Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? Well, folks, it's time.
Speaker 1: It's time for the obligatory is E three Dead? Episode edition?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I thought we could chat about E three
Speaker 1: the video game trade show and more recently fan Expo
Speaker 1: that for the second time within three years, got completely
Speaker 1: scrapped due to COVID and some other factors. The conference
Speaker 1: has had some pretty major setbacks and controversies over the
Speaker 1: last few years, and frequently journalists and analysts have been
Speaker 1: left asking is E three still relevant? And have we
Speaker 1: seen the last of E three? So today I thought
Speaker 1: it would talk a little bit about what E three
Speaker 1: is and where it came from. So why E three is,
Speaker 1: or perhaps maybe why E three was and why things
Speaker 1: are so different today apart from, you know, the obvious
Speaker 1: case of the pandemic. So spoiler alert, it's not just
Speaker 1: because of COVID, although obviously COVID plays a really big part. Okay,
Speaker 1: So to understand E three, we first have to go
Speaker 1: back to the early nineteen nineties, before there was a
Speaker 1: dedicated video game trade show in the United States. In fact,
Speaker 1: this was before there was even an organization that could
Speaker 1: throw such an event. And we have to bring politics
Speaker 1: into this as well, because, as it turns out, political
Speaker 1: pressure is one of the factors that led to E
Speaker 1: three even being a thing. So the early nine nineties
Speaker 1: saw video games maturing. Actually maturing is kind of a
Speaker 1: weird word to use. Video games were including more controversial material.
Speaker 1: The video games of the eighties were largely tunish, unrealistic creations.
Speaker 1: You know, pac Man's Ghosts were not particularly disturbing. Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong was a tribute to King Kong, and while determined
Speaker 1: to throw barrels at poor jump Man, who would later
Speaker 1: evolve into Mario, he wasn't particularly concerning either. Heck, all
Speaker 1: the earliest arcade games, I would have to say Frogger
Speaker 1: was potentially the most upsetting because I hated seeing that
Speaker 1: little green guy get smushed by a car. Anyway, my
Speaker 1: point is that games couldn't be terribly explicit simply because
Speaker 1: they lacked the fidelity to do that. You did have
Speaker 1: occasional computer games that got a little bit racy, the
Speaker 1: text based and titillating Lee titled The Leather Goddess of Phoebus,
Speaker 1: pushed the envelope a bit, though honestly the game was
Speaker 1: fairly tame, and the leisure suit Larry series indulged in
Speaker 1: juvenile male fantasies, straight male fantasies, i should say, but
Speaker 1: it featured really primitive graphics, so it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: particularly explicit. It was explicit and intent, but the graphics
Speaker 1: failed to be able to carry through that. So for
Speaker 1: the most part, games were at least a couple of
Speaker 1: layers of abstraction away from being realistic. And then as
Speaker 1: hardware and software became more sophisticated, it became possible to
Speaker 1: create more graphic content and there was a demand for
Speaker 1: that kind of game, so game designers began to meet
Speaker 1: that demand. One famous example of this was the Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat games. So fighting games were not a new thing,
Speaker 1: but Mortal Kombat's focused on blood and violence, particularly with
Speaker 1: the fatalities that gamers could pull off if they knew
Speaker 1: the right combo to do. Those caught a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: and on the more lascivious front, there were games like
Speaker 1: night Trap, which was a full motion video game. Uh
Speaker 1: full motion video is when you use actual video footage
Speaker 1: within a game. And that game night Trap, it featured
Speaker 1: you as player that's peeping in on a lot of
Speaker 1: young women and a sleepover, running around in nightgowns. Now,
Speaker 1: the point of the game was that you were ostensibly
Speaker 1: trying to protect those young women from intruders who were
Speaker 1: inside the house, but really most folks just focused on
Speaker 1: the fact that you're kind of a peeping tom. The
Speaker 1: game companies were thriving on controversy, as the concern over
Speaker 1: the games would naturally lead to greater interest in those
Speaker 1: games and sales numbers would go up. But that also
Speaker 1: meant that lawmakers, particularly those who were the think of
Speaker 1: the children type of lawmakers, were pretty certain that these
Speaker 1: games were a harmful influence on the young. It's a
Speaker 1: story that we've seen again and again, from Rock and
Speaker 1: Roll to Dungeons and Dragons to video games, that you
Speaker 1: know video games are somehow the domain of children, that
Speaker 1: only children play video games, and that this content clearly
Speaker 1: is not suitable for children. Now today, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of folks are aware that video games are something
Speaker 1: that people of all ages enjoy, but I suspect are
Speaker 1: still some fossils and leadership roles who can't get their
Speaker 1: heads wrapped around that. Anyway, the US Congress was threatening
