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FEATURE

Opinion: E3 Must Change or Die

Colin Campbell's picture

By Colin Campbell

July 19, 2008

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Instead of bleating about the crummy job the ESA is doing, it’s up to the publishers to help create an E3 event that's worth the name.

Leading publishers have been extremely critical of E3. The media has been underwhelmed by this year's event. Change is inevitable. 

The trouble with E3, is that it’s trying to be too many things, and isn’t much good at any of them. It’s a product showcase, a media circus, a business and trading forum, a social event, a debate. But it’s also none of those things.

So what function does E3 actually serve? We list the dubious benefits of E3, and how they might be generated in different, better ways.

Show Floor

If you’re going to attempt to represent a multi-billion dollar industry with a few dozen gameplay pods, you can hardly expect to be showered in plaudits.

The show floor was neither fish nor fowl. Not showy enough to impress with bigness and razzmatazz, nor even representative of the quality this business has on offer. I spent an hour or so wandering around and left uninspired, even though some good games were on show.

This sort of thing is best left to the private sector. Let IDG make the case that E For All represents good marketing value.  Or publishers should spend their demo effort at retail or in the malls or on a roadshow.

Press Conferences

Press conferences are not supposed to imitate academic lectures; plodding through the various features and release dates of well-known products. They are supposed to be entertainment events, with lots of news and quotes, that inspire the media to feel good about a company or a game. There were some good press conference moments at E3, but also, some sessions dragged and went on way too long.

At press events, short and to-the-point is good. New announcements about new games are also good.

Nobody worries that they aren’t spending enough time sitting in press conferences. If you’ve got something big to announce, do like Blizzard. Make a big deal out of it and spend some money. If you haven’t, find an appropriate way to generate copy without the live event.

Live Media Coverage

Much of the information transmitted from E3 arrived to consumers via live blogs, often inane, that failed to offer anything in the way of consideration or context.

Your precious announcements are merely raw materials that are being fed into the blog-combine to generate instant traffic. 

There was a time when embargoes forced editors to come up with actual angles and arguments, rather than stuff like, “Reggie is wearing a blue suit and is showing us a boring sales chart.” Use embargoes, invite only trusted journos, and ban outlets that break them, for life.

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_bootzilla_'s picture
On July 21st _bootzilla_ said:

So the question is really, what was wrong with the old E3 format? And what are the benefits of the new E3 format?

frostquake's picture
On July 21st frostquake said:

If E3 is going to be closed to the "public" then the public has to rely on what can come out of E3, which by the way is usually the medium of the Internet, followed by TV, then Print based Media.
This "closed" doors mentality of the past has to go away. We are all connected in some way or fashion and thrive on that "instant" access.
I really don't rely on the comments of industry insiders as much as I rely on the actual video content delivered of that medium, or that actual hands-on that I get with a demo. We "ALL" have opinions on the current demo we are trying and having someone tell you what it is like is like trying to describe a flavor. You really don't know if you will like it till you try it.
I would really like to see publishers spend more time and money on providing demos to their consumers, instead of a show for a select few who then write commentary on the "flavor" of the game.

cronotrigger913's picture
On July 19th cronotrigger913 said:

It is somewhat ironic that this is supposedly what the publishers wanted when they decided the old E3 was too much and that it needed to change. What did they expect would happen? Take for example those comments from Ubi and EA, where they called E3 a waste. It's a waste because you voted to have it become a waste. Am I wrong in this? Didn't they all have meetings with the ESA to say E3 was too much before? These people need to start figuring all this out because us consumers are getting very disappointed, year after year.

One thing that surprised me, disappointed me, and then made me think was the quote from Miyamoto, stating E3 wasn't a place to show off games like Zelda and Mario. Rather it was for interesting concepts like WiiMusic. I'm pretty sure no one ever thought that, and Sony and Msoft might disagree with him. So it seems no one truly knows what E3 really is anymore, and there needs to be a consensus on the matter before we move out. And they should have informed the public what E3 really stands for instead of assuming we knew what they were thinking. E3 has always been about the big announcements, and to just take them away because they thought it was different is naive. And Nintendo kept egging us on, saying E3 was for the core gamers, and BARELY backed that statement up.

E3 has to change, but it needs to inform the public on what it's going to change into so we aren't disappointed so much. Everyone says the readers on the net are somewhat creating the problem by reading the liveblogs, but we've been doing that for years! Why should we suddenly change?