Game Industry Commentary on the E3 Revamp

John Callaham writes "FiringSquad examines what happened to cause the Electronic Entertainment Expo to implode and retrench for 2007, and posts opinions on the expo's revamp from game industry insiders. Interviewees include 3D Realms' Scott Miller, Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford, Rusty Williams of Flying Lab Software, Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Entertainment and more."

Some quotes

[mobby_6kl]

During our interview, Scott Miller has mentioned that the company is "working within the industry to organize a better, more focused, trade show", the original date of the new event was set to fall 2007. However due to some changes the event was postponed to at least late 2008. "Our design phase has gone well, but we are having some difficulties with the new layout. For now, there is no date, it will be done when it's done."

No more booth girls?

[elmCitySlim]

Whats the point then?

Oh yea...videogames...

Bah humbug.

[BlackCobra43]

Booth babes only served to reinforce the stereotype that gamers are hopelessly clueless nerds that drool over even moderately attractive females that feign interest in videogames. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Re:Bah humbug.

[p0tat03]

As opposed to car babes that reinforce the stereotype that rich sports car/muscle car junkies are clueless nerds that drool over every moderately attractive female that feigns interest in cars?

Booth babes aren't there to satiate the fantasies of hopeless nerds, they're there 'cos sex sells, clueless nerd or not.

You're comparing apples to oranges

[BlackCobra43]

Car babes reinforce the cultural stereotype that people with nice cars "get the babes". Big,powerful cars are a sign of virility in North America and I hope to God you're not pretending the same allure exists with COMPUTER GAMES.

Re:You're comparing apples to oranges

[Drey]

"Hey baby, wanna come back to my place and see my forsaken rogue with the full tier 3 raid set?"

Re:You're comparing apples to oranges

[WilliamSChips]

Interesting, I thought that big, powerful cars were a sign of compensation.

Re:Bah humbug.

[Nanassi]

Or even that all gamers are straight, desperate men/boys. *offers the industry a cluex4

Re:Bah humbug.

[drinkypoo]

I may not be desperate but I still like looking at tits, and so do the majority of gay men I know.

Re:Bah humbug.

[Nanassi]

Ah, but as a straight female who is also a gamer? No thanks.

Re:Bah humbug.

[drinkypoo]

Right but to date, the females (regardless of sexual orientation) have been a serious minority, and even today 99% of female gamers probably couldn't give one tenth of one shit about going to E3 or GDC or any of these other dick-fests filled with booth babes. I mean, there was never so egregious a sausage party as a video game convention. Now, women are becoming more prevalent in gaming, but I think the overall interest in gaming conventions is pretty small among them; also, keep in mind that most of the pe

Cheaper Games?

[TheAngryMob]

All the money the publishers save by downsizing E3 will surely be passed along to the consumers by way of lower game prices. Right?

Re:Cheaper Games?

[interiot]

How about if game journalists get more than 3 minutes of hands-on time with new products, rather than just writing stories about how long they had to wait in line for the Wii?

Re:Cheaper Games?

[Amouth]

if it wasn't for your id.. i would say you where new here.......

but when you think about it.. yea.. it will be passed on to the consumers by the way of lower game prices if Consumers = publishers.

i mean it will make the game a hell of a lot cheeper ..

Re:Cheaper Games?

[govtpiggy]

Or it'll just get shifted into advertising budgets. Money spent on E3 was generally for the purpose of advertising anyway.

Mixed feelings

[p0tat03]

On one hand, it IS true that the industry loses a ridiculous amount of time each year just sharpening up E3 demos that don't go anywhere, and a lot of dev time is wasted (on the order of MONTHS) just on this one event alone that are not productive towards the end product at all.

On the other hand, E3 was the only event that the mass media ever covered. You don't see anything about GDC on the pages of the world, you hear only about E3. Methinks they need to do two things:

- Scale back E3 to its original model: backroom shows and press conferences. More professional, less glitzy.

- Create secondary shows *with* the glitz in the same model as the car shows of the world. Publishers come in and let the public get some hands-on time with their new hardware and software. These are darlings for the mass media, without impacting the professional side of things.

