[smooth groove plays]
[disk drive noises]
- Yep, I am done with traveling.
It is nice to be back home.
Greetings and welcome to an LGR E3 thing!
Yes, we're gonna talk about the E3... thing [chuckles]
The big stupid convention that happens every year
in Los Angeles, at least up till this point.
There's talk of it not being in the same location in 2020.
Who knows?
But, I figured it'd be interesting to just talk about
this whole experience and what it's actually like
to visit this ridiculous show
because, I don't know about you,
but, I see coverage of this every year
and I'm going back to the 90s
and I always wondered what it was like.
Now, that I've been there a couple times,
I figured I'd document the experience and share it,
so,my brother Luke and I, we both went there
with a bunch of cameras and equipment
to just capture the entire experience
and I mean everything, from the mundane stuff,
like figuring out transportation and food,
and just getting passes to begin with,
what that will get you,
where that will not get you into
and all kinds of things like that.
And then you know, looking at the booths
and all the cool games and tech, as well.
But, yeah, let's just dive into that,
kind of like and LGR Thrifts episode,
but, instead of going thrifting,
we're going convention-ing.
Or E3-ing.
Or whatever-ing.
I don't know, man.
Let's go do it and dive into E3 2019.
["Driven Electronics" by Niclas Gustavsson plays]
- All right, so as with all good stories,
let's begin at the beginning,
which begins before the beginning began
and that was back in April sometime,
when I first signed up for the badges for E3.
Now, you don't have to sign up beforehand,
but, I highly recommend it
because waiting in line to get them at the show
would just be a friggin' pain.
And there's a whole bunch of ways to get badges, these days,
you don't just have to be industry,
or press and media, anymore,
you can just get in as a gamer, I guess,
is what it's called, the gamer pass.
That only you have to pay for.
I think it's like 300 bucks, normally, before the show.
And the once you're there, it's like 995.
These are not cheap passes, but, you can get in,
however, if you're media, then it is
a little bit of a different thing.
And well, what does media even mean?
What qualifies as media?
Well, a whole lot of things, nowadays.
It's actually easier than it's ever been to get into E3.
I mean, I've never even had a problem getting in
back when I had 50,000 subs.
Maybe the requirements are a little different now,
but, basically as long as you're somebody who covers
some games in some form, [laugh] you can pretty much get in,
if you can be verified and you have over
a certain number of monthly views
or monthly videos being put out related to games,
or I don't know, there's some requirements,
but, the only other stuff that they look for
is just making sure that you are you.
So, you have to provide a photo ID
or a government issued passport kind of thing,
as well as a business card
and if you don't have a business card,
you can just make one up
and then a link to your channel
that shows your face somewhere in a video,
or pictures, or something,
you know what, they just have to make sure
that you are who you are.
And if you're qualified,
then you get the qualified email, here.
Looks something like this.
I've edited it a little bit for privacy.
But, yeah, pretty much just says, "you're in",
you can can get a bar code and you'll be able
to pick up your badges at the show,
a couple days before the show.
They do not ship the badges out.
And from here, it's just the normal travel stuff,
you know, selecting flights and a hotel,
and yes, E3 does have a number of hotels
that they recommend, I guess they have some deals with.
You can get a little bit of a discount doing that.
It's not a huge amount, in my experience,
but, it is kinda nice because
it gives you some extra options,
however, it's gonna be more expensive,
so, Airbnb makes a lot of sense, too.
And if you're media, then,
well, you're probably familiar with a wall like this
of just tons of emails coming in the very moment
that you're approved for those badges.
These are just a few of the more interesting ones
that I've selected.
But yeah, I mean, a lot of these things,
especially when it comes to getting hands-on
with games and such and being invited
to press events and parties,
and those are all invite only.
Same goes for the press conferences.
You know, things that are live streamed by Microsoft,
and Ubisoft, and I don't know, whoever else-soft.
Those guys will get in touch with you
or you have to know someone to get in.
You can't just show up.
I mean, I guess you could, but, good luck with that.
Finally though, it is day negative two of E3,
at least for us.
We decided to travel out Sunday.
The actual show floor opens on Tuesday,
but, there's things happening on both Sunday and Monday
that we were invited to,
so, we wanted to get there in the morning,
so, we could get there in time for those things,
and well,
you know airports,
is just a bunch of bad weather was coming through
for the past several days, at that point,
and we ended up waiting there for about six hours
and just watched the rain.
[laughter]
There's not much else you can do.
This is a tiny airport that kept bumping and bumping
and bumping up the flight as the previous night's flights
were still trying to get off the ground.
Weren't sure if we were gonna be able
to take off that day, whatsoever,
especially when we got to the counter
and the person was like, "you're not even on this flight".
And we're like, "yeah, we are".
And they've said, "Oh, you've been removed
"and they never told you?"
We were like, "nope, they never did".
So, it was just awful.
The nightmares began immediately
and they continued the entire rest of the day,
but, you know, spoiler alert, so.
Eventually we were on the plane, completely unamused
by absolutely anything whatsoever.
Just happy to be in the air, at this point,
even though it had taken six friggin' hours to get here.
Whatever.
