So I didn’t get any more than one fifteen minute podcast done. Scheduling proved very difficult this year, and even if I had scheduled things, I had appointments bumped and moved and delayed all week so there would have been no guarantee of anything during the day and people were busy at night.
Some thoughts:
1) We are coming perilously close to the big, crowded E3s that everyone was complaining about five years ago. Though I’m not willing to go as far as Bill Abner and wish for the return of the insurance brokers’ convention that passed for E3 a couple of years ago, all the noise and crowds made it difficult to stay sane and get my work done. Best Buy and Gamestop employees without purchasing power have no business on the floor. Sorry.
2) I went to zero parties this year, which is a first for me. Part of it is that I didn’t hear about or get invited to many. I had an invitation to the Bethesda one, but was not in a mood to go that far out of the downtown area. I’m too old and invested in being functional the next morning to want to be out drinking till 4 every night, but maybe one night would have nice. For tradition’s sake.
3) Once again, very few strategy games on display. In the chaos of the floor, most would not show well in any case. Therefore, most were tucked away in demo rooms or cubicles. The strategy surprise of the show is probably End of Nations, from Trion and Petroglyph. This might be the AAA MMORTS people have been waiting for.
4) I loved hanging out with the Gameshark people, and Tom Chick managed to join us for dinner most nights. I’ve been told that I tend to attract good people because I have a reputation as being good to work with. I think it’s more that I tend to seek out people that I want to work for and with. The site is impossible to read and navigate, but there is a strong core of writing talent there that will only get better. And every one of them is hilarious in person.
5) The people who ran the media hospitality room sucked at refilling the coffee thing. Note to catering: You will always need more caffeinated than decaf at 9 AM.
Troy, I disagree with your sentiment on retail employees. They have just as much right to be there as the industry funded games press, after all both jobs are selling games. They need to know the products they are hawking just as much as IGN.
As a past employee of Gamestop I can safely say that nobody other than marketing and acquisitions executives have any need to be there.
Unless they’re planning on doing special promotion stuff (which only gets decided at a really high level) they don’t need first-hand knowledge of games that won’t come out for months or years.
The information that comes down the usual pipelines is more than adequate for most, and it’d be better if they didn’t interfere with that process for the sake of their own entertainment.
After this year’s show I am never shopping at *&^%$#! Best Buy ever again.
@bill Abner: Between steam and Amazon, why would you have ever bothered with Best Buy?
I don’t know about Best Buy, but GameStop has an annual managers meeting where they get a “mini E3” experience anyway that is geared to them, so from that standpoint going to E3 is unnecessary. However, it really depends on how many actually attend E3 – when I was a manager it was a really low percentage since the company only covered the entry fee. Managers were on their own as far as transportation, lodging, and other expenses.
I think the problem is that if E3 is just a developer/publisher/media show, then you are back to what it was a few years ago. That event may be more attractive to some of the attendees, but it reduces the shows PR value to the public.
Yes but it is all about me, damn it.
And I loved the little E3. No ridiculous Unleashed II trailer blasting on volume “insanity”, and I could hear a developer talk about his game over the fake UFC fight in the background.
The worst show, though, was the hotel hop of Santa Monica. I’ll take the obnoxious show over that one.
I don’t think it needs to be dev/pub/press only. E3 has never been about the media. But we saw people from ITT-TECH.
Seriously.
WTF.
Ithaca plagued the last day, too. My favorite attendee were folks with “Guest” badges. Some were “Guests of LACC,” which I assume means something. But seriously. Guest?
Beat it, pal. Stop taking pictures of Sonic. Some of us have shit to do.
Oh, and it also didn’t help that you could just walk up to the attendee booth in West hall and just BUY A BADGE.
About 4)… I never heard about GameShark until you mentioned. Their podcast is nice, and I like the mix of opinionated, naive and cheerful personalities they have there. But the site… jeez. And no RSS feed? Erm…
Anyway, keep up the good work, Mr. Goodfellow.
kenoxite– yes, yes, we know. We know.
And knowing is half the battle, right?
As long as you’re taking requests, Bill… please, please PLEASE get rid of those “interactive ads.” Really like what you’ve got going on, but those things are so incredibly annoying that I just can’t force myself to visit sites that have them.
Jon
Bill’s the naive one, right? I’ve worked so hard to educate the man, but it’s a process.
Jon, I wish I could. I have no control over that stuff — I hate them too.
I want to talk more about this but I’m literally not allowed; suffice to say we know the site looks ripped from a bad 1997 design.
Sorry to hear that Bill. I know how things go sometimes.
Jon
On the subject of Best Buy, I have to shop there if I want to buy PC games from a place that employs people who live in my town. Gamestop quite selling PC games here, and Amazon is where I go for pre-orders.
Sorry to hear that the show is getting annoying again. It seems people will do anything you let them get away with.
What an arrogant asshole you are!!! Best Buy employees have every right to be there, just as much as you and this shit blog.
For the record, this shit blog did not get me into E3.
Heh. Living The Dream, eh Troy? You know your blog has reached a new plateau when you’re sullied by the Knights of Best Buy.
“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” –Wilde
Oh, DennisS, you just made me smile.
And then Troy made me almost wet my pants with his response :D
Looking forward to hearing more about E3 on the next podcast, whenever that might be, and it’s shame that you weren’t able to get more out during the week, but, can’t be helped. For me, my E3 experience basically boiled down to watching the various press conferences (though I was really pleased to see Gametrailers manage a full-HD stream that almost never failed, even over here in England – more than can be said for the BBC’s current World Cup streaming, that’s for sure…!).
Damn Blue Shirts. Night of the Long Knives, but with pocket protectors.