Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. And how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So I read the news today. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: technically I read it yesterday when all my troubles seemed
Speaker 1: so far away, But I had already recorded yesterday's tech
Speaker 1: News episode, so I couldn't include it in that episode.
Speaker 1: But the news is that E three, also known as
Speaker 1: the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is no more. It has ceased
Speaker 1: to be. It has rung up the curtain and joined
Speaker 1: the choir invisible as it were, or to be less
Speaker 1: monty python ish about it. The Entertainment Software Association or
Speaker 1: ESA has announced that E three will stop trying to
Speaker 1: make three happened. It's like fetch, It's never happening. E
Speaker 1: three is over now. Some people would argue that E
Speaker 1: three had already died years ago, and that in the
Speaker 1: years following it was just a shambling, zombie husk of
Speaker 1: what it once was. So today I thought we would
Speaker 1: do a very short overview of E three, why it
Speaker 1: was a thing and why it's now no longer a thing,
Speaker 1: and I have done lots of other episodes about E three,
Speaker 1: including some deep dives on E three's history, so please
Speaker 1: check the tech Stuff archives for other E three episodes
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more. This is more of
Speaker 1: a high level look at the event and what happened.
Speaker 1: So here we go. Now. Before E three, which officially
Speaker 1: began in nineteen ninety five, the video game industry found
Speaker 1: it difficult to promote itself, and this was for a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of reasons. So, first of all, back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties in the United States, there was this
Speaker 1: massive industry wide video game collapse and it reset home
Speaker 1: video game entertainment and made a lot of retailers wary
Speaker 1: of another potential crash. It really set back specifically console games.
Speaker 1: Here in the US. There was a general point of
Speaker 1: view among much of the mainstream public that games were
Speaker 1: for kids and really only for kids, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people found it beyond belief that an adult would
Speaker 1: actually like to play video and computer games. This meant
Speaker 1: that when games began exploring material that wasn't suitable for kids,
Speaker 1: there was a huge disconnect. You know, people were saying,
Speaker 1: you can't make a game where one guy rips off
Speaker 1: his face and breathes fire to torch another guy. These
Speaker 1: are for kids. That was the sort of thinking that
Speaker 1: was going on back then. In fact, that problem led
Speaker 1: to the formation of the Entertainment Software Association itself, the ESA.
Speaker 1: This is the organization that formally put on E three. Now.
Speaker 1: At the time, it wasn't called the ESA. It was
Speaker 1: called the Interactive Digital Software Association or IDSA, but eventually
Speaker 1: it would change its name. So the game's industry needed
Speaker 1: to create a review board that could assign maturity ratings
Speaker 1: to game titles to let people know what ages are
Speaker 1: appropriate for specific video games. If the industry could prove
Speaker 1: that it could regulate itself well, that would help prevent
Speaker 1: the US government from getting involved. So this was really
Speaker 1: an act of self preservation in the video game industry,
Speaker 1: and it was all made necessary largely because the US
Speaker 1: government was mostly comprised of old poops who were totally
Speaker 1: out of touch with the modern world. Some things never
Speaker 1: seemed to change. So the Entertainment Software Ratings Board or
Speaker 1: ESRB became a thing, and the ESA, the organization behind it,
Speaker 1: was a nonprofit. The ESA also would form working groups
Speaker 1: to help tackle specific challenges in the home video and
Speaker 1: computer game spaces, so stuff like intellectual property policies and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. E three would end up being
Speaker 1: the main way that ESA would pay for all this activity.
Speaker 1: It became a primary revenue generation kind of outlet, but
Speaker 1: that wasn't the main purpose of E three. So the
Speaker 1: main purpose outside of funding the ESA was to give
Speaker 1: video game companies their own trade event where they could
Speaker 1: speak directly to retailers and distributors and the press. They
Speaker 1: could promote upcoming titles, they could make announcements, they could
Speaker 1: provide people the chance to experience early builds of games
Speaker 1: through demos. This meant that the companies wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: accept the indignity of going to events like CES only
Speaker 1: to get pushed out to a leaky ten in a
Speaker 1: parking lot, because seriously, that's the sort of space these
Speaker 1: companies would usually get assigned because no one in consumer
Speaker 1: electronics actually respected the video game industry at the time,
Speaker 1: so going to a big event like CES, it was
Speaker 1: hard to get noticed and to stand out among every
Speaker 1: other company at CES, and at the same time you're
Speaker 1: in enduring really uncomfortable circumstances, all right, So E three
Speaker 1: would become part promotional event, part networking opportunity, and part
Speaker 1: revenue generator for the ESA. And then the ESA could
Speaker 1: fund stuff like the ESRB and various working groups and
Speaker 1: keep the entire industry safe from government intervention. So it
Speaker 1: was a mutually beneficial system for everyone involved. But over
Speaker 1: time potholes formed in the road for E three. It
Speaker 1: got pretty wild pretty quickly, and this excess garnered attention.