Eventually landed in Atlanta for our connecting flight
or it would have been a connecting flight,
but, we were about four or five hours late for it.
[laughter]
So, that meant, making our way over to the service desk
where we had to wait in line
for about another hour and a half, or something,
just to see if we could find a flight to LAX.
And of course, with all the other delays, there were none.
So, we're just like "give us a plane to California,
let's just see what happens."
In the meantime, we just wandered over to other parts
of the airport and got us some nice daggone food
at some daggone place.
I don't even remember what this was, but it was super good.
And thankfully Atlanta has
this nice underground tram system that gets you around
the terminals quite easily unlike LAX, for instance.
They have these outdoor shuttles and they suck,
but anyway, Atlanta's pretty decent for getting around,
which, we had to do a lot
because they switched our departing gate, I think six times.
But, eventually again, we got on a plane
at around 6:45 PM Eastern,
so, we'd already been doing the travel thing
for 12 hours, at that point.
And they sent us to Santa Ana
because there were zero flights to LAX
where we were originally going to go.
Of course, that also meant that my luggage was sent to LAX.
I don't know how, exactly, apparently it took off
at like, two in the afternoon.
Yeah so, that was something to deal with
whenever we got there, but, in the meantime,
it was a pretty nice peaceful flight.
I always like flying over this part of the United States
just to look at all the neat ground formations,
and weird desert things, and mountains, and rivers,
and all this kind of cool stuff.
I don't know, it's just different surroundings
than I normally see over on
the mountainous Appalachian region of the East Coast.
For hours later, we were making a landing in Santa Ana
which, I'd never been to before
and I guess I still really haven't
because we were only there
to find a car
over to LAX
because my luggage was there
and we were hoping it was being held
in some back office or something.
So, we got an Uber or a Lyft or,
I don't remember half of this,
and we went on over to LAX, which, was like,
another hour and a half drive because traffic.
Traffic was just the absolute worst even at night, here.
There were a ton of inbound and outbound flights
that were just getting screwed up and it was awful.
Finally though, made it over to LAX, picked up our crap,
got into another Lyft, or an Uber, or whatever,
and then made it to the hotel and I don't even think I,
no, I didn't, I didn't get any footage [laugh]
of the outside or the inside of the hotel,
except for the room, briefly.
It's just a small little junior suite deal that we got.
It was just, it was what was available
and it was really close to the convention center
and I've stayed here, before, so, whatever man.
Don't care.
At this point, we are just ready for bed.
[sigh]
What a wonderful five hours of sleep
that wasn't wonderful at all, in fact,
it was kind of garbage, but, that's okay,
because we got E3 crap to do, yes.
And that means getting a quick breakfast,
which, I didn't film at all because screw that I'm hungry.
And we just started walking to the convention center,
since, the shuttles weren't running, yet,
and we weren't paying for another ride sharing car,
quite yet.
It was only like a 14, 15 minute walk from the hotel,
anyway, not bad, just down two streets.
You take like a right and then a left
or a left and a right, I don't know, Albuquerque,
and you're there and you get to see some
of lovely downtown L.A.
which is well, only lovely to visit,
and honestly I would never want to live there,
but, that's okay, no offense L.A. people.
Your city's crazy, that's all I want to say about that,
but, I like visiting.
It's neat and you get to see some of the cool buildings
that have been painted up with murals and such,
around E3, like this one right here,
on the figure of a hotel, that's always nice to see
whatever they put there.
This year it was Doom Eternal.
Awesome artwork, always cool to see this in person
because it's a lot bigger than you event realize
and that's totally what I said.
[laugh]
And before you even get to the convention center itself,
you start seeing a lot of the E3 shenanigans going on,
just in the surrounding areas.
It's not just the Staples Center
and we'll get to more of this later.
But yeah, once we made it to
the actual convention center halls,
we went to the west hall entrance,
which, is where we were picking up media badges, today,
so yeah, you just kind of skip all this right, here,
because that's for other,
different kind of badge pickups and registrations.
You snake past the back area of the Staples Center,
the Coliseum area, where they do all the sporting events
and concerts and such, E3's not in there.
And then, eventually you end up at a security checkpoint
and there, they just check your bags and all the stuff
to make sure you're not doing anything stupid.
And I like this entrance because you get
a fascinating look at the back side of E3
and all the loading bays and people setting things up
and security checkpoints
and it's not the big glamorous advertising filled thing,
I mean, there's still ads everywhere,
but yeah, this is the area that you go in if you're media,
especially, if you want to get into the media rooms.
Once you get past another dude looking at your id and such,
you can get in to the media registration
or rather the media badge pickup area.
And yeah, they just check everything, again,
and give you your badge.
And at that point, you're free to go
and check in to the media hospitality lounge.
And they just check your id and your badge every time.
They give you a little bracelet thing and there you go,
you can just hang out in there.
They give you, I don't know, a room to sort of hang out,
and do your work or whatever you want to do.
We just want some waters and kind of get our barrings.
And yes, they do provide wi-fi.
It's not [laugh] very fast,
but, it is better than relaying on the cell network,
which, always kinda crumbles when you
get 60, 70,000 people in the area.