Speaker 1: to set up a government agency that would assign essentially
Speaker 1: decency ratings to video game releases. The video game industry,
Speaker 1: in an attempt to sidestep governmental oversight, elected to create
Speaker 1: its own ratings board. To do that, the industry first
Speaker 1: formed an organization that originally was called the Interactive Digital
Speaker 1: Software Association or i D s A. That group would
Speaker 1: later in two thousand three, rebrand itself as the Entertainment
Speaker 1: Software Association or e s A. And I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: use E s A from here on out, but just
Speaker 1: you know, be aware that before two thousand three it
Speaker 1: was the I D s A. After two thousand three
Speaker 1: it was E s A. Same organization though anyway, what
Speaker 1: would become the E s A created the Entertainment Software
Speaker 1: Ratings Board or e S r B. And it's this
Speaker 1: group that evaluates games and assigns an appropriate age rating
Speaker 1: to those video games. So it's a lot like the
Speaker 1: mp A A, which does a similar thing for cinematic films.
Speaker 1: Now let's finally get to some E three stuff. Now
Speaker 1: I would argue there are two really big factors that
Speaker 1: made E three necessary. One was that as a whole,
Speaker 1: the video game industry didn't have the respect of the
Speaker 1: broader tech sector. While video game companies would occasionally secure
Speaker 1: a booth at other major general tech trade shows like
Speaker 1: c e S, they were frequently pushed out of the
Speaker 1: way of main show traffic. So there are famous stories
Speaker 1: of companies in the games industry being forced to set
Speaker 1: up in leaky tense out in the parking lot outside
Speaker 1: the Las Vegas Convention Center with only access to like
Speaker 1: porta potties and no access to food. And you know,
Speaker 1: leaky tents are a bad shelter if you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of television's computers and game consoles running in an
Speaker 1: effort to show off various games. The video games industry
Speaker 1: itself was actually picking up a lot of momentum, so
Speaker 1: it seemed really insulting to these companies that they should
Speaker 1: be pushed so far off the main show floor. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, video games have been popular in the eighties,
Speaker 1: but that popularity was really starting to pick up in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and yet publishers, distributors, developers, and others in
Speaker 1: the business they didn't have trade show opportunities that would
Speaker 1: help them do business and aid in discovery, you know,
Speaker 1: using the press and media, and just generally achieve the
Speaker 1: goals of your typical trade show. So there was a
Speaker 1: need there. But another factor that made E three and
Speaker 1: necessity is that something needed to foot the bill for
Speaker 1: the s A and the E s RB. There needed
Speaker 1: to be a way to fund the organization that existed
Speaker 1: so that the games industry could keep the US government
Speaker 1: off its collective back and a trade show could be
Speaker 1: really profitable if run correctly. Game companies could spend bookoos
Speaker 1: of buckos to get show floor space. You could charge
Speaker 1: industry attendees a fee to get a badge that guarantees entry.
Speaker 1: Press would be allowed free entry upon successful registration, as
Speaker 1: the press would elevate everyone else at the show. So
Speaker 1: there was this financial need for something like E three
Speaker 1: as well. And so in nine the future E s
Speaker 1: A would organize the very first Electronic Entertainment Expo, providing
Speaker 1: an alternative to the summer session of ce S. Because
Speaker 1: back in those days, c e S actually held two
Speaker 1: shows a year. These days it has scaled down to
Speaker 1: a single show held in January in Las Vegas, Nevada,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, companies use E three to promote upcoming hardware
Speaker 1: and video games, often splurging for massive press events that
Speaker 1: stacked video game trailers and hardware demos to drive up
Speaker 1: anticipation for upcoming releases. You also typically see celebrity cameos
Speaker 1: in these where you get some celebrity to come out
Speaker 1: and announce a game. You also see a lot of
Speaker 1: cringe e kind of sketches and attempts at comedy. And
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of big announcements at E
Speaker 1: three over the years, including announcements for games and systems
Speaker 1: that never actually came out, and then there are a
Speaker 1: few that did come out but severely underperformed. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you, fall Out seventy six. Oh and initially there
Speaker 1: was one other important element to E three. It was
Speaker 1: an industry only event, so the only people allowed to
Speaker 1: attend the show were people who were in the video
Speaker 1: games industry or journalists who covered that industry. The general
Speaker 1: public was not allowed entreat to E three, which of
Speaker 1: course gave the event a type of exclusivity that made
Speaker 1: gamers really want to go. So if you ever need
Speaker 1: to have people really want to go someplace, just tell
Speaker 1: them they're not allowed to go there. Piece of cake.
