching about sharing the attention and acting like a pack of edgy twits. Their generation started this mess.gyrobot said:
As someone who finally saw the ESC[footnote]HA! It spelled like the "Escape" key on a computer keyboard! *laughs til it hurts*[/footnote] for the first time, I can't help but laugh in agreement... Now, if only this year's E3 was narrated by Carson Kressley...
Other than that, I'm still waiting for Call of Duty: Total Warfare... That will surely change it up fo sure!
Yahtzee's brand of cynicism passed on to the press itself. During the 90s the industry was stoked on how awesome the upcoming game is. No political grandstanding or bitter cynical grumps. It was mostly a time for the press to just enjoy themselves and pass on that positivr energy to gamers. Nowadays we do nothing but stay guarded in our bolthole. Weary of strangers, liars and looters and an active perchant to shoot anyone fitting of the description. Top that with the recent takeover of the turtleneck triad in the press and all we hve is a bunch of unhappy gamers who have to rely on guerilla Radio to get their fix.Sheo_Dagana said:
And Japan hates that Guerilla Radio and actively jams all transmition attempts.
Tl;dr. The professional rags used to be hyper positive. Now they are cynical fucks with an agenda
Well, i usually try to stay cautiously optimistic about games and not involve myself in every meaningless shitstorm over some tiny in-game feature/publisher politics/reviews etc.
And that's why i LIKE E3. Because during these two or three days a year i, together with other people, can just spill out all my witheld salt and make fun of every slip that happens to publishers on these conferences. It's catharctic.
And that's why i LIKE E3. Because during these two or three days a year i, together with other people, can just spill out all my witheld salt and make fun of every slip that happens to publishers on these conferences. It's catharctic.
I perfer that to hyper-positive with an agenda, frankly. Especially in an age when it's difficult to tell what's an article(sorry, sponsored content) and what's an ad.gyrobot said:
As others have said, it's hard to be optimistic about an industry that will gladly sell pre-orders for games that release in a broken/uncompleted state, sometimes not be fixed for months(if at all) and review embargo said games so there's no way to know if there are problems until after the game drops.
There was also that time where GTA 5 went to a 50% discount on steam...and somehow stayed the exact same price, because it turns out they raised the price by the same amount in an attempt to sucker people. Yeah, fuck you too Rockstar. Guess what game I will never purchase now?
Not to mention the whole "Well, you bought the game now, but you'll have to buy the 5 DLC over the next year or so to really get the full experience, or have something actually worth playing". Which makes it hard to want to even bother buying until the "Complete" or "GOTY" edition drops.
When companies stop doing that shit, I'll stop being cynical.
E3 was actually never open to the public, but in the past a lot of people managed to sneak their way in by claiming to be journalists of some sort, and the ESA started vetting people more carefully to make sure they were "real" journalists and not just some blogger(though these days it's getting harder to tell the difference).Sheo_Dagana said:
And in that case, unless you are part of the media empire run by Ziff Davis or something similar, you aren't getting in. That means a lot of non press endored journalists are basically kept out and you get a who's who is relevant to the PR teams with showcases at E3.
You condemn '90s nostalgia in your original post, yet you seem to have more than a touch of it yourself, talking about how awesome it was and how pumped people got for new games back then. So what? A lot of those articles had no choice but to be upbeat because you couldn't say what you actually wanted to say because doing so would get you fired. Why do you think so many people have gone to YouTube in this day and age? Back then all we had was X-Play if we wanted honesty, but even Adam Sessler (before Yahtzee's time, wouldn't ya know) quit covering games after a decade and a half out of sheer frustration of the bullshit that is pervasive throughout the industry.gyrobot said:
If gamers have to be on the look out for liars and looters it's because they have no choice; you never know when a game is going to get scaled back from what was shown at E3 or even if it will be shipped as a completed product. Assassin's Creed Unity? Watchdogs? The Evil Within turned out completely different. Or how about the crowd-funded Mighty No.9? And those are recent fiascos, and just a couple of examples, to say nothing of DLC or microtransactions. Companies have gotten greedy, and if I'm cynical, it's because I have to read shit like how the Final Fantasy 7 Remake episodes will be sold as full price games.
Again, Yahtzee didn't 'start the fire' so to say. I refer you to my earlier statement about the pessimism being a symptom. Instead of complaining about their cynicism, instead ask why they're so embittered. If all you want is overly positive gaming personalities, then I suggest you check out the Playstation Access guys.
TL;DR: Those 'hyper positive' individuals didn't get to being cynical fucks for no reason.
Well no, we really won't, because as said just a paragraph earlier:Yahtzee Croshaw said:
No-one remembers what happened several years earlier in the first announcement that game is going to happen. Even for games that might come out in the next year or two there will be a huge advertising push with probably hundreds of separate items put out over the course of months at the least. This is really the biggest problem with E3; it's simply irrelevant. Any announcement is simply one tiny drop in the advertising ocean, and by the time anyone is able to actually act on it and buy something, they'll have forgotten it ever existed.