#Everyone else uses standard format except EA

[eternally-anomalous]

please I need plabts

I don't understand what you're trying to say here

-eternal anomaly

[musingsofonehuman]

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so let’s muse some more.

Summer has been and... well it’s still here thanks to the weather, but one thing that has come and gone is E3, well, technically that’s not true, it never came in the first place due to being cancelled because of the pandemic, so instead, publishers, developers and organisations put together their own showcases to help fill the gap. Everyone got involved, the usual suspects such as Xbox, Ubisoft, EA and Sony, to media outlets like IGN, Kinda Funny and PC Gamer, to specific games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Marvel’s Avengers, everyone had their own stream, and with all of them done, I think, it’s now time to look back and ask the questions we’ve been asking for so long, do we still need E3?

We have been asking this question for so long, with the rise of digital events, less people have been attending E3 in favour of watching the press conferences from their home, and speculation has been running wild for years over whether we needed such a big event, but now that we’ve had a year where E3 didn’t happen, we have a better idea of what a future would look like without E3, and......I’m not sure really. I’m in two minds myself, on the one hand, why do you need to travel to Los Angeles to watch trailers when you can do it from home? Nintendo have been doing directs for years now and have seen great success with them, so much so that’s it’s now the standard format for the industry, why put on a giant press conference when you can save money by doing it in video form? On the other hand, something has been missing from this year’s set of showcases, a lack of excitement, a spark, a jolt, its felt a bit flat, and I’m not quite sure what it is.

Let’s take a quick look at some of these showcases, there was Xbox’s “this is gameplay except it isn’t” showcase which set the bar pretty low, it was passable, had some decent games, but didn’t really grab the imagination, there was Sony’s “we’re not taking part in E3 but we totally are” showcase which for my money was the best showcase of the lot, showcasing some great games and keeping things tight. Then there was Ubisoft’s “everyone forget about our harassment problems and look at our games” showcase, which.... moving on, Devolver Digital’s “we went batshit crazy on this and now we can’t go back so we’re gonna keep going” showcase, which I can’t really describe in words, maybe a blood painting could describe it better, and finally Xbox’s “ok this time we’re gonna show you the good stuff we promise” showcase in July which was far better than their previous showcase, still not enough gameplay shown for my liking, but some great games shown. Overall, it’s been a mixed bag of showcases, some of these obviously weren’t planned as expected, but overall, some good and some bad. So now that we’ve seen these offerings, do we still need E3?

In my opinion, yes, but not as it is currently. For starters, you have to remember what E3 is in the first place, or what it used to be, E3 started out as a trade event, a place where developers and publishers could showcase their games to retailers and media outlets, for a long time E3 was never a public event, it was an industry event, only recently has it started opening its doors to the public and becoming a more public event, there was word that E3 was going to shift to a live event experience with stages and special guest appearances. E3 has slowly been transitioning away from the trade side of things, especially now that the industry has been shifting in recent years towards more online and intimate presentations and was starting to move towards more consumer experiences in an effort to stay relevant, this year’s E3 could have been wholly different from any E3 we’ve ever seen, whether we’ll see that next year remains to be seen.

Certainly in terms of numbers, it seems that games are doing just as well, if not better, a recent article by gamesindustry.biz showed that social media activity for games announced during these showcases were around the same, if not higher, than games announced during the conferences in 2019, showing that games didn’t need to be put on stage in order to receive buzz, understandably, more people would have been watching due to more people staying at home, but still, the number are impressive. You also have to look at it from a cost value perspective, if you can get just the same value from doing an online showcase and not attending than putting on a stage show and attending, why wouldn’t you choose the option that saves you more money? Sony got a whole lot of buzz from not attending last year, EA and Xbox get just as much value from having events at the same time but not inside the convention centre, so why wouldn’t you follow suit?