Speaker 1: It takes care of itself. Now, we're actually gonna skip
Speaker 1: around a bit in the history of the three because
Speaker 1: I've already done some episodes about E three in the
Speaker 1: past and covered the history in greater detail. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some big moments in E three
Speaker 1: that threatened the show's existence. Because this is not the
Speaker 1: first time people have asked the question, is E three doomed?
Speaker 1: Is it not coming back? Uh? And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: dwell on disastrous press events like the ones that the
Speaker 1: individual companies have held. There have been lots of those,
Speaker 1: some combining you know, cringe worthy entertainment and wooden presentations
Speaker 1: to lackluster response, and like, there are numerous press releases
Speaker 1: that kind of vie for the title of worst E
Speaker 1: three press release ever or press event ever. So those
Speaker 1: definitely happened, and most of those press events had at
Speaker 1: least a few low spots. Some of them had more
Speaker 1: low spots than anything else, and those can stand out
Speaker 1: as an embarrassing footnote in a video game company's history,
Speaker 1: but they weren't really a threat to E three's very existence.
Speaker 1: So while it would be fun to talk about really
Speaker 1: big misfires and press event history and E three that's done.
Speaker 1: What this show is really going to focus on. All right,
Speaker 1: when we come back after this break, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: some of the things that happened in E three's history
Speaker 1: that really put it on unsure footing. But first these messages.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, the E s A organizers chose the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Convention Center as the location for E three. However,
Speaker 1: in the E s A move D three to my
Speaker 1: hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, because well, in some accounts it's
Speaker 1: because the l A Convention Center needed to have some renovations,
Speaker 1: and in others it's because contract negotiations between the E
Speaker 1: s A and the convention center had kind of fallen through.
Speaker 1: So the move to Atlanta was a bump. Be one,
Speaker 1: there were fewer exhibitors who would actually make the journey
Speaker 1: out to Atlanta. There were a lot of companies that
Speaker 1: had a West coast presence but not an East coast one,
Speaker 1: and they just said, no, it's too expensive and difficult
Speaker 1: to go all the way there and set up a show.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna do it. And a lot of attendees
Speaker 1: felt that the Atlanta show was just inferior to the
Speaker 1: one in Los Angeles that was harder to navigate and
Speaker 1: just less satisfying. So a stumbled that was that early
Speaker 1: in E three's history was a bit concerning. However, E
Speaker 1: three would recover and it would return to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in now from two thousand and six. The show grew
Speaker 1: year over year, and as the show got bigger, companies
Speaker 1: felt compelled to make a larger presence there. That meant
Speaker 1: spending a lot more money. Companies would shell out huge
Speaker 1: amounts to create spectacular booths and hold flashy press events
Speaker 1: complete with celebrity cameos. I remember one year I went
Speaker 1: and I saw the the booth for Fallout New Vegas,
Speaker 1: and I could only see it from the outside because
Speaker 1: it was walled off and you had to have an
Speaker 1: invite to go in, and I did not have an invite.
