My post-E3 schedule brought me to San Diego for a mini-vacation. After three days of running around to sit in front of a multitude of TV screens, a shared house on the beach with friends is the perfect antidote to pixel burnout. During dinner with my housemates, we started playing the Marry-Screw-Kill parlor game and each one of us drilled others with lists of names of people we’d assign the titular verbs to.
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The first mistake was not getting out of Los Angeles earlier. Sitting around for an early afternoon flight just extended the risk of serious jetlag.

The second mistake was then immediately comitting on an East Coast schedule and logging on to my computer to chat with friends I hadn't spoken to since I left for E3.

The third mistake was talking about E3.

It's great that everyone is so enthusiastic. I've been asked by a lot of people already about Alan Wake - my ride from the airport tried to pump me for information I didn't really have on hand.  Questions about the press conferences, the demos I saw,whether Aliens vs Predator is still awesome...it never ends.

And this is a very good thing.

I was beginning to be very tired of E3. Press conferences are broadcast across the internet and television so the media doesn't even really need to be in that room or reporting on it - anyone interested can see what Microsoft or Ubisoft have to say. The days of publishers showing games that are still two or three years away are mostly gone, with a very high percentage of titles on display being summer or early fall 2009 releases. With all the game trailers going up on Youtube almost as soon as we in the press see them, I had a growing sense that this trade show wasn't targeting us but the next month's NPD data. Streaming video and G4's 24 hour coverage almost made me - a humble wordsmith - feel redundant.

But people still want to know what intelligent commentators think. Even if they have read a thousand articles about Project NATAL and seen the The Old Republic trailer on an endless loop, there seems to be a hunger for more perspective, more analysis. Especially from a writer they have grown to trust or maybe just happen to know

With the games news and commentary industry now a seven days a week, 365 days a year non-stop churn of information, you would think that people would get tired of E3 or find no point in it whatsoever. Some companies have abandoned the convention for their own, and other cons have emerged to challenge the dominance of E3. But there is still a deeply ingrained sense in the gaming community that what happens at E3 matters and that what the games media says about E3 is worth listening to.

You thought they would have learned from the uproar (albeit misplaced) with Mass Effect. But darn it if BioWare hasn't revisited the slippery slope.

For the uninitiated, Mass Effect contained a cutscene where Commander Shepard has an intimate liaison with a member of his party. The scene is tasteful, with only a split-second of anything remotely tawdry being shown. Add to the mix that this scene could be achieved only if certain choices were made at particular points in the game, meaning that many players would not see the scene if they made choices that could hamper the relationship. This did not stop numerous critics, almost all of whom never played the game or bothered to inform themselves about it, from bashing the game and BioWare for exposing players to sex in videogames and decrying the game as a sex simulator.

Fast forward to E3 2009 and the showing of Dragon Age Origins in a private screening room at the EA booth. The developers demoing the game showed off the trailer to build anticipation, then immediately jumped into a part of the game where the player is faced with a choice of advancing a relationship with one of two female characters. Once the female was chosen by the audience, the developers proceeded to make the appropriate choices (three in all) that ended with another sexual liaison between characters. Again, nothing was shown other than the characters in skimpy undergarments, but the images were there, lasting only a few seconds.

The question I'm left with is why would BioWare insist on showing THIS particular sequence, given the unwarranted shellacking it took before? If anything, you would think they would want to downplay it a bit, not titillate further. Dragon Age has plenty going for it without the first scene being shown to E3 viewers having sexual undertones. I sincerely hope the game isn't that shallow. I'm always impressed by BioWare games, but in this case, I am more than a little surprised at how they roleplayed this out.

This year has continued a disturbing trend of press conferences by the big 3 console publishers that are useless. With rare exception, these conferences follow the same formula. At least six of the following incidents will happen, and in some cases, all of them. These are not in an exact order, but most will occur, almost like clockwork.

