Going by everyone’s memorials and obituaries for E3, I’d have to say that 99 percent of them contain the same two emotions. One: it was an exciting honor to get to go to E3 for the first time after years of hearing about it. Two: there were a lot of great friendships made and maintained there.

And I understand both of them. Having been to E3 myself, I know it’s fun to see friends. In fact, I’ve found it’s fun to see friends in most places. E3 didn’t actually cause that. It just forced people who work in a strange industry to come together for a few days to either desperately hope their game gets positive coverage or desperately hope their outlet gets to do coverage of a game.

Related: Nobody Wins If E3 Fails

But as much as we’ll miss seeing pals and so forth, we can just admit that E3 was bad. E3 was not a good conference. There were fun moments at E3. But nothing about E3 itself was actually that good or - to be honest - worth preserving. The Electronic Entertainment Expo was everything that was wrong with video games tied into one sad spot.

E3 2009 banner hung up at the entrance of event
Via: GAMEVIL Inc.  

I’m being a bit hyperbolic, but look at old E3 photos. It’s weird as f***, man. Everything reeks of desperation. Confused-looking models stand next to identical-looking industry professionals in booth after booth of long-dead games using the same edgelord fonts. Massive displays that were meant to be photographed and published in Electronic Gaming Monthly. Demos for triple-A games that would never see the light of day.

Yes, this shit still exists - but back in the day E3 was the gatekeeping nexus of it. There wasn’t always PAX. E3 was designed to be aspirational. And the video game press - god help them - was largely just happy to be included on the cool side of the wall. All the photos of hot chicks and famous game designers and parties. When we finally started getting video of E3, we heard the screams of joy from reporters whenever a company announced The Big Next Thing. The fact that normal humans couldn’t go only made it seem even cooler.

But those press conferences mostly sucked. If you think press conferences are bad now or that announcements at The Game Awards can be clunky, just check out old E3 footage. E3 was theoretically an industry show, so press conferences wavered between assuring investors and buyers that the company was doing better than ever and screaming at the top of their lungs that, really, Duke Nukem Forever was finally coming. Literally any Nintendo Direct or Sony Whatever They Call It is better than any E3 presentation.

phil spencer xbox
via Xbox

Again, E3 had moments. Miyamoto was always a delight. But overall, it was mostly annoying dudes in blazers acting like this year - whatever year that happened to be - video games were finally crossing the rubicon into important. It was an event run by an insecure industry trying to convince others and itself that it was cool.

A lot of this sounds like bitterness. It’s not. I got to go to E3 myself. I got to see the bags of plastic shit they give out. I got to see some of my heroes up close.

But you can get that now at better events. And by ‘better events’, trust that I’m saying events that suck less but still have a lot of giant problems. They’re still better. They’re still more accessible to the public. They’ve dropped away most some a little of the sweaty sexism that has been part of video game marketing since Pong.

Via: gamecrate.com

I’m not glad E3’s gone because I hate it. E3 not happening is going to cost a lot of people money, and not just the big corporations that were still interested in that corpse of a show. But I am glad that we’re leaving E3 behind. We don’t need shows meant to make the fans jealous while making the industry look embarrassing.

E3 wasn’t good. It was necessary. It was a place for stores and the press to learn what they were supposed to hawk for the next nine months. We don’t need it anymore. We don’t need what it represented. We don’t need how it functioned and how it felt. We can just try to be normal for once.

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