Speaker 1: But man, there must have been a lot of money
Speaker 1: spent just making that booth look so incredible. This was
Speaker 1: also an era where you started seeing, you know, more
Speaker 1: celebrity cameos, and there was this prevalent trend of hiring
Speaker 1: young women to staff booths in an effort to entice
Speaker 1: people to come into them because In these years, the
Speaker 1: video game industry was still largely focused on catering to
Speaker 1: young straight men, not entirely, but predominantly, and so this
Speaker 1: was the so called booth Babe became a booth standard.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, I don't mean to diminish the
Speaker 1: women who played that part. They were taking a gig,
Speaker 1: and a gig is a gig. My judgment is more
Speaker 1: toward the general trend of objectifying women for the purposes
Speaker 1: of pulling in more foot traffic. Really objectifying women in general,
Speaker 1: but specifically like using them as advertisement is to get
Speaker 1: people to come into the booth. So my judgments not
Speaker 1: aimed at the women themselves, but rather this kind of
Speaker 1: objectifying tendency. Moving on, one challenge E three had early
Speaker 1: on was in timing. The show Originally would happen in May,
Speaker 1: so for a company to really take advantage of the three,
Speaker 1: it needed to have something to show off at E three,
Speaker 1: and a lot of video game companies really focus on
Speaker 1: getting releases out so that they're available during the holiday
Speaker 1: shopping season so late in the year, but that meant
Speaker 1: that May was sometimes too early for companies to really
Speaker 1: have something to show off. So E three would gradually
Speaker 1: shift over to June to give the industry a little
Speaker 1: bit more time to prep something, because there's nothing like
Speaker 1: attending a trade show but having nothing to exhibit other
Speaker 1: than games that have already released. By two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: the E s A, because by now it was officially
Speaker 1: called that, was getting complaints from various game companies. Some
Speaker 1: of those companies were threatening to drop out of future
Speaker 1: shows because the costs were getting out of hand. E
Speaker 1: three had become such a huge party of a show
Speaker 1: that it was eating too much out of company budgets,
Speaker 1: particularly for the larger companies that were competing against the
Speaker 1: other larger companies. And so in light of these criticisms,
Speaker 1: the E s A made the decision to scale E
Speaker 1: three back dramatically. The two thousand seven show wouldn't happen
Speaker 1: at the l A Convention Center at all. Instead, it
Speaker 1: was moved out to Santa Monica, California, and would be
Speaker 1: in several hotels as opposed to a central convention center.
Speaker 1: The event itself adopted the name the E three Media
Speaker 1: and Business Summit, which, hey, you know, that's one way
Speaker 1: to take sexy out of the event. It also moved
Speaker 1: to July. The e s A cap attendance to around
Speaker 1: ten thousand people, which was a dramatic reduction from previous years,
Speaker 1: And in two thousand eight, E three returned to the
Speaker 1: Convention Center in Los Angeles, but was a much much
Speaker 1: smaller event, with attendance capped to around five thousand people.
Speaker 1: That party atmosphere was gone and costs were way down,
Speaker 1: but interest in the event also dropped. There wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of media coverage, and big companies began to rethink
Speaker 1: their objections to the extravagance of previous years. The E
Speaker 1: s A received several new complaints, which I suspect is
Speaker 1: exactly what they anticipated and in fact, is what they wanted.
Speaker 1: After all, leading up to the two thousand six decision,
Speaker 1: the E s A was raking in millions of dollars
Speaker 1: through E three. It was an incredibly lucrative event, and
Speaker 1: then with the big companies complaining and threatening to drop out,
Speaker 1: that became an existential threat to E three because if
Speaker 1: the big companies dropped out, well, other companies might follow
Speaker 1: and E three would just cease to exist. So by
Speaker 1: scaling way back and giving the big companies what they
Speaker 1: asked for and thought they wanted, the E S He
Speaker 1: was able to show that what those companies thought they
Speaker 1: wanted wasn't actually what they wanted. If that was the
Speaker 1: essays plan. It was a calculated risk that paid off,
Speaker 1: But that really could have been the end of the
Speaker 1: three right then and there. Now. One thing that did
Speaker 1: shake E s A up a bit was that in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, Activision, fresh off its acquisition of Blizzard,
Speaker 1: pulled the eject cord not just on E three but
Speaker 1: also the E s A as well. Activision had been
Speaker 1: one of the founding members of the E s A
Speaker 1: back when it was the I D. S A. So
Speaker 1: this was a big deal and it was a sign
Speaker 1: of things to come. And in two thousand nine things
