Now You're Just an E3 That I Used to Know

Watching E3 from the comfort of various chairs around my home and office — which I contend is now the preferred way to experience the event — found me spending a lot of time being internally cynical about what I was seeing. I think it is relatively well documented that E3 has lost much of its prestige over the past five years or so, if not longer, but it hadn’t been until the past few events that I really began to wonder whether the industry had just completely lost its way at a top level.

But I also wondered if I was just being caught up in the cynical whirlpool that seems to wander endlessly through the ocean of gaming fandom. After all, I’m on record as saying the past few years have been some of the best in recent memory, and it was only six months ago that I was having to make hard decisions about whether to play Skyrim, Uncharted 3 or Saints Row the Third. Sure, the show may be different from the halcyon days I dimly recall through the lens of nostalgia, but today’s game biz is certainly still cranking out the fun.

I find myself very much left with the question then: Is E3 a relevant gamer event anymore?

And the answer, somewhat surprisingly is, yes. It actually is, but in the context of understanding what the people who control the industry think is important. Not at all as a celebration of the form. It is not an event, it is a warning.

I’m not just talking about the relative affronts of DRM, DLC and other such sinister acronyms. I mean that an E3 presentation, particularly from console makers, is as likely to focus on TV integration, subscriptions, add-on plans or social platforms as it is to actually talk about how a game will be good. Every year it seems that the people with most influence in gaming have less and less investment in or familiarity with what makes for a quality product from a gamer perspective.

I suppose I need to establish that I am drawing an important distinction between the ideas of a “gamer” and a “game consumer,” because from the perspective of the latter I think E3 isn’t just relevant, but perhaps more relevant than ever. I am using a much more niche definition of the term “gamer.” When I use that word, I mean it in the terms that someone might have used it in 1999, meaning specifically an individual who is passionate about the industry, the artform and the evolution of gaming.

Now, of course, these two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. I, for example, am very much both a “gamer” and a “gaming consumer.” I am as likely to get excited for and buy a critically acclaimed independent title as I am the latest AAA title from EA or Activision. My buying habits are perhaps mitigated but not wholly impeded by a more rigid DRM scheme. In short, my habits tend to represent both the activities of a hardcore gamer as well as the larger buying public.

Perhaps that is why I am torn on E3. I see from an informed point of view the way the soul of E3, if such a phrase has any meaning, is being leached away year after year, but I also know that many of these games that are front and center in the service-driven monetization wars are going to sell a hojillion copies, whether they deserve to or not. We can lambast Madden and Call of Duty all we like for being soulless, money-making machines designed to manipulate and penalize consumers, but any reasonable analysis also has to contend with the practical upshot, which is that they will be very successful soulless manipulation machines.

In that sense, E3 is extremely relevant, assuming you accept that it is, above all else, a business platform to market and highlight a company’s best money-making opportunities in the business. And I think that gets down to the heart of the issue, because the “gamer” side of me wants this to be a celebration of the industry and medium, a show for what will likely be the best games as opposed to simply the games and/or applications that will drive the highest value and best return on investment.

I think E3 is actually extremely successful at being exactly what it needs to be to continue driving in exhibitors, which, let’s be honest, is as important if not more important than drawing attendees. After all, if you build it and you get exhibitors, then you have to work really hard at screwing up the attendees part.

Unfortunately, E3 is not presented that way in most media coverage.

This isn’t the part where I start caning my peers for applauding at IE integration in the Xbox 360. (Though seriously, guys, what the hell?) I just think that, from a gaming enthusiast press side, they/we aren’t doing a good enough job of making it clear what this is. Because if you just watch the gaming sites or the streaming feeds or live blogging, you’d think that this is that old-school celebration. The coverage is bombastic and enthusiastic. The enthusiast press does enough gearing up hype for E3 (in honesty, we play a role in that as well) that the show and the presenters are best served by not dispelling the illusion. The press, which I do think continues to need to be more critical and realistic about this event, spoon feeds marketing spin to an eagerly waiting public. But that coverage isn’t really what E3 is about.