As I’ve already mentioned though, not every event did great, IGN’s 4 day event was complicated and confusing, I didn’t even know The Escapist had an event going on, and then there’s Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest, a 4 month long event which is still ongoing as we speak, what a mess that has been. It’s been stringed out for far too long with announcements just popping out of nowhere and events that have passed most people by, and that’s one of my major criticisms, all these showcases have just been spaced out too far apart. Most of these showcases have been happening over June and July, which is still far apart compared to E3, which including the press conferences, happens over the space of about a week or so, it’s all crammed into a small timeframe, this helps boost events that normally wouldn’t happen, events such as The Escapist showcase, or the Day of the Devs event, or the Wholesome showcase, again, I had no idea any of these were happening because it was all too spaced out. I understand major developers and publishers wanting their own time in the spotlight, but sometimes, sharing the stage with someone else helps amplify your own message rather than having it float out into nothingness.

You also have to look at it from another perspective, E3 was our big event, it was the one time the industry came together to celebrate video games and show off the latest and greatest it had to offer, and with that came a lot of coverage the industry normally wouldn’t get, mainstream coverage such as the BBC, Sky, CNN and other networks and outlets that normally wouldn’t cover video games. If you search E3 2020, one of the results you’ll get is ‘E3 2020 replacement’ or a question such as ‘What is replacing E3 2020?’, to me, that shows how big E3 is, the fact that people are asking if there’s a replacement shows how much people want to tune in to E3. Think of this way, you don’t watch football, but you’ll watch the World Cup, you don’t watch American football, but you’ll watch the Super Bowl, some people don’t follow what happens in the industry as much as we do, but they’ll tune into E3 because it’s the biggest event of the year in our industry, without E3, what is our big event? What is our industry showcase? In a way, E3 unites us as an industry.

Then there’s the feeling of these online showcases, yes the games that they show off are impressive, and they wouldn’t really do a lot different if it was on a live stage, but it doesn’t feel right. The energy doesn’t feel the same, the excitement, the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, the shocking reveals of trailers, logos and characters, it doesn’t feel the same. I go back to sporting events, you can watch football from your own home on your tv or listen to it on the radio, but it doesn’t feel the same as when you’re there, shoulder to shoulder with the crowd watching the action. I watched Hamilton for the first time recently on Disney+, a phenomenal musical, absolutely superb, but just imagine what it was like being in the crowd, watching it in the theatre with your own eyes, there’s a feeling around live events that you can’t replicate elsewhere, and the same goes for these online showcases.

I have memories of staying up past 2am in the morning, watching all the showcases, I remember watching the Sony 2013 showcase live in the middle of the night, trying to stay quiet so as to not wake everyone up while still getting excited about everything that happened, the infamous ‘Used games will work on PS4’ drop is one that will go down in history, that moment saved Sony and brought about the PS4 dominance, that type of moment is something you can’t do with an online showcase because they all have to be planned, prepared and edited well in advance. Compared to that, the recent showcases have all felt a bit flat, there’s no real excitement in them, no buzz, they feel too clean and polished. Developers sat in rooms with appropriate decor, reading from highly edited scripts, it all feels a bit dull and boring. Yes it’s nice to get loads of trailers all in one place, but it’s also nice to have something happen unexpectedly, that hasn’t really happened this year, it could be that developers are holding back or schedules have had to be rearranged because of the pandemic, but it’s all just been a bit flat for me this year, some of them just ended up blending into one since they just felt the same.

So, let’s return to the original question, do we still need E3? I say yes, the excitement, the coverage, the feeling of togetherness, nothing can replicate that, as an industry, we need a marquee event, where we can show off our best, but I don’t think E3 itself is gonna be part of that future. Following this year, more developers and publishers are gonna move to online showcases, and why not, it’s cost efficient, but there needs to be some form of event, whatever it may be, it needs to be more compact, something over the period of a week, not 2-4 months, where every developer and publisher has the chance to showcase their games and get their time in the spotlight. It’ll be a shame to not have those live events, but who knows when those will come back, in the meantime though, I will settle for the online showcases, but I want more unpredictability and less scripting. Right, I’m off to think about what the bottom of an avatar’s shoe looks like.