ESA Announces Changes to E3: "A More Intimate Event" (Update 2)

I wouldn't mind if the booth babes were more intimate...

Don't worry everyone, all the video game publishers are going to Comic-con now. You can merge in with the rest of the fanboys in the comics and art.

Not that 120,000 people in a 1/4 mile convention hall elbow to elbow was any good....

"The ESA will reveal more details about the event in the coming months."

In other words... as soon as *they* figure out what the hell they're going to do. I got all emo yesterday, but I'm going to miss the show - and will have to wait and see what they come up with, who participates and what other events will happen around that week before I decide if I'm going to attend.

Well if there's announcements around the year like we had with TeamFortress and Portal, then it won't be such a bad thing. That thing litterally came out of nowhere. I mean, everyone was interested in seeing what the new TF looked like and all we had that first day with brief descriptions of them that sounded far to crazy to be real. THEN later on the screenshots & video's popped up.

Spacing things out I suppose won't be such a bad thing for big announcements. But for smaller devs, they NEED an E3 for sure if they don't work directly for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or EA.

So far that sounds like things I've heard just about every year, especially the "stricter admitance rules".

I still think that what this really comes down to is that the big guys don't want to spend the stupid amounts of money they spend just for the sake of showing off, but even more they don't want to be a part of something where they aren't the center of attention. E3 definitely needs some reform, but the main problem of out of control costs is completely their own fault.

There are usually a handful of cool "discoveries" that come out of every E3, stuff that at least looks interesting getting discovered and hyped up, without celebrities and 200db stereos. Why don't these big players have enough confidence in their products to sell them without a circus?

Next Generation has posted a follow-up analazying 10 reasons E3 fell apart in such a short time.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3548&Itemid=2

This one is most interesting to me, and similar to the scenario a lot of people imagined when the news first broke:

Four People Said 'Enough'
When I spoke to some people about E3's collapse, the general response was one of disbelief. How could something so big fall apart so quickly? Perhaps this is why so many news outlets simply refused to believe the news. The fact is that all it took were a very small number of company presidents to talk with each other, and figure out that if they all decided to pass, none of them would need to be there. Once Nintendo, Microsoft, SCEA and EA had stepped out, E3 was history. It was multilateral disarmament.

This is bad. And as soon as the elist tone of 'it had too many people' dies down, the reality will set in. This wont hurt the big companies like MS or Sony. But the lack of E3 will destroy all of the small companies that made up the bulk of the International Hall. E3 was one of the few places a basement developer could actually get his product seen by a large number of people and press. Going to those tables and seeing 2 guys showing off a game that rivaled the stuff in the main hall was a common occurence. Without E3 those same developers wouldn't even be able to get a call back from Gamespot, much less Ubisoft or EB.

So the real story is that MS, Sony, EA, and Nintendo will create their own shows, spending roughly the same amount on them as they do on E3. And indy developers will be left out in the cold, with only backwater indy game fests to show off their wares to other indy developers.

From yesterday's article: "E3 was first organized to avoid the bloated and costly trade shows that the games industry previously attended."
That brings the question: what was before E3?

What this means, folks, is the big, loud, sweaty, loud, smelly, loud convention center approach to E3 is dead. Completely dead.

The big players don't want to deal with it anymore...it's too expensive. It's more efficient to have their own events. Microsoft has an annual XBox-focused event (X05 last year, now it's X06). Toyko Game Show is a huge huge huge thing. 3rd party publishers have their own shows worldwide...Activision has "Activate" and Midway has their own thing, I think. EA, too.

You don't hear about those things because they're not for the public. They're for retailer buyers first and foremost, and press (sort of).

E3, long ago, let the public in on certain days. Each badge came with a guest pass that you could give to your girlfriend or best buddy or just hand out on Figueroa Blvd. And it was laughably easy to bullshit your way into a badge. People complained about the crowds, the noise, the inability to "do business" and they tightened it up. Guest passes went bye-bye, and the process of getting passes became much more difficult, even for actual employees of actual companies. It was a pain in the ass. But there were still annoying levels of people who honestly had no business being there (i.e. part time retail employees from Gamestop...wtf?).

The crowds got BETTER (i.e. thinner) over the years as they did this. Honestly, last year seemed like a fairly civilized affair. But E3 has always been a pain in the ass for other reasons.

