Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) Finished?

[Slaughter]

Next Generation reports that sources within the industry reveals that E3 will be no more in it's present form:

Senior industry sources have revealed to Next-Gen.Biz that the E3 industry event, in its present form, has been cancelled for next year and the foreseeable future.

Good or bad if it is so?

 

[Zaij]

Article doesn't really tell us much, so it's hard to say.

 

[Metzer]

hmm i wonder why thed want to cancle it, it must be a big earner and advatisment for all the companys

 

[Brother None]

Wrong. Forum.

SUFFER MOVES!

 

[SuAside]

lol, ze hype factory dies? funny. can't really say i'm sad about it really.

Publishers believe the multi-million dollar budgets would be better spent on more company-focused events that bring attention to their own product lines rather than the industry as a whole.

euhm, how about spending those multi-million dollars on development (that actually includes game DESIGN) and QA?

 

[Slaughter]

A less dramatic version available at GameSpot.

 

[Roshambo]

Good, because the E3 hasn't existed as it was originally created for YEARS. Instead of being a technological EXPO to showcase new technologies and ideas to further the imagination and technological level of the industry, it has simply become an elitist marketing tool to showcase the next brand of unimaginative shit that has more polygons and bouncier tits than last year's unimaginative shit. While it has made the market lazy and stagnant, with developers treated as primadonnas.

I'm glad that kind of mentality will be gone. Maybe it will spur more US developers to go over to Japan to form a clue, who have shows that spank E3 rather soundly, almost on a monthly basis. Hell, some companies create their own expo levels in their business towers, open all the time, with much more imagination (though far less tit, US fanboy or booth babe) than E3 reps from US companies have shown in years.

This is a good thing.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

I'm glad that kind of mentality will be gone.

Do you really believe that, Rosh? I think this is just the publishers deciding to spend their money on more effective ways of generating hype, instead of spending it organising an event where other turds (or heck, even small independent companies with worthwhile games) would divert attention from their Shiny Piece of Shit™.

 

[Roshambo]

It could work one of two ways. It becomes more "elitist", with less scrutiny and more pedestal worship as developers have to bid on presence; or it could become more focused and with less bullshit given the more focused scrutiny.

Hopefully it will be more like a real expo now, with a number of entrants each given a set amount of space, and they have to decide what to do with it. They have to decide what to bring to the show, and compete imaginatively instead of vapid floor shows. No more buying out entire areas of the floor over other developers in order to overhype some garbage console shit. That was the key problem as of late, and this might be a fix for it.

 

[mortiz]

I think the whole Booth Babe phenomenon was perhaps the single most poignant aspect of the downfall of E3.

E3 completely lost focus, anyone and their grandma could get a pass and it simply became an event where the people could go to play a few games early instead of actually reporting on new games.

Good riddence to E3 in its current form I say, the industry is in a bad enough state as it is without E3 adding fuel to the fire that the games industry is still unprofessional and for "kids", as it is often seen from the outside.

I know that from first hand experience. When people ask me what I want to do and I tell them I want to work in the games industry they give me this little smile as if to say "Why don't you get a real job?".

 

[Roshambo]

I think the whole Booth Babe phenomenon was perhaps the single most poignant aspect of the downfall of E3.


E3 completely lost focus, anyone and their grandma could get a pass and it simply became an event where the people could go to play a few games early instead of actually reporting on new games.

Exactly, rather than as some reason for the expo, to showcase new technologies and advancements of the industry. E3 has become little more than a hype preview show.

Good riddence to E3 in its current form I say, the industry is in a bad enough state as it is without E3 adding fuel to the fire that the games industry is still unprofessional and for "kids", as it is often seen from the outside.

I know that from first hand experience. When people ask me what I want to do and I tell them I want to work in the games industry they give me this little smile as if to say "Why don't you get a real job?".

Amazing, for an industry in the US that has such a corporate mindset, that the US is now considered immature in the games development industry. Instead of being just for kids, the industry with the help of E3, has thrown quality and imagination away in lieu of shallow effects for shitty console games, and one of the biggest culprits was Bethesda.

The core problem resulted from numerous failure business majors flooding in over from the dotcom bust, scooped up by game publishers cheap because these dotcom majors have no other use in this world except McDonald's. I'd go so far as to include Pete Hines and any other PR spokesman hired after 1998 in this list, as if it doesn't take much to see that this child doesn't know shit about the industry's history or making games*, who looks like he graduated business and marketing school in time to be a spectacular dotcom failure, and then "earn" the position of "Vice President for PR and Marketing" when he couldn't bear salting the fries for the rest of his life while paying back the loans for the overpriced and shitty "business school". All who have the hype mentality, but like the dotcom, can't be bothered to feasibly produce quality work, or in many cases, any work at all. Or be honest.

These are the failures the games industry "inherited" from the dotcom bust, now advocating MMOGs and other stupid shit in the same market model used by marketing idiots who treat game development like high fashion or a dotcom investment convention, where the leaders are the only ones right.

