[HN Gopher] E3 Is Officially Dead
___________________________________________________________________
E3 Is Officially Dead
Author : eXpl0it3r
Score : 245 points
Date : 2023-12-12 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| virogenesis wrote:
| https://archive.is/ECxZR
| tivert wrote:
| Non paywalled article:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/12/how-the-internet-kill...
| timdiggerm wrote:
| > A mix of new competitors, partner withdrawals, changing
| audience habits and pandemic-era disruptions led to E3's
| collapse, ending years of attempts to resuscitate the event,
| which began in 1995.
|
| This poorly worded sentence can easily be read to state that the
| years of attempts to resuscitate E3 began in 1995.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Maybe they were trying to prove they weren't using ChatGPT.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| ...and phrase your results slightly awkwardly like a time
| pressured human journalist (churnalist) would.
| havblue wrote:
| The author is fairly well-versed about video games and I've
| known him online for a long time from a site called
| gamecritics. I'll allow that's a poorly worded sentence though.
| adamrezich wrote:
| again?
| dylan604 wrote:
| think of it like a horror movie franchise. soon, we'll have
| spin offs like CES vs E3: The revenge!!!
| ethbr1 wrote:
| RIP, booth dudes and booth babes.
|
| Official end of the 90s era.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| What on earth will the buff dude with a blonde flattop do now
| that he can no longer be Guile at game conventions?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Wait for Duke Nukem Forever to finally come out? /s
| Root_Denied wrote:
| TikTok, apparently.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| People rely deny the role of libido in that industry.
|
| You could bring them back and have a totally enticing event.
|
| Fortunately Miami exists and the west coast ideology of
| "inclusion by exclusion" is ignored.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| RIP. An important part of the gaming history is now gone, such a
| shame.
| RIMR wrote:
| Eh, all good things eventually come to an end. E3 played an
| important part of gaming history, but we're not worse off given
| that it died because gaming culture became extraordinarily
| mainstream and no longer required these kinds of industry
| marketing events.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I always enjoyed watching videos of crowd reactions to trailers.
| It's a bummer we won't get those anymore, but I can see why it's
| too expensive to host an IRL event. I wonder why they didn't
| transition to an online-only expo? I'd watch that.
| r3d0c wrote:
| it's called summer games fest
| underlipton wrote:
| And the crowd reactions are still there in the form of
| chat/Twitter. And then there's PAX et al.. It's not the same,
| but the experience isn't completely erased from existence.
| clintonb wrote:
| Why would a vendor pay someone else for an online-only expo
| when they can market directly via ads? Why would a customer pay
| to participate in an online-only expo when they can see videos
| for free online?
| The-Bus wrote:
| Marketing directly via ads is not free, either.
|
| Most industries have trade and consumer shows (from film to
| boardgames to concrete). There's no reason to expect that
| gaming is somehow unique and should not have one. It's
| unlikely it will be like the E3 of decades past (or even have
| the name), but there's value to getting consumers to see/try
| a bunch of new games.
| fredgrott wrote:
| hmmm let's see E-sports influencer reach is I imagine the cause
| as many vendors are in fact using those for their ads reach,
| etc.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why would you want to a release about your game at same time
| with all other games, if you didn't have to. You would instead
| try to guess a few days in year where there isn't likely other
| releases and aim for that. In later case you get more publicity
| for same effort.
|
| E3, kinda makes sense for connections and getting boots on
| grounds and showing stuff in progress in controlled
| environment. But for online you are better off going alone,
| unless you are tiny.
| phillryu wrote:
| This is more about back in its peak, but E3 used to gather
| all the gamer's attention to a single keynote, it was like
| the Super Bowl of gaming. Basically if your game was on
| stage/shown off well it would be covered by every single
| gaming press and magazine and almost guaranteed mainstream
| gaming culture hype.
|
| Today Geoff Keighley's Video Game Awards basically took over
| that role and similarly is the single biggest stage/audience
| to announce a new game to. If you had a game that they were
| interested in revealing + you thought it would sparkle to its
| audience it's a powerful platform.
| gtirloni wrote:
| CES next?
| atemerev wrote:
| CES still exists? With actual people going there?
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah man. It's the hot place to go when you need to find out
| what they managed to cram a wifi antenna and touchscreen with
| an unsecured OS into next. Definitely only sunshine &
| lollipops on the horizon for that event.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Lost, thank you for my early morning chuckle.
| busterarm wrote:
| CES will continue to exist for as long as it's booked on back
| to back weeks with AVN AEE.
|
| The show did much better when they were run concurrently
| though.
| underlipton wrote:
| Sad. Never got to go.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >The pandemic further exacerbated E3's woes, as quarantines
| forced several game publishers to adopt the online news
| conference format, to varying degrees of success.
|
| Jensen Huang's spectacular spatula collection has driven the
| barnstorming success of Nvidia's online news conferences.
|
| https://twitter.com/NVIDIAGeForce/status/1304088143805607936
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Of all the CEO's I've seen present, Jensen has been the best.
|
| Charismatic engineer.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Perhaps their audience of gamers wanted it to be about games?
| Certainly not influencers, "high profile celebrity activations"
| and other assorted bullshit.
| sylens wrote:
| It's sad, but E3 is really a relic of a bygone era. In the 90s or
| early 2000s, you almost never saw media from unreleased games.
| The best you could hope for was a few screenshots in a magazine
| (and later a website) to tide you over, surrounded by
| illustrative writing by games journalists. E3 was there to inform
| retailers of what products were coming, motivate them to dedicate
| shelf space to sell them, and lastly to provide a concentrated
| pile of news for the mainstream media to disseminate. This is why
| for so long the keynotes/showcases were called "press
| conferences". You can even find some recorded videos from these
| older E3's where Nintendo and Sony are presenting pie charts and
| graphs in a fairly monotone cadence.
|
| Today, with the ubiquity of Youtube, Twitch, and other ways of
| seeing game footage and content, E3 just became another marketing
| event. And it was an expensive one at that. Publishers and
| platform holders chafed at the fact that they would have to do a
| live stage show where gaffes and demo disasters could occur, and
| marketing departments hated the fact that all of their effort
| could be easily overshadowed by another company's big reveal. You
| saw Sony tap out even before the pandemic hit, opting for its own
| separate showcases where they could control the message and
| dominate the news cycle. That became the model that more and more
| companies decided to pursue.
|
| I will miss it because it was a fun event in the middle of May
| (and later June) that gave you a nice preview of what cool stuff
| was coming later in the year. There are also some legendary
| moments from the live presentations over the year, ranging from
| Sony getting on stage and only stating the price of the
| Playstation (which could undercut Sega's Saturn by $100, after
| Sega had decided to rush it for a surprise launch that day) to J
| Allard introducing the world to the new paradigm of centralized
| online gaming in 2005.