To be fair, I think of all the press in attendance, the enthusiast press — particularly the unaffiliated press — is at least good at noticing and commenting on when the spin is happening. They still deliver it in real time with big headlines, but they aren’t walking around with blindfolds on either.

That aspect they can leave to the mainstream press, who is the final, and perhaps weakest, piece of the puzzle. When even CNN covers the event but appears to not understand that the Wii U is an entirely new console as opposed to a peripheral for the existing Wii, it’s impossible to expect that they are going to actually have a critical analysis in the next paragraph.

I think of E3 now as a mission statement by businessmen about the new shackles they plan to lock on the people in the industry who actually do care about games. It’s a high-profile quarterly earnings call, where big businesses are as much talking to shareholders and casual consumers as they are gamers. It is the chance to spin always-on DRM, and corporate partnerships between different media holders that purport to add value while, overall, entrenching outdated ideas about how and when people should get content.

E3 certainly has people in it that are in the business because they like games, but they are not the point. As a “gamer,” you have to be willing to go look for them not just on the show floor, but also in the coverage you consume. I suppose that could be seen as a sign that the medium and more specifically the methods of making money from the medium have matured. It's like television, music, movies or books. if you are passionate about the form then probably you aren't watching the prime-time network schlock, reading James Patterson or listening to my Spotify playlists. In some ways I suppose that makes the special games that are still for us a little more special, but I still can't help but watch my Spike TV feed of E3 and feel that something I once loved is lost.

Comments

Elysium wrote:

As a “gamer,” you have to be willing to go look for them not just on the show floor, but also in the coverage you consume

Yeah I got more out of some of the sit down developer interviews that I saw on Spike or G4 more than the actual press conferences and shows.

This article joins what I was reading in my main gaming source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012... and http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...

I'm not sure about the coverage in other sources, but there it seemed to have been described for what it is.

Gaming has become "popular", and the popular side is this. Noisy shooty games, with a lot of violence. Cinematic games. Incremental updates, yearly sequels to a successful game. In a way, this is not much different from cinema. So I guess we should be glad, somehow. Videogaming is being recognized and widely accepted by a wide audience.

The price to pay for that, of course, is that the most popular events will be targeted to the widest audience. but better than nothing.

Something I brought up before was that times have also changed with the nature of the Internet itself. Once upon a time we got E3 news once a year from a gaming magazine, and while the press may have heard of things such as, say, Dead Space 3 with co-op before the event, it would have been a surprise to the rest of us as we wouldn't hear about it until the next issue hit the stands.

Early days of the new millenium I remember downloading low-resolution gameplay of Area 51 in ten thirty-second chunks. I couldn't tell much of the environment, but I could see the gun and I could see the alien and I thought "this looks pretty cool!" (I was only half-wrong) Fast forward to today, where developers have to regularly schedule information exposure, and what comes as a surprise?

Part of this is certainly the press, yeah. Having waded through wannabe-game-journalist communities, it seems like a lot of the career hopefuls don't realize that this CAN be a problem and, in some ways, HAS been a problem. But Ben Kuchera and Penny Arcade aren't the first group to want to focus on long-form journalism. Hell, The Escapist wanted to focus on it first as far as I know (and has since become a large amalgamation of...stuff, including news). But it's going to take some time to get there.

But truth told, maybe E3 wasn't so surprising this year because we're "in on it", and that has become a detriment. It is also a shifting of tastes and ideas. People that are into Call of Duty loved Microsoft's conference and likely hated Nintendo's. People that have kids probably loved Nintendo's and maybe even Microsoft's, with little to find in Sony's. I don't know. We're a varied group, but the only consistency seems to be we want games.

It was interesting listening to Weekend Confirmed's podcast last week, hearing one of the hosts express a lot of my concerns with Microsoft focusing on the Xbox as a media center.

I think what scares me about E3, and in particular Microsoft, is that no one is getting non-gamers to play games. Even the whole "game consumers" thing. We like to feel that maybe games are approaching film and TV levels, but they're not. My Dad never really says "Hey Chris, let's break out that Cabella's game you bought me". We played it at Christmas, everyone had fun, and then...nothing. Maybe I need to change that. Maybe I need to ask my Dad to play more. But to me, if people aren't feeling the pull on their own, if they aren't saying "You know, I want to do more of that", then are we really sucking them in?

