E3xtinction
Nope, no update yesterday. Know why? ’cause it was my BIRFDAY and I was out partying!…okay, lies, I just went out for dinner and didn’t bloody well feel like working. :(
I drank some Bacardi Raspberry Breezers. They were delicious and calorie-laden.
With E3 finished, some of the critical amongst humanity is moaning about how they’re sick of hearing buzzwords like “casual games.” I’m personally sick of hearing “E3 is dead.”
The City of Gaming is full of educated scholars who believe E3 is supposed to be less about statistics and more about poodles wearing tutus and jumping around with lit fireworks wedged up their bums. It’s true E3 is no longer a spectacle, but didn’t we predict that would happen when the ESA announced restructuring? Weren’t developers unhappy about having to stoke the hype machine with demos instead of letting their programmers work on, oh I don’t know, actual games? Weren’t we all complaining about how E3 had all the grace, good looks and usefulness of a Snorlax orgy?
(No, I think a Snorlax orgy would be more useful than pre-2007 E3. Baby Snorlaxes gotta come from somewhere.)
I admit I’m talking halfway out of my ass. I was lucky enough to attend E3 2006, the “last” E3 and the vector that gave me some kind of gooey laryngitis. I saw the Wii and the Playstation 3 battle each other for love and attention (Wii won). I saw hundreds of people run screaming into the convention centre. I saw Microsoft’s “booth,” which was literally a two-story office building that lorded over the floor like the Emerald City.
I saw one of the longest lines ever extending from the Natsume booth for a chance to win a Harvest Moon cow plush toy.
It makes me sad that I will likely never see anything like that again, but I also have to wonder what smaller developers thought about the whole Broadway production. With booth babes pushing their goods into everyone’s face, it was easy for your product to be…well, overlooked.
So now E3 is statistics and screenshots. Will it die? Possibly, but I’m not going to mourn the end of the brain-numbing info surge. There’s still E for All and PAX has really been picking up steam as an exhibition. This will no doubt be a trying time for conventions in general with fuel prices and the economy being what they are. Not everyone is going to make a showing everywhere.
I have one suggestion for any conventions that succeed E3. Hire booth staff that knows a thing or two about video games. I don’t want to take instructions from someone who refers to Ridley from Metroid as “that bird.”