| ghaff wrote:
| The pandemic probably didn't ultimately change a lot of things
| as much as people thought it would early on. But there are
| certainly events that were stumbling along, mostly on momentum,
| that didn't make it to the other side.
| jeffwask wrote:
| It impacted E3 a bit more than some of the others because
| they were attempting to pivot from Vendor facing to public
| facing and compete against established Cons like Gamescon or
| PAX and the pandemic blew up any momentum they had. It was
| the interception of their hail mary to save the show.
| utexaspunk wrote:
| It's sort of like the PC User Groups that were more or less
| rendered redundant by the internet. I remember going to the
| HAL-PC (Houston Area League of PC Users) monthly general
| meetings as a kid and there could easily be over a thousand
| people there when they'd do things like having Microsoft and
| Lotus come and present their latest versions of Excel/123 in a
| "shootout". There were great door prizes, too. The internet
| came and there just wasn't a need for that anymore. It's kind
| of a shame, though, just because it felt like a real community
| thing.
| volkk wrote:
| it's truly sad. i keep waiting for a trend reversal where
| people would instead prefer real life interaction because
| everyone's exhausted by the soulessness of zoom & screens. i
| really think it's coming, but i keep miscalculating when
| ghaff wrote:
| You basically don't attend the public sessions at events to
| learn things you couldn't learn otherwise. At least
| keynotes are almost always streamed and companies give out
| very little in the way of datasheets and other printed
| information which is all available online anyway.
|
| Yeah, there are breakout sessions, and they're a good way
| to have some focused time on something you're interested
| in. But anyone who regularly goes to conferences will tell
| you it's mostly about the hallway track.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| IRL events similar to E3 are still happening but worldwide
| and at a smaller scale. For example John Romero attended
| such an even in my insignificant EU country. It was awesome
| and not as expensive as E3 but of course much smaller so it
| couldn't cover as much as E3.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| It's happening here, where I'm at (smallish city in the
| PNW). I've started going to a near-weekly board game meetup
| where we inevitably talk about more than games (computers,
| sometimes news of the day). It's not a large group but it's
| about the same size as the Linux/UNIX groups I participated
| in a few decades ago.
| tivert wrote:
| > it's truly sad. i keep waiting for a trend reversal where
| people would instead prefer real life interaction because
| everyone's exhausted by the soulessness of zoom & screens.
| i really think it's coming, but i keep miscalculating when
|
| I don't think this is a "trend," so much as the environment
| changing in unhealthy ways that we're not adapted for.
|
| It's like a tree whose seeds will only germinate if the
| ground is just the right conditions, if the climate changes
| and those conditions no longer occur, it's not all the
| sudden going to start making seeds that germinate in other
| conditions. It's just going to fail to reproduce.
|
| If the past, there was a lot more necessity to going out of
| the house, which has a lot of _important_ side-effects,
| because you couldn 't accomplish certain goals any other
| way. Technology provides easier and more isolating ways of
| achieving those goals, removing the necessity of going out.
| Now the needed side-effect are activities that require
| will, but people aren't set up as well to pursue them
| directly. That means most people won't do them or won't do
| them as consistently.
|
| An example is exercise. Everyone got enough when there was
| no option except to walk everywhere. Now it's an option, so
| people are much less healthy due to lack of exercise.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| I went to a bar last week, it was like a sports bar
| except the TV screens were hooked up to consoles and the
| patrons were playing Mario cart etc, with more dedicated
| spaces upstairs on a mezzanine including a few PCs
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think it's trending that way, but there are still going
| to be niche interest groups where you're almost certainly
| not going to have enough other members in your geographic
| vicinity to have in-person meetings. In the 1990s if you
| lived in a 10,000 person town you'd be lucky to find 4
| other people in your age group with such niche interests
| as, say, personal computers or video games. Obviously those
| two things are quite widespread now, but there are new
| things that are just as niche as those once were.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are still meetups of various sorts but I don't really
| disagree. The days of the Boston Computer Society having
| offices and renting out Symphony Hall to have Steve Jobs
| basically do a reprise of the NeXT launch are long gone.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, broadband basically killed the LAN party scene as well.
|
| As a teenager my friends and I got into hosting occasional
| LAN parties. The very first were so we could play Doom
| deathmatch over serial connections lol. But anyhow it was
| something I really liked.
|
| When I moved halfway across the country I didn't know anyone.
| I googled around and found the local major LAN parties. I
| went to one that was hosted every couple of months in a union
| hall, with around 200 attendees. At the first one I ended up
| sitting next to a group of chill folks, and they let me know
| they did their own dozen person party every other Saturday.
|
| So I started attending that, and it resulted in several life
| long friendships. We've all changed, grown, moved, had kids,
| etc but most of us are still in touch. Even for the folks
| that moved away we meet up every summer or two and do a canoe
| camping trip or such.
|
| Now, to be fair, I've made life long friends purely on the
| internet as well, but I do miss those old LAN party days. It
| was a lot of fun staying up until dawn playing rocket arena
| et all over and over.
|
| Also to be fair the LAN parties were _not_ hospitable to
| women, especially the larger ones. On the rare occasion they
| did try it out they 'd get hounded by the least socially
| aware idiots in the room, and no one else really did anything
| about it (including myself, as I didn't understand these
| dynamics at that age).
|
| These days with discord and everything some of that vibe is
| back in the purely online context, but still I don't think
| there will ever really be anything like those in person
| events.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| LAN parties were cool, imo and led to interesting things
| like this pic that's been on the interwebs for a very long
| time.
|
| https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/duct-
| taped_gamer_1.jpg?width...
|
| I still have a 48-port Cisco Switch that we used for these,
| back in the day. It's 10/100, so that far back. ;)
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, we never taped anyone to the ceiling but that was
| very much the vibe of our regular little 12 person group.
| The host lived at his parents house (college student) and
| they had an addition on the side of the garage that we
| packed into.
|
| A big deal for us was pooling money to buy a 24 port 10
| mbit switch back when those were new and fancy. Such a
| huge improvement over having to shut down the whole party
| and redo coax connections because one person in the
| middle of the line wanted to leave early.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| I was the IT connection. I worked with the gear daily, so
| it was easy to borrow gear or just MitM it when it was
| headed for the dumpster.
|
| I kept it because memories, but it's a big ass rack
| switch, so it may go the way of the dodo someday.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| We had women at our LAN parties in the 2000s, usually GFs
| or girls from the friend group. Not many played games so
| they'd just hang out and socialise amongst themselves or
| maybe play a console if there was one. So much fun.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, the only woman that showed up to that smaller dozen
| person regular event was my gf. Once.