Microsoft's presentation, to me, seemed as if to say "Great! We fooled you suckers into buying this system, and now we can continue with our traditionally Microsoft plan of an all-in-one media device so you can Microsoft in your Microsoft while you Microsoft all over your Microsoft".

Aside from being lame from a tech and consumer point of view, I find that traitorous as a gamer. It may sound strange, but I feel like Microsoft used me like a cheap date on prom night.

And I hate myself because it worked.

Thank you for coining "Game consumer" Sean. That's a really good way of defining the people who only buy the yearly Madden, Call of Duty or are only interested in a specific brand like Angry Birds or Halo. Much prefer that to the standard moniker of "casual" (the people who only do Bejeweled or Angry Birds) or "dudebro" (Madden and CoD junkies). I've been looking for a term to differentiate an enthusiast like myself from someone who only buys Call of Duty like clockwork. "Casual" doesn't really work because CoD is not in the same league as PopCap, Big Fish, et al.

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The thing I find funny about E3 the last few years is that the "soul" is gone and it sounds like most of the enthusiasts are starting to mellow out on it (despite all the chest thumping on the blogs about how their coverage will be the best). Is this what everyone rallied for almost half a decade ago when they decided to kick the riff-raff out?

In a lot of ways I feel that PAX is now the event that E3 used to be. Or the event we think E3 used to be. If you want to see a celebration of gaming as a medium or culture you go to PAX (or maybe even Gamescom?). If you want business suits and talking to sheep you go to E3.

It feels to me that E3 is stuck in a weird place right now. PAX clearly has the enthusiasts covered (as demonstrated by this year's Prime selling out in < 48 hours). GDC provides a good opportunity 2-3 months prior for all the networking and backroom deals and without all the distractions. Streaming video is killing the need for the big keynotes to anchor the event. Plus, publishers and platform holders are inviting journalists on-site for events at an increasing rate. Why compete with everyone else for 5 days out of the year when you can host your own private party and completely control the message?

E3 is dead. Long live E3!

I think what scares me about E3, and in particular Microsoft, is that no one is getting non-gamers to play games. Even the whole "game consumers" thing. We like to feel that maybe games are approaching film and TV levels, but they're not. My Dad never really says "Hey Chris, let's break out that Cabella's game you bought me". We played it at Christmas, everyone had fun, and then...nothing. Maybe I need to change that. Maybe I need to ask my Dad to play more. But to me, if people aren't feeling the pull on their own, if they aren't saying "You know, I want to do more of that", then are we really sucking them in?

This is something I'm noticing too, and we saw it echoed with the Wii. People bought it for Wii Sports and bought little else after that. I think Nintendo is trying (I'm hoping NintendoLand is an awkward attempt at searching for a "hook") on some level but we still haven't found a "crossover" game to really bring people over. Yet, I think we all know this exists based on what we're seeing in the board game space.

Also, part of me wonders if there's just something about how gamers are wired which makes us attracted to these sort of experiences.

Honestly, I think there are two major hurdles. Complexity of jumping in and the impression that games are all shooty-shoot-shoot.

My sister doesn't like using dual analog controls, for example. She doesn't even like one analog stick. She was playing Wind Waker and cried out how much she misses the directional pad. Hasn't stopped her from playing Wind Waker or Final Fantasy 12. She has the advantage of growing up with gaming brothers. But it still brings to mind the day she came home, watched me finish up a level of Dead Space: Extraction, watched the cut-scene and said "Wow, I actually want to know what happens next."

I feel like a game like Heavy Rain or Beyond would be perfect to try and get people like my sister playing games more, but they aren't marketed to her. This is what pisses me off, because if I were to blame anything it would be marketing. I remember seeing the Bioshock 2 commercial on television, and while I myself was a bit excited about the game, I also had some sense of story. To my family? Violence. All they saw was violence, and unless you're 18 or younger then violence without context is going to be boring or even offensive.

But if they advertised these games based on their plot? Yeah, that would be different. Or at least, COULD be different.

