Devolver Digital’s press conference at E3 would be better classified as a surreal and bizarre piece of performance art. It presented itself as a conference that did not take itself seriously in its opening seconds, billing itself as a “big fancy press conference” and introducing its main presenter, Nina Struthers (played to perfection by actress Mahria Zook) as the company’s “Chief Synergy Officer”. Any indication, however, that the conference was to be a standard listing-off of new titles vanished when Struthers fired a small revolver to silence the audience’s frenzied clapping.
Devolver’s first new title, Ruiner, is then announced. A visually gorgeous, cyberpunk-inspired isometric shooter, Ruiner promises a vast array of weapons, ranging from katanas to grenades. This high-octane, blood-pumping trailer possibly subconsciously primes us for what is to come.
Another Devolver employee, Milo Lowrie (Asa Fager) takes to the stage, explaining the “disconnect” between a player’s intent to perform in-game purchases and their actual knowledge of how to do so. Lowrie gleefully announces the solution to this problem – “Devolver Digital Screen Pay”. As a lab-coated assistant wheels a computer monitor onstage, an “audience member” (suspiciously wearing a Devolver Public Access t-shirt) is selected to demonstrate. The conceit of this new invention is that by simply throwing physical money at the screen, the corresponding amount of money will digitally appear in the bank accounts of Devolver employees.
Chaos ensues, however, when the monitor consumes the arm of the volunteer, causing jets of blood to coat all onstage. Lowrie attempts to exact some damage control by cutting to the next trailer: Serious Sam’s Bogus Detour, developed in conjunction with long-time collaborators Croteam and Swedish developers Crackshell.
Struthers soon returns to the stage, with two more new Devolver inventions. The first of which is “Devolver Digital Earliest Access”, a new feature whereby a developer merely has to think of an idea in order for it to appear up for sale. Next is “Comment Created Content”, a service that will immediately insert any “half-assed comment, recommendation or criticism” into its corresponding game. Manic but triumphant, Struthers, flanked by the bloody figures of the assistant and the volunteer, declares that Devolver has successfully shown those watching “the future’s future’s future’s future’s…” (and so on,) before collapsing and convulsing, as the volunteer vomits. Interspersed are starkly lit clips of the audience’s roaring laughter and cheers, as the presentation staff descend further into a manic spiral. The presentation ends with Struthers’ head exploding, before her body is dragged offstage by the mystery man in the motion-capture suit.
Devolver’s conference was the ultimate parody of E3, ridiculing its grandiose announcements, overconfidence, and its repeated insistence that the “future” of gaming is on display. To classify it as anything other than a masterful, avant-garde roast would be, as previously stated, to do gaming’s future’s future’s future a glaring disservice.
