I Bring Nothing to the Table

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

It’s that time of year again, E3 season. Come next week the nonsense will begin yet again in California, but in the same diminished capacity it showed up in last year. The relevance of the show was really tested last year with the new format which eschewed the old convention hall, complete with flashy lights, long lines, and booth babes in favor of smaller company-run events in separate hotels.

As you might have guessed, part of the problem with this new format is the lack of a centralized show floor. As crowded and hectic as the convention center was, it seems to be preferred to a much greater extent than driving around all over L.A. to make it to the various hotels and showrooms where each developer was showcasing their wares. Sure, you no longer were forced to wait an hour in line just to see a game, but now you had to wait in a car as you drove around to each show for an hour.

Another huge problem for the ESA and the continued existence of E3 has to do with all of the game companies dropping out of the association. Top among the companies no longer a part of the ESA is Activision Blizzard. It gets pretty tough to argue for the continued existence of a show that doesn’t include the largest publisher of video games in the world.

I’ve never actually been to an E3 show, despite wishing I could since I first learned about them. Even though the show has become far less important and the journalists are less interested in going, I still would like to see the show continue. I hope that this year is not as big a bust as last year’s show, because if it is, it could be the end of E3.