Speaker 1: E three started looking less like a professional trade industry
Speaker 1: event and more like a wild Hollywood party with lots
Speaker 1: of excess, and so the ESA tried to course correct,
Speaker 1: but it used way too heavy of a hand. So
Speaker 1: for a couple of years ethere was much much more subdued,
Speaker 1: with individual sessions located in different hotels across town, and
Speaker 1: gone was the party atmosphere, And gone too was a
Speaker 1: lot of the appeal that brought people an attention to
Speaker 1: the event in the first place. And so the ESA
Speaker 1: course corrected again and a bit more party crept back
Speaker 1: into the event. It wasn't as wild as the earlier days,
Speaker 1: but it certainly wasn't as buttoned down as the more
Speaker 1: restrictive years. But then another challenge began to emerge. See
Speaker 1: some of the bigger companies started to realize that they
Speaker 1: could hold their own event, and it could be a
Speaker 1: physical event where people attend in person, such as Blizzard's
Speaker 1: BlizzCon that started in two thousand and five. That allowed
Speaker 1: the general public to purchase takes to this event, which
Speaker 1: really set it apart from E three. E three was
Speaker 1: still an industry only event, which meant to attend E
Speaker 1: three you needed to be a game developer, a publisher,
Speaker 1: a distributor, a retailer, or a journalist. The general public
Speaker 1: was not allowed inside, although a lot of enterprising young
Speaker 1: people would launch game focused blogs or websites or such
Speaker 1: and they would gain access to E three that way. Anyway,
Speaker 1: blizz Con was an early example of a company decided
Speaker 1: to strike out and do its own thing and use
Speaker 1: that as a promotional event for its various products. The
Speaker 1: Internet also was really changing things up, so in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen nineties when E three first launched, the primary
Speaker 1: media covering video games tended to be magazines, you know,
Speaker 1: physical paper magazines with names like Nintendo Power or Game
Speaker 1: Pro or Computer Gaming World. The Internet and the Web
Speaker 1: were definitely things in the mid nineties. They exist, but
Speaker 1: they hadn't saturated our world just yet, But by the
Speaker 1: mid two thousands it became a different story, and upon
Speaker 1: the rise of the consumer smartphone, things would really change quickly.
Speaker 1: Folks turned to the Internet more and more for news
Speaker 1: and entertainment, and this also meant it would become possible
Speaker 1: for a video game company, particularly the larger ones, to
Speaker 1: hold their own events digitally online and to control the
Speaker 1: entire experience. See One of the downsides of E three
Speaker 1: is that every company there is competing against everyone else
Speaker 1: for attention. Usually, the big companies would have their own
Speaker 1: presentations scheduled so that they weren't going up against anyone
Speaker 1: else at that time. So Sony would have a press conference,
Speaker 1: then later on Nintendo would have one, then Microsoft, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Another downside is it was very expensive for these companies
Speaker 1: to attend E three. They were spending millions of dollars
Speaker 1: on presentations and booths. That's a lot of money. Yet
Speaker 1: another is that E three happened on its own schedule,
Speaker 1: regardless of how far along a company might be in
Speaker 1: development of their next game. So imagine that you are
Speaker 1: in charge of running a video game company and E
Speaker 1: three is coming up, So you've got a new title
Speaker 1: that's in development, but it's so early in the development
Speaker 1: phase that it hasn't really coalesced into something that you
Speaker 1: can talk about easily. So do you go to E
Speaker 1: three with nothing new to show and just rely on
Speaker 1: older titles that have already been released to kind of
Speaker 1: carry you through? Do you not go and you're not
Speaker 1: part of the conversation at all. Do you make a
Speaker 1: guess as to where your barely formed game is heading
Speaker 1: and then mock up something to show folks, And then
Speaker 1: what happens if development takes a different turn and the
Speaker 1: game you produce ends up being significantly different from the
Speaker 1: preview you showed. It was a real problem. Holding your
Speaker 1: own event would give you far more control, and you'd
Speaker 1: have the spotlight all to yourself, and you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about whether or not you quote unquote one
Speaker 1: E three. So the transition of companies leaving E three
Speaker 1: didn't happen all at once, but there were signs as
Speaker 1: early as twenty eleven. That's where we'll pick up after
Speaker 1: we take this quick break. So before the break, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that in twenty eleven things began to change. That's