It's like a 25MB up and down, so, you know,
not the worst, but, not the best.
And yeah, at this point,
you know, we didn't know what else to do,
so, we just decided to look around at some
of the convention halls and not the main ones,
you can't actual get into those unless you're an exhibitor,
at this point, but, yeah, I mean we were inside,
so, we figured, hey, let's get our barrings
just a little bit and kind of look and see where we
want to go tomorrow when everything actually opens up.
And yeah, at this point, it's just a lot
of crap being laid down, stuff being unpacked,
and un-boxed, and setup, and prepared,
and it's kind of a madhouse,
but, at the same time, it's very quiet compared
to entire rest of the show,
so yeah, it's just kind of a neat experience
to go through here, and look at all the things
that are gonna become things
and there's a lot of signage and stuff,
just warning everyone that yeah,
you're gonna be photographed and recorded through, here,
but, you know, right now don't photograph inside
of the actual show halls because there's like games
that haven't been announced
that they're setting up booths for,
inside the exhibition halls.
So yeah, but that's why we couldn't go in there.
But, down here, is the south entrance,
which is gonna be absolutely packed tomorrow,
so again, it's kinda neat to see everything before
it get started.
At this point, it is just exhibitors, industry, press,
and security walking around,
just kind of getting to where they need to go
and I don't know, hanging out, I guess.
[laughter]
Mostly, working.
We were just kind of hanging out.
All right, well, since there wasn't much to do here,
we decided to take our way out of the convention center area
and grabbed a Lyft over to a place called Samy's.
It is a camera shop somewhere west of where we were.
It wasn't too long of a drive.
And my goodness, was this worth the trip.
My brother Luke was there with a lot of film cameras,
or a couple film cameras and a lot of film,
but, he wanted more and he wanted to see if they had film
and well, they had film.
Dude I think they have film.
They also had an absolute ton of other stuff.
A very interesting museum of old cameras
and camera equipment
and a just a [laugh],
it has like three, no four levels
of absolutely every kind of camera
and camera equipment related thing that you could want
or at least, that I could want
and have ever wanted and hoped and dreamed for [laugh].
This is a great place.
Got to look at a couple lenses and kit accessory type things
for my Lumix GH5 and GH5S that we brought.
I didn't get anything 'cause I just bought a bunch
of stuff before the trip, but yeah.
It was just a lot of fun to look around, here,
and then up the next level they have the pro-grade stuff.
You know, cinema cameras and lenses
and massive lighting rigs
and all sorts of things, that honestly
a lot of this I'd never even seen in person before,
so, it was, yeah, just a cool store.
Loved hanging around, here, and just ogling everything
and making mental wishlists of stuff
that I might be interested in if I were MKBHD.
After this, we decided to head back into town
because we were gonna meet some folks down, here, anyway.
This is Little Toyko, somewhere that I always like to visit.
My brother had never been.
We went into a bunch of these little stores
and didn't film any of it,
but yeah, lot of things to look at both above ground
and underground.
There's a lot of neat little shops down there
and we only got a couple pictures,
but, yeah, just kind of taking it all in,
looking at the collectables, and old video games,
and figurines, and waifu pillows [laugh]
and whatever else they happen
to have stacked up against the walls.
Also grabbed some ramen and takoyaki
because you have to do that.
Super tasty stuff,
absolutely everywhere down there,
oh, I love this area.
And after this we stopped in a place called Wolf & Crane
because this is where we were gonna meet people, anyway.
Again, didn't get to much footage down there,
but yeah, they have a nice selection of drinks,
if you're into that.
There's more footage of this over
on the MetalJesusRocks channel because we meet up
with Jason and Kelsey and John Riggs and Cody
and several other related folks.
Here's a photo with some of us, right here.
This is John Linneman from Digital Foundry,
and Alex who does a lot of cool things,
and right now, he just happens to be with Dolby.
Wish I'd gotten more footage there, but, I didn't.
I was too busy schmoozing, so, anyway.
On over to the next morning.
Yeah, this is the lobby area of our hotel,
the Mayfair hotel, it's a nice little spot.
We're just waiting for the shuttles
and they appear at certain times,
this being Tuesday, June 11th, between 9 and 12,
it arrives about every 10 or 15 minutes.
Sure enough, 10 minutes later, the bus arrived out front
and you just hop in as long as you have your E3 badge,
it is free, whether you're industry, media, gamer pass,
whatever, totally awesome because [laugh],
you know, we ended up taking a lot of Ubers and Lyfts
throughout this trip and that adds up pretty quickly
in terms of cost.
Plus I think that this was the day
that the heat wave was going through
and it was over 90 degrees
and like, 113 degrees east of L.A.,
so yeah, I'll take the free air conditioned bus.
You get dropped off at one of these bus locations,
I think there's seven of them
or at least there were this year.
And we just made our way over to the south hall,
since that's where we're dropped off
and got a security checkpoint
and you get this every single time you go into any
of the entrances of the show.
If you're media, and industry, and exhibitor,
you can bring bags up to a certain size,
but, if you just have the public gamer pass,
then there's a ton of restrictions on bags,
in fact, I saw a bunch of people get turned away
for even bringing tiny little backpacks.