|
| I kinda understated what I was saying in the above
| because I didn't wanna get hounded by the basement
| dweller crowd, but the reality at the bigger events was
| pretty ugly. The only girl that ever showed up was the
| daughter of one of the organizers. Only a couple women
| showed up otherwise.
|
| One story I can mention is from a different party I went
| to in a town not far away. This was a big bigger of an
| event, around 300 people and only run once a year. I only
| recall a woman showing up once.
|
| That event held a 1v1 quake tourney with a modest cash
| prize. This woman was _good_. She smoked everyone easily.
| This was a bit of a shock because a couple people at that
| event had competed at quakecon and such.
|
| The entire time she was at the event there was this mob
| surrounding her PC of... well, imagine the least socially
| aware and hygienic dudes that would show up to an early
| 00's LAN party. Didn't matter what she was doing or
| trying to play, they endlessly pestered her and tried to
| chat her up. If she walked across the room to get a coke
| you could see half the room openly staring at her turning
| their heads. Stuff like that.
|
| Unsurprisingly she didn't return for the second day or
| any future event.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| This happened a lot. 2600 Magazine had locations for meet ups
| with ones fellow hackers. I, personally, wrote in and had
| them remove 2 locations, since people stopped showing up to
| them after the evolution of information we're in now.
|
| Ironic, imo. It all started with BBSes, turned into personal
| meets, then went right back to digital, because of ease of
| use and features not supported with the BBS style of
| community.
|
| I miss BBSes some days. It was a fun time.
| yreg wrote:
| Companies want to have as much control as possible over their
| own announcements.
|
| It reminds me of how Apple left Macworld in favour of hosting
| its own events.
|
| Or even (as you mention) abandoned live presentation
| altogether.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| > Or even (as you mention) abandoned live presentation
| altogether.
|
| The writing on the wall for this was when Steve Jobs died.
| Covid just gave them the nails.
|
| There's just so much that can go wrong (elon musk throwing
| the ball at the cybertruck window and it cracks for ex).
| ghaff wrote:
| Apple has so much in-house video production skill and so
| many more people want to watch Apple events than could
| possibly be accommodated in person. What's the point of
| jamming a crowd into the Yerba Buena Center or wherever
| when most people will be watching streaming anyway and you
| have so much more control over the results that way?
| Racing0461 wrote:
| Watching it live just feels better. Go back and watch one
| where they do it live and one where it does it pre-
| recorded. Something just feels off with the pre-recorded
| one.
|
| By live i mean they are doing the presentation on the
| spot, not live as in person BTW.
| sylens wrote:
| Jobs did have a penchant for making a live demo feel
| natural. With anyone else, it just doesn't feel the same.
| I much prefer the pre-recorded videos now.
| yreg wrote:
| Steve was great at it, but maybe all it takes is for the
| presenter to be passionate about the thing they are
| presenting.
|
| Elon is a terrible live speaker and yet I think his
| keynotes are pretty good. Also, we've all made fun of
| Steve Ballmer, but he was good at this as well.
|
| Meanwhile, listening to Tim or Sundar is much less
| captivating. Perhaps if Tim could do a presentation about
| optimizing supply chains he would do much better than
| when he's at presenting iPad games.
| ghaff wrote:
| Cook is not really a natural. He makes up for it by
| throwing in a lot of incredibles and amazings and it
| often feels pretty forced.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I feel the same way. The new Apple videos are supremely
| well-produced. Of course there's something special about
| the absolute best of those live presentations (Jobs'
| original iPhone announcement is an all-timer), but there
| are way more live presentations that are far from
| memorable.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| the low points of the live presentations are memorable
| too - like the iPod HiFi!
| MBCook wrote:
| It really was an event for the magazine era. As they lost
| importance, and easily showing video became possible, it was on
| borrowed time.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I remember when different magazines would get different
| exclusive screenshots for the PS2's Spiderman 2, and I would
| log in every single day to a BBS forum in the internet cafe
| to see if someone had uploaded the screenshot.
| nightski wrote:
| It really isn't though. The video game awards are pretty huge.
| It just wasn't managed well.
|
| This is more a product of Sony & Microsoft not only buying all
| the studios but also then wanting to have their own showcases
| and not have compete with each other on stage.
|
| To me this all kind of started back in E3 2013 when the PS4 &
| Xbox One were being unveiled.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| They could have adapted to the modern era instead of getting
| wiped out.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I don't agree at all. The Video Game Awards from last week was
| critiqued for being mostly previews of upcoming games.
|
| E3 was poorly managed.
| starburst wrote:
| > mostly previews of upcoming games
|
| It's the reason 99% of the viewers watch it
| rvba wrote:
| How can you give an award to an upcoming game? By
| definition that game is not finished yet...
| sylens wrote:
| The awards are for games that have come out over the past
| year. But they're juxtaposed by trailers and
| announcements for new games that will release in the next
| year or two.
|
| To be fair, it's really the inverse - it's a majority
| trailer/announcement showcase with some video game awards
| in the middle.
| Insanity wrote:
| Kinda sad for nostalgic reasons, as I haven't actually been
| excited about E3 in the past 10 years or so.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Makes sense - the gaming industry, like Hollywood, has gone full
| monetization. A lot of the stuff is generic.
|
| Why attend? Many AAA games are basically just rehashes.
| dingnuts wrote:
| This is a particularly weird take for me this year, when I've
| been absolutely snowed under with good games to play. There are
| more high quality gaming hours available to me, just from this
| year, than I have available to play them. It's hard for me to
| remember a better year for gaming in the last quarter century,
| as far as new releases are concerned
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah, same.
|
| There have never been this many good games coming out in a
| year. There also is more Call of Duty and FIFA garbage than
| ever, but I haven't found it hard to simply ignore it?
|
| I think The Game Awards is a good refutation of this
| argument. They showed off a ton of upcoming stuff, most of
| which wasn't just FIFA/CoD AAA shovelware. A good
| demonstration that you can advertise all the other stuff too.
|
| I think the real argument is that E3 was industry captured,
| had become a mouthpiece for the giants, and it was time for
| it to go.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It would be interesting for you to list titles, because I
| share the OP's sentiment that this year has been largely
| uninteresting for gaming. I've had exactly three games which
| I cared about: Like a Dragon Ishin, LaD Gaiden, and Baldur's
| Gate 3. Good games all, but not exactly a barn burning year.
| coldpie wrote:
| Sure, here's some highlights from this year for me: Street
| Fighter 6, Sea of Stars, Ghost Song (technically late 2022,
| but I'm counting it), Super Mario Wonder, Octopath Traveler
| 2, Void Stranger, Oxenfree 2, Age of Empires 2 (on Xbox).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Thanks for that. Looking at that list, I wonder if the
| reason that I've felt underwhelmed is because of my
| backlog. For example I actually kind of forgot about Sea
| of Stars and OT 2 (both games I do want to play), because
| I have so many JRPGs in my backlog already that I can't
| throw more onto the pile.