Developers usually must derail their schedule to put together an "E3 demo" which can take months away from the real game. It often becomes "lost" work - doing a bunch of smoke and mirrors work to get the game playable and presentable before it rightfully should, which gets tossed aside as soon as the dev gets back to making the game.

One thing E3 was good for was for those rare projects that weren't getting much love from their publisher, that garner a huge buzz and critical acclaim, which can sometimes turn into more attention from buyers (not consumers, buyers - the people who work for Walmart and Best Buy et al. who actually decide how many copies of a game go on store shelves) and give the game a chance. I've seen games go into E3 with only cursory support from a publisher, make a splash, and then suddenly get a lot of love and (surprise) become hit selling games.

But mostly it was a huge waste of time and money.

I've demoed games to some of the most powerful buyers in the industry, both on the E3 floor amidst the hubbub, and I've done the same exact demo in a small backroom. Guess which one was a more effective?

Smaller, more targetted events are a better approach for b2b communications.

Consumers will not be affected by this much, because E3 has never, ever been about the consumer.

The press, especially the indies, will get screwed, but as someone up there already mentioned, they've always gotten screwed.

Developers may hopefully be relieved of having to schedule the dreaded "E3 Demo." (Although the little events around the world will still require demos, so it might end up being WORSE...time will tell.)

And publishers might be able to strengthen their relationships with retail buyers and get more product in the channel, more marketing support, etc.

reposted here from http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=12597276 at the request of Remo - a thread about how the shift in focus for E3 '07 will "fuck over independent journalists"

The fact of the matter is, any journalist worth his/her own salt will be able to get into E3 in some way or another regardless. It's not that hard to get into any trade show and it never will be, because the point of trade shows is for them to be attended by people.

The true fucking-over of independent journalists at E3 is the way it's currently set up (you know, all the stuff they're trying to get rid of that you're petitioning to keep).

* Closed door meetings which you need a preexisting PR contact to schedule.
* Huge booths with not enough public demo stations and fully booked schedules for the private rooms.
* EB/Gamestop/Gamecrazy employees clogging the lines and sitting there playing BF2142 for 20 minutes while you wait to write a preview.
* Six hour lines to see a game trailer or rolling demo.
* Company VPs and VIPs who bring their kids and get bumped to the front of the line.

These are the things that fuck you over if you're an independent writer for a small site, not getting into the show itself.

Anyone can get into E3, but once you're inside, if you haven't got a hugely recognizible site name on your badge that Cindy the PR Rep will recognize on sight and/or a managing editor who spent the last year establishing contacts with publishers and getting you set up with meetings to see everything behind closed doors, you will basically see nothing in your week on the show floor.

Changing E3 to an event more like X05, in which the entire thing is a series of meeting rooms with posted schedules, where if you see an opening in the schedule you can slip in to an unscheduled spot and get a demo, or like GDC where the show floor is calm and (though it's slipping in recent years) focused on learning about the companies and their products more than about their marketing campaigns, it would be extremely good for everyone involved on all sides of the equation.

Oh well guess there goes any hope of ever going to an E3. Not that I actually would, but it would have been fun at least to go to one

But I guess the reasons it would be appealing to me are why the show doesn't work well anymore for those who really need it and should be there. With all the people comlaining how bad E3 was I guess it was just a matter of time before they changed things.

Bring back the G.O.D. Lot! (if they were still around)

Seriously though, e3 is a grand event that I wish every avid video gamer could attend. You cannot imagine the chaos and the sensory overload that is e3. It's fun to actually play the hottest games 6 months before they're released.

Top that chaos off with: sneaking into after parties, bull shitting credentials, hiring strippers as 'booth babes', seeing Cliffy B in a gnarly suit in a strip club, and going to korea town to eat.

I hope this new move will bring about smaller "video game parties" where you can have a more personal conversation with a team member who made the game. I just don't need the Disneyland craziness of lines of emo haircuts and bad anime shirts. Oh yeah, make them 21 and over please and a few cocktails would be fine with me.

Good news !

As long as the GDC is still around, I'll be just peachy. Huge conventions have never been my thing.

So does this mean that I will never again get a press pass for the event? It never felt to me like there was more than 10% press present at any one place at any one time. It would be retarded if they figured to just tighten their press admittence procedures. :(

They don't really spell it out clearly but this basically means - "if you aren't in the industry, forget about it" right?