Speaker 1: started heading back into the more splashy, extravagant, and more
Speaker 1: importantly expensive direction for E three. I also think two
Speaker 1: thousand nine was the first E three I attended, so
Speaker 1: I went the year that it shifted back toward becoming
Speaker 1: a big spectacle. For a few years, E three flourished,
Speaker 1: but things began to shift as early as that was
Speaker 1: the year that Nintendo changed it's E three strategy. Now, previously,
Speaker 1: the company had done the usual routine, which involved holding
Speaker 1: an in person live press event in front of an audience,
Speaker 1: and you would have presenters revealing game trailers and footage,
Speaker 1: and occasionally scripted conversations between people that was tried to
Speaker 1: be passed off as like natural conversation that never worked,
Speaker 1: by the way. Instead, Nintendo decided to go and present
Speaker 1: digital pre taped segments, which makes sense. You have far
Speaker 1: more control there, like you can do take after take
Speaker 1: until you get it right. When it's live, you get
Speaker 1: one shot, and if it went wrong, well that's that's
Speaker 1: live theater for you. It's one of the things I
Speaker 1: love about live theater. It's one of the things big
Speaker 1: companies hate about live prece events because unless everything goes perfectly,
Speaker 1: it could become a disaster. So this was the beginning
Speaker 1: of what would become Nintendo Direct, and over time, Nintendo
Speaker 1: would actually shift these digital presentations away from E three
Speaker 1: timelines entirely, which freed up Nintendo to reach its audience
Speaker 1: on the company's own schedule, rather than having to account
Speaker 1: for a trade show schedule thrown by an independent organization.
Speaker 1: In Electronic Arts or e A left E three and
Speaker 1: started its own event held before E three would actually start.
Speaker 1: So Electronic Arts had its own specific event catering to
Speaker 1: e A's announcements, and I gave e A the chance
Speaker 1: to really stand out without having to compete against all
Speaker 1: the other companies, and so it could hold the spotlight
Speaker 1: for itself. And e A was a big enough company
Speaker 1: to pull this off. As we will see, this was
Speaker 1: the beginning of a trend. We'll be back to talk
Speaker 1: about this more after these messages. Okay, So we talked
Speaker 1: about how Activision had pulled out of E three, how
Speaker 1: Nintendo gradually migrated away from E three, and how Electronic
Speaker 1: Arts would do the same. Blizzard, which by this point
Speaker 1: was part of Activision. Blizzard would also begin to sit
Speaker 1: out E three. Since two thousand five, the company had
Speaker 1: been holding its own fan event called blizz Con, and
Speaker 1: slowly blizz Con became the main showcase for upcoming Blizzard titles.
Speaker 1: So instead of revealing that stuff at E three, Blizzard
Speaker 1: would reveal it at blizz Con in front of rabid
Speaker 1: Blizzard fans because it was the best chance for getting
Speaker 1: that big reaction that could help promote upcoming titles. Like
Speaker 1: e A and Nintendo, Blizzard saw the value of catering
Speaker 1: to its fans directly on its own schedule without the
Speaker 1: distraction of other game companies vying for the spotlight. In
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, we saw Sony pull out of E three.
Speaker 1: That was a truly tremendous blow. For years, one big
Speaker 1: discussion around E three was always around who quote unquote
Speaker 1: one the show, and typically the conversation was did Nintendo,
Speaker 1: did Xbox or did PlayStation win the show? Did Sony win?
Speaker 1: Did Microsoft win? But by two thousand nineteen, Nintendo was
Speaker 1: no longer really a prominent presence, at least not at
Speaker 1: press events, and Sony was gone to Microsoft would remain,
Speaker 1: and of course video game companies would still bring Nintendo
Speaker 1: and PlayStation systems and games to the show in order
Speaker 1: to demonstrate them. So it's not like you would walk
Speaker 1: into E three and all you would see would be
Speaker 1: PCs and xboxes. There were other systems there, but those
Speaker 1: withdrawals stirred a lot of talk about E three kind
Speaker 1: of losing its purpose, that more and more company knees
Speaker 1: were drifting away from E three. Now, something else that
Speaker 1: cheesed off a lot of folks in the industry happened
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen. That was the first year that the
Speaker 1: Essay decided to sell tickets for E three to the
Speaker 1: general public. Now that first year they kept ticket sales
Speaker 1: at fifteen thousand, and of course tons of people were
Speaker 1: eager to get in there. They had seen the videos
Speaker 1: of extravagant press releases with celebrity appearances. They'd seen footage
Speaker 1: of folks getting to play games that the rest of
Speaker 1: us would have to be, you know, waiting around for
Speaker 1: months or years to try. And for two decades the
Speaker 1: general public had been told it was not welcome to attend.