Instead, we sell violence to gamers that already play games (or to people that only buy Call of Duty and/or Halo and maybe one or two similar games a year), and then eight-million versions of Wii Sports to everyone else.

The last time the market really opened up and genuinely brought new players into the medium was Halo. Maybe there's more to take away from that then "it was a first person shooter"?

I think part of the success of Halo was that it was the first console FPS game that controlled well and looked like something you'd play on a PC, with none of the headache that came with PC gaming at the time. You also had a number of PC gamers dropping the PC for the XBox (which was Microsoft's intent since they courted PC developers to make the switch).

I think you have a good point about Heavy Rain, and I'm hoping that the rebirth of big name adventure games is a way to draw people in more. There's also the fact that hidden object games are slowly drifting into the adventure game space as well. Moon logic puzzles aside, I think these are a good way to bring people to games due to the strong narrative aspects, plus they're at a much lower pace and violence isn't the name of thee game.

EDIT: I still maintain that a lot of the problem is the sheer price of getting started in video games*. Even something so simple as JSJ requires a $50 controller for each player. You can buy a lot of great board games for the amount of money you'd spend on 4-player JSJ. That's incredibly saddening.

* General exception to the rule, if you're willing to fudge the numbers, is PC/Smartphone/Tablet gaming where you bought the hardware for a different purpose and then spend your free time playing on portals like Kongregate or Newgrounds, or scooping up cheaper indie games that run well on your integrated graphics chip.

ccesarano wrote:

I remember seeing the Bioshock 2 commercial on television, and while I myself was a bit excited about the game, I also had some sense of story. To my family? Violence. All they saw was violence, and unless you're 18 or younger then violence without context is going to be boring or even offensive.

This is why that RPS article about the amount of violence on display at the press conferences is a bit alarming. Not just that, but the audience reaction.

I think of E3 now as a mission statement by businessmen about the new shackles they plan to lock on the people in the industry who actually do care about games. It’s a high-profile quarterly earnings call, where big businesses are as much talking to shareholders and casual consumers as they are gamers.

Maybe it's because I didn't really pay attention to E3 until a few years ago, but I'm a little bit surprised to see people announcing that this is what they've realized E3 is. It's not a celebration of gaming; it's a sales pitch for the companies, the platforms, and the games, in that order.

That's perhaps why I'm not disappointed by this year's E3 like so many other people are. I was expecting sales pitches for upcoming products, and that's what I got. How a game or platform is pitched helps me gauge my interest level in it, and the features that each company shows off give me an idea of what they think is important and what they'll emphasize going forward.

Although I would argue that people aren't disappointed by this year's E3 because of the tone, the media partnerships, or the amount of violence on display. The one complaint I hear more than any other is that this year felt "safe," that there weren't any "surprises." There were plenty of new games announced, but people seem to be disappointed primarily because none of the new games were unexpected. The conferences largely showcased games people already knew were in development.

I don't think gamers tune in to E3 because they want a celebration of gaming; they tune in because they want to find out that the new Halo or Zelda or Deus Ex game is coming out that they didn't even know was in production. Ubisoft's conference was widely proclaimed this year's big winner, and that seems to have largely been on the back of Watch_Dogs, a decent-looking game that no one knew was coming out. If even a little bit of information about the game had been released a few weeks ago, I doubt Ubisoft would be getting so many pats on the back.

shoptroll wrote:

So it sounds like PAX is officially the bigger event, and that's held twice a year.

PAX is also open to the public, whereas I don't believe E3 is. That'll skew the numbers.

I agree with this assessment, and I'm not sure what can be done about it. Or if anything should be done about it. If publishers genuinely cared about surprises they wouldn't send out PR releases to their mouthpieces.

I don't know why publishers would care about surprising people. The surprise reveal of Watch_Dogs got some positive buzz going for the game, but by the time it actually gets released to the public that buzz will have evaporated. If people are enthusiastic about it, it will be on the basis of the inevitable magazine previews, quick looks, and gameplay trailers between now and then.

