E3 Finished? GenCon is about to get worse...

[Steel_Wind]

Gamespot is reporting that the ESA is downgrading E3 in a big way, with other sites suggesting Electronic Arts lead the charge to kill the show.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6154897.html

Next-Gen is reporting that "E3 is finished":

http://next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3538&Itemid=2

The importance of E3 in terms of the cycle of game development cannot be underestimated. Without E3 - many producers admit it's impossible to achieve the necessary focus and crunch to make major progress on a title.

Interesting times ahead this week for computer game geeks.

GenCon is certainly well positioned to snap up some of that bling-bling, as is Comic-Con. Probably the best positioned of all - in terms of contacts in the booking and PR departments of game developers and publishers, is CMP's Game Developer's Conference. GDC has become a big deal in the past few years - and I expect this will only make it worse - much much worse.

There's always CES.

 

[Jdvn1]

Very sad. I never had a chance to go!

 

[Arnwyn]

Confirmed yesterday/today.

The ESA is preferring a much smaller show, with only specific invited guests (only certain media, only certain game store executives). No more "friend of a friend who once worked at EB", or "fan website that has 1000 readers". Everything else will likely be done by large individual companies (EA, MS, Sony, Nintendo) at their own shows.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

The ESA is preferring a much smaller show, with only specific invited guests (only certain media, only certain game store executives). No more "friend of a friend who once worked at EB", or "fan website that has 1000 readers". Everything else will likely be done by large individual companies (EA, MS, Sony, Nintendo) at their own shows.

As I recall, that's pretty much the way E3 started out, so I wouldn't be too surprised if it becomes a huge event again in another couple of years.

In any case, I don't really see a big problem with it. Frankly don't understand why so many companies think they need huge, loud bands and scantily-clad "booth babes" to sell things.

 

[takyris]

I'm kind of in the good-riddance category as well, for the most part, although I AM bummed at the effect this has on small companies for whom E3 was the primary way to get the word out about a product.

I'm not in PR, but from my discussions with the folks who demo'd Mass Effect and Jade Empire (PC), the experience was better with a small crowd in a controlled space -- they actually got to deliver the message they wanted to give, they didn't have to worry about large-crowd concerns, and so forth. They ended up thinking it was the way to go. I figure that if that's the case for a mid-size company like BioWare, the big guys probably had the same experience, and then some.

Also, from within the company, watching my friends have to work crunch-hours to prepare for a demo that had very little to do with the actual game was frustrating. (I don't mean AT ALL that the Mass Effect demo isn't a good representation of the game. I mean that instead of working on making the tool to make facial animations fast and easy, they crunched in order to hand-animate facial expressions for the E3 demo. Instead of working on build issues that caused major crashes and made it really hard to test plots, people were working on an E3-specific build that incorporated everything they wanted to demo -- but which would have to be completely rewritten later to scale up for the full game.)

Every game company, I believe, does this. It's frustrating as hell to have to stop making the actual game so that you can tack a shiny chrome covering over the existing engine to show off at E3. Everyone who has ever complained about a release date being pushed back, think about losing two months of development time because a product had to be shown at E3, and it had to look finished in its small focused way at E3 even though the actual product wouldn't be finished for another year.

So if it helps deal with that, in some way (and nothing will deal with it all the way -- there will always have to be time spent on demos that could have been spent developing the game), I'm in favor of having E3 shrink down to a more manageable level.

 

[Arnwyn]

In any case, I don't really see a big problem with it. Frankly don't understand why so many companies think they need huge, loud bands and scantily-clad "booth babes" to sell things.

Agreed. Us consumers will be bombarded with marketing no matter what happens. This just seems to be more focused and (hopefully) efficient.

(Though I do think everything needs scantily-clad booth babes to sell things.)

 

[Steel_Wind]

Actually, I don't think it's going to change a damn thing overall. The E3 hype is going to migrate north to San Francisco and the GDC, which will then outgrow San Fran and GDC will end up getting moved to San Diego or some other destination - soon enough.

GDC has become big enough in the past year that the gaming media have now started to treat it as a "must attend" event. There are frequently different rules for who in the company can attend GDC (as opposed to E3), but a lot of that will get shuffled off to various "Serious game summits" as the pressure builds. The bling-bling will rise. While GDC has not been a boothmania bonanza to date - that can change pretty damn fast when the thing that is at stake - free media exposure - is on the line.

GDC will be the "up and coming" thing - whereas E3 will end up hopelessly being a shadow of its former self. It's all a matter of perception.

But in the end - about the same

 

[ThirdWizard]

Dun dun dunnnnnnnn

Mostly ambivalance for me. There are pros and cons to this.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I blame this on the changes dealing with the booth babes.

 

[Truth Seeker]

Maybe they should change it to..Booth Men...

I blame this on the changes dealing with the booth babes.