The gaming industry has changed, and it doesn’t need E3 anymore.

March 31, 2023 8:28 AM

E3 isn’t coming back. [The Verge] “The pandemic proved that gaming could survive without E3. The last year E3 took place in person was in 2019; the event was cancelled in 2020, held as a digital show in 2021, and bounced from in person to online-only and finally to fully cancelled last year in 2022. Yet even without E3 as an anchor, developers and publishers have found ways to make a splash that don’t include the investment required for a big booth on the expo show floor. And when the pandemic arrived, the industry already had a playbook to follow — a playbook written by Nintendo. Since 2011, the company has seen enormous success with its Nintendo Direct video presentations, letting anyone in the world watch big game reveals without attending a physical show. Since then, nearly every major gaming company has adopted the format to create newsworthy moments of their own, and they’re pre-recorded ones that can’t break down on stage or might embarrass in front of a live audience. ”

• E3 2023 has been canceled. [Polygon]

““This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen, but we had to do what’s right for the industry and what’s right for E3,” said Kyle Marsden-Kish, global VP of gaming at ReedPop, in a news release. “We appreciate and understand that interested companies wouldn’t have playable demos ready and that resourcing challenges made being at E3 this summer an obstacle they couldn’t overcome. For those who did commit to E3 2023, we’re sorry we can’t put on the showcase you deserve and that you’ve come to expect from ReedPop’s event experiences.” ReedPop and the ESA said they will “continue to work together on future E3 events.” IGN reported Tuesday that a handful of major publishers had backed out of the event, with others casting doubt on their participation in the show. On Thursday, IGN reported that E3 organizers reportedly told members that E3 2023 “simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry.””

• E3 Wasn't Canceled, It Was Killed [Kotaku]

“E3 started dying when major companies like Nintendo and Sony began reducing their presence there, or pulling out entirely, and that had nothing to do with the limited dining options available around the Los Angeles Convention Center. Those companies, from platform holders to major publishers, the real stars of the E3 experience, weren’t really presenters at a trade show. They were gladiators. At its peak—whenever you think that was across its various locations and decades—E3 ran for just a handful of days, but in that time hundreds of major announcements would be made, from new hardware to AAA reveals, and each of them would be vying for the public’s attention. If there was one thing that defined E3 beyond “press conferences”, it would be that every event, and every show, had its own list of “winners” and “losers”, drawn up by forum posters and international media alike. The “winners” could bask in the glory and leverage it for increased exposure and sales, while the “losers” might risk sinking into oblivion. Why on earth would any major company want to risk being a gladiator? ”

posted by Fizz (14 comments total)

"Cancelled" and "killed" seem like much more active verbs than "found to be ineffective".

What's really "killed" E3, or at least what made it irrelevant - and bluntly, what should make many, many in-person conferences of any kind irrelevant, because the pandemic hasn't ended - is ... streaming video.
posted by mhoye at 8:34 AM on March 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

I went to E3 a handful of times in the late 90s when I was running All About Games. It was a hell of a thing but honestly even then it was mostly a bullshit way for all the execs to get together and schmooze behind the pipe and drape, which a side-order of major publishers scouring the floor for "indie" developers that had something interesting to show, and table-less developers with laptops begging like peons in the street for five minute beta presentations to smaller publishers hoping to get a scrap of attention. And, of course, us, the gaming press, basically masturbating constantly for four days, trying to push out as much content as possible, suck up to big publishers as much as possible, and run whisper campaigns about what's broken, what isn't broken, who's paying more, are you hiring, etc. So basically Carnival with t-shirts instead of beads; like Scout Jamboree but with even more cock sucking. At least with a press pass there were "quiet" lounges where you could get free coffee, sandwiches and muffins.

I kind of liked them but what an enormous toll they took on everyone. It made sense before the internettification of everything, but even as late as 2010 it didn't make any sense at all and the big shops were attending just out of a sense of FOMO.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:41 AM on March 31, 2023 [11 favorites]

Counterpoint, it's not streaming video that made E3 irrelevant, but digital downloads of games.

