Good riddance
I feel like we already had this ceremony, didn't we? Hell, I remember closing the book firmly on what was E3 pretty much the moment I heard they'd given up on this year's event. I'm pretty sure they were pretty definitive in their sentiments. Some small 'lip service' about potentially coming back was little more than hopeful gibberish- no one really expected to see them pull it back. Remember that PlayStation, Nintendo and Microsoft all ghosted them in the same year! There's no coming back from that! But I guess what we all needed was the short and very brisk goodbye message from the ESA officially bidding farewell to the Electronic Entertainment Expo that we all loved to make fun of. And with it goes many fond memories of reveals that blew us away, events that made us cringe and Ubisoft conferences which dragged on through the Just Dance sections every year despite the fact the game was an annual release- they didn't need to spend that money and time to choreograph it!
Who can remember their favourite moments of the E3 lineup? There are the classics like the 'Giant Enemy Crab' who appeared in a game that was just introduced as a 'grounded and realistic' feudal war game. Several screw-ups featuring Nintendo and their attempts to make motion controls look more intensive then they really are. And more than one presenter who climbed on to stage clearly inebriated out of their minds, whereupon they preceded to make absolute fools of themselves. Of course, then there are the more sweet memories that only a live event can confer. Such as during the reveal for Beyond Good and Evil 2 where the team members forgot to turn their mic off after going back stage and you could hear them congratulate one another- that was adorable. (I wonder how that game turned out when it released...) But all those memories, dreams and nightmares, will be lost in time; like, tears out of the ESA's eyeballs when they realise they aren't the big boys of the games industry anymore.
Rockstar were really the first superstar developers to stamp their feet in the ground and announce they didn't need the ESA to advertise their games, back when they found themselves at the centre of a bizarre controversy due to a leaked build that was running objectional content that never even made it to the full game anyway. But then, Rockstar didn't need the ESA; they were probably the biggest developers on the planet, at least in reputation. That hasn't really changed, and it's taken several decades for everyone else to carry themselves to that same point of self-sufficiency. But here we are, the console runners are no longer beholden to a yearly horse and pony show. They still put one on, however, because otherwise us greedy gamers would get antsy and start picking off our ever expanding backlogs. But no, we can't have that! We need to keep players engaged with content forever because trapping players in an endless cycle of replay is what makes a good game, not making them feel like they enjoyed themselves. (I would say that was facetious but recently it's become clear that Call of Duty developers seriously subscribe to that thought process. Wild.)
It was only a matter of time until the ESA could no longer extort it's peers for advertising space. Leaving the industry with only the biggest award show of the year as an organised point of congregation every year. And you know what? That's alright. It was already getting unrealistic for all these big seasonal events to spit out worthwhile video game announcements, and with development periods only getting longer there really isn't enough to fill the gaps anymore. There's only so many advertising slots that can feasibly be filled, and now those slots are the sole monopolies of the console developers which is... better? I don't really know. I just know that this doesn't quite feel like the happy freeze frame moment at the end of the heartwarming movie. Kind of feels like the cold fade to credits with a stinger in the post moments.
So now we turn on the Game Awards with all of our left over ire? To be fair, journalists always had a chip on their shoulder about the E3 trade show, seemingly upset at it's attempts to become more of a fan celebration event for some reason, laughing at it's flailing attempts to 'update' to the modern age. I guess because they would prefer it if we had no events to bring the game's industry together? I guess that must be why utmost hatred of the Game Awards is now popular- this year's iteration has been declared a disgrace to the industry and pitchforks want the whole thing to burn down. Why? Because the advertising got a little out of hand this year. That's about it. Geoff seems like a reasonable enough guy who listens to criticism, but that's not enough- we need to rip it apart for the good of gaming! Apparently.
I'll be honest, I actually really like gaming event shows. So much of the games industry feels like such a lonely hobby. We play alone, we get excited alone, we game together alone thanks to the death of LAN- I just like the feeling of the community all having it's eyes in the same spot at the same time. When everyone is getting hyped or rolling their eyes at a new announcement we finally feel like, you know, a 'community', and I don't there's some higher morality to turning your nose up at some events because they don't quite slide in to every facet of respectful representation you expect it to. I literally read an article from a writer who moralised over the fact they didn't watch the show, and still went on to complain about it's contents! What kind of future do you really want, anyway? Are a couple of events every year really the worst thing for the industry?
There's always going to be a balance between awards and game advertisements, and although the balance was woefully twisted this time around- I still want there to be equal amounts. If Geoff found a way to fund the show completely independently and hosted the awards without any announcements whatsoever- I wouldn't watch. Because to be honest with you, I don't really care about who wins awards. It is a significant event, as much as the same journalists are desperate to insist it isn't, because the fact that The Game Awards is the most watched award show of the year grants power to the winners and prestige that draws talent, establishes respect and widens opportunity. But how did the show get to be so sought after? Because everyone is tuning in to see what crazy announcement Geoff has cooked up! It's a tightrope to walk, between advertising and award giving, but it's a necessary one as far as keeping the show relevant is concerned.
Maybe it's failing to even engage with that tightrope which ultimately killed E3. They had nothing there for the community and industry- it was all advertising, and that made the event feel disposable and exploitative. Many out there like to denigrate Geoff Keighley as nothing but a marketing man with no real respect for the art of gaming, but I'm sorry- if that were true he would never have thought to do an Award show. He would have made yet another trade show. Geoff Keighley wanted the medium to be respected, he wanted to have his own version of the Oscars, he wanted to celebrate games. Does he enrich himself in the process, yes- the man isn't a nun! But to throw him in with the same lot as the ESA is, I think, to give E3 so much more credit than it was ever do. Goodbye to the Expo, and to hell with the Expo.
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