http://firingsquad.gamers.com/featur...firing_line_1/
I agree. He lists lots of good reasons why the show just isn't fun anymore, even when you're just reading about it on the web like me. It certainly doesn't involve quality writing about games. I don't know if it ever did; I'm too young.
I just wasn't into E3 this year. I used to love it...used to look forward to the time of year when I could pick out everything I could look forward to for a while. And all the pretty lights, and all the big tits, and all the screenshots, and etc. But I've since discovered that the best kind of gaming experience is the one you engage in without expectations. So now I try to avoid previews whenever possible and resist the urge to soak them up when I'm bored. E3, of course, is nothing more than a bunch of previews. And not even good ones.
I'm also trying to condition myself to spend my gaming time playing games instead of chasing the perpetually out of reach carrot on a stick that is the majority of the online gaming journalism industry. I realised at one point that more than half of my gaming time is spent looking forward to games that aren't out yet. That's pretty pointless. The preview mindset has no benefits to me; it takes the fun out of the current releases because I'm always hooked on the great stuff that's supposed to come out in a year. I want to enjoy the games that are out now. When the upcoming games arrive, then I'll enjoy them as a totally fresh experience. Without hype and expectations. There's nothing quite like buying a game you're really looking forward the day it comes out (say, oh, Half Life 2) and discovering it as you play it. Concerning HL 2, I know only that it has Gordon, hot babe, pretty faces, City 17, and aliens. I guess I won't know anything else until I play it.
"I'm looking forward to it already".
I think a lot of people who covered E3 completely missed out on the OTHER games (other than Half Life 2 games). There was some very minor coverage of games like Soldner, STALKER and Xenus. yeah yeah they don't have the budget and backing (hype) of an HL2 or a Doom 3, but they are pretty ambitious and look good too.
Take my word for it, at least one or two of the games I mentioned should rock!
etc
There were other games?Originally Posted by mtkafka
I think Half-Life 2 Game of the Year Edition was there as well.
But what if E3 is fun? Haha, just a little Tom Chick humor there. I'd also like to point out that despite 19 years of formal education, when I read this:
I thought to myself, "Huh? Why would a guy have an appointment with a Konami man-purse?"Here's a shaggy headed kid showing up for his appointment with a Konami man-purse, made of faux worn canvas
And why are they making kids out of faux worn canvas?
Hahaha nice catches.
I'm scared to edit Tom's work. He yells a lot. :shock:
What!! E3 isn't for the kids or guys who have to write 400 pages a week for firing squad!?!? CLOSE IT DOWN!!! CLOSE IT DOWN!!!!
Chet
E3 is great if but for the sole purpose of getting everyone involved with gaming together in once place and time. Sure maybe the previews are PR crap (what preview isn't?) and yes it's loud and often obnoxious, but I say what's wrong about an event that celebrates our entertainment at one big event?
It's like a gay parade for gamers.
Allright that might be going too far.
When was the last time you were funny?
Oh so sorry Jakub - I forget, those 30 page reviews - are 30 quality pages.
But thanks for that oh so mean quip, you always have some childish rage like protection of firingsquad. And for that I say, good for you, good for you. But now that I have your attention, I have to ask, do you donate money to IGN? Because as long as IGN still exists, you aren't the worst game site on the web. I figure you must be pulling for them.
Do you and avault have a contest on who can stretch meaningless content the farthest?
I hadn't even noticed Tom wrote the piece - wow, from a quick scan of it I just lumped it in with all the other kiddie writing for firingsquad.
And for Tom. Give me a freaking break. This article could have any date on it - from the 2nd E3 to next years event. What next? Are we going to learn that kids these days really don't listen to good music - not like in our day - when our elders said they were wrong - but now...
And since I value my time more than plowing through 30 pages, is there a big :wink: at the end letting me know it was all a joke?
ugh.
chet
What? Chet's funny. In fact, the funnier he gets, the more dashes he uses. Eventually it'll just be all dashes, no words. Like morse code for anti-hero gaming icons.
