E3 2017 Was Dull and Awkward, But It Still Had to Save Face for the Games Industry

Behind the spectacle, an ongoing existential crisis

E3, the world's most important video game trade show, hasn't been this crowded since a record 70,000 people came in 2005. On the show's first day, an extra 15,000 players gathered outside the Los Angeles Convention Center. For safety reasons, the organizer, ESA, made the unheard-of decision to open the doors 15 minutes early.

That isn't because E3 has suddenly become more important. It's because this was the first year the show opened to players and fans rather than only to media and industry insiders.

Fans and organizers seemed to be in a honeymoon phase. Players were willing to queue four or five hours for ten minutes of hands-on time. ESA, for its part, was thoughtfulness itself: to keep the crowds down, it cut the number of passes handed out to press and industry people, making it clear that this E3 did not belong to them.

Fans in the room pushed publisher press conferences to a fever pitch. Louder screams, warmer applause — when the cameras swept the seats, row after row of excited faces stood in sharp contrast to the going-through-the-motions expressions of the press in years past.

An E3 that belonged to fans seemed to show the games industry at an unprecedented high. But beneath the noise, E3 was in the middle of an ongoing existential crisis, one that left nearly everyone involved feeling, to some degree, awkward about where they stood.

Game publishers want to get closer to players, but…

The ground under E3 has shifted; the rise of digital sales stripped E3, built for brick-and-mortar retailers, of its original function. New media — fast, convenient, wide in reach, good at building closeness with consumers — has replaced E3 as publishers' first platform for announcing news. If you can give your game an exclusive slot on a Twitch stream with millions watching at once, why cram it into a show full of competitors where a rival can steal the moment in an instant?

That is also why, once the first rush wore off, this year's press conferences felt short on surprises: most players had known months in advance what publishers were working on. Leaked concept art, leaked store pages, tips from insiders — months of teaser marketing had already left plenty of people calm, because almost nothing came as news.

Traditional press conferences were still the mainstream at E3. Microsoft, rolling out its new Xbox One X console, used the most classic form of all: a hardware reveal, commentary from game leads, and world-premiere trailers. Ubisoft also still worked speaking segments and warm-up song-and-dance numbers into its show.

But that traditional form is being abandoned bit by bit.

To match this year's fan-facing E3, Sony cut every one of its usual interstitial segments. "We wanted to focus on the games themselves," said Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Shawn Layden. He hosted the whole press conference alone, coming on stage each time only long enough to deliver a few connecting lines before sending the audience back to the trailers. He admitted it felt less like a press conference than a screening of short films.

You can see why Sony did it. At past E3s, publisher press conferences were deliberately tailored to the media in the room. They brought developers on stage and had one executive after another talk, in language carefully vetted by PR, about sales figures, company progress and the creative process — all so the press would serve as a better megaphone.

E3's reforms flooded this year's halls with players, who care more about the games themselves and whose emotions are easier to stir. Those flat, uninspiring press conferences had to adjust: trim the segments, cut straight to the most exciting part. That direct kind of showcase did produce a carnival mood for the players in the hall and watching the stream.

Which weakened E3's purpose even further. A pure video showcase like Sony's is no different from an online stream. The physical venue went to waste, and the event offered no information beyond the demos.

For the same reason, online celebrities had a more prominent place at E3 than ever before. Publishers wanted to use their reach to push products out to more people. EA brought in YouTube star Jesse Wellens to host the announcement of Need for Speed Payback. His stumbling delivery later made several E3 cringe-moment compilations, and what people questioned more was his standing: Wellens runs a prank channel, he isn't a gaming streamer at all. What gave him the right to be up there?

Because he has 10.3 million subscribers. It's that simple.

As EA sees it, understanding games isn't a required quality in a marketer. The efficiency with which mobile games rake in cash has taught publishers that making money means catering to a more mainstream society and a wider public. In this context, "getting closer to players" means not just the hardcore fans with a shelf of consoles, but potential customers who don't think much about games and are still willing to spend, many of whom will trust the pitch of a Jesse Wellens without question.

But the player community mocked this awkward half-measure without mercy: "This is too cringeworthy to watch."

E3 is a microcosm of the games industry, and both have stopped trying

When a company with a good reputation tries to make one more payday out of a six-year-old game, you should be able to tell something is wrong with the industry.

That is exactly what Bethesda did. At this year's E3, the company put its biggest push behind a 2011 title, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The "new content" included a Switch version of Skyrim, Skyrim in VR, paid mods for Skyrim, and Skyrim heroes joining the Elder Scrolls card game.

"Why are you still wringing money out of Skyrim? Where's the next one? Are you even working on it?" That was the common question. People joked that in 35 years, Bethesda would probably put out a PS8 version of Skyrim.

We have written before about the trend of console makers shifting from selling games to selling long-term services: rather than a one-time purchase, publishers now prefer to keep certain games alive through paid DLC and online features. Bethesda, showing real creative flair, went a step further and decided to charge for mods on its old games.

Compared with DLC, a mod is usually a simple thing. It might change a suit of armor or hand you a new weapon, a bit of extra fun and nothing more. Until now, the mod community — free to create in, free to download from — was outside Bethesda's control. But Bethesda has caught the scent of a steady stream of money and decided to break that balance, turning every mod into a paid product.

The move put the company squarely on the other side from players, and its image as complacent and greedy made it the perfect target for mass mockery.

