Gripes of a Grumpy Gamer - E3 is Stupid

I had an opportunity a while back to apply for a job that required
traveling to gaming conventions and writing about them. I was not even
slightly tempted to apply. I hate conventions, and not just because I'm
a misanthrope with social anxiety - they genuinely seem like a waste of time, money and resources. What do lavish multi-media displays,
bikini-clad "booth babes" and slavering hordes of sweaty, over-stimulated
nerds have to do with me sitting in the dark quietly clicking on things?
Practically nothing, that's what.

E3, the
Electronic Entertainment Expo, is going to dominate gaming news this week.
These conventions take place in Vegas and L.A., cities that are built upon
a foundation of "style over substance," and allow studios and publishers
to set up booths to promote their current stable of games or gadgets,
showcase games and gadgets in development and announce future plans for
incredible new games and gadgets. Millions of dollars are spent on these
events. They have to hire staff to man the booths, and models to walk
around wearing the ridiculous costumes of game characters. They have to
fabricate plastic and fiberglass statues and props with blinking lights
and massive TV screens and whatnot to visually compete with the big dogs.
They have to buy thousands and thousands of custom-printed lanyards.

Grumpy Gamer - E3

Lanyards as far as the eye can see!

 

One of the things that most annoys me about these conventions is the
stuff they give to attendees. Not the swag, like action figures or
lanyards or whatever with company and game logos plastered all over it -
that stuff is fine. A colossal waste of money, but fine. The thing that
particularly grinds my gears is the digital stuff they hand out. Codes for
mini-pets or cosmetic items.

That means the studio is paying a team of designers to create these
frivolous items to give away to people who go to the cons, instead of
paying them to fix bugs or create general content for everyone that would
actually improve the game in some way. The really annoying thing is, you
almost never see these items in the game. The people going to the cons and
getting the digital swag aren't playing the games they've gone to see. So
the resources that go into making these convention items is
double-wasted. 

E3 is an industry expo, rather than an event geared towards the fans,
where the developers and hardware guys show off to one another and make
big announcements in the press about the "next generation" of whatever
they are peddling. It's a big money event, where big corporations sell
their stuff to other big corporations. It also occasionally gives fans the
opportunity to get hands-on play-time with games that are over a year away
from launch. The developers bundle up their buggy, untested code, wrap it
in cranked-up visuals and run it on top-end gaming rigs, delivering a
gaming experience that will be almost entirely unlike the product that
will be released 12 months down the road.

Grumpy Gamer - Sony vs Microsoft at E3

The big draw, really, is the pissing matches. Microsoft unveils the Xbox
One, so Sony strikes back with a press conference that seems mostly to be
about what an overpriced piece of crap the new Xbox is going to be
compared to the PS4. Nintendo will be the next to whip out their console
to see whose is bigger. I'm sure this is all really awesome for the
console kiddies, but the only thing I care about, as a PC guy, is the
vicious soap opera. It's like Game of Thrones without the nudity, and with
nothing important or interesting happening.

And, of course, it's these massive squeaking wheels who attract all the
attention - the ultra-powerful corporations who no longer really need the
press. The small studios that actually need the press to create awareness
of their developing products can't afford E3, and wouldn't likely get a
whole lot of coverage even if they could.

For me personally, the only reason to ever go to any con is to see
normal, nerdy girls in homemade slave-girl Leia costumes and dudes
dressed up like Doctor Who and Batman. E3 has lots of "booth babes" -
models hired to stand around in character costumes and pose for pictures
with chubby, grinning teenage fanboys - but cosplay by fans is not as
prevalent at E3 as it is at events like ComiCon, or even PAX. You get a
few crazies, sure, but nothing like the army of cosplayers that go to
fan-oriented events. And it's going to be particularly lame this year,
because even though EA is resurrecting the Battlefront franchise, SWTOR
(which attracts roleplayers, and therefore cosplayers) won't have a booth.

Grumpy Gamer - a gaggle of Slave Girl Leias

About the only thing that could ever
get me to attend a convention
, and it won't be at E3.

 

We have a few of our guys from Ten Ton Hammer attending and otherwise
covering E3 this year, and it's their job to sift through the mountains of
irrelevant garbage that come spewing out of the E3 press machine to find
the choice nuggets of interest, like This
slab of white-hot disappointment
. I do not envy them in their
Herculean task. Stay tuned for the few bits that actually matter.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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