| jerf wrote:
| If by "backlog" you are referring to the mere brute fact
| that you have a bunch of games you haven't played, fine.
|
| If by "backlog" your mental model includes even a _hint_
| of obligation... drop it. You have no obligation to
| games. You have no obligation to play them, you have no
| obligation to finish them if you start. They 're just
| sunk costs. If they happen to be what you want to do,
| great, but if what you _really_ want to do tonight is
| drop $30 on some new (to you) game and go to town, all
| that is costing you is $30 and the relevant time. It is
| not costing you $30, the relevant time, _and_ the moral
| failure of betraying your backlog, because the latter
| does not exist. It is not costing you any more because
| you "wasted" the money acquiring your backlog, because,
| again, it is sunk cost.
|
| Yes, it's obvious when I say it, but if you're anything
| like me (and most other people I see) it takes a few very
| deliberative passes at training your subconscious to
| really get this.
|
| The good news, breaking yourself of sunk cost fallacy can
| directly pay off in your job, too. It's a pernicious
| little mistake that can sneak up on you, and it's one of
| the things that divides the engineers from the business
| folk in your company... and I gotta tell you, even as an
| engineer and with all sympathy to engineers, the business
| folk are 100% in the right on this one.
|
| (Additionally, once you really internalize this, you'll
| also find yourself less inclined to buy something just
| because it's on a killer deal. The marginal value of
| adding one more game to my list of games I can play in
| the future for $0 may not be even $1 once I've already
| got a couple dozen such great $0 choices.)
| coldpie wrote:
| Agree with all this. One additional thing for me is I
| think it's fun to be playing a game while it's hot and
| part of "the conversation", rather than after everyone
| has moved on to something else and I'm just playing
| catchup. Just another point in favor of forgetting the
| concept of a backlog entirely.
| swyx wrote:
| Spider-man 2? Breath of the Wild 2?
| coldpie wrote:
| They're not to my tastes, but if you're into them, then
| sure, yeah! Lots of good stuff this year.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| The two big hits for me this year have been Baldur's Gate
| and Armored Core. Both are by devs with a good track
| record. But I can definitely see the argument that there is
| a lot of samey crap. Activision seems to be on an annual
| release cadence for Call of Duty now. Its already come full
| circle by remaking the modern warfare trilogy. Starfield
| was a disappointment, Bethesda seems stuck in 2003. There's
| the endless stream of sports titles which really should be
| their own category of entertainment. They are so divorced
| from the rest of the video game market.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Everyone seems to have forgotten Hogwarts: Legacy was this
| year too.
|
| Maybe not to your taste, but over 15m copies sold, second
| highest single player game of all time on Steam after
| Cyberpunk and very strong reviews (89% aggregate on
| opencritic).
| fckgw wrote:
| 2023 was the best year for gaming in decades, what are you
| talking about?
| coldpie wrote:
| The OP got old. Happens to all of us. Some accept it better
| than others.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I guess it depends on the kind of games you like or follow.
| For example, the Elder Scrolls last release, Skyrim (2011),
| has been milked and re-released seven times, the last one in
| 2021. Meanwhile the fans keep expecting an Elder Scrolls VI
| soon(TM).
|
| There are good new games, but there is also a growing
| attitude in big game studios to low-risk cash in old
| franchises.
| erulabs wrote:
| I mean, the studio you're referring to just launched a huge
| new IP this year. It wasn't very good, but you can't accuse
| Bethesda of "low-risk cash in" when they just released a
| brand new title this year.
| endisneigh wrote:
| To each their own obviously, but look at the Game of the Year
| nominees - all sequels, and even a remaster.
|
| Baldurs Gate is good, but it's really not that much different
| than Divinity original sin.
|
| Nothing is wrong with games being similar, same thing
| happened with movies. It's just formulaic imo.
| fidotron wrote:
| Indeed. I think it is even tempting to suggest video gaming may
| be in trouble, after a multi decade long technology advancement
| enabled cambrian explosion of possibilities, now it has settled
| into the narrowest field ever seen.
|
| The last time it was remotely like this was the brown first
| person shooter phase circa 2005, but yet another walkfest with
| super high production values is no more interesting. If you
| happen to be into that stuff it is a golden age, but that is
| like saying the Marvel era of cinematic domination was a great
| thing.
|
| The question really becomes if games were ever interesting to
| the mass market as games at all, or merely proxies for
| technological experimentation or storytelling, both of which
| can be done by other means.
| password54321 wrote:
| > now it has settled into the narrowest field ever seen.
|
| Funny, I just played a game where you carry worlds within
| worlds and leap between them. And that's the tip of the
| iceberg of the games coming out these days.
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1497440/COCOON/
| dota_fanatic wrote:
| _> now it has settled into the narrowest field ever seen._
|
| That's a hot take. It's never been a better time to be a
| gamer. In addition to most of the gaming backlog being
| available via emulation, it's never been easier for a small
| number of people to build a great game. So long as you're not
| extremely picky there's more good games to play than time to
| play them.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Eh, I'd put an asterisk on the "never been easier for a
| small number of people to build a great game" comment. On
| one hand, what can be achieved by an individual with
| today's engines is indisputably incredible relative to what
| was possible in the past. On the other hand, expectations
| from players have also had a pretty huge runaway explosion
| as well, meaning the ability for a small team to achieve
| commercial success is more of a mixed bag.
|
| It obviously still happens. Lethal Company is a great
| example of that (1 developer, currently the top seller on
| Steam), but compared to the DOOM/Myst/etc era where ALL
| games were developed by small teams it's harder to
| establish a niche.
| kranke155 wrote:
| of course it is, but the industrialisation of games seems
| inevitable. You had craft workshops then, with 10-30
| people, now you have factories like Ubisoft making yearly
| releases of whatever game they can (Assassins Creed, Far
| Cry, etc)
|
| The fact that Steam exists and dominates the industry
| however, was not inevitable, and its incredible that we
| have things like Early Access and other tools to enable
| smaller developers to carve out their niche!
| fluoridation wrote:
| No, the problem is not expectations. There's a viable
| market for pretty much anything. The problem small
| developers face is not so much finding a market, but
| rather being able to be seen. Since it's so easy to make
| games nowadays, the indy market is flooded with titles.
| If you go browsing through Steam it's not too hard to
| find games that will appeal to you, but that you just
| never heard of. If the AAA studios are analogous to
| Hollywood, then the indy studios are analogous to
| YouTubers.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Interestingly, the video game industry has regularly grossed
| more than both the movie industry and the music industry
| combined[0][1] since at least 2019.
