The Catch 22 of E3 June 21, 2011

Let’s face it; E3 is a media event as much as it is a trade show.  These game developers are there to show their games to the press, who in turn are expected to show it to the public.  Now, a lot of developers have decided it was easier and cheaper to just directly show their games to the public, which is why E3 went off radar for two years, but it was decided that was a bad idea and it was brought back.  Why though, with all the advances that have been made technologically over the past ten years, are the E3 exhibitors still operating within the same mindset?

If you want to see a game that’s being shown at E3 (not just a trailer, but a playable portion of the game) with the intention to write a preview of it others will read, there are usually two ways it will be displayed to you.  Of course usually the developer or publisher will choose which option they want you to have for you, but the rules for either are pretty consistent based on what my experiences were this year. The first can be a hands-on demo at a demo kiosk.  You can pick up a controller and get a chance to actually play the game.  Other than a controls guide, no instructions are usually provided for the user except to have fun and don’t die.  The other option is to wait in a line at a theater booth and see the game presented to you by the game development team while they talk you through what they’re playing and you can simply watch.

Here’s the downside of both of those options.  Demo kiosks usually will allow you to video record the game that you’re playing.  Unless E3 allowed you to have a professional cameraperson accompany you (which they didn’t for me this year) a lone journalist is going to have a really tough time video recording a live demo while playing the game!  If you’d like some examples I had to deal with this year, I had to record the Resistance 3 single player demo from my lap, I had to play Dead Rising 2: Off the Record demo one handed while using the other to record, and it made recording the Rage demo impossible.  I think Tim Buckley was the first to weigh in on this problem.  However, while his article sattired the problem, I don’t think he got to the heart of why these videos are so bad.

So it would seem that recording from a theater demo would be the best option.  You’re sitting down, the game is being played for you, and you’ll be able to hear developer commentary no problem while recording the game.  Well, that’s a no go, because for some reason video recording is still NOT allowed during a theater demo.  Don’t bother to ask they’ll usually tell you straight up before the demo starts.  In fact Randy Pitchford informed the crowd during the Aliens: Colonial Marines demo that a Sega security guard was watching us with night vision and would do terrible, terrible things to us if he so much as thought we were pulling out a camera or recording device.  Needless to say I was too scared to even put my phone into silent mode before the demo started.  Even after the four hours of waiting I did to demo the PS Vita, I was told to shut my camera off immediately before even the Q&A started (where they didn’t even say anything that wasn’t already officially announced.)

I can understand that the people who hold these theater demos don’t want poor quality offscreen videos of the demo showing up on YouTube, but my camera shoots offscreen pretty darn well (I’ve used it for some demo and beta lets plays because decent capture equipment is beyond my expenses) and I’m sure that a lot of other modern cameras that are a lot more expensive than mine can as well.  Plus, there’s only so many people that are allowed to be at E3, making the journalists almost the elected representatives of the public in general.  Don’t you want what they bring back with them to be decent?

For god’s sakes, developers, let me pull my video camera out when you do a theater demo.  I promise I’ll leave it to you to make your game look good.