A big point of E3 was that it was a good place for developers and publishers to court brick and mortar retailers and convince them to allocate a bunch of shelf space for a game, or put a big cardboard cutout of Master Chief somewhere, or whatever. Convincing stores to put games on the shelves was at least as important as convincing customers to buy games from said shelves. But now, while brick and mortar retail may not yet be completely irrelevant (it's dead for pc gaming but still holding on a little for consoles), it's getting there, and certainly not important enough to justify the investment it warranted 10 or 20 years ago.
posted by aubilenon at 9:32 AM on March 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

"Cancelled" and "killed" seem like much more active verbs than "found to be ineffective".

It's not that it was ineffective, but that it was superceded by events that do what it did better. The PAXen and Gamescom took over the public demonstration side, while GDC handles the shop side of the equation much better than E3 ever could, and the big names can just do their own presentations on their schedule and under their control. E3 simply has no purpose anymore, and as such has withered on the vine.

Counterpoint, it's not streaming video that made E3 irrelevant, but digital downloads of games.

A point I heard made back in the day was that the most important person at E3 was the lead buyer for Walmart. And while that may have been true at one point, it hasn't been for years - which explains the show's fall from grace.

It's also worth remembering why the show was born in the first place - it was created because the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) had been an increasingly poor fit for the industry, and so an industry specific trade show was needed. And just as those dynamics birthed E3, they also put it in the grave.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:47 AM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

E3 has also had lots of ups and downs with its management. I recall from several years ago that they had leaked a ton of vendor/consumer personal data. Journalists email addresses and phone numbers. I'm not saying that was the nail in the coffin, but it certainly didn't help with regards to people feeling like this was a convention that could be trusted.

I honestly feel like the title of this post says it all. The industry changed, it evolved and moved on and E3 wasn't able to keep up and corporations decided to just do their own thing on their terms and here we are. They have all that money and its much easier to control your product and the messaging of your product when you're the one in charge. There is less risk to your brand and how you're perceived by the media and your consumers.
posted by Fizz at 9:50 AM on March 31, 2023

I've done PAX West many times, and the pandemic put the squash on that for me. But even before that, it was wearing thin at a quickening pace. The spectacle of the mega-booths and a bunch of people who are into the same thing as you can be really exciting, but after a couple years it all starts to feel the same. And even, at some magic time in the future, when The Pandemic Really Is Over, I just really don't see myself going back to PAX. I feel like "Been there, done that."
posted by xedrik at 9:55 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

They should move it back to its original Atlanta location.
posted by underavenue at 10:25 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

E3, for me, has always been about the big shows held by major publishers and platform owners, and those aren't really going away. When Ubisoft pulled out of E3, for example, they said they would instead just hold their own unaffiliated event during the same time period as the show. Summer Games Fest is already a big series of announcement events.

The actual floor show itself has felt increasingly irrelevant from a distance, just from commentary from the people who went year in and year out. "Is E3 dying" was a staple of gaming podcast conversations going back a decade or more. But the one thing I will miss is that feeling that all the announcements were happening at the same time; because the aforementioned Summer Games Fest is spread out across an entire summer, and because major publishers and platform owners now set up their own livestreams according to their own marketing schedules, the announcements get more spread out across the year. This is good because it means any individual game potentially gets more space to breathe, instead of being buried under "OMG HALF-LIFE 4 WAS ANNOUNCED FOR NINTENDO SWITCH 2" and whatnot, but it also means it's harder to keep track of the big highlights when there are so many games across so many events across so many months.