Speaker 1: when Nintendo held its first Nintendo Direct Video News Conference,
Speaker 1: and in twenty thirteen, Electronic Arts and Nintendo both chose
Speaker 1: to forego a live stage keynote presentation, instead opting to
Speaker 1: hold their own digital showcases around the same time as
Speaker 1: the E three event. They did still maintain a presence
Speaker 1: on the exhibition floor, so they still had booths and
Speaker 1: stuff on the floor, but they didn't do a big
Speaker 1: stage keynote, they didn't do a live presentation in front
Speaker 1: of a live audience. Electronic Arts would further distance itself
Speaker 1: from E three and twenty sixteen, and then Sony and
Speaker 1: Microsoft began to hold their own events in order to
Speaker 1: unveil hardware. They would just use E three to kind
Speaker 1: of announce software. But then Sony announced in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: that it was not going to come back for E
Speaker 1: three twenty nineteen or twenty twenty. In fact, nobody went
Speaker 1: to E three twenty twenty because Covid took care of that.
Speaker 1: Sony has been out of E three ever since. Nintendo
Speaker 1: and Microsoft would announce earlier this year, back in January
Speaker 1: in fact, that they were not going to go to
Speaker 1: E three twenty twenty three, and again nobody would end
Speaker 1: up going to E three twenty twenty three, because the
Speaker 1: ESA chose to cancel the event because frankly, hardly anyone
Speaker 1: was agreeing to show up to it. In fact, since
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, E three has only happened once, and that
Speaker 1: was a digital only event in twenty twenty one, twenty
Speaker 1: two to twenty twenty three. All of those events were canceled.
Speaker 1: Other things contributed to E three's decline. For example, in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, the ESA chose to open the event up
Speaker 1: to the public on a limited basis. They offered tickets
Speaker 1: for sale for the public to attend E three, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the industry folks found this really frustrating,
Speaker 1: particularly the journalists, at least in my experience, because those
Speaker 1: were the people I was hanging out with. And that
Speaker 1: was because getting around E three and doing your job
Speaker 1: got a whole lot harder when the general public was
Speaker 1: taking up space. But the ESA was in a losing battle.
Speaker 1: E three was becoming less relevant as more companies drifted
Speaker 1: away and started to hold their own events. Now that's
Speaker 1: not to say that everyone found E three to be irrelevant.
Speaker 1: A lot of independent game developers used E three to
Speaker 1: connect with media and with fans, and for a while retailers.
Speaker 1: But that does bring us to another thing that has
Speaker 1: changed dramatically since the founding of E three. So back
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, if you wanted to buy a
Speaker 1: new computer or video game, then you, as a consumer
Speaker 1: had to go to a store, probably a toy store
Speaker 1: or maybe a big like electronics box store. You'd peruse
Speaker 1: the aisles and you would look for the title you
Speaker 1: wanted and you would hope it was in stock. But
Speaker 1: these days, with digital distribution, buying a physical copy of
Speaker 1: a game is far less common outside of cartridge based systems.
Speaker 1: That change meant that the role of distributors and retailers
Speaker 1: pretty much disappeared, so a big chunk of E three's
Speaker 1: reason for being also went away. Meanwhile, you had folks
Speaker 1: like Jeff Keeley, who once upon a time played a
Speaker 1: very important part in E three, but then would go
Speaker 1: on to launch their own events that would compete largely
Speaker 1: in the same space. Keighley's Summer Game Fest has become
Speaker 1: an alternative platform where developers can announce upcoming titles to
Speaker 1: drum up excitement, and then the game Awards would also
Speaker 1: become a place to promote upcoming games. Also, you know
Speaker 1: you could hand out awards and stuff, but if you
Speaker 1: saw this year's Game Awards, you know there was way
Speaker 1: more focus on video game trailers and celebrity appearances than
Speaker 1: on the actual awards and recipients. That might be a
Speaker 1: little commentary from my point of view. Anyway, you could
Speaker 1: argue that E three's relevance really faded away a few
Speaker 1: years back. Actually, since only one event and a digital
Speaker 1: only version of E three has happened since twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's even arguable. I think it's obvious
Speaker 1: E three was no longer relevant. Now. That's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a bad thing, at least not for the individual companies involved.
