Originally published in the Summer Issue 2020.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of E3. Canceled this year by the COVID-19 pandemic, the renowned annual conference for all things games has left this world and taken its place in the pantheon of conferences from yesteryear. My friends, E3 did not die solely by the hands of the pandemic, but rather by its steady decline in relevancy as heavy-hitting publishers abandoned it like a sinking ship, opting to hold their own independent press shows. E3 2021, though still scheduled to take place, is unlikely to go ahead as we know it. But we’re not here for a post-mortem, friends. We’re not here to grieve the death of E3, but to celebrate it’s nearly 30-year life. So let us reminisce on the thrilling highs and cringeworthy lows of the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Early days
E3 was conceived as an event for publishers in the games industry to showcase their upcoming games to the press, and for their staff to network with their peers. Prior to E3, the closest equivalent event was the Consumer Electronics Show, which is an exhibition event for everything from TVs to refrigerators, and still takes place every January. Tired of sharing the spotlight with an unrelated sector, game publishers banded together to hold the first E3 in 1995.
At the very first annual event, Sony introduced a new product to the industry. The PlayStation was set to launch that holiday season, and would compete with consoles from Nintendo and Sega. Sony’s press briefing from the first E3 is remembered for one jaw-dropping mic-drop moment. Gaming enthusiasts wondered how Sony would fare in a competitive market, especially since Sega had just released a brand new console for a reasonable asking price of $399. When asked to take the stage, Sony executive Steve Race said one word, “$299” and promptly walked off. Race had announced that Sony’ would viciously undercut Sega’s offering, signifying that the company was not pulling any punches as a new player in the console market.
The Highs
Arguably, no company understood the art of the light-hearted, humourous E3 showcase better than Nintendo. In 2004, we were introduced to Reggie Fils-Aime, an executive at Nintendo whose first public words for the company were “My name is Reggie. I’m about kicking ass, I’m about taking names and we’re about making games”. Reggie went on to become a beloved personality among Nintendo fans. In 2015, the Nintendo showcase was hosted by muppet versions of Reggie, Shigeru Miyamoto and the late Satoru Iwata, and was chock-full of references and inside jokes about Nintendo’s past E3 moments. In 2014, Nintendo announced the arrival of Mii avatars in Super Smash Bros, with a bizarrely over-produced vignette of Reggie and Iwata brutalizing each other in hand-to-hand combat. In any given year, it was impossible to watch Nintendo’s E3 showcase without cracking a smile.
Another way to make an impression at E3 was not to charm your audience, but to leave them excited beyond a reasonable level for upcoming games. Whenever I am asked why I write about video games instead of a more mainstream medium, or why the medium is not just about glorified toys (both questions represent an antiquated view of the games industry, but I digress), I bring up a video on YouTube showcasing live fan reactions to the announcement of the Final Fantasy VII remake at Sony’s E3 conference in 2015. A re-imagining of the seminal 1997 RPG was rumoured for nearly ten years, leaving fans in an extended state of limbo. Over the course of the two-minute trailer you can watch grown adults reduce to tears and ecstatic cries of joy. Even if you’ve never played a Final Fantasy game, the second-hand excitement is palpable. Moments like this are what made E3 special. You’ll rarely see anyone get as excited about anything as the fans in this video did about the remake’s announcement. It’s this awe-inspiring passion that makes the medium special.
The Lows
For every memorable E3 moment, there was at least one more that made you wonder why you stayed up until 3am Irish time to tune in. As an example, Ubisoft’s 2011 conference was hosted by hired talent Aaron Priceman. To say his hosting style didn’t gel with the audience would be an understatement. Every line and gesture on the stage was cartoonishly energetic, leading the internet to christen him “Mr. Caffeine”.
A YouTube search for “E3 cringe” reveals an astonishing quantity of dance numbers and musical performances throughout the years. From punk rocker Andrew W.K struggling to rile up a dead crowd at Bethesda’s 2018 show to Ubisoft’s annual choreographed performance revealing yet another Just Dance game, these were the moments to switch over to another stream or grab a cup of coffee while the hosts pretended to be excited. No such occasion is etched into our collective memory more than the Wii Music reveal from Nintendo’s 2008 show, deemed “abhorrent” by a former editor of this magazine. In it, Shigeru Miyamoto, the designer and creator of Mario and one of the most respected auteurs in the industry, led a band of executives in shaking Wii remotes to the tune of the Super Mario theme. Try as they might to make the action look impressive, their efforts proved futile.
Despite its reputation for an abundance of cringe-inducing moments, E3 grew to have its own identity. The much anticipated conferences and even their off-moments became part of the event’s DNA. One publisher, Devolver Digital, took this widely accepted fact in its stride by starting an annual satirical conference in 2017. The show proved to be a head-scratchingly wonderful piece of performance art with its sharp commentary on the state of the games industry. Covering the first event for this magazine, our writer Nathan Patterson said that “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.”
The Twilight Years
After recovering from historically low attendance during the financial crash years, E3 had struggled to maintain its initial purpose in the past decade. Though it was intended to be an industry and press event, the ever intensifying annual spotlight and the increasing popularity of live-streamed content meant E3 became a more public affair than ever. In 2017, the show floor was opened to the public for the first time amid backlash from developers, publishers and members of the press. Around the same time, major publishers left the event to host their own press conferences elsewhere. One by one, E3 lost the presence of Microsoft, Sony, EA and others on the show floor. It was at this point that E3’s death knell sounded. Its cancellation this year and the subsequent online alternative press conferences proved that E3 was an expense most publishers could do without.
E3 lived a full life. Like many of us, our beloved conference had a starry-eyed childhood, an awkward adolescence and a peaceful decline into quiet retirement. But mourn not, my friends. As the quote goes, “Dust you are and unto dust you shall return”. As E3 heads to the great convention centre in the sky, its memory lives on in the minds of gamers around the world. Whatever the future of the summertime games industry conference looks like, we can be sure that every time an event host delivers an awkward joke, every time a new game announcement sets the world on fire with excitement, every time a technical issue causes a demo to crash on stage, fond memories of E3 will come flooding back for all of us.
