You can guess by reading the headline that I was a super cool kid. Younger Jade was all about playing video games and hiding in the closet. I’ll be honest it wasn’t that bad. I had plenty of friends, hobbies I enjoyed, and a love for video games that has endured well into adulthood. Now I’m a filthy games journalist, which has soured my perspective a smidge.

But before the days of being paid off by publishers for reviews and adopting an agenda to destroy all things gaming with my filthy leftist brainwashing, I was a casual consumer like the rest of you. Well, I still am, loving nothing more than to tune into a press conference or media briefing to watch an avalanche of new trailers and cross my fingers for reveals I’ve been waiting years for. I grew up watching shows like this, and for so long wanted to be a part of them.

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E3 demos are a special breed. Curated slices of upcoming games prone to fall apart the second it goes off the rails either by complete accident or entirely on purpose. Time and time again we’ve seen gorgeous glimpses of future games come crashing down as those behind the scenes scramble to fix things before the audience notices. It’s tense to watch these situations unfold, praying nothing goes wrong but also morbidly hoping it all does.

I’ll never forget the iconic Madagascar section from Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End which began with Nathan Drake refusing to move from his starting position for several seconds. It was painful to watch because a controller had clearly stopped working on the debug console, causing staff to rush around in search of a replacement hoping that it wasn’t too late.

We eventually saw the demo unfold, but not before this awkward start was burned into our brains. Naughty Dog even shipped the game with a trophy paying homage to this moment, rewarding players with a tongue-in-cheek accolade for refusing to move as the chapter begins. It could have flown off the handle, but choosing to have fun with its own unfortunate mistake meant we were able to embrace it just as much. E3 demos can so often be canned and awkward, filled with false chatter and overblown set pieces that seldom represent the finished product, so honesty like this will always be refreshing to me.

But I want to go back even further. To explore the appeal of demonstrations with deliberately slow camera movements and epic reveals designed to draw us into myriad worlds without ever representing the actual pace or even content of games we’ll come to play. I’m talking about BioShock Infinite, The Last of Us, Fallout 4, and so many others that see us walk through new experiences with epic narration from voice actors or developers promising us something we’ve ever seen before. It was so easy to be sold into the hype at times like this.

Like I said, I’m super cool. So when playing games with friends I’d often jokingly say it was just like an E3 demo as we stepped into a new area or had the open world revealed to us after hours of teasing. It can even be tempting to throw in a bit of false narration, overselling the game we already have in our hands despite us already knowing what to expect. This works especially well with first-person games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Call of Duty where freeform exploration of explosive set pieces can be played out with an infectious rhythm.

Pan up to a stunning skybox before focusing on the streets below, slowly walking towards your objective while lingering on points of interest scattered across the environment like you’re presenting this game to an audience of millions. Act like each procedural action is secretly a planned instance, engaging in combat with weighty deliberacy or moving in ways that ensure focus is never obscured from a viewer that doesn’t even exist. It’s weirdly fun, and allows us to view games in a light that our usual pace often isn’t able to accommodate.

Games are able to depict fictional realms in ways no other medium is capable of, so taking time to smell the roses and alter our perspective to more of a spectator can make revisiting games with this perspective so fascinating. I did it so much with the original BioShock. I was 11 when it came out, so don’t feel quite so pathetic recalling my attempts at demoing the game to myself while playing through it for the thousandth time. Especially the opening.

BioShock’s first stage is iconic, and utterly perfect to be showcased at such a slow, gradual, and deliberate pace. You are a random man who finds themselves subject to a plane crash and stranded in the Pacific Ocean, with no way forward beyond a lighthouse shimmering in the distance. You stumble inside in search of shelter until we come across the Bathysphere, having no choice but to venture down into the underwater city below in search of help.

Andrew Ryan’s egotistical narration, the humble introduction of Atlas, and the way in which each new environment is designed to stun and surprise makes this opening hour a conveyor belt of achingly slow camera movements and brutally scripted combat encounters. So much of it remains peerless, and if BioShock was remade today I could see this exact approach being taken with an on-stage demonstration.

I’ve no shame in saying that - at least when it comes to repeat playthroughs - I’d find myself playing small parts of games like this. It might have been about showcasing my favourite games to someone who doesn’t even exist, or adding a new layer of enjoyment to worlds and characters I’d seen countless times before.

You might even consider it a form of roleplay, taking away the expected role of a player and putting myself in new shoes for the first time. Maybe I’m just weird, but the next time you boot up a beloved classic, pretend you’re sitting in the chair of a nervous developer trying to make it look like the best game in the history of everything. You might discover something new, or just have a bit of fun.

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