I've never seen PAX as a replacement for E3. Two different beasts altogether in my mind. As a promotional vehicle for games, the meat always felt like it was in the panels (which isn't really a thing the general public got out of E3), and the floor show was for suckers who didn't understand that paying hundreds of dollars to fly to Seattle/Boston/wherever, stay in hotels for an expensive weekend, and stand in line for hours to play that One Game That Hasn't Come Out Yet was a terrible use of resources. You could play a bunch of neat indie games, which is great, but they were largely at a booth specifically created at PAX because otherwise those games wouldn't get exposure, and definitely would've been priced out of E3 unless they happened to show up in a platform showcase at Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo.
posted by chrominance at 10:26 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

E3... it's a really complicated relationship.

Way back in the past, when it was your best/only shot at marketing your game, the scramble to have a working awesome demo would start in January and intensify until literally the day before the show opened. So working on one of those, depending on how willing you were, could literally make you disappear from the face of social life for weeks to months. Was not a fan, but had to admit it was a good "rehearsal" for your inevitable autumn ship, it could be one of the first time your game had to become "real".

But if you had a good demo that was well received, it's a hell a feeling, can't really describe it, even better if you're there presenting it. In 2003, having devs from Blizzard come see our demo, like it, and then come back with their colleague because "you have to see this", is still a highlight for me.

With independent developers becoming almost a thing of the past and the capacity to stream your content easily to a wide audience, it's way easier for the big publishers to host their own events and this makes E3 a lot less interesting for them (being there was crazy expensive). And it might even be a bit more relaxed for everybody involved.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:08 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Having crewed a booth at E3 to hawk the game we had been desperately trying to debug into presentable condition for a demo, I say good riddance. Burn it all down. Unionize all the game studios. Take that money from the Bobby Koticks of the world and put it back in the pockets of everyone who did crunch time in the name of shareholder value and AAA titles.
posted by RakDaddy at 12:14 PM on March 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

I've never seen PAX as a replacement for E3. Two different beasts altogether in my mind. As a promotional vehicle for games, the meat always felt like it was in the panels (which isn't really a thing the general public got out of E3), and the floor show was for suckers who didn't understand that paying hundreds of dollars to fly to Seattle/Boston/wherever, stay in hotels for an expensive weekend, and stand in line for hours to play that One Game That Hasn't Come Out Yet was a terrible use of resources.

PAX still works if no big games show up, as evidenced by PAX Australia.
posted by Merus at 5:52 PM on March 31, 2023

There were some great parties back in the 00s. Some of them like mini festivals with multiple bands you'd actually pay for, and excellent food. Blagging the ticket was an adventure in itself, as they were not intended for actual developers. They were huge because you had a lot of retail from across the globe in one place, and a lot of money was being moved. That's all gone. That E3 died years ago.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 10:55 PM on March 31, 2023

I went to E3 in 2002 as a reward for slaving away on some game you've never heard of. They had Humvees parked outside to advertise some game the US Army was giving away for free to get kids to sign up for the Iraq War.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 1:58 AM on April 1, 2023

I go to a fair number of trade shows and conventions across a lot of industries.

The recurring issue for most of them is that the action has gone all off the schedule: private, invite-only, meetings and parties.

As a registrant, you feel very uncool indeed if you can only attend the things to which your registrant badge provide you access. The opening reception for badge holders can feel like a gathering of dateless nerds at Denny's on prom night, if there was the added humiliation that a few of the cutest girls swing by to have a Diet Coke before they run off to meet their dates.

As a sponsor, exhibitor and/or panelist - who might be paying $100k or more in fees, costs and staff time -- you feel like a real chump when you realize that the cool kids are running from one private event to another and the badge-holders who have the time to walk the exhibitor halls or sit through panels have little or no buying power.

Accordingly, a lot of shows are in the death cycle phase where sponsors/exhibitors are pulling back in order to concentrate their budgets on private events, and influential attendees aren't even bothering to buy a badge because badge-access things have become so irrelevant.

The only major shows that will definitely survive, I think, are those where exhibitors display big new metal in the exhibitor hall, and seeing said big new metal is something that all attendees, cool kids included, need to do. (You can't show the fancy new 40 foot high combine at a cocktail party at Maple & Ash.)
posted by MattD at 6:50 AM on April 1, 2023 [4 favorites]