|
| I can't seem to find the relevant article, but esports is now
| topping viewership of other sporting events (e.g. the
| SuperBowl). I'm sure eventually, there will be monteization
| models that follow and it will inevitably be grossing more
| too.
|
| If anything, it seems like video games are still on the
| upward trend, and the narrowing is somewhat natural to the
| maturity of the industry. AAA titles need to gross _alot_ to
| be profitable, and they stick to well traveled areas most of
| the time, however one thing I have observed that the video
| game industry has that the movie industry is lacking is a far
| more flourishing indie side to the industry[2], such as Yact
| Club Games or the folks behind Undertale
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46746593
|
| [1]: Mind you, the BBC article is from 2019, you can search
| for current year and get even wider gaps between the video
| game industry and the movie / music industry
|
| [2]: With a proper addendum here, that its still, like acting
| in a movie, ridiculously hard to make it as a indie
| developer. Still, there is a flourishing of indie game
| developers
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Thinking about the difference in scale and scope between a
| AAA 3D HD real-time shootfest and a small 2d Visual Novel,
| I wonder if the problem with Indie movies is that we don't
| consider things like Youtube videos et al to qualify.
| password54321 wrote:
| Not really, The Game Awards just took over.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| TGA is full-on monetization. This year's TGA spent more time
| on paid game previews and advertisements than it did on the
| awards. Hideo Kojima was given more time to preview his
| upcoming game than _all of the winners ' speeches combined._
|
| The breakdown of the show:
|
| 1% announcing the nominees and winners
|
| 1% speeches by the winners
|
| 10% Hideo Kojima
|
| 10% other celebrities
|
| 78% ads and game previews
| starburst wrote:
| The award part is worst part of the game award and
| personally one of the reason I watch it is especially to
| see a Kojima premiere and I wasn't disappointed when he
| announced he was going to collaborate with Jordan Peele.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| I mean, E3 was a business tradeshow. That's why people like
| me who never went have rose colored glasses, because we
| didn't see how dry it was, just the press show excitement
| leaked to us. It was retailers and publishers making shelf
| space deals and some annoucement press conferences. A lot
| of the industry cross pollenation was taken up by GDC for
| devs, and I'm not sure how it is these days but I went to
| Penny Arcade Expo in 2015 and it felt very much like the
| indies and fan conventions. Pandemic changed things, but
| I"m not sure how these expos are these days.
| thrillgore wrote:
| If they aren't rehashes, they're broken, unfinished, or
| underwhelming. BG3 was a welcome anomaly. The norm in
| Generation 8 has been that AAA releases just plain suck, or are
| buggy.
| gopher2000 wrote:
| That's not why. E3 lost out to the big game publishers doing
| their own events. And so it lacked purpose. I also don't think
| it adjusted well to COVID.
|
| The Game Awards has a similar but different format with a
| clearer purpose. And it is thriving and has largely replaced
| the games aspect of E3.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I disagree - the game awards is just as much if not even more
| promotion than E3.
|
| Look at console sales, says it all.
| gertlex wrote:
| I remember circa 2005 that E3 seemed to be on its last legs?
| Maybe it paused for a couple years. Particularly, in English
| class, there was some prompt (possibly involving time travel)
| where my answer was "It would be cool to go to E3 in 2020" or
| something like that, and the student teacher dude thought it was
| a cool idea and explained E3 to the class...
|
| I haven't paid any attention to E3 since then, though! (I also
| just never tried to keep up with playing the latest games,
| either.)
| michaelt wrote:
| I too thought E3 died decades ago, so I looked it up.
|
| Turns out in ~2007 E3 decided they were a industry event for
| industry people, so they made it invitation-only and cut the
| attendance from 70,000 to 5,000
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20060811192744/http://arstechnic...
| kaon123 wrote:
| On the positive side, Gamescom has been on the rise for a while,
| together with other more local gaming events. It shows how the
| focus of a live event changed from bringing news, to providing
| entertainment to hundreds of thousands of cosplayers and fans.
| With maybe some "news" on the side, which then becomes available
| on Youtube 5 minutes after.
| davexunit wrote:
| The Video Game History Foundation uploaded an archive of E3 2000
| show floor footage last week. It's quite the time capsule. The
| cleverly deceptive MGS2 trailer is in it! Also many things "best
| left in 2000".
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SekM6yD26Qc
| xnorswap wrote:
| E3 2000 had one of the greatest trailers ever made for a game
| that would never be released:
|
| Halo.
|
| The e3 2000 trailer was when it was under development as a PC
| title, prior to the buy out of Bungie by Microsoft, after which
| (?) it became an xbox exclusive.
| reaperman wrote:
| > a game that would never be released
|
| Halo was released to Xbox in 2001 and by 2003 both a MacOS
| and Windows port were released. "Delayed" maybe, but
| definitely not "never released".
|
| I played quite a bit of Halo on PC in high school with my
| friends, sneaking into a nearby university computer lab and
| usurping it as a LAN party room. For some reason those
| Windows machines all had Halo pre-installed on them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo:_Combat_Evolved
| rightbyte wrote:
| It was not the same game as the PC version they initially
| were making though.
| jacobsimon wrote:
| Believe it or not - it was actually meant to be an
| exclusive for Mac before Microsoft acquired it. Here's
| Steve Jobs kicking off the demo in 1999:
| https://youtu.be/6eZ2yvWl9nQ?feature=shared
| nsxwolf wrote:
| 2005 was the year I noticed it was becoming irrelevant. I had
| traveled thousands of miles to stand in line to be the first to
| see new games, and while standing in those lines, friends back
| home would text me talking about the trailer they just watched on
| the internet.
| Andrex wrote:
| All those friends were wishing they could play the game as you
| were about to, though. It's not like pre release demos were
| _that_ big (yes magazines came with CDs, but those were rare as
| far as I remember).
| ryandrake wrote:
| Sad news. I fondly, but vaguely, remember road tripping from
| Pennsylvania to Atlanta in 1997 with a bunch of university
| buddies and other Doom/Quake addicts we connected with online.
| Someone in the group knew someone who knew someone and somehow we
| all found ourselves with "press" badges. If I recall correctly,
| that gave us access to some shit not available to the general
| public. I don't know, it was almost 30 years ago. 3DFX and Tomb
| Raider were everywhere. Fun times in a simpler less-immediately
| connected world.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| Ah man, I remember that one specifically! I grew up around
| there and begged my parents to take me. They were probably
| gonna do it too but then my little brother was born right
| around that time.