Much less restrictive if you're media, though.
And yes, inside the facilities and this, right now,
since it is the industry hours,
you will not see any public people, here,
so, industry, exhibitors, press, media.
Still a whole lot of people, though.
I mean, there's [laugh] no shortage of folks trying
to get in the front.
You can see over here, the entrance to the west hall
is starting to pile up and I'm starting to film, man.
It was really why we came here, after all,
is just trying to capture the entire show in
as many ways as we could.
So yeah, may as well start straight away.
And yeah, this big pile of bodies you see down there.
This is just waiting to get in to the main exhibition halls.
And in this case, it is the west hall.
No, it's not, it's the south hall.
I always get those mixed up
because on the map they're like weird.
Okay here, just look at this, okay.
So, on the map this is the west hall.
This is the south hall?
If I interchangeably screw them up throughout
this video that's just my brain doesn't work
that way, but, there's also this E3 App
that they give you
and, well they don't give it to you,
you have to download it
and it's not good either, [laugh] it's clunky
and slow and I hate it and the text is not very legible.
It is handy, I guess, you know,
for looking at some interactive searching
and maps and stuff.
They used to just give you a booklet,
like a pamphlet thing and a fold out on paper.
I kind of liked that and miss it, but, whatever man.
That's just me being old.
Anyway, yeah, we're just waiting to get in to the show
and this is suppose to open at a certain time,
I think 11 AM, but, it ended up being 11:25,
by the time everybody got in,
or at least by the time we got in.
There's a ribbon cutting ceremony that nobody cares about.
That happens, too. [laugh] [cheers]
I mean, you know, whatever.
I just want to get in the show.
And eventually, the line starts moving
and you go up the escalators
and make your way to the front doors.
And there's another quick little security check.
There's just looking to see that you have the right badge.
And once you're inside this, this right, here,
not Fortnite, specifically,
but, this hall, this is very much what people think of
when they think of the E3 convention.
The south and west halls just filled with all the booths,
man, the big, giant booths full of things.
So, right up front, here, you had Fortnite and 2K Games,
which, I think really was just Borderlands 3.
There might have been something else they were showing,
but, this is all I noticed.
And yeah, I mean, we were just walking around.
I mean, this first day that's all I like to do.
I don't have any appointments,
like I didn't make any appointments at all, this year,
except for just people that are fun to hangout with.
[laugh] No official press thing.
If you're just here to look around and hang around,
then, you can do that.
There's a lot of games to play, a lot of merch to look at,
a lot of things to pick up and play with,
and lines to form in to,
and it's just a bunch of hubbub, a bunch of craziness.
Lot of people watching, in my case.
I just like to look at the crowds and see what's going,
and feel the energy because it's neat.
It's one of those things that you only get by going
to a gigantic convention like this.
It doesn't even matter if it's gaming.
In my case, I don't care, I just like to go to conventions,
every so often, like maybe a once or twice a year thing
at the very most, I don't do these too much,
but, when I do, it's neat to just wander
and look at the things, you know, the lights,
and the music, the smells. [laugh]
Always kind of smells like feet,
a little bit of corn chips,
I mean, that was most things on this trip.
Maybe I have a olfactory problem, I don't know.
Everything smells like feet and corn chips, these days.
But yeah, in this one particular hall, the south hall,
got it right this time,
you go that big 2K, Warner Brothers, Square Enix,
Ubisoft, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Bethesda,
THQ Nordic,
and a bunch of other people that are in there
and sort of scattered around.
There's a lot of smaller booths, too,
that get lost, I mean, even when they're still pretty large,
they still get lost.
Really, it's hard to even know what to look at,
what to film, where to stop, where to continue walking
and just ignore it because you know you don't care.
In fact, most of this,
I'd say that it's just not on my radar
in terms of interest, these days.
It's not why I'm really, here, after all.
Like I said, I'm just here to take in the experience
and document it for you guys
and occasionally run across things like this abomination.
[laughter]
Commander Keen Mobile, nope.
It gets a nope from me because,
I mean, not only was the original creator uninvolved,
Tom Hall, they didn't even ask him to be involved
and he had ideas for new Keen games
and they just ignored him.
And then, it's just a mobile free to play thing
with a bunch of junk tossed in there
and it's just doesn't, no.
And seeing it's a puzzle type game,
I'm assuming they're just gonna be timers and restriction
and premium currency and nah, nah, nah,
it's just, it's not anything [laugh] that I want at all.
I have nothing against the new art style.
I don't have any problem with the thing being rebooted.
It just, this way, nope.
All right, rant over, let's get back to the show
and well, it's just a lot of wandering around,
at this point.
Like I said, definitely didn't take me long to find
the National Videogame Museum area.
That's always fun.
They setup this cool, retro spot, here.
It's kind of a museum slash hands-on
with a lot of retro consoles and arcade games.
I found a Vectrex and that made me happy for a bit.
And just down from that,
next to the marshmallows walking by,
there was the Hyperkin booth.
And I've always had mixed feelings on the stuff
they produce, but you know, they had
some interesting things this year,
including that Nintendo 64 clone system,
which, wasn't playable so, I didn't even bother look at it.