And it's good to see Tom is still finding work. You know, in the "industry".
Nothing but dashes would be preferable to what Chet wrote here, 'cause it just ain't true about Firing Squad. As a new member of the editorial team, I'm biased, but I've always found the content there to be a cut above what can be found at most other sites and in a lot of magazines. To wit...
"Here's a shaggy headed kid showing up for his appointment with a Konami man-purse, made of faux worn canvas, and a fancy denim jacket with the EA Games logo stitched tastefully over his heart. He's holding a little digital voice recorder that he got from a Microsoft event that he's not even bothering to turn on. 'Oh, man, I'm so hung over. I was at the Sony party last night until 4am sucking down free vodka and then I had to get up at eight to get over here from the hotel. Okay, I have to be at the Activision booth in fifteen minutes, so show me what you got real quick. How many levels does it have? Twelve. Multiplayer support? Check. Let's see your water effects. Cool. PC and Xbox, you say? All right, we're good to go.'"
Again, I'm even more biased here because Tom and I are doing the Firing Line together, alternating weeks/topics/bitching at each other like the bitches we are, but this is great stuff from a great column, with a lot of stuff there that you wouldn't know unless you'd covered E3. Honestly, if you think this is kiddie crap (you ain't gonna read that "Konami man-purse" line at IGN), I can't imagine what you think of some of the other sites out there. But hey, you want to make this your latest fuckwit crusade (and I say that with all due respect, as someone who goes on a fuckwit crusade of his own every couple of hours), knock yourself out.
Didn't he just say that FiringSquad was better than IGN?
Anyway, the reason E3 is the way it is is that it is an expression of gaming as an industry, not as a hobby. All of the problems Tom mentions can be attributed to problems with the way the industry is structured. It's all a big hype-fest? It's all about selling? The press reprints a lot of the marketing pitches verbatim because they don't have that much else to go on? The whole affair is geared around the retailers who have to eventually sell (or not sell) these games? These aren't just annoying things about E3; they're annoying things about the gaming industry in general.
But that's the way it works, for better or worse. Nobody is more for ending the hypefest that is the promotion and sale of video games more than me, and no one would like to see the focus shift off of the marketing and onto the games more than I would, but, for the time being at least, this is how it's set up.
Ending E3 isn't going to change that. E3 is just one big explosive amplification of the realities of the industry, nothing more, nothing less.
Is the show supposed to be fun? I thought it was supposed to be about getting information on games out ot the fans who want to know about them.
Not every site covers the show the same way. Some provide bitesize nuggets that gets the most basic facts on a game out there. Some may go more in depth and ask more probing questions. A lot of it depends on the staff a site has and the time they think each game deserves.
My biggest problem with E3 is that there is just too much to see in such a short period of time. We are forced to pick and choose what we write about and some games may have to wait until the tail end of our coverage, if they get any at all. Hell, I even make arrangements with some publishers to see the game immediately after E3 and write about it in more detail so it doesn't get lost in the morass of coverage.
The bottom line is that someone is going to read what the shaggy haired kid is going to write. Is it journalism? No, but he will be imparting some information that someone may find valuable. I personally wouldn't, but then, not all of us expect the same thing from stories.
Everyone's opinion of quality journalism or a good story varies. The ones who satisfy the most people (while keeping up with the overhead) are still around. Smaller sites with little or no overhead will always exist and provide some service, no matter how minimal we think that is.
E3 will continue and I think it should. It is a big glitzy celebration of gaming, providing those of us who work in the industry just another reason to earn a paycheck doing a job we love.
Show me examples of this. Because I don't recall ever reading anything beyond the usual "Fun game/Feature list" stuff. I see the same thing every year with E3 and as someone who's worked at a couple of shows, I don't think there is any way to cover games there other than the way that Tom describes. Yeah, you can make follow-up appointments, etc., as you mention, but that really has nothing to do with covering E3. You can do that with phone or email.