Speaker 1: It can be bad for some of the independent companies.
Speaker 1: It decreases the opportunities they have to get in front
Speaker 1: of people. It can be really challenging for an independent,
Speaker 1: a small independent developer to get that kind of attention. Sometimes, however,
Speaker 1: it can partner with a larger company like a Microsoft
Speaker 1: or a Sony and become part of a showcase for
Speaker 1: one of their events, but it's still challenge. For the ESA,
Speaker 1: the loss of E three could be a real headache
Speaker 1: because now the organization will need to determine how to
Speaker 1: manage funds to still fulfill its other functions. Like E
Speaker 1: three was probably the most visible thing that the ESA did,
Speaker 1: but that ESRB, that's still a thing that goes on,
Speaker 1: and there are still these issues of the working groups
Speaker 1: that try to help forge the video game industry stance
Speaker 1: on important issues, so that's still a challenge. I didn't
Speaker 1: even touch on some of the scandals around the ESA
Speaker 1: itself because it's not like it is immune to well
Speaker 1: to scandal. There are lots of them, in fact, including
Speaker 1: the time that the ESA accidentally docsed hundreds of video
Speaker 1: game professionals, particularly journalists. Yikes. In an era where there
Speaker 1: have been death threats made against game developers and journalists
Speaker 1: from extremes, I guess I should say it's bad to
Speaker 1: have all your personal information revealed online, And yeah, the
Speaker 1: ESA did that. It was a whole thing. Anyway, after
Speaker 1: years of asking the question, is E three dead, we
Speaker 1: can now say definitively yes, it is really most sincerely dead.
Speaker 1: Does that mean it will never come back? Never say never.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe sometime in the future someone will resurrect
Speaker 1: the E three brand. I mean, people do love nostalgia,
Speaker 1: after all, Whether it's the ESA or maybe some other
Speaker 1: entity that purchases the rights to the E three name.
Speaker 1: Maybe that will happen, But the original intent of E
Speaker 1: three isn't really a thing anymore. Right. We don't have
Speaker 1: the barriers to promote oneself that existed back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. We don't have the retail and distribution channels
Speaker 1: that we had back in the nineteen ninety so a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that E three was trying to
Speaker 1: address no longer is an issue. It's moot. So I
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna get an E three, at least
Speaker 1: not the way we had in the past. Maybe we
Speaker 1: get some sort of larger public facing event that's run
Speaker 1: by a different organization, but I don't know. Anyway, you
Speaker 1: could say that it really stuck around longer than was necessary,
Speaker 1: but still farewell E three, Fair winds and following seas.
Speaker 1: I only attended E three maybe three times total since
Speaker 1: since I started working this job back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, so I am by no means a veteran
Speaker 1: of E three, like I've only been a few times.
Speaker 1: But I can say like there was some stuff that
Speaker 1: happened to E three, like some of those presentations. They
Speaker 1: were so wack adoodle weird that I do. I am
Speaker 1: sorry that they're gone, because I mean, it was real spectacle.
Speaker 1: I will I don't. I don't know that it was
Speaker 1: always effective in promoting a company or its video games,
Speaker 1: but it was always worth talking about, not necessarily in
Speaker 1: a positive way. But yeah, I kind of miss that
Speaker 1: that's no longer a thing. I mean, you can still
Speaker 1: sometimes see that in these individual companies events online, but
Speaker 1: it's not quite the same because they're not trying to
Speaker 1: outdo each other in the same space, so that takes
Speaker 1: a big part of it out. Anyway, that's the update
Speaker 1: on E three. As I said, you can go back
Speaker 1: into the tech Stuff archives. There are lots of episodes
Speaker 1: about E three. They go into much greater detail and
Speaker 1: talk about the various changes that happened over the course
Speaker 1: of its existence. But yeah, it's it's sad to say goodbye,
Speaker 1: but I think it was pastime. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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