And they also had their lightgun alternative for modern TVs,
the Hyper Blaster HD.
It's cool that it's working.
I've seen a few of these things coming out, now,
like this year, next year, so,
I'll be curious to see which modern light gun thing
comes out on top.
And yeah, even though the floor wasn't open
to the public, yet, there was no shortage
of meeting and greeting,
whether it was people that watch out YouTube shows
or salesmen just seeing the media badges
and wanting some attention on their product.
Yeah, it's always fun to go to these things
and bump into people that you know
and just generally hangout and talk about things.
Apparently, I became and impromptu
1995 Sega PC product salesman, here,
but, I was showing this thing off
to just every YouTuber I knew 'cause I thought it
was fascinating.
You'll see it in an upcoming video,
but yeah, just bothering John and Audi
from Digital Foundry, right here.
What else did I see in the floor, here, in this hall?
Oh yeah, there was this thing.
I was drawn to the whole booth
because it was just made of wood, [laugh]
but yeah, so was their product,
it was like a console inside of a wooden briefcase.
I don't exactly know who that market is, here,
but, apparently they're pretty hopeful
'cause these booths aren't cheap.
I think I was reading that they start at 30 grand
for a smaller one and then they go way, way up from there.
It's not uncommon for some of these guys
to spend 100, two, 300 thousand.
That's not including a thousand dollars to access the wi-fi.
Yeah anyway, just looking around at all these things,
it makes me wonder if attending here,
paid off for them or not.
Oh yeah, I got to see a guy get blasted in the face
with Bethesda's hot steam.
Ironic, since, Bethesda uses their own launcher,
not Steam, ha. [clap]
And this was confusing, over near
the backwards-walking people there were these stacks
of loot boxes, like real life loot boxes.
I saw a lot of these around.
And people were buying 'em, man,
I don't know what was in them, like, [laugh]
this culture confuses me.
And it just wouldn't be E3
without some ridiculous booth trying to be
as bright and loud and eye-catching as possible
with dancers and music and I don't even know
what they were selling.
Or were they?
It wasn't a game.
It was like a, I don't know, spandex?
[laughter]
I think it was an energy drink.
They had a gigantic booth.
Was it really worth that kind of cash?
I mean, I guess if you have it, so, whatever.
Now, these are the kind of things I like to see though,
monster trucks hanging around all over the place.
I don't even know what it was for.
Yeah, THQ Nordic has a monster truck game or something.
And our couple of Lego games announced.
That was always fun.
I guess they got a new Star Wars one with
this Lego Han Solo in carbonite.
I thought that was a pretty cool model.
And as a bit of a fun distraction,
seeing people get slapped in the face
with Epic Games big long rod, here.
Just sort of spinning around, I guess you're supposed
to jump over it and under it, I don't know.
Is this a Fortnite thing?
I mean, it is, but, is this in Fortnite?
I don't even know.
This was interesting, though.
Completely unplanned, I was just getting
random B roll, here, people in lines
and then this happened.
- [Crowd] Oh. [crowd chatter]
- E3's over.
They canceled E3.
- [Clint] So yeah, the power just cut off
of the main show floor there, for a second.
Nothing too major, really.
It came right back on and the house lights
and the rest of the building stayed on,
but, everything in the show floor itself turned off.
And that means the live streams, the events, the demos,
everything had to be reset.
Still don't know exactly what happened,
but, it was kind of interesting to hang around there
for a bit and hear everybody in the industry garb
just freaking out, trying to get everything back up.
Like, "oh crap, the live stream went down",
and "oh, the stores down",
and this thing and it was just chaos for mostly behind
the scenes, but, everybody else on the floor
was just kind of laughing it up.
And turns out Luke was filming at the same time, as well,
and yeah, it was not quite as exciting from his perspective.
[crowd chatter]
Yeah, there you go, you can see all the rest of the lights
just kind of stayed on there on the outskirts of the hall.
Really was just everything connected in the middle.
So yeah, I don't know.
It is a slightly interesting thing.
You know what, whatever, we're done with this hall, for now.
[laughter]
Besides, it's almost time for the public to get in
and well, it is, now.
Everybody here, in the orange badges,
these are those with gamer passes,
which, carries the aforementioned restrictions
in terms of not being able to bring in
a load of camera stuff in bags and what not.
And you also can't get in to any of the media things
or whatever, but, you get to explore the show floors
and just generally hangout and experience a bit of E3,
so, yeah, you know what, this felt like a good time
for us to go back to the media lounge
and hangout away from everything
and maybe think about some lunch.
Yeah.
And yes, if you are media then, you get free lunches,
which, is absolute chaos.
[laughter]
Everything is first come first serve,
so, you just kinda gotta be there at the right time
and get something that happens to be within your reach.
Nothing like a bit of mediocre food for free
that turns a bunch of professionals into
a pile of crazy people.
So, what about the other alternatives for things
to buy, but ingest, well there are plenty
of sport out on the floor,
vendors set up shop selling beverages, and sandwiches,
and chips, and snacks of really all kinds.
A lot of this out on the show floor is pretty expensive.
