Why Do We Keep E3 Around, Anyway?

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

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I think gyrobot is just expresing this observation about mainstream media.

Spoiler: Well, just the two first panels...

Well, just the two first panels...

But let's not pretend it's just the reviewers who changed. Different games, different industry, different means of communication and different audience.

If you are a weeb the third panel hits harder than ever. What with your games losing points just because your characters look like a skyrim modder's fantasied follower but slightly more modest and have more soul beyond kill me now. Or the reviews from Polygon and Killscreen which inputs social commentary into their reviews.

 

[CaitSeith]

snip

snip

I think gyrobot is just expresing this observation about mainstream media.

Spoiler: Well, just the two first panels...

Well, just the two first panels...

But let's not pretend it's just the reviewers who changed. Different games, different industry, different means of communication and different audience.

If you are a weeb the third panel hits harder than ever. What with your games losing points just because your characters look like a skyrim modder's fantasied follower but slightly more modest and have more soul beyond kill me now. Or the reviews from Polygon and Killscreen which inputs social commentary into their reviews.

What about all the other reviewers and sites that DON'T do it? Why no one mentions them? It's way easier to make the professionals you support more relevant than to change the behavior of reviewers whose approach you disagree with.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

It cost Pete Davison his job at USGamer if it is any indication. The big ones have an agenda or has stopped reviewing games from certain companies.

 

[warmachine]

For those Americans who think Yahtzee must be exaggerating about the Eurovision Song Contest, he is not. It really is a nation popularity contest, pretending less and less about the music, and the UK will get hammered in the next one.

 

[hermes]

You know, I happen to like it. For about three or four days a year, I get all the news, trailers and announcements of the year compressed for easier consumption. Now that the conferences dedicate some not trivial amount of time to indie games, it gets closer to being all encompassing.

It beats having to look at youtube channels, RSS feeds or the escapist news portlet to see if some 10 seconds new footage of Mass Effect 4 was leaked.

 

[Vigormortis]

TLR: E3 offers consistency.

Not really. Publishers, even the large ones, don't always show up to the show. At times, upcoming major releases are completely absent. Likewise, far too often what's shown at E3 winds up being nothing more than a misleading vertical slice of the final product. *see: Watch Dogs, Evolve, A:CM, etc.

Not that I don't agree that E3, even today, has a place. (an ever diminishing place, but a place nonetheless) But "consistency" is not the reason for it.

We keep it around so we can know who won.

This. After all, how will I know if I made the right choice in purchasing that game/system/device unless the company that made it 'won' their battle against 'that other company'?

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

E3 really has become mostly redundant to today's super fast internet (and I mean both the bandwidth and how word spreads so quickly today). Those demos can be sent to game publications for review, and if the pub/dev wanted someone there with the previewer to answer questions, a skype call can be made. Press conferences can be streamed, and forums and email addresses open only to the press can be made to answer questions and conduct interviews. New hardware to test out and hype/publicity are the only major reasons to spend money sending reps and journalists to meet at video game trade shows. Having a person at a physical location makes them, and their readers/viewers, more emotionally invested in what they are trying out. That's what keeps these expensive trade shows alive and huge.

I was sort of sad when they almost killed E3 a few years ago, but I now I see that would have been for the best. It has become a dick waving competition between the major publishers, with all of those "who won E3 articles and videos pumped out every year" and the swag distributed to journalists to subconsciously sway their opinion on both the games and "who won." It was always a hype machine, though. The attempt at hyping everything on display at E3 has just gotten bigger when the constant news updates on the internet started to compete with trade shows.

It would be nice if game companies focused their PR more on the internet, but there is still a benefit to them in investing the money and effort they currently do into trade shows. I sure would rather see major news usually given at E3 spread more evenly throughout the year. The news for the weeks afterwards are always slow, and the many of the debates about what game or presentation was better can quickly undermine the point of being shown a preview of a product.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

This. After all, how will I know if I made the right choice in purchasing that game/system/device unless the company that made it 'won' their battle against 'that other company'?

More importantly, how can you brag about how much smarter (and sexier) you are than the people who bought something from "that other company"?

 

[Vigormortis]

This. After all, how will I know if I made the right choice in purchasing that game/system/device unless the company that made it 'won' their battle against 'that other company'?

More importantly, how can you brag about how much smarter (and sexier) you are than the people who bought something from "that other company"?

Exactly.

My life has no meaning or validation unless I'm throwing my hard-earned money at the company that "won" some contest against another company.

 

[SiskoBlue]

E3 isn't for gamers, or general consumers? It's like the Cannes film festival. It's an Electronic and Entertainment Expo. It's where people in the industry get together to see who is selling what and make deals. It used to be the place where stores like Walmart, GAME, GameStop, etc. would decide how many units of certain products they are going to order for their stores. It's also where developers, studios, publishers etc. meet up in back rooms to discuss deals. Again, not for the average joe/jane gamer.

But like Cannes, Fashion Weeks, and other trade shows journalists go along to get an early scoop on what the industry has got in store. The presentations were for buyers to get them pumped about a product and order more units. But because journalists reported it to the general consumer, and created a marketing opportunity, the whole thing has been skewed towards the general public. It's now a bastardised event. The deals are still made, the store buyers are still there, but a large proportion is media baiting.

It is what it is, if people lost interest there'd still be an E3 trade show for people to do business, just not as grandiose.

 

[Darth_Payn]

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.

Hey, don't drag us into this. Croshaw was born '83. It's him and the rest of you 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 pessimistic twits.

If he was born in 83, then he'd be 7 by the year 1990, 12 by the year 1995, and 17 by the year 2000. Considering the majority of his childhood would be spent in the 90s, I'd class that as a 90s kid.

HOLY SHITBISCUITS! He's just a year older than me?! Now I really feel like a bum.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Why are we so cynical? Because back in the day, the industry actually delivered sometimes. I think that's seriously about it. Nowadays, outside of the indie circle, all I see is mediocrity and the same ideas getting used over and over and OVER again.