Yeah, E3 is becoming a dinosaur, but it can become something new and important.
Nintendo made waves in the gaming industry recently when they announced that they wouldn’t be participating in a traditional press conference at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. Right off the bat, people started in with the doom and gloom. Oh, Nintendo is fading fast! Nintendo doesn’t have anything to show! Rhetoric like this was prominent --as was talk that the entire E3 conference is a dinosaur -- and perhaps Nintendo is reading the writing on the wall and is beginning to part ways with the trade show. This sentiment has been circulating for years, and even though I believe that E3 is vital to the gaming industry, it’s high time that the show evolved.
Before I detail how I think E3 needs to change, I feel like I need to make a case for its continued existence. Simply put, E3 is the big show for the games industry, and that’s a very important thing for the marketing, design, and proliferation of video games. This is where developers and designers meet with publishers, games journalists get together to compare notes, and (most importantly) buyers decide which games they want to double down on for the upcoming seasons. It’s also one of the only times that the media at large pays attention to video games in a positive way. For all of the booth babes, Z-list celebrities and over the top shenanigans, E3 is a way to get the entire industry excited for the future in a way that smaller publisher shows simply can’t.
The problem with E3 in its current incarnation is that there’s little reason to be on the show floor anymore. The major games media outlets get to see the big games during judges’ week, which usually happens a few weeks before the show. At the actual E3 event, most of the big news and preview coverage comes not from the exhibit hall, but in closed door meetings upstairs. The big suits from outlets like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and GameStop have their own private meetings, with no need to go to the crowded exhibitor halls.
If you’ve always wanted to attend E3, I can tell you that you’re not missing anything. I was there during the crazy, indulgent times of the early 2000s, and when I went back in 2010 I saw a far different show. I would often wait in line for 30-45 minutes not to play a game, but to see a guided demonstration from a developer. Very little on the show floor was what I would call the “cream of the crop”, and some booths (like Bethesda) were completely walled off, accessible by appointment only. To be perfectly honest, you can probably get a better experience by sitting at your computer with a beer and watching streaming videos all week.
So far, I’m not making a good case for keeping E3 around, am I? Well, things need to change on multiple levels, and this can happen through technology and in the way the ESA runs the conference. Since the bigger news outlets get such preferential treatment weeks before the show doors open, it would be great to let more of the smaller, focused sites into the show floor. A game like Knack for the PS4 is probably going to get more detailed coverage on a PlayStation-only website than a juggernaut like IGN that will run tiny previews on every single game they see. Ditto for a niche Atlus RPG on a roleplaying site. Smaller sites aren’t the amateurish blogs run by a single fanboy trying to score free games and swag anymore. Well, for the most part, anyway. Through social media and aggregate news sites like N4G these specialized outlets can get more exposure on specific titles, and that leads to sales and interest through word of mouth.
I think the best way for E3 to evolve comes with our shiny new consoles, including the Wii U and the ones on the way from Sony and Microsoft. It’s time to let the consumer get a front row seat to the spectacle that is the E3 conference. Sure, strides have been made into this area—Microsoft used to have E3 demos on the Live Marketplace and have done a lot of streams in recent years, for example. This is just the bare minimum of what’s possible, though. We can do better…much better.
Consider what was shown of the PS4 at the console announcement. The ability to stream demos before they’ve even finished downloading and the huge possibilities that come from players being able to stream and share their game experiences could completely change the face of E3. It’s entirely possible that a completely interactive E3 experience could be created and piped right into PlayStation 4 consoles around the world. Although we’re still a couple weeks away from an Xbox announcement at the time of this writing, I think it’s safe to bet that the new ‘box will have comparable capabilities. This would allow gamers to experience a great portion of E3 from their couches. It might also have the added effect of keeping away less than reputable people that manage to finagle their way into the show with bogus credentials.
The Wii U doesn’t have as robust of a streaming service as what Sony is promising, but I think the GamePad and the TVii integration could be a huge boon for the platform. Imagine a Nintendo Land-style depiction of their booth, with your Mii able to wander the area and check out trailers, livestreams of interviews, and play demos with a push of a button. The GamePad could provide extra information on each game and lead to even more interactive areas of the Nintendo E3 experience.
Of course, for all of this to work, publishers would need to coordinate with the big three content providers to get demos that are stable and in a state that can be played by the general public. As someone that’s been to the big show four times over the past ten years I can say that most of the games I played were perfectly stable, and many of the demo discs that used to be handed out at various exhibitor booths were the very same builds people were lining up to play. Demos that were released to the general public through magazines and other methods in the months after E3 were often the same builds, as well. Video games are an interactive medium, after all, and it’s high time that the biggest show of them all reflected that. The amount of hype generated from E3 as it is now would be a drop in the bucket compared to what would come from making the experience available to a wider audience.
I love E3, and even though the show is a shadow of its former self, I still consider myself lucky that I’ve been able to attend as many times as I have. I used to say that it’s an experience I wish every gamer could have, but you’re probably going to have a better time at the PAX conventions. However, with new systems and technology, there’s no reason why we can’t all enjoy a taste of what it’s like to wander the show floor and play the next big things from our favorite developers.
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