If E3 is the games industry’s Christmas, then it was hard not to go into this year’s
conferences thinking that your presents had already been opened for you.
From around the time a Walmart Canada listing revealed the existence of Rage 2 and Bethesda
was forced to start their marketing campaign early, it felt like every day leading up to
E3 brought along another batch of leaked games; oftentimes feeling less like a slip of the
tongue from a wayward retailer and more like publishers trying to fit their games into
their own spot pre-show so as to avoid getting lost in the whirlwind of trailers and reveals;
securing what little time they can get in the spotlight.
An understandable impulse for sure, but it meant that the joy of speculation usually
associated with the big reveals of the show was largely gone; we knew that Cyberpunk would
make an appearance, we knew about Fallout 76 and Rage 2, we knew the big four games
Sony would be showing off, we knew there wouldn’t be any info on the new consoles until at least
next year.
We basically knew it all, meaning that publishers instead needed to focus on how their games
were presented as much as what they were presenting in order to keep people’s attention.
And in that sense, the most prominent throughline of the conferences as a whole could be summed
up in Andrew WK’s performance at Bethesda’s show; an earnest attempt by music’s most
prominent party-man to bring a more playful energy to this marketing event; frequently
cutting to an audience ranging from nonplussed to outright confused.
That is to say, what you could call the disconnect between publisher expectation and audience
reception.
It was a trend that continued throughout their presentation for the most part, with the “let’s
have fun” sentiment conveyed by Andrew WK being mirrored by the countless devs proudly
paraded like rockstars and comedians.
And look, I am always in support of publishers championing the oft-overlooked developers
behind our favourite games.
It’s one of the reasons I’m usually so enthused about E3; it feels like a celebration.
The problem being that, in this case, unlike WK, these people didn’t have the years of
practice in terms of timing and dealing with potentially unresponsive audiences.
It led to a lot of truly chest-tensioning moments where devs would be making jokes or
announcements that weren’t landing, awkwardly trying to eek some kind of meagre response
out of the sea of silence.
It was rough, and just had you wishing they’d cut to a game, any game, but they were there
too!
You couldn’t escape it!
The point is not to take developers off stage, but rather have them focus on what they do
best, keeping it short and to the point, maybe having a more experienced presenter guiding
them through it.
Developers aren’t performers and that’s OK!
It’s something Bethesda would do well to learn for next year.
But this mismatch of publisher expectation and audience reception was far from exclusive
to Bethesda’s conference.
Sony’s showings in general, since the release of the PS4 and their newfound confidence when
placed alongside the Xbox One, have only become grander with bigger venues and an increase
in production values around the games they show.
This year, however, as the conference faded in, things looked a lot more…
cosy (think overpacked garden party as opposed to night at the ball).
As the trailer for The Last of Us 2 opened up, however, you realised that they were mimicking
that game’s homely church environment.
A potentially neat touch.
But the problem of this approach turned out to be logistical, as I’m guessing it made
more sense in someone’s head than it did in practice.
We’ve gone as big as we can in terms of venue, so how about we splash out on more
venues?
Well, a lack of consistency given that they only did this once, meant that we were left
with a real awkward intermission slammed right at the start of the show, as a bunch of presumably
disgruntled journalists were marched from one set of movie-watching seats to another.
In turn, this was a conference we came here looking for Death Stranding footage from and
we end up watching trailers for Call of Duty and Destiny of all games.
Sony’s daft opulence has been easy to dismiss as humorous posturing in previous years; this
is the first time it actually dragged the energy out of what should have been a showcase
of some of the industry’s most polished titles.
Despite how impressive Microsoft’s presentation ended up being this year, their insistence
on showing 50 new games in a bid to convince people that games were indeed coming, was
inevitably going to lull somewhat in the middle, narrowly avoiding feeling like something of
an assembly line purely down to the quality of the games going along it.
Perhaps focusing on the best games (your Sekiros, Cyberpunks and the like) as opposed to all
the games would have done some good here.
And even Smash Brothers fans had to admit that Nintendo dedicating almost their entire
direct to Smash Brothers going into the changes of every single…
Smash Brother was maybe just a little bit too much Smash Brothers and maybe should have
been saved for the following Treehouse stream.
And look, that’s not to say there weren’t exciting games to be seen during all of this,
especially considering Nintendo opened with a goddamn mech game which is a very easy way
to get me hooked immediately.