I mean, everything here is gonna be expensive.
I mean, just looking at the vending machines,
just about everything starts at four dollars,
even for just a basic Coke.
Four dollars?
I've seen worse, but, I've certainly see better, as well.
In fact, just going out here, to the food court area
and you often find better alternatives
and sometimes cheaper, too.
Coffee, tea, churros, pretzels,
Asian dishes of various types, you know, rice bowls
and things like that and some sushi
of absolutely dubious quality.
[laughter]
Some mixed kind of Hawaiian, I don't even know what,
slushies, and all that kind of stuff.
And there's kabobs and things,
and that's just in this one little area
of the food court, so, I ended up grabbing some
of that dubious sushi.
It was a [laugh] it wasn't good.
I mean, it wasn't horrible,
but, you know, it was like a step down
from gas station sushi.
[laughter]
And he got one of those smoothies and an ice coffee
and here, I am wondering if my insides are going to be okay.
Really the back area of the food court is a little better.
You've got burgers, sandwiches, hot hogs, pizza, fries,
soda, nachos, and coffee back here.
And this is all cafeteria style.
You just kinda go in there and get in line
and pick up what you want,
and yeah the cook it all right there.
It's you know, it's not too bad really.
On one of the other days I ended up grabbing one
of those little pizzas.
It was like a 10 dollar thing or something.
It was all right, however, it's outside,
just outside of the convention center
that I would recommend grabbing some foods
'cause there's a lot of food trucks and stands
and just L.A. things setup all over the place,
right outside.
Like, this one you don't even have
to go back through security to get to.
It's just right inside the perimeter.
Of course, going right outside,
yeah, that's where you find all these little carts
and things setup with, I don't know,
just a little bit of everything, really.
Like dude, I got his loaded bacon wrapped hot dog
for like five bucks or something.
The bread wasn't even stale.
That's better than I can say for the stuff, inside.
Hey, that reminds me, speaking of dogs,
you know, no one every really talks about the E3 dogs.
Look at that little guys wandering around down there.
In fact, I think somebody told me his name is Bacon.
Anyway, a lot of the security guards
have dogs going around just sniffing things
and man, the dogs seem super happy doing their job.
It may not be the most intimidating security dog
I've ever seen, but, it doesn't matter.
That's all, I just wanted to make the point
that nobody talks about the E3 dogs
and there's a bunch of 'em.
Like there's a new watch dogs game, here,
but, who cares when you can do it in real life.
All righty, we'll I think we're done with this section
of the convention for now,
so, let's move on over to the other main hall,
the west hall, which still feels like the northeast hall
to me, but, whatever, you go down this long hallway, here,
as you can see my brother filming.
Switch over to his perspective and yeah, this is
the section that's just a big long hallway
with a bunch of stuff off to the side
that we'll come back to briefly, later,
but, it always has these signs and things up above
from different companies every year, this year,
it happened to be 2K, I guess.
And yeah, once you make it around
to this wing you can go behind the stairs, here,
and this is the entrance to the west hall.
They got one of those really simple little security checks.
Just make sure your badge is turned around the right way
and as long as they see that you have
a badge you can get in.
And yeah, right away you can see that [laugh] it's
a little more low key in this area.
I mean, you do have the gigantic Sega, Nintendo, and Oculus,
over there to the right, but, off to the left
there's really not much
and having been here in the past, that's pretty strange.
You probably heard, but, Sony just decided not
to come here at all this year.
And honestly, I can feel their lack of presence
in a big way, especially in the hall.
In previous years you'd have Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft,
the big three all just right, here, taking up
this big hall and it was pretty awesome
to see them just competing for attention.
But now, it's pretty much Nintendo has it all to themselves
and there's a couple little tertiary things around it.
Microsoft is in another building, entirely,
and like I said, Sony just skipped out.
So in the west side of the west hall, what do you have?
Well, not much, I mean, there's and e-sports zone,
a networking lounge, something called Big Ben,
a 10G gaming lifestyle pavilion,
and there's also Lenovo Exceed,
but, other than that I mean, what is there?
There's a bunch of weird little things off there
in the corner that honestly,
I forgot about until I was looking at this footage.
There's also something called the Unreal Garden.
I think that was like a mixed reality experience.
The line was ridiculous
and, yeah man, it's just not the Sony and Microsoft thing
that you had in the past and it is kind of
a bummer coming into this hall in this year, so, whatever.
At least Nintendo was kinda cool.
Always a bunch of buzz and it's, I don't know,
there's something about the Nintendo booth
that is always exciting and kind of magical
and kinda feels like a kid, again, going there.
It's like, "Oh man", they have their music playing
and the big giant displays.
They always do a really good job with their booth.
I just never play anything at their booth [laugh],
to be honest.
It's just like this stuff is gonna become coming out soon.
So yeah, I just kinda wandered through, here.
They do have this nice press area, as well,
and just down from them, you had the Oculus booth
and well, you know, Oculus [laugh] has a bunch
of related, augmented, and virtual reality stuff
just surrounding them, too,
but, if you're into the VR thing
and you don't have any of it at home,
these kind of experiences are always fun
at big trade show like this.