Speaker 1: So of course those tickets sold out in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. E three was not organized to
Speaker 1: handle that kind of experience or traffic. That's not what
Speaker 1: E three was built to do. There were other fans
Speaker 1: centric events that were far better prepared and designed to
Speaker 1: handle the general public. The Penny Arcade Expo later just
Speaker 1: known as PACKS is a big one. PACKS events see
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of attendees, and generally speaking, these events
Speaker 1: have a reputation for being well organized and well run.
Speaker 1: But E three was a different beast, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of folks discovered their ticket really just gave them
Speaker 1: the opportunity to wait in a line for four or
Speaker 1: five hours and order to play just about ten minutes
Speaker 1: worth of video game content. It hardly seemed worth it,
Speaker 1: but selling those tickets was a big source of revenue,
Speaker 1: and the E s A was not going to stop,
Speaker 1: nor was it going to put in the right amount
Speaker 1: of time and effort to adjust the experience to better
Speaker 1: suit an event open to the general public. So it
Speaker 1: kind of shows the worst of both worlds. It alienated
Speaker 1: the industry attendees who found it increasingly difficult to navigate
Speaker 1: the show floor, and it disappointed fans who had traveled
Speaker 1: really long distances and spent a lot of money to
Speaker 1: attend an event that was pretty poor as a return
Speaker 1: on investment. There were other massive problems too. One of
Speaker 1: those happened in two thousand nineteen when folks discovered that
Speaker 1: the e ESA had been terribly negligent with attendee personal data.
Speaker 1: On the E s A website, there was a way
Speaker 1: to access attendee personal information, which led to tons of
Speaker 1: folks effectively being docked by the e s A, including
Speaker 1: lots of video game journalists in fact, primarily video game journalists. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if anyone I know personally was affected
Speaker 1: by this, but certainly people that I admire and follow
Speaker 1: were And y'all, if you haven't followed video game journalism,
Speaker 1: you don't know how ugly that stuff can get. Passionate
Speaker 1: gamers can get very opinionated about people who failed to
Speaker 1: fawn over a specific game system or title. Someone who
Speaker 1: is a die hard fan can take personal offense to
Speaker 1: a less than glowing review, and several game journalists have
Speaker 1: found themselves the targets of online abuse and worse. So
Speaker 1: with this, dock sing and meant that those threats could
Speaker 1: extend beyond online harassment and into the real world. And
Speaker 1: considering that the ugliness of gamer Gate wasn't that far
Speaker 1: in the rear view mirror, I mean gamer Gate really
Speaker 1: got started in two. There was a very real threat
Speaker 1: going on here, particularly for women who appeared in that database.
Speaker 1: A lot of the names on that list, which it
Speaker 1: also wasn't every attendee at E three, it was like
Speaker 1: two thousand of them, but a lot of those names
Speaker 1: were media and social influencers, So as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: that prompted a pretty harsh reaction to the essays negligence.