Does anyone find this stuff valuable? Although I like hearing about some of the basics, I'm satisfied reading the game announcements. I rarely read over any of the E3 "previews" because they tend to be nothing but regurgitated PR crap (through no real fault of the writer, as there is no way to do much of anything else from the showroom floor). This year, for instance, I looked at the Half-Life 2 blurbs, grabbed the video, and that's it. I want to read a preview of this game, but there isn't really one available yet, so I'll wait.
I'll have more to say on this next week in my response to Tom's column, though I also have something of an appreciation for the big dumb stupidity of E3. Of course, I've skipped the last two shows and live in a town smaller than the LA Convention Center, so perhaps I've just forgotten how obnoxious the damn thing is.
Most of you seem to forget that the PR function of E3 is secondary. It's not about the announcements. Well, it's not about the press covering the announcements.
E3 is a trade show where buyers from around the country (and the world) come to see what product will be available to sell in the coming year -- particularly over the Christmas season. The gamer press is really not the primary part of the show. The major function is dealmaking. It's where the people who actually have to stock the shelves make the decisions about what to stock. It's where the deals are cut for endcap pricing, shelf space and other merchandising.
Any press guy who thinks the show is just for them is deluding themselves.
Note: edited for consistency
While the writing may be getting better because they are bringing on new writers, you can't tell me the past years of the firing squad were a source of quality writing. I am not a regular reader of FS, it was a few years back that I think I last read a complete article, I remember back in '99 reading a review and finishing it up sometime in 2000. Maybe they just need an editor to tighten up the other writers, but I can't think of reading anything worthwhile or insightful on the site during that time.
I have not really read anything on the site since they began using tom, bub, you etc? But poking around quickly, I see Justin Hall's name. That isn't a good sign.
And for online sites, I think only gamespot seems to have any editorial direction or consistency. Sure it is the gamespot style - on the bland side, but looking around I do not see other online sites having the consistency that the print mags have.
Chet
I disagree that it is a minor part of the show. Each division has their own function and PR caters to the press, while other divisions cater to the retailers and buyers. If the press was such a minor part, I'd think that appointments would be a lot harder to come by.
One more thing, in response to this part of Tom's article:
There are things that come between me and the people who make games for me anyway, just as there are things that come between everyone else and the people who make games for them.And suddenly I feel a little dirty for being involved in the whole thing and I?d rather just go home and play Rise of Nations, which is what it really all comes down to: a game ends up on my hard drive, on your hard drive, and we?re sitting in front of it, losing time and the space around us, sinking into whatever?s happening behind our monitors where none of the rest of it matters.
This is where gaming journalism, if there is any such thing, belongs. Not at E3, which is yet another example of the industry maturing into big business with retailers puling the strings, just like they did with small boxes, ESRB ratings, short shelf lives, and the supremacy of end cap displays. It?s all an example of the stuff that comes between you and the people who make the games for you.
I'm not fortunate (or talented?!) enough to have a job of any sort in the gaming industry. (I'm trying to correct that colossal error in the order of the universe, but for now, here we are.) Here's what I do at my job: I sit at a tiny, tiny desk, in a cubicle four feet wide by three feet deep. When the phone rings, I answer it. I have a conversation with the poor schmuck on the other end about something that he could never hope to understand, and that I could never hope to give a shit about. When the conversation is over, we both hang up, and, a little bit later, I have a similar conversation with some other poor bastard.
You can bet both of your testicles that I'd rather be at home playing RoN, trying in vain to not suck. But I'd also rather be at E3, because then I'd be a little bit closer to doing something fun.