|
| Looking back, I'm not even sure we could've gotten in but that
| was a DREAM for a kid back then.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Yup. At the time there was a local video game program aimed
| at kids that one year ran a contest where the prize was a
| trip to that year's E3. It was like the Disneyland of video
| games.
| boogieknite wrote:
| Very stupid, funny video from the last minutes of the last E3 in
| 2019 where this character Bugs Bunnys around trying to squeeze as
| much fun as possible out of the place while everyone's breaking
| down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsH0s2_S_Ck
| sdenton4 wrote:
| That's not just any character... It's Tim Rogers, purveyor of
| fine six-hour game reviews.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=779coR-XPTw
| zogrodea wrote:
| Is gaming big among tech people and software engineers?
|
| I did (while 18 and younger) play video games for most days of my
| life, with it being the main thing I did on holidays and also
| after school on school days, but I kind of lost interest for the
| most part after I turned 19 (not looking down on others who play
| them at all).
|
| I remember my university (for tech fields like CS) had a room for
| LAN parties and also had a Discord (mostly a gaming-related chat
| platform?) set up by one lecturer for informal chat.
|
| I'm not entirely sure what relationship our industry (most here
| are coders in some capacity?) has with gaming and would like to
| see others' thoughts.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yes, gaming is big among people who work in tech (software
| engineers, sysadmins, etc). It's uncommon to be working in tech
| and not be a gamer, in my experience. Not unheard of by any
| means, but not the majority either.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I gamed a lot as a kid and much less as an adult, though it
| took a bit longer for me to put it down than you did. I'd say
| that video games are what got me into computers; I wanted to be
| a game developer as a child. I never really took to straight
| software development though; I'm more of a devops type these
| days, and I'm frankly a bit glad to have avoided the gaming
| industry because I'm not particularly happy with what it seems
| to have largely become. That said, there are still some smaller
| studios doing impressive, innovative work and it's very cool to
| see that.
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| I found my interest in video games died when I started working.
| Whatever button in my brain video games were pushing is now
| being pushed by the day job and I get paid for it.
| lukeasch21 wrote:
| I'm curious, if you don't mind me asking what field of work
| are you in?
| uvesten wrote:
| You know, shooting demons, solving mysteries, jumping over
| koopas, that kind of thing...
| photonbeam wrote:
| My company is hiring, we're looking for a rockstar koopa
| jumper
| x86a wrote:
| To add a datapoint, I also gamed a lot (18 and younger) but
| quit when I started my SWE career some 15 years ago. Have not
| had a desire to play since then.
| ghaff wrote:
| I probably played mostly though never voraciously in my 20s--
| I was never really much of a console gamer and PCs didn't
| really exist earlier to any great degree. I sometimes still
| dabble--like I was into the Wii sports games for a while--but
| I basically grew out of it more than not. I think that's a
| pretty common pattern for a lot of people. What I do still
| play is mostly on mobile when I travel.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I was a huge console gamer in my teens, then transitioned into
| a PC gamer in my young adult years (helped by the yo-ho
| attitude of the era), then became aware of the scene and have
| pretty much treated any AAA title as guaranteed spyware trash
| until it gets cracked and (fitgirl) repacked.
|
| I play maybe a game a year, where I basically do not sleep for
| a week, use/develop trainers to get past the grind-ey aspects
| of the gameplay, and essentially finish the game for the plot,
| as fast as possible so that I can resume my normal work life of
| unpaid overtime.
|
| I keep up with interesting games by watching good youtubers
| like Jacob Gellar[0], but essentially I don't really play any
| small indie games, with the exception of Dwarf Fortress...
| though I mostly just like to read the colourful dev blog[1]
| instead of playing it.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMGEjgYJhEc
|
| 1: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
| groovybits wrote:
| I've worked in tech for a number of years. I think I'm in the
| same boat as you. However, I can confidentially say that
| videogames were merely a conduit to social experiences with
| friends. i.e. you wouldn't find me grinding a game by myself
| just for the sake of getting good. For my friend group, that
| was consoles in our teens, and PC in our early 20s.
|
| I've mostly given up on traditional PC gaming. I have a
| Nintendo Switch and a Steam Deck. I use the Deck occasionally
| to play games that aren't available on Switch, but otherwise
| the Switch is preferred, because it enables social
| interactions so easily.
|
| Now that I'm reaching mid-life, I cringe at the thought of
| taking time off work to play a game. If it means that much to
| you, more power to you. Apparently I've separated from the
| hardcore gamer scene.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I'd say gaming is similar to sports in that it's an easy way to
| find common ground with other men when speaking casually, at
| least in my Zoomer cohort.
| saberience wrote:
| Assuming this question is asked in good faith. I find it hard
| to believe you could work in the tech industry and not realize
| that a lot of your co-workers probably play games. Unless
| you're just the type who doesn't ever speak to people.
|
| I'ved worked in tech for 20+ years at this point and every tech
| company I've worked at had gamers across all departments but
| usually programmers/engineers have a much higher percentage of
| being gamers. Every tech company I've worked at has some area
| with consoles hooked up to TVs for playing Fifa or Mario Kart
| type multiplayer games. Most of those companies also had one or
| two arcade machines too. And then every company has some
| internal groups/communities for gamers. Even the most serious
| and least "gamey" of the companies I worked for (a financial
| tech company) had internal communities for Dota 2 and
| Valorant...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I would go further and state that many probably owe gaming
| for their tech career. In the dark ages, installing and
| running a game could take significant technical effort.
| Scouring forums and looking for magical configuration or
| patches that could make it work. That technical knowledge
| builds upon itself.
| no_wizard wrote:
| when games were far more open to supporting mods and had
| big communities around it, its where I first cut my teeth
| programming in earnest without even realizing it.
|
| At some point, the programming became more fun than the
| playing for me
| zogrodea wrote:
| I'm disappointed there was any doubt that my question was
| asked in good faith! I do regret the obsession I had with
| video games when younger because of the huge time sink I put
| in, but I only see that as a me-problem (others likely have a
| healthier relationship with it).
|
| Thanks for sharing your experience though. That's interesting
| news to me. I talk with coworkers occassionally, but games
| don't come up (and neither do other interests outside of
| work).
| gopher2000 wrote:
| > I do regret the obsession I had with video games when
| younger because of the huge time sink I put in
|
| Don't regret time spent doing something you enjoy. So as
| long as you enjoyed it, feel good about it.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Opportunity cost is real.
| shmoogy wrote:
| Try to not do this to yourself too much. Everybody needs
| an outlet, and you can't beat yourself up for spending
| time relaxing or enjoying instead of hustling with a side
| gig or something.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I'm not beating myself up. I'm consciously choosing to
| engage in productive and enriching hobbies, while
| refusing to rationalize away those that are time wasting.