Speaker 1: While the e s A pulled the initial list down,
Speaker 1: other people found older databases that were still accessible from
Speaker 1: the SAS site, so people who had attended past E
Speaker 1: three's E s A would take care of those two,
Speaker 1: but the organization had severely tarnished its reputation among the media,
Speaker 1: which you know, for a trade show big on press
Speaker 1: events was not a good move. In twenty eighteen, there
Speaker 1: were reports that emerged that the E s A itself
Speaker 1: had a toxic culture, and that there were allegations that
Speaker 1: the then president of the association, a guy named Mike Gallagher,
Speaker 1: would frequently pit his employees against one another, and he
Speaker 1: also had a tendency to insult his subordinates. The complaints
Speaker 1: prompted an internal investigation, and in October two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: Gallagher stepped down from the E s A and was
Speaker 1: replaced by Stanley Pierre Louis, who initially was an interim
Speaker 1: president but who has since taking the job on a
Speaker 1: more permanent basis. The E s A had planned to
Speaker 1: increase the number of tickets sold to the general public
Speaker 1: in to twenty five thousand, with the E s A
Speaker 1: saying that E three would become a fan and media festival,
Speaker 1: which sounds like the SA's plan was to try and
Speaker 1: make E three more like a PAxx and less like
Speaker 1: a trade show. That kind of makes sense, as a
Speaker 1: lot of the big names had already withdrawn from E three,
Speaker 1: which you know, meant that they were opting to hold
Speaker 1: their own events and head so E three had to
Speaker 1: do something to adapt. Jeff Keiley, a journalist who rose
Speaker 1: to fame in the G four TV days and who
Speaker 1: had spearheaded the development and production of the Game Awards,
Speaker 1: and also a man who hosted an enormously popular event
Speaker 1: called E three Colosseum, announced in early twenty that he
Speaker 1: would not be attending E three that year. That was
Speaker 1: a pretty big announcement because Keeley had become a big
Speaker 1: part of E three for several years, arguably serving as
Speaker 1: one of the faces of E three. As it would
Speaker 1: turn out, his decision to sit this one out would
Speaker 1: end up being moot. And that's because of a little
Speaker 1: thing called COVID. As epidemics evolved into a pandemic, it
Speaker 1: became clear that big gatherings filled with lots of people
Speaker 1: in close proximity to one another might not be such
Speaker 1: a good idea. E three, which was in the middle
Speaker 1: of this kind of identity crisis between trade show and
Speaker 1: fan Expo made the decision to pull the plug on
Speaker 1: the event and canceled the twenty ty d show entirely.
Speaker 1: Keiley would end up organizing a digital event called the
Speaker 1: Summer Game Fest, which for several companies served a similar
Speaker 1: function as E three. It gave them a chance to
Speaker 1: promote upcoming games and tease some that were in earlier
Speaker 1: stages of development. Keely and crew have continued with the
Speaker 1: Summer Game Fest, the most recent one being just a
Speaker 1: week ago. Unlike E three, the Summer Game Fest isn't
Speaker 1: confined to just a week. It can theoretically stretch across
Speaker 1: the entire summer and give developers more opportunities to prep
Speaker 1: the best digital event that they can muster in one.
Speaker 1: E three would return, but only as a digital event.
Speaker 1: There would be no show floor or heavily attended press events.
Speaker 1: Companies put together digital video packages that could stream out
Speaker 1: to an eager public, most of whom were stuck at
Speaker 1: home anyway due to COVID. Initially, E s A hoped
Speaker 1: to break E three back in twenty twenty two, but
Speaker 1: obviously that fell through as well, and plans for a
Speaker 1: digital event never emerged, so in and in two there
Speaker 1: was no E three at all. That didn't stop various
Speaker 1: companies from holding their own digital events, announcing video game
Speaker 1: titles and showing off trailer and gameplay footage. We've seen
Speaker 1: several of those over the last couple of weeks. In fact,
Speaker 1: for the record, the e s A says that it
Speaker 1: does plan to have an event in T three, but
Speaker 1: most folks now suspect that whatever that event turns out
Speaker 1: to be is going to be very different from the
Speaker 1: E three's of the past. Maybe it will be a
Speaker 1: better run fan experience, something that lets people share their
Speaker 1: love of games with a community of fellow fans. That
Speaker 1: would be cool. Maybe it will be the type of
Speaker 1: event that will inspire multiple companies to participate and tap
Speaker 1: into that fan enthusiasm. That would also be cool. But
Speaker 1: a lot of people have written off the three, essentially
Speaker 1: saying the event itself is dead, at least as it
Speaker 1: was initially envisioned. It's dead. Back in the web was
Speaker 1: still new, dynamic web pages capable of streaming video and
Speaker 1: holding live chats were not really a thing. Companies, particularly
Speaker 1: big companies, didn't have an easy way to reach out
Speaker 1: to other industry players, from retailers to the press, but
Speaker 1: today things are very different. The very technologies that allowed
Speaker 1: so many of us to shift to working from home
Speaker 1: are the same ones that facilitate communications between big companies
Speaker 1: and everybody else. And like I've said a few times
Speaker 1: during this episode, companies can now do this on their
Speaker 1: own schedule. They don't have to rush to get a
Speaker 1: presentation ready for a trade show. They don't have to
Speaker 1: fudge gameplay footage and hope no one notices that's actually
Speaker 1: a cinematic designed to look like game footage. They don't
Speaker 1: have to hire comedians to tell cringe worthy jokes or
Speaker 1: show a complete lack of interest or knowledge about games.