Other than some meaningless fluff about who won or lost, I don't know that surprising gamers with an announcement makes a bit of difference for the companies themselves. There's such a huge lag time between announcement at E3 and release that I would be surprised if an E3 reveal made any difference to a game's sales at all. Now, if they released Watch_Dogs in a couple months that E3 reveal probably would be a huge advantage, but it's a year or two away at best.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/07/e3...

It sounds like PAX is officially the bigger event, and that's held twice a year.

EDIT: Upon further looking, PAX has been bigger for a few years now (on both coasts) and E3 is shrinking: ~80,000 in 1996, ~60,000 in 2006, ~45,700 in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Maybe it's because I didn't really pay attention to E3 until a few years ago, but I'm a little bit surprised to see people announcing that this is what they've realized E3 is. It's not a celebration of gaming; it's a sales pitch for the companies, the platforms, and the games, in that order.

*nods* This is why I'm not 100% sure if we're collectively remembering E3's origins properly. If I understand the history right, E3 is a trade show which grew out of CES. The main point of E3 is to showcase stuff that retail should order for the holiday season/early next year. Maybe part of the problem with the lapse in collective/tribal memory is that there wasn't nearly as much enthusiast coverage back in the mid-90s when E3 started?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I don't think gamers tune in to E3 because they want a celebration of gaming; they tune in because they want to find out that the new Halo or Zelda or Deus Ex game is coming out that they didn't even know was in production. Ubisoft's conference was widely proclaimed this year's big winner, and that seems to have largely been on the back of Watch_Dogs, a decent-looking game that no one knew was coming out. If even a little bit of information about the game had been released a few weeks ago, I doubt Ubisoft would be getting so many pats on the back.

I agree with this assessment, and I'm not sure what can be done about it. Or if anything should be done about it. If publishers genuinely cared about surprises they wouldn't send out PR releases to their mouthpieces.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

PAX is also open to the public, whereas I don't believe E3 is. That'll skew the numbers.

Good point, although it looks like it's shrinking at a pretty good clip.

Yep, E3 technically started with the Playstation running Tomb Raider at CES. That's where the idea for E3 came about.

Clocky, if you've been tuning into E3 the past few years, then you've started tuning in around when they began making it a bigger event again. As I said, the feeling of the event when you were watching around 2000 and on was different. In fact, now that I consider it, there's a LOT of reasons things probably seem "disappointing" the past few years.

When do most of those surprises come about? When a new console generation is coming around and unannounced titles are suddenly revealed. How long ago was that? 2004 and 2005, just when things like YouTube and video streaming were starting to become more common. I think that's when consumers and enthusiasts began following along a lot more closely.

It's been years since then, and this has also been the longest lasting console generation. By now we'd normally be gearing up for another console. You also don't have all the failed competitors to add excitement, such as the Nokia N-Gage, the Lynx, the Phantom, the Jaguar, the Sega Saturn, the Sega Dreamcast, etc. More so, I wonder if there were even such huge press conferences back then as there are now? Did Internet Streaming turn everything into more of a dog and pony show?

Maybe E3 hasn't changed, but our expectations were forged under circumstances that gave us a different impression than the reality.

By now we'd normally be gearing up for another console.

You, of all people, should not be forgetting that Nintendo exists.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
By now we'd normally be gearing up for another console.

You, of all people, should not be forgetting that Nintendo exists. :P

Assuming everyone has new consoles out by next year...
Wii->WiiU: 6 years
XBox 360->XBox 3: 8 years
PS3 -> PS4: 7 years.

Aside from the XBox, that's not really all that unusual for a hardware cycle.

NES->SNES: 7 years (Japan)
NES->SNES: 6 years (USA)
Master System -> Genesis: 3 years
SNES->N64: 6 years
PSX -> PS2: 6 years (Japan)
PSX -> PS2: 5 years (USA)
XBox -> XBox 360: 4 years (USA)
XBox -> XBox 360: 3 years (Japan)

The only reason this generation is the "longest" is because Microsoft started early since the original XBox was in the toilet sales-wise. If everyone operated under the same business logic, we would've had the Wii U over a year ago when Wii sales came crashing down.

EDIT: Oh, and before I forget. Was the article title deliberate? I heard that Gotye song was played at several of the press events this year.

So is this the day Gotye officially jumped the shark?