| shaneoh wrote:
| What are those hobbies?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Reading non-fiction, writing open-source software, taking
| continuing education classes at my local university,
| learning foreign languages, self-study, volunteering,
| travel.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| What makes any of those things more or less valuable than
| playing a video game?
|
| Volunteering, sure, but the rest are just as self
| indulgent as any other pass time. Just because _you_
| value them higher doesn 't mean you should discount the
| things that other people do to enjoy themselves.
| tycho-newman wrote:
| In our intensely competitive capitalist society, gaming
| has a low expected utility. It also doesn't usually
| reinforce skills that make you more employable. You also
| usually don't get a salary or remuneration.
|
| The elitist in me wants to say games are little more than
| hi-res Skinner boxes. But properly applied, games can
| teach us strategy, reason, and problem solving. Is that
| why I play God of War? No. I play it because KRATOS SMASH
| shaneoh wrote:
| That's cool! I do all of those things as well, minus the
| uni classes and open-source. But for someone who has no
| interest in travel, then learning foreign languages would
| be a waste of time. I personally consider writing open-
| source software a waste of my time because it would be
| taking away from my closed-source side project ventures.
|
| You can totally min/max your entire life and only do
| things for self-improvement, but then to what end? What
| do you expect to derive out of the continuing education
| classes that is going to be significantly valuable to
| your life/career?
|
| I think it's important to note that many people are
| actually quite satisfied with their position in life, a
| lot of us are making a lot of money engaging in
| interesting work, so at a certain point doing things for
| the sake of minimizing opportunity cost comes with
| diminishing returns as you've already made the most of
| the opportunities you've already had. The whole point of
| working hard is to reach some stage of life where you can
| actually reap the rewards and have the time and resources
| to enjoy yourself however you please without worrying
| about it.
| dbmikus wrote:
| I don't consider playing video games time wasting. If
| they were, then watching movies is time wasting, enjoying
| art is time wasting, playing board games or sports with
| friends is time wasting.
|
| Certainly, an addiction to gaming is bad, as is playing
| games too much to the detriment of the rest of your life.
| Ultimately, everyone should do what they find enjoyable
| in the moment that they will simultaneously not regret
| later in life. Totally understand if video games fall
| under that category for you, but I dispute them as "time
| wasting" as a general statement.
| zogrodea wrote:
| Opportunity cost is definitely one thing I had in mind.
| Other than that, my peers were committed to various
| things like fundraising for charitable organisations,
| doing something good by serving people in one way or
| another, voluntarily taking up responsibilities or just
| becoming a more well-rounded person by spending their
| time doing various things instead of just one thing.
|
| While they all did that, I just stayed at home playing
| games instead and acted like the sole purpose of life was
| to enjoy myself which is something worth regretting (and
| happy I've made some progress since then).
| fluoridation wrote:
| It's not. Every instant of your life you're making
| choices that lock you out of opportunities. To claim that
| you're able to measure the opportunity cost of your
| current path is to claim that you're able to know the
| path that would have led to the greatest reward and
| measure that reward. At best you could say that _in
| hindsight_ a previous choice you made was suboptimal.
| beltsazar wrote:
| > Don't regret time spent doing something you enjoy.
|
| This common saying is harmful and borderline hedonistic.
| Not all enjoyable activities are good activities. Should
| ex-smokers not regret their past smoking habit, then?
|
| Everything must be in moderation. Playing video games,
| watching movies, and binging TV shows are great for
| unwinding after work. But if you do them too much, they
| can disrupt your life.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I work in startups, and literally not a single one of my
| coworkers plays games. Maybe it depends a lot on your field
| or company?
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| As an anecdote that is completely contrary to yours. I also
| recently worked in startups (within the last year), and
| practically single person in the founding team I worked
| alongside was an avid gamer.
|
| I think the proportion of gamers in the tech sphere vs
| others is likely overall higher than the norm. I do
| honestly find it hard to believe others don't think gaming
| is common in tech.
|
| On my current team in a definitely non-startup corporate-y
| atmosphere, even many of the devs well into their 40s and
| above are avid gamers to this day. Meanwhile I'm 30 and
| while I don't play very often anymore I definitely was one
| as a teen into my early 20's.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It is. Some games I completed in the last few years: Cyberpunk
| 2077, Horizon, Mass Effect series, Max Payne, Deus Ex, Alan
| Wake...
|
| My 30-40ish friends and colleges also play casually or actively
| and they are in tech.
| koito17 wrote:
| The replies to this comment surprise me a bit. I'm in a similar
| situation as you. I used to play video games all the time as a
| teenager. When I went to university, I stopped playing at all.
| In hindsight, it was a mix of inconvenience (I wouldn't dare to
| bring a desktop to a tiny dorm, and good luck playing on a
| laptop!) and the fact that I wanted to try many things that
| were new to me at the time. Even then, I still lack motivation
| to try downloading and play a game. None of my coworkers seem
| to play games regularly either. There are plenty of social
| activities one can do that isn't gaming.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >None of my coworkers seem to play games regularly either.
|
| Are you sure? Since you don't game, I imagine you normally
| don't ask people what they've been playing lately. Just
| because they don't bring it (or don't bring it up when you're
| around) doesn't mean they don't play games when they're
| alone.
|
| >There are plenty of social activities one can do that isn't
| gaming.
|
| What a strange thing to say, especially since I can replace
| the last word with just about anything and the idea remains
| equally true. Are you saying to you an activity has no
| significance or importance (or at least not enough) if it
| doesn't have a social component? I'm not trying to be
| combative, just trying to understand your point of view.
| gopher2000 wrote:
| I would feel very confident saying that the percentage of
| gamers is higher among tech people than people in general. It's
| easy to point to pretty direct relationships with tech and
| gaming - and with overlapping cultures.
| racl101 wrote:
| I find a lot of millennial devs like me are old, have
| responsibilities, kids, a family, barely have time to game.
|
| I bought a PS5, only own one game and I barely play with it. I
| just have either no time or little energy to play. I wanna get
| Spider-man 2, but I know I'd just end up not playing it.
|
| Now the Nintendo Switch is another thing. I still play it quite
| a bit, especially the Zelda game. It's just so easy and
| convenient to pick up anywhere anytime.
|
| It boots up quickly and it's just so convenient.
|
| And that's it. That's life for a lot of us, squeezing in gaming
| here and there whenever there's time, whenever the wife gives
| the go ahead or whenever you've tackled your day-to-day
| responsibilities.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| As a millenial devs with kids, the switch is really the only
| reason I game for what you mentioned. Quick, easy and
| convenient. Also, my son is of the age of playing video games
| (7) and the switch just has good games to play two player
| with him on. (Time honored tradition of kicking the kids butt
| in Mario Kart).