• Someone will get on stage who looks, acts and talks like they are incredibly uncomfortable ... causing the audience to laugh nervously.
• There will be several attempts at lame humor, occasionally accompanied by an uncomfortable pause for applause that may or may not come.
• A celebrity of some stature will appear on stage, usually associated with a game the publisher is putting out. Said celebrity will act very wooden and talk about the game while knowing little about it other than the number of zeros on the royalty check.
• Numbers and more numbers showing why the publisher's console is number one, ignoring the fact that anything can be done with numbers if you try hard enough.
• A big game will be unveiled, usually accompanied by the big name developer behind it. Said developer will say little about the game except promise what he wants it to be.
• Promises, promises and more promises.
• The company rolls out a laundry list of all the things they are doing online to build community. A few of the revelations aren't even worth mentioning.
• This just in: Said company is doing all these things to appeal to the mainstream soccer moms and grandmothers. It will be the best ever.
• A huge lengthy cinematic trailer will be show on a big screen, eliciting ooo's and ah's from the audience, but nothing more will be said about the game ... and it won't be on the show floor. This leads to rampant analysis by the press, much of which will be wrong, because no one at the publisher will talk about the game.
• A teaser trailer will be shown about a new game in development, less than a minute long. Very little can be pulled from it other than it is a sequel to a popular game. The trailer ends with "Coming 2015."
• Some high ranking company executive will try to act cool on stage, perhaps with a celebrity or trying to play the company's new game. It ends badly, and becomes future fodder for bad E3 moments.
• The press conference ends with a big announcement. There is a 50-50 chance that this announcement will be a collective yawn from the audience.

There may be a few others, but these are the big ones. The advice here is: Watch the streaming video from your hotel room. Watch the trailer online. Read the press releases that come out during the press conference. The only thing you might miss will end up on YouTube as an incredibly funny moment from E3.

The sad part is that non-big 3 companies are having press confereneces that are just as bad. If I had to cast my vote for the winner of the best press conference each year, my vote would go to the people smart enough NOT to attend. 

The abuse has gone on long enough. Sensible gamers have had indecency upon indecency heaped upon them and now it is time to react. With recent announcements regarding the Left 4 Dead, Rock Band, Metal Gear Solid and dozens of other beloved franchises the furor or outraged fans has snowballed into a cacophony of self-righteous complaint. It's time for those voices to cease being heard. I'm am officially calling for a boycott of all crazy video game fans -- those angry that Rock Band isn't a platform any more, those disappointed that Left 4 Dead 2 came out so quickly, those frustrated that Metal Gear Solid games will be playable on the Xbox 360. I propose that all sensible, decent human beings enact an across-the-board boycott of these deranged fans. Cease speaking and listening to these buffoons. Give them no more notice than you'd give a homeless guy with his pants around his ankles. Block them on message boards. Disconnect from them on social networks. Don't turn the steering wheel if they're in the middle of the road. Crispy Gamer is proud to host the first boycott officially rejecting these morons. Please join us and help make the world a better place by signing your name in the comments below.

 

 

I think a couple of scenes from MTV Games' sprawling suite at the O Hotel last night provide a good look at how MTV is splitting up the gaming universe with the newest incarnations of the Rock Band series.

In one room, a raucous group of slightly drunk 20- and 30 and 40-somethings screamed the lyrics to The Beatle's "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in horribly off-key harmony, finishing with a self-congratulatory round of applause.

In the next room, a group of younger, hipper-looking gamers watched silently and intently as a foursome struggled through a heavy, note-filled scream-fest from Iron Maiden.

Add in a theoretical room with a group of kids jumping and dancing around to the strains of Lego Rock Band and I think you've got the full state of the current Rock Band experience.

In an industry that seems to need a new buzzword every few years, it's never really a surprise when you hop from meeting to meeting and hear the same phrases over and over again. At E3 2009, the big word is "cinematic", as in "cinematic experience" or "cinematic dialog" or just plain "cinematic game."

So apparently games are movies again. But, depending on the game and the approach, "cinematic" has taken on a wealth of meanings.

Bioware's Mass Effect 2 is the most cinematic. It's cast as a trilogy, has a strong script and compelling protagonist. And we in the media got to see a lot of cutscenes. In fact, judging by the ratio of game action and talky bits on display, ME2 is as close to being a playable movie as any game can get. 

Supreme Commander 2, a brawny real time strategy game (one of very few on display at E3) has a story based campaign that Gas Powered Games compares to Saving Private Ryan.  For GPG's Chris Taylor, a strategy campaign needs characters and personalities to draw you into the world that is around you and your units.