Sega certainly had an interesting thing goin on, here,
especially with the,
I mean, there was the Mario and Sonic stuff
and persona and whatnot,
but, the main this I was intrigued to try out was
the Sega Genesis Mini or really I just wanted to see it
'cause I like miniature consoles, man,
and I'm excited for this one, got a great list of games,
and they had gigantic Sega Genesis to celebrate the Mini.
[laughter]
It was really just a giant controller,
but, it worked, man.
It was totally playable.
You could play Streets of Rage and stuff with this
and we did and [laugh] it was
a little more tricky, actually,
to do that with really big buttons
and the tilting D-pad over there.
It was just fun.
I like these kind of gimmicks.
I also really like the IndiecCade
or independent games showcase
that they have over there in this hall.
It just always fun to go and see some games
that are actual unique whether for the gameplay,
or the design, or the people behind them,
or the way that they're played,
often there is experimental control scheme,
or it only works when you have random crowds
of people coming by to participate in the game,
or it's just something totally out of the box,
like, this box, [laugh] it's got lights and junk on it.
It was super fascinating
and it's actually one reason I like going to PAX
a little more 'cause there's a lot more
of this kind of stuff at PAX.
There was more of that here, too,
but you have to go to something like, the MIX,
and that's not like a public thing, so.
Anyway, IndieCade is always fun to stop by,
in fact, one of these booths was the source
of my only pick up for this entire show.
Some people go here just for swag,
man, that's not me, but, occasionally,
I'll find an interesting product
that just impresses the crap out of me,
so, I'll get it and that's what this was.
I got this tiny little Tempest machine from New Wave Toys.
Not only is the detail incredible,
it's actually made of a wood cabinet and everything,
and the display looks really good
and the spinner feels nice.
And like, dude, I was super impressed with this
and they were selling it as a bit of a discount.
I think 90 dollars.
Can't wait to un-box it, and play it,
and maybe I'll do a video on it or something.
These little arcade units excite me.
They also had this thing, too.
I mean, look at this.
A little change machine.
It was just a prototype, but, this is actually
like a USB charging station.
[laughter]
That's such a cool idea.
I'll be curious to see the final build
once it's actual wood and not just a placeholder.
And then, of course, they also had this boombox deal.
A miniature version of the Victor or JCV RC-M90,
known as the king of boomboxes.
I really want one of these or at least,
I'm gonna get one and send it to TechFone or something
because this is so cool looking.
Oh yeah, and real quick as we're about to leave for the day,
remember those little areas I was talking about off
to the side of the hallway we get to,
to come to this hall, well yeah, they are filled
with things, even though it's pretty nondescript.
You just have to know to look there.
Rooms full of cubicles and meeting rooms
and all this kind of stuff
that you pretty much have to have an appointment
to get into, but, this is where a lot
of the coolest hands-on demos are.
Well, we didn't go into any of them
because we weren't applying for them [laugh]
and also you don't get to film, for the most part,
so, didn't even bother, but yeah,
that's what this looks like.
You can also go upstairs above the west hall, here.
And if you go around the corner there are even more,
and this is where a lot of triple A hands-on demos are
with the press, so if you have an invite to one of those,
you can play things like Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk,
well, you couldn't play Cyberpunk,
but, they showed you an hour of footage,
and yeah, there's just tons of things like this
all over the show floor and like I said,
a lot of the most interesting hands-on demos
or just gameplay,
things that the developer shows you in person,
happens behind closed doors.
There's a whole nother section of E3, here,
that I would love to show,
but, like I said, filming is usually not a thing.
But yeah, we had somewhere to be this evening,
so, we got invited over
to this place called the Border Grill
and got to meet with a bunch of cool people.
And it was 3D Realms putting this on.
Awesome dudes like Fred and Mike from 3D Realms,
as well as, the legend himself,
Scott Miller, the founder of Apogee,
and oh man, it was so cool finally meeting him.
Also met up with the Digital Foundry dudes
that were here, as well as, GmanLives,.
yeah, just all around really cool group to talk to
and Scott was nice enough to sign my Kroz disc.
[laughter]
Huge thanks to Fredrick and Mike an everybody
for putting this on.
This was so cool.
Skipping to the next morning, here,
and we decided to do something a little bit different
and not go to the show floor immediately
and instead went to the Novo.
This is a venue in the same kind of Coliseum complex
and Jeff Keeley was hosting a lot of panels and talks
with some really cool people
and today, this was the one that I wanted to see the most.
It was none other than Will Wright.
- Please welcome Will Wright.
[applause] [upbeat music]
- Mr. Wright. - Jeff.
- Good to see you, my friend, it's been a long time.
- Far too long.
- [Clint] So yeah, last night I got to meet the founder
of Apogee and the, today I get to see the creator
of SimCity and the Sims and all the Maxis things, in person,
so dude, what a crazy trip.
Loved hearing him just go on about his new game type thing,
that's not really a game at all, it's called Proxi.
The ideas are extremely Will Wright.
[laughter]
There was a live stream of this too,
so, I'm sure it's archived somewhere if you want
to go and find that.
But yeah, at this point, we were just kind of avoiding
the main show floor and going out behind it.