| codexb wrote:
| There are a lot of tech people and programmers in the game
| industry and in game-industry-adjacent industries (like mocap,
| lidar, etc), especially around LA. A lot of that work is
| somewhat thankless, but getting industry-only passes to E3 was
| a one of the few cool perks, especially back when E3 was off-
| the-walls with porn stars and insane swag.
| timack wrote:
| I'm surprised this has been asked. The majority of sw engineers
| I have worked with over the past 20+ years have been gamers.
| I'd prepared to go out on a limb and say the most effective and
| productive people I have worked with have tended to have been
| the biggest gamers.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| I'd love to see E3 in the future be a more community driven event
| with a focus on A/AA games. People still want to see and attend
| these events, and there's tons and tons of good games that get
| released every year that go unnoticed.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Sad to see. At its peak the dueling press conferences was
| enormously exciting and made for a week of high energy, "must see
| tv" type energy where you had to be there online in the moment to
| really experience it in the best way.
|
| The era of "Megaton" announcements is long over at this point.
| Still there is the potential to be surprised by an announcement,
| but it'll be in some pre-recorded direct video with less instant
| response from journalists* or the competition.
|
| * I mean sadly hand in hand with the death of E3 game journalism
| has been dying out for years and years too as print media died
| and the industry died.
| thrillgore wrote:
| It took a few years, but COVID has claimed its biggest victim
| yet.
|
| In the era of livestreams and corporate events, it had nowhere to
| go. ReedPop and the ESA could have tried numerous times to get
| consumer engagement up, by maybe offering demos of what was on
| the showfloor. But that never happened.
|
| Hopefully smaller events like Gamescom, Paris Games Week,
| Siegecon, etc take time to look at where E3 failed, and aim to
| improve engagement with the consumer base. Of which to me, at
| least, feels a bit aimless due to the sorry state of games
| released in Generation 8.
| x3sphere wrote:
| I think E3 was on its way out regardless. Nintendo dropped out
| of E3 years before COVID even happened. I attended a few years
| and it seemed like the bigger publishers such as Activision
| kept downsizing their presence at the event. COVID accelerated
| things for sure, but I imagine the end result would be the
| same.
| latentcall wrote:
| Very sad. I remember watching coverage of the events when I was a
| kid on G4 TV (video game TV channel!) and being so excited to see
| all the new trailers. I would have friends come over and we would
| eat pizza and watch it all.
|
| Now everything is instant on YouTube or whatever, but that
| magical excitement is gone. The sense of community is gone too.
|
| Seeing the announcement of the Wii and waiting in line at Wal-
| Mart overnight for the release, cash in pocket.
|
| Good times. Hope we find that magical excitement again one day.
| theNewMicrosoft wrote:
| Well, at least we still have Tokyo Game Show.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Great in the "golden age" of gaming aka the 90s or early 2000s (
| debatable but not much :) )
|
| A lot of great things and also sins were committed, but
| realistically by the mid-00's the World wasn't the same and the
| Internet as a medium of news and promotion took over ( for the
| better and for the worse )
|
| E3 should have ended in ~2010, so.. good riddance. ( in a
| friendly way )
| NanoYohaneTSU wrote:
| Good. VGA should also die ASAP and will eventually.
|
| The Audience stays the same, but the Show changed. E3 was a trade
| show for developers, actual journalists, and the gamurz.
| Journalists decided to make politics fashionable for the world of
| gaming and so it did.
|
| E3 banned Booth Babes when their core audience was males. E3
| tightened up on what was going on behind the doors with the
| groupies. Technology and games stopped being revolutionary or
| edge and now it's safe. No more actual gaming icons, we need
| celebrities and influencers.
|
| This is the result of the mainstream industry adapting to
| SafeGaming only. SafeGaming isn't appealing to enthusiasts, just
| AAA gamers who continue to get taken for a ride.
|
| VGA is going to die when their politics decide to change, leaving
| their current audience behind. Always happens.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Wow, I'm a game developer and I hated E3 for almost the exact
| opposite reason. Booth babes are gross and happy to see them
| go. Celebrities and influencers can fuck right off.
|
| My first E3 opened my eyes to the disparity between the actual
| talent building the games 60 hours a week for $80k a year and
| money been thrown around for the publishing execs and marketing
| teams. The marketing budget wasn't being spent on carefully
| placed ads or thoughtful and creative campaigns, its blown on
| massive parties for the leaches and vampires.
| tyree731 wrote:
| This feels like the reason you'd like for E3 to have failed,
| but doesn't line up with the evidence. E3's attendance peaked
| in 2005, well before booth babes were banned and groupies were
| cracked down upon. It's decline started right as video
| streaming took off on the internet, and accelerated as
| companies like Activision and Sony began pulling out of the
| event, making it less and less relevant or useful.
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| Do people really go to video game shows? I mean, seriously.
|
| I can understand conferences for books/tv shows, as you can
| discuss the story etc with other people, ask the writers about
| next books/shows etc.
|
| does gaming lend itself to that? I wouldn't think so. But I am an
| old fart in my 40s so :shrug:
| kodt wrote:
| The video game industry is larger than the Film, Music, Book,
| or TV industries. It's hugely popular with passionate fans, I
| would say yes.
| impulser_ wrote:
| No surprise. The big platforms, Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo,
| have a lot of studios under them now that they all have decided
| it was better just to do their own yearly show.
|
| And now there are quite a bit of similar showcases for indie and
| PC games that it probably not worth spending the time and money
| making a big show like E3 was.
| CM30 wrote:
| At the end of the day, the big thing that killed it was that
| companies realised they didn't need a massive event in the middle
| of summer to advertise their games, and could run their own
| events year around. Stuff like Nintendo Directs, State of Plays
| and Xbox Game Showcases can be held at fairly short notice, are
| much cheaper than hiring out part of a hall and have less that
| can go wrong than a stage presentation would.
|
| When the only news sources are magazines and physical media and
| the internet isn't as big of a deal, something like E3 makes
| sense. In the modern era of YouTube and Twitch and livestreams?
| Not so much.
|
| Pre Covid the whole networking and meeting other developers and
| publishers aspect kept it going, but once everyone was locked in
| and events were cancelled, well it was basically just a more
| expensive Direct or something.
|
| So sadly, it's no surprise it's finally died off.
| mushufasa wrote:
| We're in an industry with tons of trade conferences and
| sponsorships drive a lot of ROI. For us the value of the
| conference is really a marketplace; a place to meet customers and
| a place for customers to meet vendors (b2b).
|
| I guess big conferences for consumer business make less sense;
| conferences-as-PR. It's not like Sony sales are going to be
| meaningful by meeting people directly at the conference.
| Cypher wrote:
| go woke go broke.
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