WET from Artificial Mind and Movement, however, uses cinematic in the sense of appearance - it's a stylized spaghetti western filtered through the action lens of John Woo. The protagonist earns "style points" for acrobatic kills that look good on screen no matter how impractical they would be for an assassin. How many spinning dual wielding ass-kicking gunfights can you have in a single room? More than you would think.

The flexibility of the term speaks to both the power of film and the versatility of game designers. Many seem to make games based on the types of movies they want to star in. But make the actions too film-like and you risk pulling the player out of the game and into your vanity production. How far can an RPG or shooter push the movie analogy before it becomes a series of short action sequences interspersed with the epic story that the designer wants to tell?

The tension between gameplay, story and graphics in design is not new. And even as everyone becomes cinematic, we can take comfort in that the adjective turns out to be as vague and useless a descriptor as every other buzzword. The question is not whether games want to look like movies, but which parts of movies can be well integrated into a game.

There are many ways to approach E3. Some games journos are on a strict schedule, bouncing from meeting to meeting then quickly retreating to their fortresses of solitude to crank out news items and previews on the fly. One of the great luxuries and benefits of working for Crispy Gamer is that that the powers that be understand that first doesn't always mean best. The encourage us to allow our ideas to ferment, our opinions to develop and our nagging questions to fester. That leaves us more time to do the two things that E3 was meant for -- looking at new games and schmoozing with people who make, sell and write about games. My week, so far, has been a non-stop stream of such encounters. Fleeting looks at new games, drunken converstations with people I admire and people I'm interested in learning more about. I've met employees of some of my favorite design teams and up-and-coming writers, wet behind the ears, but eager to share their work and opinions with the world. Many parties were crashed, many beers were swilled and, most importantly, a ton of brains were picked. A bunch of the stuff I've heard will never see print. It goes on background as the foundation or starting point for future stories. I can't imagine there's a job in the world you could offer me that would be nearly as stimulating. I'm sure there are a few, though, that allow for a bit more sleep.

I've seen lots of theater presentations at E3 through the years, large screens on the show floor, reverberating load music and flashy images. But there was something about the Square-Enix booth this year that had me mesmerized.

The screen at the booth in South Hall was very large and benches in front of the screen invited people to sit and take in the experience. Square-Enix has always had incredible art design and graphics for their games, but watching Final Fantasy XIII, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and their newest title, Nier, play out on the massive screen left me drifting by every so often just to watch them again and again. What made it even more comfortable was that the screen sat near the floor, making the viewing area at eye level. No craning of the neck needed. It also helped that Square had their booth fairly spread out. You could play games and watch the big screen without being elbow to elbow with others.

Overall, a pretty nice experience that ran counter to many past E3 booth encounters with the big publishers.

And as pleasing as it was to see the traditional Square-Enix style games on the big screen, it was more than a bit disconcerting to see some unconventional Square titles up there as well. The company is publishing RTS Supreme Commander 2 from Gas Powered Games, third-person shooter Front Mission Evolved from Double Helix and RTS Order of War from Wargaming.net. One developer joked that they had to make extra sure their trailers were pixel perfect to be shown on the same big screen with the Square titles. 

My girlfriend says it's sad that Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney are here at E3 presenting The Beatles: Rock Band. They've gone from being stars to being star presenters of a game in which they're featured. Note the name: "The Beatles" come before "Rock Band," an acknowledgment that they are the bigger franchise. What I've heard about the game is that the Beatles essence isn't only in the music and the avatars; it's also in the myriad period locales that blossom in the background as you play each song. Extending the Beatles from music and image to environment would be the logical conclusion of music and karaoke games.

Idol worship now takes the form of embodiment -- aided by technology, you're able to inhabit and reanimate the bodies of

[This blog interrupted to observe the fat guy with a crew cut rolling languorously through the expo floor on a Segway.]

your heroes, fictional or real. The Beatles always had an almost sacred image and mythology; now, these are all food for play-acting, through three-part harmonies with your friends if you have the mics.

So it isn't just that the aging Beatles are "featured" in this game. They've become sublimated into the game, into data designed to elicit a Beatles-themed physical and perhaps emotional feedback from the masses. You'll play and sing the right notes at the right times, directed painstakingly by the color cues. Everyone playing this game will become a sort of echo of one of the Beatles, as they were known in public. It's such a videogame way of creating memory -- forcefully, through spectacle and technology.