Goodbye, E3

by Louis Bedigian 

I am stunned and saddened. Today is not the beginning of change; it is the beginning of disappointment. The so-called “evolution” of E3 is a nice way of disguising its dissolution.

Instead of the usual media hoopla, it will be a low-key show with plain meeting rooms. For Majesco, LucasArts, SNK and other publishers on their scale, the show goes on. I enjoyed their showing this year and always look forward to what LucasArts has to offer. At the very least you can expect a Star Wars standee, and some fancy artwork hanging on the wall. 

One of several pieces hanging on the walls of LucasArts’s meeting room at this year’s E3.

But for anyone bigger, it'll be significantly different. Some speculate that this could lead to better previewing of each title, but I won't believe it till I see it. It'd be great if they could offer us a better way of not just seeing, but playing their games, for longer periods and with more time to cover each product. But I don't want to get my hopes up.

I know E3 is a nightmare for many in its current state, but as someone who grew up dreaming of the event – and as someone who got to live the dream in 2005 and 2006 – this news comes as a shock, a disappointment, and has left me deeply saddened. I dreamt of the day when my cousin could go so we could attend together. That dream is forever lost.

A lot of people will look at this as a positive. They'll ignore the hype and massive media coverage that E3 generates. You don't get inside Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, and video on MTV just by holding a publisher-specific press event. But E3 pulled that off, and its proliferation grew every year.

In the last decade or so, the majority of the industry's biggest announcements came at or around the time of E3. With E3 gone, publishers will be more selective when making announcements. Spring will no longer be "THE" time to do it.

But that right there is precisely the problem. No one wants to be second place at E3, which is why the pre-events started occurring in the first place – events that have unfortunately led to the demise of the show. By making announcements a week before, a month before – even the day before – you have a shot at getting headline news. No crowds, just one happy publisher for that glorious day. The game industry seems to prefer this over a three-day media competition.

For gamers like myself, hope may be found in the form of places like the Penny Arcade Expo, who has gained the support of Nintendo, a publisher that also had a fairly large showing at this year's Game Developers Conference (considering how small the event is). If this is the case, the day could come when their new wares are unveiled in March and August, not May.
 

Nonetheless, it will never be the same. No matter the result, no matter the conclusion, a grand era has ended.
 

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