Wow, an E3 where attendees can spend more time playing games instead of standing in lines. Images courtesy of Rick DeMott unless otherwise labeled.

Gone is the spectacle. Gone are the mega-watt booths. Gone are the booth babes. E3 has transformed from an overblown round of industry show-and-tell into a more intimate gathering of gaming professionals where the games are the focus.

Having gone to the three previous E3 extravaganzas, the change is a welcome one in many respects. The main reason is that attendees can actually play the games not stand in hour long lines waiting to see a demo or touch a controller for 30 seconds. Now on a much smaller scale with approximately 3,000 invited guests, the event is more focused and better organized. Staff members are trained better and can actually help unlike previous years when each individual would be sending you in a different direction and one person would tell you one thing and another would tell you something completely the opposite. Hotel hopping and the distance from the hotels and the exhibition floor at the Santa Monica Airport was a bit of a hassle on a tight schedule, but the shuttle service was helpful and more than one person commented that the beach front location helped all the stress melt away.

Prior E3s were billed as industry events, but they never felt like one. They played more like private country club Comic-Con; only the elitism was against fans who buy the games that were on display. In many ways, the change of this event is part of the maturing of the young gaming industry. Why spend loads of money to bring celebrities and razzle-dazzle to an event where you're only showing off to people within your own industry? The blaring music and rock concert adrenaline are not conducive to making business connections either. With the dawn of E for All this fall, the industry has figured out that impressing fans is a far more effective way to spend money on promotions. E3 now is a time for the players to meet and for companies to display their upcoming product to the hungry media. Now when I'm writing this article I'm thinking of the cool games I played, not Tony Hawk skating halfpipe.

When it came to the games, two areas also showed the growth of the industry -- gameplay and story. For gameplay, advancements are coming from the superior computing power of the next-generation systems as well as innovative uses of the various platforms. Assassin's Creed from Ubisoft uses the advanced strength of the next-gen systems to create fuller worlds. Buildings aren't just dressed with textures, but the detail is constructed up to two inches, giving the player opportunities into interact with the game environment like never before. Additionally, AI has moved forward allowing for more options in how the player interacts with the other characters in the game, which are being controlled by the game. Expanded worlds are not only something for action titles either. THQ's MX Vs. ATV: Untamed allows gamers to forget about the races and just go off-roading around the world surrounding the outdoor events.

Attendees get the first crack at playing the just-announced Wii Fit.