Speaker 1: There are so many stories of press events where the
Speaker 1: host nearly had no no knowledge of video games in
Speaker 1: general and no interest in it, and it just sucked
Speaker 1: the life out of the event. It means that they
Speaker 1: don't have to hire circ dislay to come out and
Speaker 1: the alienate a captive audience for three hours, and yes,
Speaker 1: that did happen once. Now, one group that is definitely
Speaker 1: hit very hard by E three's diminished importance would be
Speaker 1: the independent game developers. These are people and companies that
Speaker 1: lack the resources and reach to hold big digital events.
Speaker 1: That get lots of attention. These people who have made
Speaker 1: some truly incredible games. Some of my favorite games of
Speaker 1: the last several years came from small independent developers. They're
Speaker 1: in danger of losing a platform that otherwise would let
Speaker 1: them find their audiences. Some companies like Sony and Microsoft
Speaker 1: will invite independent developers to take part in larger digital presentations,
Speaker 1: so it's not all hopeless, but for many of these
Speaker 1: small to mid range players in the space, the loss
Speaker 1: of E three is a really tough one. As for
Speaker 1: what I think about E three and it's diminished presence
Speaker 1: in the video game industry, uh, I'm okay with it.
Speaker 1: I didn't care for E three selling tickets to the
Speaker 1: general public because it did make my job a lot harder.
Speaker 1: Um not that I wanted to be elitist and say
Speaker 1: like I got to do something that no one else
Speaker 1: got to do, but rather I couldn't cover nearly as
Speaker 1: much because I just couldn't be the places I needed
Speaker 1: to be because there were too many people between me
Speaker 1: and where I needed to go. So I was really
Speaker 1: frustrated because the purpose for E three had changed, but
Speaker 1: my purpose of being at E three had not changed.
Speaker 1: So after that I just decided to stop even applying
Speaker 1: to go and I sided out. I thought, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, there are plenty of other outlets out there,
Speaker 1: most of which have huge presence, and they can cover
Speaker 1: this much better than I could. I'll just look at
Speaker 1: the coverage and go from there. So I'm not really
Speaker 1: sad to see the three go in that sense. If
Speaker 1: E three does come back as a more fan oriented
Speaker 1: experience that actually delivers on that promise, I'm all for it.
Speaker 1: I want people to have that experience of being excited
Speaker 1: about video games, get that chance to get their hands
Speaker 1: on stuff that hasn't come out yet, to give the
Speaker 1: companies the chance to promote their work. I want all
Speaker 1: that to happen. I just don't need to be there,
Speaker 1: and I do need it to be well run, because
Speaker 1: as it stood before the pandemic, the way E three
Speaker 1: was being run just was not a positive experience for
Speaker 1: most people. I mean, I can't imagine having spent all
Speaker 1: that money to travel to Los Angeles, maybe get a
Speaker 1: hotel room, buy a ticket to go to E three,
Speaker 1: and then get to play maybe two demos, maybe three.
Speaker 1: If I was really lucky, maybe I can play a
Speaker 1: few more. If I wanted to play stuff that just
Speaker 1: it's kind of like cheap mobile games or something, but
Speaker 1: like the big name stuff, You're lucky if you could
Speaker 1: do more than a couple just because the lines are
Speaker 1: so long that you'd be dedicating most of your day
Speaker 1: just waiting to play. It's not great. That wraps up
Speaker 1: this episode of text Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics that should cover in the future,
Speaker 1: you can always let me know through the talkback feature
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app. Just navigate over to
Speaker 1: the tech Stuff podcast page. You'll see a little microphone icon.
Speaker 1: If you click on that, you can leave a message
Speaker 1: up to thirty seconds in length. You can let me
Speaker 1: know if you want me to use the audio too,
Speaker 1: and I'll use it in upcoming episodes, or of course,
Speaker 1: you can reach out on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H