ClockworkHouse wrote:
By now we'd normally be gearing up for another console.

You, of all people, should not be forgetting that Nintendo exists. :P

I was more thinking on a broad spectrum.

And it's weird thinking of the Wii-U as a new console. I know it feels cheap to say "iteration", especially since that's what people say all the time anyway, but it really feels like we're getting Wii-Part-2.

ccesarano wrote:

And it's weird thinking of the Wii-U as a new console. I know it feels cheap to say "iteration", especially since that's what people say all the time anyway, but it really feels like we're getting Wii-Part-2.

Why?

ClockworkHouse wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

And it's weird thinking of the Wii-U as a new console. I know it feels cheap to say "iteration", especially since that's what people say all the time anyway, but it really feels like we're getting Wii-Part-2.

Why?

This feels more like a modern console, actually. The Wii felt like a Gamecube with motion controls and horrible internet bolted on.

I had the privilege of experiencing E3 from an entirely new perspective this year and the difference is like night and day. The atmosphere, presentations, displays, kiosks... It's not what I expected at all. And now, strangely, the entire event makes sense to me.

I haven't had a chance to watch any of the press conferences so maybe I'm missing something.

Mystic Violet wrote:

I haven't had a chance to watch any of the press conferences so maybe I'm missing something.

I took it, at first this year, only as the press conferences. Boy, did I feel like it or I was missing something.

I think it's sinking in to more people that E3 isn't for 'us,' by which I mean the traditional gamer.

Arena.net doesn't even take Guild Wars 2 to E3 because they want to go to the gamer, not CNN or the BBC of the like, the mainstream media outlets being targeted by E3.

In the past, before live streaming of the press conferences the media would give us highlight lists of relevant things that made E3 look great, but now there's no filter. We see everything, and we realise that most of it isn't for us. I suspect E3 hasn't changed much, we're just seeing it without the make-up and photoshopping now.

There are other conferences for us, PAX being the main example.

I don't know if it's E3 changing, so much as things changing around E3. E3 probably represents the segment of the industry that it does as well as it always has. I guess the question is whether because that segment is the highest profile, whether it does a good job of representing the whole spectrum of "gaming", which I'd say it probably doesn't.

I believe that E3 has refined itself as non-core elements of its past makeup have been taken up by other conventions, just as AAA developers and publishers have refined themselves to a core set of genres and conventions as the more fringe games got their own, separate publishers.

I still feel like a twelve year old kid when it comes to games. I get really excited for E3 because I get to see some cool games and pray for a new Xbox. It is the one area of my life that I am blindly optimistic about, because games just keep getting better year by year. E3 may not be designed for me, but I like being a part of it all. Games are so f*ckin' cool.

E3 hasn't been relevant to me for.....ever. Never followed it. Not even once. Well, I did see a clip of it on a news show years ago when I had first heard of it. Went in looking for game coverage and saw nothing but booth babes. Never followed it again. E3 is for the press not for gamers. The problem is that most of the press people covering it nowadays are gamers. So, here you are a game journalist that has grown up playing games. You get sent to e3 to cover it and see your beloved past time being shilled like a five dollar streetwalker. Are you going to report that e3 is this great event? No. At best you'll remark on some of the games you've seen and look forward to PAX where you can look past all this bs and see some really great games.

I really don't understand why they still shove all the sex into E3. Don't they know they are alienating one of their core demographics? There are a sh*teload of female gamers out there who hate this stuff and when exposed to it will think twice about buying a product because of its representation at events like this.

After listening to Weekend Confirmed and Jumping the Shark, as well as reading some of Ben Kuchera's thoughts, I think the Press actually had a lot of space to have a great time. The problem is the press conferences, and the folks that loved E3 the most this year didn't pay any attention.

Maybe the real issue is that the Big Three are talking to everyone but the enthusiasts, but at the same time, there's plenty of information outside of the conferences for the enthusiast to follow and discover this stuff.

It instead goes back to what I said earlier. If the press conferences are more for the retailers and non-enthusiasts, then what does that say about what folks THINK gaming enthusiasts enjoy? Or how games are viewed from the outside looking in?