E3 reboots

After 12 years of increasingly noisy and flashy trade shows, E3 is rebooting as a smaller show, based on small groups in small rooms. Blizzard has previously done this sort of thing at the Tokyo Game Show and elsewhere, to good effect.

Honestly, I think this is a good idea. E3, the years I worked it, was ear-shattering, throat-destroying and wasn’t particularly kind to one’s feet, either. And it was all to get publicity that, frankly, Blizzard could get elsewhere, like at Blizzcon. (There apparently won’t be a Blizzcon this year, alas, but hopefully we’ll see one next year.) And Blizzard isn’t the only company doing its own conventions and press events.

For smaller companies that don’t have the capital or the cachet to draw in crowds to that sort of event, I honestly think few companies are doing a good job of using the Internet to generate hype. Companies need to do more than just set up e-mail interviews with a few gaming news sites and wait for the world to come calling. Game trailers should be distributed to video sharing sites, screenshots should be made available for the whole world via photo-sharing sites, podcasts should be set up where the lead producers talk about their vision for the game in bite-sized increments and more.

I have no idea if Blizzard will be participating in the new, smaller E3 shows. I imagine they will be, but such shows are almost incidental to their success now, in my opinion, although their absence from one might be so distracting and create so many confused impressions, they might have to go anyway.

I do know that the Blizzard PR crew, and the developers pulled out of Irvine to demo for the media, will come back to work without the ringing ears and hoarse voices that were a given in past years.

I shed no tears for the E3 that was.

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