And oh dude, nice shot.
But yeah, if you just walk a little bit away
from all of the convention center stuff,
you'll make it to the Microsoft Theater.
And yeah, they have their own theater.
I think it used to be the Nokia Warner,
but, it's Microsoft, now.
And this is where they were doing their gaming stuff
related to E3.
It was open during the same hours as the E3 show floor,
but, it's not technically E3 it's just, here.
Media badges don't seem to get you in any quicker.
Everybody has to wait in this long friggin' line.
They did at least hand out free drinks
and they had these people there singing
and playing sea shanties.
I don't know, I guess it was like a Sea of Thieves thing.
But yeah, once you get inside there's really not
a whole lot to see, at least in this main lobby area.
There's a Elite Controller display, which was absurd.
Well yeah, everything was happening inside
the actual theater itself,
where they did their big press conference
this previous Sunday.
And you go tot wait in another line.
And they just sort of let people in,
in batches to go up on stage and try out
the demos and stuff
and I don't know, man, it's kind of cool
in terms of spectacle, like just the largeness
of the venue, and the lights, and all that crap,
but, it was just Microsoft.
[laughter]
It does not hold a candle to how it's been
in previous years when they were on the show floor
with Sony and Nintendo.
And just dude, man, I miss older E3, let me put it that way.
It was cool, though, you know,
they had some decent stuff up on stage just to gawk at,
like the gigantic Lego McLaren for
that weird Forza Horizon Lego thing that they're doing.
But yeah, for the most part
it was just like people getting a little bit of hands-on
of a demo of a game that's gonna be out in a month or two.
A lot of noise, a lot of people huddled close together,
and a lot of green, so, [laugh] we left.
[laughter]
That's all that was.
Besides, we hadn't made our way over to probably
the coolest spot at E3
and that is the Devolver Digital lot.
Across the street from the convention center
as signified by the large floating balloon,
and it's like an anti-E3 thing.
If you're press or media, industry, or whatever,
you can just get in and hangout, man.
They were doing live stream, and they got a DJ, there,
and there's free drinks and food.
You can play ping pong.
You can, you know, whatever,
there's a museum of Devolver Digital oddities
and dude, these people are just super cool.
Met up with a bunch of other YouTubers, here,
a bunch of MetalJesusRock's crew
and Kinsey was working, here, so, that was fun.
But yeah, free food, man, look at this tostada.
Man, look at this, look at this.
We ended up hanging around, here,
several times throughout the show.
It just feels like a much more inviting
and enjoyable retreat from all the nonsense of E3.
Much more enjoyable than the media room.
And while we were at Devolver,
we ended up getting invited by some of the folks
that were hanging out there to go and meet up at
a place called Clifton's Cabinet of Curiosity's,
[laugh] on the final night
and this place was an absolute trip.
It's a multi-story building full
of incredibly unique decor and lighting
and just situations, man.
You go in there and there's this big gigantic tree
in the middle, you can sit inside of it
and it has a fireplace.
You can order all kinds of foods, and drinks, and things,
and just kind of hang out, man.
Upstairs there like a tiki bar area.
There's like a hidden door and you get into it that way
and there's an actual boat.
Yeah, we just found an area in the back, here,
and here's a photo.
[laughter]
This was taken by Kinsey and yeah, a few of us there
ended up sharing this scorpion boat thing
and I think at this very moment,
I'm kind of laughing my face off, there,
because one of the paper straws caught fire
in the middle the drink as we were taking the picture,
so, [laugh] it still makes me laugh.
Whatever, cool location, everything was overpriced.
So, we went to somewhere else.
A Star Wars themed cantina without
any actual Star Wars stuff.
This is not Galaxy's Edge, this is just, it's just awesome.
It happened to be karaoke night,
so, it was loud as crap, but, another one of those spots
where you just go in there and you're like,
this is super cool, man.
All the themed night life places in L.A.
just amuse me to no end.
There's so many of these spots,
a bunch of them we wanted to go to,
but, this was the last one
I think we ended the night out with.
And after a few people started parting ways,
the rest of us stopped in
this little pizza place, randomly, after midnight,
and yeah, this is exactly what was needed,
mmm, love pizza.
I want some pizza, now, dang it.
Go back to L.A., what is this crap, why am I here?
Ah, editing pizza, that's better.
Oh, and I got to see the Back to the Future DeLorean.
Yeah, we went by the Petersen Museum
and this was the hero car used in Back to the Future.
Not some replica!
No, this is the one that they got from the Universal lot
or whatever and restored it some years ago,
now, it looks great.
That's not E3 stuff.
This is just in the area, right?
I don't know.
Just hanging around, went to the beach and things.
And look at all this.
Now, it's turning into a travel vlog.
I don't even know what to say!
Even if you don't go and do anything like this,
just take some time before hand, highly recommend that
because we were rushing to get there
and then we ended up with all that travel nonsense
with our flights.
But yeah, anyway, that's E3 and now, I'm back home
and I have [chuckles] 14 hours of footage.
-Ahhhhhhhh
[laughs]
[mellow music]
["AfterJuice" by Homebody plays]
[mellow outro tunes]