E3 is no longer useful as a trade show.
Granted, I'm not the first person to say this; its not an original thought by any means. The signal-to-titties ratio of E3 has been declining precipitously for a long time now, and most developers you talk to in private see it as a mix of painful chore and an opportunity to get hammered with old friends afterwards. They go to GDC to do technical stuff; E3 is the brainchild of the marketers alone. Nobody on the development side of the fence sees it as a serious event.
Now, even its media value is in question.
I have been to E3 six times- by now, I am very familiar with its subtleties, or what few of those there are to speak of. There was a time when having a media badge at E3 would let you cut through all the bullshit, steer a course through fanboys, and get some work done. Private appointments in the Concourse Hall and other private rooms would let you get some serious questions in without losing your voice, and developers could display their NDA-calibre products to you. The upstairs halls of E3, quiet and professional, well-regulated and scripted, were where the real business went on. Most people were in suits, there were no boothbabes, no assholes in Exhibits Only badges showing their employer to be Best Buy(!). It was where things got done, the marketing and media of the videogame industry. Sure, half of it was unmitigated bullshit, but it was professional.
Now, the assholes in the Best Buy, or EB Games, or CompUSA badges, retail monkeys who are the industry equivalent of burger flippers, are as thick as flies. The music is louder, the booth babes skankier and more numerous, the show floor less and less useful. Worse yet, the private hallways are becoming more and more hostile to media they are 'unfamiliar' with- and by that, I do not mean small, nor do I mean only to Corp writers. Corpnews is a medium-large website in the videogame industry now, and I am not the only media badge to have experienced outright hostility at my inability to name-drop at the front entrance to this or that booth. Companies like Vivendi and EA will ask for a name right off the bat before admitting you to their corporate Shangri La, Blizzard was running World of Warcraft media demos on the noisy show floor, and Nintendo did not even have enough press kits for all media, saying "We only give these out to major media outlets". Well, fantastic, I'll be sure to tell ABC's crack video game department to saunter on by and hear how you plan on not eating #3 dust in the next round of the console wars, smart guys.
The only legitimate purpose to E3 is as a media event, for companies to show off their products to the public via the media (after all, such a tiny sliver of the gaming public could go to E3, even if it was open to the public, that the press must inevitably mediate this process), and it is failing terribly at that. Companies are no longer courting the press, or even attempting to develop new contacts among them; now, it is an established siege war between giant website network and shitty magazines, and arrogant companies who divulge the merest crumbs and act as if this were a thunderous pronouncement from Yahweh. Half of the media outlets in question have booths of their own, further blurring the line. Worse yet, the number of people who fundamentally should not be at E3, wearing badges from fabricated companies or retail outlets, continues to grow. The ESA trumpets the fact that 70,000 people are at the show, and the noisy and worthless show floor caters to these roaring crowds- but what is it all for? What point does this spectacle have? The ESA charges $350 a head, and booths run from $20-30 a square foot for floor space alone; is it all merely a cash grab at this point? How much does it cost to keep us updated on the latest in the futile war on piracy, and how do the member companies' membership dues not cover that? Does letting non-industry assholes run amok, standing in akward semi-circles with one hand in their pockets around prancing, half-naked women really add anything to the video game industry?
It was acceptable to me to have to put up with this crap when the media could get their work done, but when I have to fight my way through a crowd of gawking retail employees just to get an electronic press kit from a surly media representative, I have to ask myself what the purpose of E3 is anymore. It has jumped the shark, gone beyond thunderdome; it is an event adrift, devoid of purpose, soul, and merit.
It is neither fun, nor informative. There is no point to E3.
That said, I encourage show exhibitors, other members of the media, and the ESA to comment and discuss this issue. Let this become a point of debate.
The first smart-ass to tell me they've said this all before will get banned.
