Word: e3
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Like fine wine, the video-game business has some very good years. The product may not always be tasteful, but you know in advance when the vintage will appear - and which vintners you trust. Indeed, the scintillating previews on display at last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles had gamers salivating for more. We scoured the show to come up with our favorites...
Someday soon, some bright spark will make a video game version of E3, the annual games conference in Los Angeles. You will play a journalist running from booth to booth, trying to avoid being deafened by hundreds of booming sound systems. Replenish your energy meter with $10 hamburgers! Try not to stare at the scantily-clad Booth Babes! Find parking! The ultimate aim will be to play a game for more than five minutes without a company media rep telling you how great it is. If their presence overloads your hype meter, it's game over...
...creeping sense of doom every time May comes around and I realize I'll have to go play it again. Which may sound strange: this is, after all, a conference about fun. Surely spending three days looking at games beats any day job? But as attendees know, E3 is more like a cult rally than a high-tech sandbox. It's a little like Jonestown, only the Kool-Aid comes in iced cans at every booth and the only corpses are the ones piling up on the TV screens...
...head buried in the sandbox like this. The best-selling game of all time is The Sims, which took as its subject matter the most mundane aspects of life-wallpapering the kitchen, picking up the newspaper, going to the bathroom. But there is a strong element of conformity at E3 towards traditional adolescent fare, and towards incorporating the most realistic-looking software around. (This year's most overused word was "physics," as in "that first-person shooter has great physics" - meaning people and things bounce around and get shot much as they would in the real world). So while...
...Overall, I am more optimistic after this E3 than any of the previous three. I think it's going to be a relatively good year for games. Closer ties with Hollywood - though it may not be the best role model for mass entertainment - are at least opening designers' eyes to the possibilities of different styles and genres. But there is still a critical lack of imagination in this business, and a desperate need for designers who aren't white male thirtysomethings. Most importantly, the games industry needs to get a sense of self-awareness about its ridiculous, adolescent pomposity. Then...