Death Stranding saw Kojima finally break the cycle of cryptic trailers and vague concepts
with actual gameplay and, much to my personal excitement, it ended up clarifying very little.
All I know is that, given my affection for difficult to categorise games, if Death Stranding
plays out as some kind of survival horror meets hiking simulator, then it sounds exactly
like something I’d be into.
Hitman 2 looks like it will at least partially address one of my criticisms of its prequel;
that it would set up these potentially disruptive set pieces, then would have them function
as little more than static set dressing.
Here, it at least looks like you might have more direct control over the larger events
occurring in missions, while also heightening the absurdity that made 2016’s game such
a joyous experience.
Cyberpunk’s structuring of its trailer feeling almost identical to GTAV’s reveal, combined
with its aesthetic, its first-person perspective and its developer’s affinity for classic
RPGs had me envisioning some kind of Deus Ex/System Shock type deal, taking place in
an open world with Rockstar levels of detail; a feeling mirrored by many individuals who
got to see the behind-closed-doors demo in person, making it easily the game I came away
from the conferences most excited about.
That said, and I understand that I may be in the minority here, but while Devolver’s
conference last year may have fit with their wacky anti-establishment bent, after two years
of it I can’t really say I’m into the shtick.
For me, the show felt like little more than a very well-acted wink and nudge aimed at
the industry targets du jour.
How about them lootboxes, am I right gamers?!
At least My Friend Pedro looked neat?
Maybe it’s me being overly cynical, but it’s hard for me to view a company as truly
anti-establishment when, having visited their booth at last year’s show, they’re basically
in the same business as everyone else here.
It’s not a cynicism I’m proud of in any way, but it’s one that I just couldn’t
shake throughout the entirety of E3.
Microsoft’s conference was undoubtedly one of their best in years and Phil Spencer actually
seems like a good dude but his constant talk of “the artform” and “taking the artform
forward” rang a little hollow when considered alongside the fact that it’s, well, Microsoft
saying it.
Same with EA and their wheeling out of the indie devs as if to say “look, we really
do interact with human beings”, sandwiched by one of their most generic line-ups in quite
some time; same with Bethesda telling us that DOOM was made by the catering or something.
OK, that’s cool I guess, but you’re also all massive companies trying to sell me something
here.
I love E3; it’s a week where we get to genuinely celebrate the people and the good behind the
industry, but I’d be lying if I said there’s not a part of me that wants them to recognise
that it’s all just marketing and get directly to beaming whatever they’re hocking into
my dumb head.
It says a lot then that the conference that ended up seeing me drop some of that cynicism
ended up being the PC Gaming Show of all things, where despite their perhaps well-earned reputation
as a direct marketing device rather than an actual show, this year saw a platform given
to some neat looking games I’d genuinely never have heard of otherwise.
Things went wrong, it was a comparatively scrappy production, but both Day9 and Frankie’s
consummate professionalism in dealing with it all was a joy to witness.
They were able to talk to these understandably nervous developers on their level about the
daft nerdy shit they excel at, making them more relatable to us as an audience; rather
than just shoving them on a stage by themselves and leaving them to sweat.
It surprisingly acted as a barometer of where the industry and audience trends are at, with
people audibly groaning and leaving as Day9 wearily joked about yet another 1v100 or 1000
game being shown highlighting just how real battle royale fatigue is, even in the just
year since PUBG’s release.
It even left me genuinely surprised with the casual slip that we’re finally getting Yakuza
games on Steam, holy shit.
In a weird way, it was kind of everything I wanted from an E3 press conference that
I ended up getting very little from in the presentations from other publishers, and maybe
that is the biggest surprise in itself.
In short, our Christmas presents may have been opened early, but they turned out to
be the friends we made along the way, or something.
So I hope you enjoyed my piece on E3!
As always, these videos are made possible by your unbelievably generous support over
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Special thanks go to Mark B. Writing, Nico Bleackley, Rob, Michael Wolf, Artjom Vitsjuk,
Spike Jones, TheNamelessGuy, Chris Wright, Dr. Motorcycle, Harry Fuertes, Ham Migas,
Travis Bennett, Zach Casserly, Samuel Pickens, Tom Nash, Shardfire, Filip Lange, Ana Pimentel,
Jessie Rine, Brandon Robinson, Justins Holderness, Biggy Smith, Peter, Christian Konemann, Cameltraffic,
Nicolas Ross and Charlie Yang.
And with that, I've been Hamish and this has been Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you next time.