Looking like a short show this year...
The Electronic Entertainment Expo, I think, was a staple of the gaming world not all that long ago, even if it does feel like decades past to consider out loud. E3 was the one time in the year that every gamer rushed home early, busy-tailed and wide-eyed, eager to gaze in amazement at the latest spring-up-wonder cooked up in that ol' dream factory from LA! Wha- Hollywood? No, no- I'm talking the LA convention centre; where studios of all sizes battled each other with overly expensive bids to try and win a tiny booth in a packed warehouse which was always inevitably dominated by the prevailing three: Nintendo, Microsoft and PlayStation. The holy trinity of gaming. Other faces would come and go, rise and fall, but the three titan pillars of our industry proved to all staunch foundations upon which this industry event stood. As such, you can probably imagine how the ground must have fallen out from under the new E3 organisers for 2023 when all those three big boys refused to provide a presence for the upcoming year's showcase. (Ouch, rejection is never easy...)
For this year the unlucky runners of the E3 showcase are going to be veteran convention organisers 'ReedPop', known for their work in pulling off Star Wars Celebrations, PAX and New York Comic Con. All of that experience tells me that they're not going to exactly have their spirit broken simply because the big boys don't want to show up to their show, but I do wonder if ReedPop have weighed up exactly the size of the shoes they're stepping into. The ESA have been the whipping boys of online discourse surrounding industry marketing disaster events for the past few years for the way that they've handled trying to pull off E3. Every idea that the ESA tossed around just stunk of 'we don't know how to appeal to gamers' in their attempt to appeal to a more 'generalised demographic'. Although I will give the old E3 kudos for tricking Disney XD into airing E3 without realising that the event would be full of 15+ rated games that parents do not want their children to be watching on the big TV at home.
With ReedPop there's a hope that given their experienced familiarity with nerd culture and even with the various worlds of gaming specifically, we won't be seeing a bevy of out-of-touch organisers turning to desperate means in order to get attention. Such as seeking out celebrities to be hosts because of the Keanu Reeves moment during Cyberpunk's conference, which in turn totally misses the point of why that moment worked and how soundly that special moment would have been ruined with a resulting influx of unnecessary cameos. Although that may be something of a vain hope after all those bubbling rumours that some facet of ReedPop's management has caused an upset among potential attendees. Although there's no evidence to back it up so far, there's a possibility that Nintendo walked away because of ReedPops wanting conduct. Or maybe they just heard that Microsoft wasn't coming and didn't want to be alone. That's a very real possibility too.
Whatsmore, I can't help but wonder if the cultural need for E3 hasn't passed all of us by given the rise of Geoff Keighley's Game Awards which seems deadest on fulfilling the gap left by E3 within our culture. Long ago the community once came to E3 looking for the low down on their exciting upcoming games of the year, only to become increasingly frustrated as more and more companies started coming to E3 with nothing but CG trailers that could have just as easily made it onto their Youtube page without all the expensive and wasteful fanfare. Yes, E3 is a massive marketing machine, but it's a marketing event that should provide enough stage time to really give time to dive into the specifics of gameplay with back-up footage. Failing that, E3 is just a barrage of trailers totally undeserving of hosts or a physical stage at all. The Game Awards pulled that off better last year than E3 managed in it's past three events. The balance of power has shifted.
Now to be fair, this mass withdrawal of all the big studios out of the E3 lineup dpes not, as it might seem, come totally out of nowhere. PlayStation actually pulled out all the way back in 2019 in order to save all of their reveals and gameplay previews for their dedicated 'State of Play' showcase event which they've thrived using exclusively throughout their recent years. Nintendo has their special 'Direct' conference which always could have replaced their E3 slot, but until this year never actually had to. And with the recent Microsoft-Bethesda conference which recently managed to shadow drop a half priced game that has performed well enough to out-earn Forspoken in their shared release week, the big M have proven theirs is a formula worth sticking to as well. E3 is a time investment and a secondary deadline that has sat on the back of development studios for decades, being set free of that schedule is a godsend for many.
In their absence, the other studios who show up are going to have their chance to really step up and try to fill the perilous void. But given that each of those three big studios usually had entire days dedicated just to them and the games under their purview- the whole E3 event is inevitably going to feel smaller this time around no matter what happens. Square Enix have a lot going on, but they rarely know how to properly show it off. (Kingdom Hearts 4 footage would be appreciated, thanks bunches.) Embracer Group could really do with setting up some sort of presence given their unholy number of studios they've collected like some sort of 'Avengers' of developers; but they prefer to remain on the outskirts like anime supervillains. And I'd love for Gearbox to make a longer showcase so we can see Randy Pitchford steal even more time away from his own studio to show us his home videos of him visiting movie sets and whatever else catches his fancy. (Maybe he can have horse riding lessons and show us a montage of his progress- the possibilities are endless!)
The dominance of the AAA landscape of gaming lasted for so very long through the same means that Hollywood propagates it's most expensive projects. Marketing excess. But not only has the tight weave of marketing unravelled in recent years with the sleeper hits of Vampire Survivors and Valhiem domineering recent charts, the aforementioned Hi-Fi Rush beating out Forspoken is a perfect example that traditional marketing is no longer the sure route to riches it once was. Luck is a major factor, trust is just as strong but word of mouth is king. And word of mouth sounds so much better coming from the vocal cords of a human being rather than the bowels of a marketing machine. E3 might not be the catapult to success anymore, or at the very least it's not the only catapult; even if it might still be the most expensive.
When the ESA retired E3 it was amidst a whirlwind of bad vibes and sparked controversy, a storm that might have been weathered if they communicated themselves a bit clearer, but here we are. I think a lot of the really in-tune members of the gaming community were happy to let E3 sunset off and never bother a one of us again, such that most of us find this return a bit too little too late. Maybe if they got the big boys to come down and deliver a knock out E3 the community would reconsider, but with the line-up we're looking at I wouldn't be surprised if this year's E3 is a quickly forgotten footnote with little to show for itself. Maybe what the ESA are shooting for is that one last inglorious disappointment to let everyone know once and for all that what they have truly is irrelevant, and that the age of conventions is finally long past.
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