Look at it this way: E3 gets in the way of game reviewers in the same sense that everybody's job gets in the way of everybody. You can't be playing games while you're at work, not all the time, not even if your job is to write about games. So the next time you're at E3 and you're not having any fun, think about this: it's your job. You're not supposed to enjoy it. Just get it over with and resume the fun when you get home, like everybody else.
The fact of the matter is that E3 is in fact a trade show, and as such it's meant for business. Fan boys and enthusiastic game journalists make up a lot of the attendance but come on now, it is unrealistic to go in there as a "game fan" and expect to have "fun." Just because some of the companies (Gathering of Developers for instance) treated it that way doesn't mean much, and remember, they weren't even on the show floor.
I'm not sure if the people that are in charge of the companies or even the folks that run the show give a hoot whether or not it's "fun" -- that's not even the point of the show.
That being said, the show intentionally attracts a lot of journalists and the like, because it may be the only chance a developer or PR person can actually meet and talk to someone or have a product demo'd in their presence. And the developers get to see in person what other people do.
After going to E3 since the start and being a witness to other trade shows of various types I'd have to say that none of them are ever fun (hippy pipe-smoking MacExpos notwithstanding). For anyone. Ever. Conceivably if you're a game fan only, yeah sure, maybe once or twice.
--- Alan
Is it just me? Tom's e3 2003 articles at FS are hilarious! kudos to Tom! and Kudos to Uru!
etc
Yayyyyy!
I didn't say it was minor; I said it was secondary.
The primary function is to sell to buyers.
Actually, I'm one of the insane group of people who love going to trade shows. It's not for the parties, either, because I generally avoid the parties, opting instead for gatherings like the Qt3 gathering at E3, or small group dinner affairs. I love soaking up the energy, and talking with people about new stuff, whether it's new games, new technology, or whatever.
But then, I've never been normal.
:)
If Tom thinks that game journalism should focus more on the "game-on-your-hard-drive, the game-that-you-play" aspect of things, how come we haven't had a new Shoot Club in forever?
Chet, thank you *so* much for you comments about how my article was timeless. That really means a lot to me! Cheers.
Also, that stuff was really funny about how it's 30 pages long. I know it's only 1500 words split into four pages, but I've always found hyperbole amusing. Keep up the good work, Chet!
***
For everyone else, great thread.
My complaints about E3 aren't that it's not fun. Because it is. I like seeing the people I rarely get to see, I like meeting the people I haven't met, it's exciting to stumble across potential gems like Prince of Persia, Nexagon, and Mythica that I wouldn't otherwise give two bits about.
My complaint is that it fosters superficial coverage, which is one facet of the gaming industry's biggest problem: it is juvenile, both in terms of maturity and lifespan. E3 is a giant symbol of that, and it also contributes to it.
BTW, I know -- as I mentioned in the column -- that it's for buyers, but they're as blinded by the glitz as everyone else. Also, I don't expect E3 to stop, any more than Jonathan Swift expected people to eat the rich. It has too much momentum and money. It's an Event now and it's here to stay. Unfortunately.
-Tom
it is juvenile, both in terms of maturity and lifespan
That is obviously mature content. You won't see that on network TV at 8 (but oddly at 9pm sex horse jokes are 100% fine).
Chet
:)If Tom thinks that game journalism should focus more on the "game-on-your-hard-drive, the game-that-you-play" aspect of things, how come we haven't had a new Shoot Club in forever?
I really wish there was a market for that kind of approach to talking about games.
(The truth is, I'd love to do more Shoot Clubs, but it's pretty discouraging that I've made more money from any single game preview than all fifteen-ish Shoot Clubs put together.)
-Tom
Like everything on Firing Squad except that essay about why no good cripples don't actually deserve to play Freelancer, I didn't read Tom's article on E3. But for what it's worth, I agree with Ch - DASH! - et about the length of Firing Squad articles. Jakub, why is your review of Battlefield 1942 longer than Orwell's essay about the Spanish Civil War? As for Tom's article, I'll read it when he finally watches Woman in Black.
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