In other words, one perfectly serious professionals-only conference, and another glitzy conference from the proles.

Re:Mixed feelings

[anjin-san 3]

I disagree. I think the video game industry has become large enough that it doesn't need a carnival to promote itself anymore. If journalists stop writing about E3 because it's no longer a circus, then they're probably the guys who know nothing about video games to begin with and they're doing us a favor by not writing about the industry.

Re:Mixed feelings

[andrewman327]

I attended a balloon festival in New Jersey on Sunday. There was a carnival atmosphere and many booths promoting different things. One tent was by Microsoft and they had 8 XBox 360s crammed in with people waiting for all of them. I think this is a good marketing tactic. The whole event cost very little for them and hundreds (if not thousands) of people played their games across the three days they were there. One of the best things is that it attracted people who are not obsessed gamers who read EGM co

Re:Mixed feelings

[slaker]

The AVN Expo is a different convention that just happens to happen at the same time as the nerdfest that is CES.

but the booth babes. . .

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

what will the booth babes do now that they no longer have jobs?
I think we should start the "One Booth Babe For Every Gamer" initiative!

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Will a smaller E3 alienate the little guys?

[spyrochaete]

I've watched a bunch of E3 keynotes that I found on Bittorrent and I found them mostly very informative. The Sony talks are by far the most professional as they have a technical slant whereas Nintendo and especially Microsoft are rah-rah sessions by marketing jerks. From what I've read about the "interactive" booth areas of E3 it sounds like it's pretty much a series of standing in long lines, unintentionally rubbing up against stinky fat people, playing alpha versions of immature software, and getting pr

Re:Will a smaller E3 alienate the little guys?

[p0tat03]

I dunno about you, but to me the new E3 format does exactly what you want. We get away from 3-hour lineups to see the Wii, and you get more keynotes, more speakers, more backroom shows, more meetings... It's precisely the atmosphere that will allow for somebody from Crytek to give a big long speech about their next game - without the noise and flashy lights and trying to out-amp the other speakers in the hall just to make yourself heard.

Kentia Hall... I'm not sure what's going to happen with that. But rea

A smaller E3 will only help them...

[Svartalf]

For starters, most of the "little guys" can't DO E3 anyhow- everyone that did, however,
wasted a LOT of energy on trying to make demos to showboat there. Like Comdex that fell
before it, it became a victim of its own success and was a massive timesink rather than
a useful thing to do- but you did it anyway because "everyone else is doing it..."

There's at least a few venues picking up speed that are more for the "little" guys to
connect up with publishers and tool vendors (The Texas Independent Game Conference [txindiegamecon.com]
i

I, for one, scorn our boardroom overlords...

[Doches]

Go ahead, say it. Call me an idiot, an easily distracted consumer. Call me a prole, and feel free to trash talk my complete lack of intellect. But I'll miss E3.

Sure, it was expensive. Sure, it was over-the-top, blatant advertising. But hell, that was the point! E3 didn't exist to promote great development practices, or to help developers meet budgets or release dates. Nominally, I suppose, it was a conference for game journalists -- anything to generate some buzz.

But that's not it, either.

E3 was our focu

Authoritative Commentary

[kie]

As normal, Penny Arcade provides authoritative commentary.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/07/31 [penny-arcade.com]

Anything else is just superfluous

People that do this for a living, are happy.

[Rifter13]

It seems that a lot of people that are in the gaming business are happy about this. I am talking about people on BOTH sides of the fence. The developers AND the journalists. I think the people missing it the most, will be the gamers. There is something cool about seeing all the insane pictures take. I know that E3 became more of a chore between the first time I went, and the last time I went. I have good friends that have attended the last few shows, and comment that the show is getting too big, though

I'm grateful it ended, but I still have concerns

[Rolman]

Last year I wrote this comment [slashdot.org] about the current state of E3. Granted, this year went a little better than I expected, but still, I couldn't help but keep having the same feeling since 2001 that companies were throwing their money away in a silly pissing contest to "win the E3". In particular, Sony was a big loser this time around, since they spent tens of millions of dollars just to be bashed and told their strategies were wrong, and leave them with more millions to spend doing damage control. I imagine it