Video Game Development at the University of Michigan

I find the E3 experience to be a mixed bag. On one hand, I find myself in the center of a gigantic, upscale arcade full of new and unreleased videogames and attractions promoting them. There are elaborate sets, lights, girls everywhere you look, all of them entirely focused on promoting the games that you love. On the other hand, E3 showcases games and the game industry itself in such a way that I can't help but feel a little disappointed. Not to mention how incredibly exhausting it is to walk around all day, carrying a bag and a camera. E3 2004 was the third E3 I have gone to, and more than ever, this duality was apparent to me.

First, I want to set straight that although this article might sound very negative, it's important to realize that I understand that going to E3 is a great privilege and a really great and unforgettable time. This is what you expect from E3, given what it is - 3 days of just about every game company showing off their best upcoming games in the most extravagant way possible. This article emphasizes the negative aspects simply because they are not so obvious and they make for more interesting and arguable reading. There is no point in writing an article about something that everyone already knows and agrees with. I am also not going to get into what I liked or did not like about specific games because that is not what I want this article to be about. If you care to know my opinion about a specific game, email me or the dev-list. Instead I will just discuss E3 in general as an important event in the industry, focusing on my experience this year.

So now let's talk about some of E3's positive aspects that I find notable, besides just getting to play lots of games before they are released. First and foremost, my favorite thing about E3 is the amount of pride for the game industry there is at the show. Even though this is rapidly changing, I feel that games still do not get the respect they deserve as an art and entertainment form and as an industry. But at E3, games are the undisputed star of the show, and it feels like everyone there takes games seriously, and I really like that kind of environment. I get excited imagining that one day I will be working at an E3 booth promoting and demonstrating the game I have been working hard on. However, this aspect is somewhat of a double-edged sword, and I'll get to this later.

Another very cool thing about E3 is that you have a lot of fun doing stuff there that is not playing videogames. Taking pictures around some of the more elaborate booths (like Konami's), and with the booth girls is a lot of fun. Totally random and hilarious stuff happens at the show that is totally unrelated to games. For example, a few of my friends and I were just standing around when this guy with a painted-face and an extremely high voice came up to us and started making stuff out of balloons. He spent the next twenty minutes dressing my friend up with balloons from head to toe, complete with balloon sword and a pair of balloon fairy-wings. It's also really entertaining to seek out the booths giving away the coolest free stuff and getting as much as you can. All of these little things really make E3 a lot more fun than just playing new games all day.

Now I'll get to the things I dislike about E3, which are more noteworthy anyway since you rarely think of E3 as a bad thing. The first thing you will probably notice when you arrive at the convention center on Wednesday morning are the lines. There are lines everywhere. Practically every attraction has some sort of line in front of it, whether its just 1 or 2 people waiting to play a game demo, or hundreds of people waiting in line to catch a glimpse of the DS or the PSP. In this sense, E3 feels a great deal like an amusement park. After the first 5 hours of E3, I had played only 4 games (granted, I went to Nintendo's booth first). It gets a little frustrating, especially when just walking from point A to point B is a chore due to the crowds in some of the booths.

The second thing that bothers me is the other edge of the double-edged sword mentioned above. While E3 is great because it's a huge, serious event promoting our beloved hobby of playing games, it also makes it painfully clear how business and money driven the industry is. I really get the feeling that almost everyone working the booths was hired to be there. Some of the booth workers, especially some of the girls, are just so incredibly phony that it's sickening. You can really tell they don't give a damn about the games. This feeling is so prevalent that when you are playing a demo and someone who actually cares about the game because he is involved with the development talks to you about it, it is really refreshing. I would like it if every company had these sorts of people promoting the games. Put simply, the hot girls are fun to look at, but they know nothing about the games and the fact that they are the ones promoting them in many booths (Nintendo's being the biggest) is really insulting to the creators and the craft involved in game development.

This same feeling comes from some of the ways companies attract you to their booth. For example, Square-Enix had this system to get into their theater where you had to show up really early to pick up a button that you would wear. The button says what time you get to come back and see the presentation. The presentation was really cool, but it really just amounted to showing us a bunch of trailers on big screens with a really nice sound system. It is not necessary to make people go through so much hype-inducing trouble just to see these things. Another example would be Nintendo's pathetic DS presentation. After waiting for an hour on a line, you are ushered in to a room. Charles Martinet (voice of Mario) talks to the group for a little bit, and at the end, they say essentially, "All of you will get to play the DS, but only some of you will get to play the DS." They then select 2 rows of people to go into the next room where the DS demo units were set up. The rest of us are then ushered in a few minutes later, stuck playing the lame tech demos and completely missing out on anything that even resembled a game (like the Mario and Metroid ones). Keep in mind this is after waiting on a line for an hour. One of the units demoing the Mario 64x4 game became available on the other side of the rope, and just as I was about to reach over to try it out, I was met with a stern glare from one of the girls, telling me, "I don't think so, kid." Presenting new products in such a lackluster and unprofessional manner like this really makes E3 feel more like a theme park than a trade event sometimes. And not that it really matters, but while I'm ranting like this: There are signs all over the place that say "No one under 18 will be admitted, NO EXCEPTIONS.", yet I saw multiple kids walking around the show with "Underage" badges. There is something ironic about that if you ask me.

The last thing I can think of to tell you about E3 is that certain games or genres come across really badly in the demo format of E3 games, particularly RPGs. I can never appreciate an E3 demo of an RPG or any sort of deep, complicated game simply because I have no idea what's going on. All I can pretty much do is observe the quality of the graphics while getting a vague impression of what the game is like. Also, sequels that will inherently share a great deal of gameplay elements with its predecessor come off badly because they really feel like more of the same. Even if the final game will be a worthy sequel, bringing many worthwhile new elements to the game (as I suspect they will), games like Metroid Prime 2, Viewtiful Joe 2, Pikmin 2, Jak 3, Sly Cooper 2, Devil May Cry 3, etc. really just feel like more of the same old game, and I think this probably does not do many of them justice as sequels. Only the games that are so radically different from their prequels, like Metal Gear Solid 3 and Final Fantasy XII feel like new games in their demos.

That's pretty much all I can think of to say on the subject of E3. If you disagree or have anything to add to anything I've said, send out a message to the dev-list, or email me personally. I'm happy to discuss anything related to the show. E3 is such a huge event in our industry that I feel even the little, almost trivial, things about it are worth discussing if there is interest.

Hayden Cacace

WolverineSoft President

Here are some pictures from the show. All photos are courtesy of Al Yang.