We need to get rid of them, quickly, if the US industry is going to be respectable anymore.

* - From here.

Most of Bethesda’s games are released on PC and X-box. We’ve already seen that a complex RPG is possible on a console (cfr. Morrowind). Do you think an old-school RPG with lots of text and turn-based action like Fallout is going to appeal to, for instance, the average PS2 gamer?
Well, Morrowind had over a million words of text in the game, and given the great success of that game on a console, I don't think text is something that will make or break a game. And obviously turn-based combat has worked well on consoles, since KOTOR blew people away last year and FF has a very large and loyal following**. I think what we're finding out is that the stereotype of what a console gamer is, or what they want, isn't necessarily what it used to be. You can't define a game just by what features it has, you really have to define the experience. Some stuff works well on any platform because it's so brilliantly done, and some stuff won't work on any platform because it's the right features with the wrong implementation.

** About the only thing in this answer that Pete has said correctly, as the rest is just clueless shit, in particular what people expect from consoles. Yes, console-itis is starting to become a problem in PC development again, as it was in the mid-90's with the Nintendo affecting some stupid business majors. Now we have X-Box making the business majors even dumber than before, because the retards can't understand that the X-Box is pretty much only for the US market the publishers and developers have dumbed down through releasing insipid garbage.

Extra amusement, aside from "I don't think we could make a great game without staying true to Fallout.":

If you work for Bethesda, you must be an RPG lover. What type of character do you like to play in an RPG?
I usually play a kind of jack-of-all-trades. I'm always the good guy, dunno why that is. When the Fellowship of the Ring first came out I remember looking at Aragorn and saying, "there's my character, that's the guy I always play." Whenever I play party-based games, there's never enough room for all the characters I want to bring along. I like to have a little bit of everything, cover all my bases.

Too bad you can't play a JOAT class in Oblivion. Good one, Pete. Now only if you played the games you lie and hype about, you wouldn't be regarded as such a useless liar outside of the TES crowd.

 

[SuAside]

Whenever I play party-based games, there's never enough room for all the characters I want to bring along.

maybe that's because no one is willing to follow him around irl.

ow wait! scratch that. Beth's NPC party members are exactly as Pete's irl life: empty headed fanboys that follow him around!

Too bad you can't play a JOAT class in Oblivion. Good one, Pete. Now only if you played the games you lie and hype about, you wouldn't be regarded as such a useless liar outside of the TES crowd.

of course, there's a jack of all trades class, Roshambo... it's called cheating. you know, as an employee of Bethsoft, he can use developer mode without feeling guilty or bad about it!

 

[Metzer]

when Pete says there was over a million lines of text in TES:Morrowind dose he man in total or just what every character says cause half of the characters in that game say the same things no mater what you ask them.

you say "were is the theif's guild"

they say"i don't know but id stay away from that place if i was you!"

and thats what every person says in the game. it never differs they all say the same things over and over.

 

[Roshambo]

maybe that's because no one is willing to follow him around irl.

ow wait! scratch that. Beth's NPC party members are exactly as Pete's irl life: empty headed fanboys that follow him around!

Except for that in games, there's no fanboy smell.

of course, there's a jack of all trades class, Roshambo... it's called cheating. you know, as an employee of Bethsoft, he can use developer mode without feeling guilty or bad about it!

Of course, there has to be a mode mindless enough for him to understand.

Actually, that's not a cruel remark. We all saw what happened when Herve decided to hire on marketing folks from the dotcom bust.

when Pete says there was over a million lines of text in TES:Morrowind dose he man in total or just what every character says cause half of the characters in that game say the same things no mater what you ask them.

you say "were is the theif's guild"

they say"i don't know but id stay away from that place if i was you!"

and thats what every person says in the game. it never differs they all say the same things over and over.

A million lines of stock bullshit.

Pete is right. The amount of text doesn't matter when it's the weak garbage of Morrowind or Oblivion. It matters only if there's talent behind it, as Fallout and Planescape: Torment both have proven.

Yet another aspect of development Bethesda is in far over their head in regards to real RPG development. They certainly have helped piss down the meaning of "CRPG", and now they expect us to believe they can suddenly have the talent to do write for a title that exemplified the RPG genre? What is their answer? Vagueness and ambiguity, the resort of every developer who has their nuts in the media vise, and who is too cowardly or clueless to know how to proceed. In regards to Fallout, simply mentioning it is a dangerous game.

 

[Tagaziel]

Sir, the gunships are fueled, ready and await your orders to obliterate stupidity.

Now, seriously...

Roshambo, you are 100% right. while I do not posess your insight into the gaming industry, as a pretty much seasoned gamer, I can tell what I see: In the past few years, very little meaningful, ambitious or just well designed games were released, and the biggest drought exists in the cRPG field. Fallout set an example how a true cRPG should be made and Planescape: Torment confirmed it. Sadly, they are no more. Knights of The Old RepublicII: The Sith Lords came pretty close to this category, but lost a lot in the immersiveness factor due to cuts in the plot.

