It seems very likely that the biggest event in the gaming calendar of the last 25 years, E3, is over.
Last week’s announcement that the 2023 event had been canceled was met with no huge surprise in the industry: It’s enormously expensive to get on the show floor, it’s a major commitment for development teams (already stretched by the pandemic) to provide playable demos, and the introduction of digital-only events like Nintendo Direct and PlayStation State of Play have shown that it is possible to reach global audiences without having to pay anywhere between $20,000 and $1.5m for a large booth in the middle of the hideous sprawl of downtown Los Angeles.
The organizers have not ruled out a reappearance of the event in some future year, but it seems incredibly unlikely that it will be held again in the same wild, glitzy and bloated format.
Everyone in the industry nods wisely and talks about how dated the event was and how game marketing has changed in the digital age. What fewer people are doing is questioning whether this is really a good thing. E3 was unique. It was a place where publishers made deals with developers, where retailers decided which titles were going to fill their shelves in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and where people got to see next year’s biggest titles first. It was part trade show, part advertising festival, and it was the one place where reporters could get access to everyone from the newest freelance programmers to the head of Xbox. You will lose a lot.
It’s no surprise that major publishers and console manufacturers prefer their own digital events to a big conference. They’re cheaper, there’s no need to compete for attention with rival companies, and messages can be fully controlled. Gaming journalists and industry insiders may be left out of the equation entirely. Gaming influencers are now more likely to be a part of broadcasts and have exclusive access to spokespersons and unpublished gameplay—they’re cheerleaders, not analysts. At E3, on the other hand, the spokespersons were highly exposed to scrutiny and skeptical questioning, and the interviews were less predictable. When I interviewed then-Xbox head Phil Harrison at E3 2014, I became so frustrated with his stock market responses that I wrote the article as an analysis of media training. The article got a lot of sharing and exposed some of the gimmicks in game promotion, but it couldn’t have happened if Phil hadn’t been there talking to me in person.
So what are we getting in a potentially E3-free future? An increasingly curated and sanitized advertising process. Other major game events remain on the calendar. GamesCom in Cologne fulfills many of the commercial and promotional functions of E3, but has never been able to compete in terms of global publicity and mainstream media coverage. The likes of Pax and EGX are good events for the consumer, but offer little for journalists.
E3 was a disaster, but it was a disaster: the collision of different targets, the sheer intensity, the buzz that went through the show floor when a new game was playing well or very poorly, it was unique. Without him we won’t have weird moments like giant enemy crabswe will not get gay sims kissingwe will not get Keanu yelling “no, you’re awesometo an audience member, we’re not going to make Sony outright own Microsoft with a joke about Xbox One’s incomprehensible digital rights management.
What we’re missing are moments of shock and genuine surprise, the very things we look for in entertainment. Video games are not just another arm of the technology industry, they are not just products: they are tactile, interactive, cultural, artistic. If we really want to understand the people who do them and why they do them, we need to see and hear those people in an environment where things are not strictly scripted or rigorously controlled by messages. Too often, a digital showcase is just a book-ending compilation of trailers by a handpicked and excited presenter. But a live broadcast of an E3 showcase showed an audience in a theater reacting with cheers and applause. And to be in that audience when something big happened, it was exciting. People feed on other people’s buzz – it’s human nature.
E3 was far from perfect, but the things it got right will never be replicated on a live stream.
what to play
Sega has done some crazy stuff in its time (Segagaga, Seaman, 32X, I could go on), but The murder of Sonic the Hedgehog I could beat them all. It’s a free-to-play game delivered seemingly as an April Fool, in which Sonic’s love interest Amy and her friends must find out who killed Sega’s spiky mascot by gathering evidence and interviewing the suspects, and it all happens in a train. Taking the form of a visual novel with brief platforming interludes, it’s a fun and extremely meta-puzzling puzzler crafted in genuine style. If you’ve always longed for a mix of Agatha Christie, Sonic, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, unbelievably, here’s your chance to try it.
Available in: personal computer
Approximate playing time: Three hours
what to click
Super Mario Bros Movie Review: Wacky Players Fall On Screen
Deals, drama and danger: the incredible true story behind Tetris
Rytmos Review: A Tasteful Musical Riddle
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‘Luigi Has Sweet Apple Notes’: Testing Lush’s Unlikely Super Mario Soaps
what to read
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GamesIndustry.biz has the latest figures on the UK gaming market. According to trade body UKIE, the industry was worth £7.05 billion in 2022, 17% less than in 2021, but still higher than pre-pandemic figures. The best-selling games were Fifa 23 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, surprising…exactly no one.
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The Legendary film studio has secured Street Fighter film rights according to the hollywood reporter. No doubt inspired by the success of the recent Sonic and The Last of Us tie-ins, the company has bravely overlooked the critical attack the original Street Fighter movie received and the financial bombshell of the sequel Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.
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Bloomberg has one piece Looking to Saudi ArabiaThe continuous efforts to diversify its economy by investing heavily in video games. This comes after Prince Mohammed bin Salman Announced plans to make Saudi Arabia “the ultimate global hub for the esports and gaming sector by 2030.” Bloomberg estimates the investment at 38,000 million dollars. The games industry is about to plunge into another moral quagmire.
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Meanwhile, Eurogamer published a great list of Games to play on International Transgender Day of Visibility. Trans creators and trans stories are a vital component of gaming culture, so let’s keep making them visible all year long.
block of questions
Regular reader Iain was surprised by one of last week’s Bafta Games winners (as was everyone, honestly):
“Can someone explain how the heck Vampire Survivors deserves GOTY at the Bafta Games Awards? It seems to have been resurrected from the days of Atari and Commodore 64 consoles.
Pushing the buttons themselves also mcdonald He was at the awards ceremony, so I shake his hand for him to answer:
“You’re right, Iain, Vampire Survivors does It looks like something from the older days of video games, but it brings all the game design lessons that have been learned in the decades since, and it’s a slice of perfection. It was a surprise winner, for sure, made by a very small team that couldn’t achieve anything like the graphical and technical sophistication of some of the other nominees, like God of War Ragnarok and Elden Ring (both created by 100+ people). But it’s such a brilliant game that it’s a worthy winner nonetheless. I defy anyone to play it and resist its simple, bountiful, and rewarding cycle of killing stuff, collecting stuff, getting more powerful, getting overwhelmed, and starting over. It removes all but the essentials of the attractive game design.”