Users on social networks got so worked up about publishers squeezing old games that they nearly overlooked the two new games Bethesda saved for the end of its show, The Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Which, of course, count only as sequels themselves.

That was this year's most striking feature at E3. From Uncharted: The Lost Legacy to Assassin's Creed Origins, from Destiny 2 to Call of Duty: WWII, from the Shadow of the Colossus remake to Need for Speed, nearly every title that caught the eye continued a series the publisher already had.

Even the new games weren't new. The naval combat game Skull and Bones actually came out of Black Flag, four years earlier; BioWare's Anthem felt like Destiny all over again; Vampyr looked like Dishonored and The Order: 1886 fused together.

Publishers were even reviving much older work: both Metroid Prime 4 and Beyond Good and Evil 2 go back at least ten years.

So once the first thrill of watching the press conferences passed, you might start to wonder: are they really making progress? Isn't this industry standing still?

This conservative leaning on old IP runs flat against the bold, inventive style the industry is supposed to have. On this point, games have come to look like a Hollywood short on ideas. Both pick carefully which IP is worth continuing, trying to cut the risk of releasing something new to a minimum by cashing in a second time on what already worked.

Of course, part of why the strategy keeps working is the same reason superhero films have crowded out Hollywood. People are willing to buy sequels, and they don't necessarily love new ideas more. Everyone was mocking EA and holding back on Star Wars Battlefront II, and it still became the most-watched E3 game on YouTube.

"This is basically a sign of the times," said Joost van Dreunen of the market research firm SuperData. "People want to play games they already know will be good."

Nobody wants to run against what players want, and long-term services have eased the pressure to develop new IP. So the whole industry is content to stand in place.

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick once pulled his company out of its dependence on Grand Theft Auto; after he took over, it developed other hit new IP, including Red Dead Redemption. He asked, "If all you have is sequels, then what are you?"

That is probably the question every publisher needs to put to itself.

When you have nothing to say, cross-industry panels come in handy

Coliseum was new to E3 this year. It consisted mainly of developer interviews about individual games; nearly every big title got 30 to 40 minutes for the people behind it to talk about how the game was made.

But outside game-making itself, film and TV companies drew the most attention in this run of panels.

A panel called World Builders brought guests from Microsoft and Gearbox on stage along with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn to discuss building virtual worlds. Better Call Saul writer Gennifer Hutchison, 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg, designers from Bethesda and Naughty Dog, and mystery novelist Marcus Sakey took up different kinds of storytelling. Hideo Kojima didn't bring his new game Death Stranding, but spent an hour in conversation with Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. District 9 director Neill Blomkamp closed the run, talking about his own production studio and his independent short films.

Games are still holding out an olive branch to film and television. One has been overrun by sequels; the other has finished remaking the classic films of the 1980s. Both industries are short on ideas and badly need each other to push their own "progress" along, even though they have no happy history of working together and no game-to-film adaptation has ever succeeded.

You couldn't call this growing braver with each setback. It's that neither side wants to pass up ready-made hits like Metal Gear or Tomb Raider. Past failures, though, have forced them to move carefully and pay closer attention to how a story shifts form and how a script is adapted. Coliseum's cross-industry panels reflect precisely that: both sides' continuing willingness to work together, and their plans for the next step.

Games will collide with television too over the coming year. TV versions of both The Witcher and Assassin's Creed are being developed by Netflix. The news may leave players with mixed feelings, but everyone will watch the moment the finished product arrives.

They all know you will.

Everyone has seen through the routine, and everyone will still watch the next E3

Reform or no reform, however much the press conferences changed shape, anyone who has followed E3 for long spotted the one routine that never changes: publishers dangle promises to get players to pay up early.

Players were sick of it, and Devolver Digital, which plays against the routine, won more of their praise. The publisher, known for backing indie games, turned its E3 press conference into a giant spoof that mocked the industry at every turn.

The company produced only a 15-minute press conference video, but ran an eight-hour "pre-show" stream on YouTube beforehand. When the main event started, comedian Mahria Zook, playing a fake CEO, took the stage and promised to display the industry's most "unethical" side: rolling out an "Ultra Pre-order," more aggressive than the ordinary pre-order, under which a game would go on sale the instant a designer had a new idea. Another new technology let people hurl cash straight at the screen and have it turn into in-game currency.

That short film, which attacked industry habits without flinching — making money off unfinished games, luring players into purchase after purchase, having celebrities with no connection to games recommend them — was judged by many the best press conference of the year. But you can predict that none of those habits will disappear because of it. As long as they still work and still maximize profit, they will remain part of E3's tradition.

Just as E3 itself, dull and short on ideas as it has become, still has to exist.

"E3 has to exist so that the games industry can keep existing," Polygon concluded. That's not to say the industry would vanish if E3 were cancelled. What this show, increasingly more form than substance, gives the people involved is mostly a kind of reassurance of the spirit. It strains to embody the industry's most alluring elements, even if the effect may be temporary.

In the novel American Gods, Neil Gaiman imagines a system in which gods stay alive on human belief. "Video games" are probably one such new god: young still, but the annual E3 has already come to resemble the oldest form of worship. Crowds swarm in from around the world to adore the game footage on giant screens, while publishers use the worshippers' enthusiasm to make the occasion grander still. Players' love of virtual worlds takes on, here, a form the eye can see.

Nobody wants this increasingly bloated new god to lie there and not move.

Cover image from Beyond Good and Evil 2 and Fallout 4 VR