It's sad, that the dumbisation has such an impact. While a few years ago I can remember loads of great games, now I can only name a few.

*sigh*

Gotta dig up Homeworld.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

I swear, many simply fail to grasp the sheer brilliance of TES setting and narrative. They constantly bitch about "flaws" in NPC behaviour, not realizing that these imagined flaws aren't flaws at all, but important setting elements. For instance, in their malicious ignorance they fail to notice that all Morrowind NPCs give identical responses to same questions because they are in fact part of a massive collective consciousness a la Borg, whereas an Oblivion NPC will speak in multiple different voices because he or she suffers from dissociative identity disorder, undoubtedly a side-effect of the Emperor's death.

Really, all of you TES-haters should go back to fighting big green mutants in Fallout and other "RPGs" and leave the intricacies of Morrowind and Oblivion to people with sufficient intellect to appreciate them.

 

[Per]

Fallout set an example how a true cRPG should be made and Planescape: Torment confirmed it.

Even before that there was Wasteland, the perfect union of people who knew how to write and people who knew how to code. Built 100% on existing PnP RPG rules, and using words to create a more memorable world than most so-called RPGs since. What a concept...

 

[Brother None]

Suffer finds it unlikely that the gaming industry will change as long as its formulas "work". Suffer uses the term "work" rather haphazourdly.

The formula, basically summarized in releasing a stream of shitty games until one snatches and happens to be a hit, is pretty self-supporting. The hits pay for the countless failures, and thus it perpetuates.

How much does this resemble the old Bubble economy? Suffer is unsure, but one would say that the fact that the gaming industry is currently roughly the size of the movie industry "domestic" is a telltale sign that something is not exactly right. Of course the gaming industry does resemble the movie industry in the vicious cycle of marketing-over-quality and hits-support-failures, but the difference is that the movie industry is mature enough to realise realistic views of quality, sales and failures, which is why the movie industry is much better than the gaming industry at supporting those oddball moments of brilliance. Oddball moments mostly banned from the gaming industry.

I don't see the gaming industry model collapsing, by the simple logic that it works, economically, and we can make fun of Pete's knowledge of games all we want, but there seems little wrong with his marketing skills, going by Oblivion.

The best we can hope for is it maturing much like gaming industry has, realising the full potential of quality or cheap hits. Hell, one would've thought they figured it out in the 90's. The my memory, I might be wrong, one of the marketing guys involved with Planescape: Torment once said "Sales weren't great, but that was no big letdown. It was never considered a mainstream game."

THERE YOU GO. It's as simple as that. Replace your run-of-the-mill flops with quality games targeted at niche markets and you'll have exactly the same net result. Or slightly better!

Why has this not happened? Who knows. Rosh?

 

[Sander]

I don't see the gaming industry model collapsing, by the simple logic that it works, economically, and we can make fun of Pete's knowledge of games all we want, but there seems little wrong with his marketing skills, going by Oblivion.

Eh, I don't know. Marketing Oblivion can't have been that hard. The game relied mostly on the hype the gaming press created with the 'OMG, Morrowind!' shite and Pete dodging questions through most of its development. Once there were good-looking screens he started saying things, because he always had the screens to fall back on ('But Pete, that doesn't sound too...' 'Look, em, like, at the screenshot, em, look!'). The press did the marketing for him, basically, and he gave some interviews, explained how the developers were giving it everything because they attended a class on soil erosion (that's great PR material), and did some previews.
None of it too special or requiring that much effort to get out.

The best we can hope for is it maturing much like gaming industry has, realising the full potential of quality or cheap hits. Hell, one would've thought they figured it out in the 90's. The my memory, I might be wrong, one of the marketing guys involved with Planescape: Torment once said "Sales weren't great, but that was no big letdown. It was never considered a mainstream game."

THERE YOU GO. It's as simple as that. Replace your run-of-the-mill flops with quality games targeted at niche markets and you'll have exactly the same net result. Or slightly better!

Supposedly much better, since a quality niche game will generally sell a lot more than a crappy mainstream game.
Hell, Planescape made a profit, normal companies would consider that a sign to continue along that road.

Why has this not happened? Who knows. Rosh?

Because the gaming companies are conservative. If it ain't broke, don't fix it seems to be their motto. Which are solid words for investors, but crap words for us.

Also, some companies do take some leaps of fate. For instance, Blizzard bet all their money on World of Warcraft, had that tanked, they would've lost a shitload of money. And with some decent competition, that wouldn't even have been that weird.

 

[Roshambo]

Also, some companies do take some leaps of fate. For instance, Blizzard bet all their money on World of Warcraft, had that tanked, they would've lost a shitload of money. And with some decent competition, that wouldn't even have been that weird.

Heh...given their expansion, they're possibly going to eat a lot of the equipment investments if their IDIOTIC plans to have both sides have the realm-distinctive classes on both sides, as some kind of population balancing "fix", goes through. Not too many players are happy about it, and if the Outlands is the same shitty raid treadmill as the rest of the game, many of the realms will fall.