As the gaming world descends upon E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles here are 5 facts that will keep you from looking like a N00b in need of an extra life as you try to soak it all in.
1. Members Only
E3 is “industry only” meaning that if you don’t write about, make, sell, or otherwise have some credible connection to the professional side of gaming then your best bet is to just follow a reputable outlet, watch the streams, and hope that one day you too could be deemed worthy of entering the hallowed halls of hype.
2. The Big 3
Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft a.k.a “The Big 3”. These are the gaming companies who have the most money to toss around and as such they get the biggest presentations. These presentations are from a business standpoint the equivalent of the much anticipated Apple Keynotes that used to be helmed by Steve Jobs. Essentially the companies do what they can to put their best foot forward (and more importantly “win E3” ) for the future and normally that leads to our next entry.
3. Trailer Park
E3 is teaser trailer nirvana, with the big guns pulling out whatever they can to lure fan boys worldwide with their planned releases. This is where your heads of the company come out and say, “THIS is the game that you should buy our system to play”. Prominent examples typically include the announcement of a Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Mario, or other such blockbuster titles. The trailer should feature a few couple elements
A. The first few moments should generate that “wait…wait… OH MY GOD YES” feeling that you get when the camera pans out/ the images on screen come into focus and familiar themes/characters are displayed.
B. Fan service needs to be heavy. For example, how excited would you be to see a concert where your favorite artist didn’t perform any of their hits? By the same token imagine a Mario trailer focused solely on improved red shell physics? You want to see the titular plumber stomping Goombas, donning new suits, and flying around the screen like the hero you grew up with.
4. Bye Bye Booth Babes
Whereas previously scantily clad women were the carrot dangled in front of vendors areas in order to draw in the ever-horny nerds of the world. In year’s past complaints about the clutter created by people stopping to pose and photograph the babes mounted as did the growing culture of feminism in gaming. Soon enough the mandate to clean up E3 came and the booth babe became an increasingly endangered species.
5. Performance Anxiety
Each console has always promised to be more powerful than the next and each game has promised to improve graphically upon its predecessors as well, so logically the best place to prove that would be an Electronic Entertainment Expo…right? Not so fast, game companies have notoriously used “pre rendered” footage to show off their hardware. The problem here essentially boils down to game companies using fancy cut scenes to gloss over less stellar in-game graphics. The equivalent in other mediums of entertainment would be watching a trailer for a movie featuring George Clooney and Al Pacino reading their lines only to sit down in the theatre to watch a film starring Channing Tatum and Mark Wahlberg playing the same roles.
In any case E3 is one of the singularly most exciting times to be a gamer as you get a taste of gaming’s future as presented by its brightest stars. So even though you may not be able to attend, sit back, check a couple of the live streams out, and if you’re like me, start trading in your old games towards the new wave of games you can preorder in the fall.
Kyle Collins is by day a not-so mild mannered drone for one of the world’s largest tech companies, by night he’s a sports enthusiast/wrestling smark/videogame geek/travel nut/chicken connoisseur/ comic book nerd and self- proclaimed “hopefully non-threatening black man”. Follow him at https://twitter.com/TKCExperience for tweets that he hopes get more RTs, because that’s how he validates his existence.
Check out GeekBeat.TV on FilmOn:
As the gaming world descends upon E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo) here are 7 facts that will keep you from looking like a N00b in need of an extra life as you try to soak it all in.
1. Members Only
E3 is “industry only” meaning that if you don’t write about, make, sell, or otherwise have some credible connection to the professional side of gaming then your best bet is to just follow a reputable outlet, watch the streams, and hope that one day you too could be deemed worthy of entering the hallowed halls of hype.
2. The Big 3
Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft a.k.a “The Big 3”. These are the gaming companies who have the most money to toss around and as such they get the biggest presentations. These presentations are from a business standpoint the equivalent of the much anticipated Apple Keynotes that used to be helmed by Steve Jobs. Essentially the companies do what they can to put their best foot forward (and more importantly “win E3” ) for the future and normally that leads to our next entry.
3. Trailer Park
E3 is teaser trailer nirvana, with the big guns pulling out whatever they can to lure fan boys worldwide with their planned releases. This is where your heads of the company come out and say, “THIS is the game that you should buy our system to play”. Prominent examples typically include the announcement of a Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Mario, or other such blockbuster titles. The trailer should feature a few couple elements
A. The first few moments should generate that “wait…wait… OH MY GOD YES” feeling that you get when the camera pans out/ the images on screen come into focus and familiar themes/characters are displayed.
B. Fan service needs to be heavy. For example, how excited would you be to see a concert where your favorite artist didn’t perform any of their hits? By the same token imagine a Mario trailer focused solely on improved red shell physics? You want to see the titular plumber stomping Goombas, donning new suits, and flying around the screen like the hero you grew up with.
4. Bye Bye Booth Babes
Whereas previously scantily clad women were the carrot dangled in front of vendors areas in order to draw in the ever-horny nerds of the world. In year’s past complaints about the clutter created by people stopping to pose and photograph the babes mounted as did the growing culture of feminism in gaming. Soon enough the mandate to clean up E3 came and the booth babe became an increasingly endangered species.
5. Performance Anxiety
Each console has always promised to be more powerful than the next and each game has promised to improve graphically upon its predecessors as well, so logically the best place to prove that would be an Electronic Entertainment Expo…right? Not so fast, game companies have notoriously used “pre rendered” footage to show off their hardware. The problem here essentially boils down to game companies using fancy cut scenes to gloss over less stellar in-game graphics. The equivalent in other mediums of entertainment would be watching a trailer for a movie featuring George Clooney and Al Pacino reading their lines only to sit down in the theatre to watch a film starring Channing Tatum and Mark Wahlberg playing the same roles.
In any case E3 is one of the singularly most exciting times to be a gamer as you get a taste of gaming’s future as presented by its brightest stars. So even though you may not be able to attend, sit back, check a couple of the live streams out, and if you’re like me, start trading in your old games towards the new wave of games you can preorder in the fall.
Kyle Collins is by day a not-so mild mannered drone for one of the world’s largest tech companies, by night he’s a sports enthusiast/wrestling smark/videogame geek/travel nut/chicken connoisseur/ comic book nerd and self- proclaimed “hopefully non-threatening black man”. Follow him at https://twitter.com/TKCExperience for tweets that he hopes get more RTs, because that’s how he validates his existence.
Check out GeekBeat.TV on FilmOn:
Follow TV Mix on Twitter: @tvmixusa
Contact TV Mix: editors@tvmix.com
SOURCE: TVMix.com
