E3 flies into town and attracted people from various sectors of business. Photo courtesy of Sarah Baisley.

You won’t find me in a Korean cyber café. Don’t ask me what’s got better graphics capability the Xbox or PS2. Don’t even ask me what my favorite game is, because I don’t play them. It’s not because I don’t like games, but because I like to be able to step outside between consuming other forms of media. (Or maybe I’m still recovering from all the childhood scars of being constantly shellacked at videogames throughout my youth.) One striking fact that I picked up when attending E3 is that a study found that some hardcore youth are consuming more media in a day than there are hours in a day. Does anyone ride a real bike or skateboard anymore?

So looking at E3, my observations are strictly from a novice’s point of view. To me, gaming still feels like an underground, subculture entertainment, but the industry makes several billion dollars a year, so there’s got to be more than a select few dropping serious coin on videogames.

Nearly 60,000 people attend E3 each year. The L.A. Convention Center has to bring in extra electrical units to generate the awesome amount of power consumed by the various booths. I heard that some booths utilize more lights than the Rolling Stones used on their last tour. Nearly 1,000 new products are unveiled at the expo. The big companies all compete to make the biggest splash. It does strike me kind of funny, though, that a convention, which doesn’t allow the general public into the event, would spend so much money to impress each other. They’ve truly gone Hollywood.

And that’s what the convention floor felt like — Hollywood. Epic-sized, loud, bright, flashy, with a little dose of sex. For some (not me, I’m a married man), a big highlight is the many “booth babes,” whose goal is to draw attention to a company’s products. The most affective were the girls at the Nyko booth with bright red wigs and tight white shirts with short red shorts, they were hard not to notice. And if the hardcore gamers weren’t trying to get their picture taken with the Daisy Duke look-alikes at The Dukes of Hazzard booth, then they were clamoring to get a picture with the Storm Troopers wondering the floor. This kind of awe is clearly taking a page from Hollywood, which is now going to the gaming companies to make deals not visa versa.

PSP was the hottest thing at the expo. Photo courtesy of Deron Yamada. © DYA367.

The big things that really caught my eye that I think others were most interested in were Sony’s new handheld system, the PSP, which will have DVD picture quality, and several new games, including ones based on feature films and ones featuring nudity. Just like Hollywood, sex and violence sells. The buzz surrounding the Spider-Man 2 game and the Vivendi Universal booth was jam-packed when action star Vin Diesel showed up to promote the videogame version of his upcoming summer feature, The Chronicles of Riddick. Accompanied by the debut of the film’s trailer, The Incredibles game seemed to have its fans. When it comes to sex, attendees seemed drawn in by the Playboy: The Mansion and new Leisure Suit Larry games. I remember secretly playing the original Leisure Suit Larry at my friend’s house on his Commodore 64. Hey, you could say that it taught me something — I had to figure out who was U.S. president in 1964 to verify that I was over 18 to play. I also shouldn’t fail to mention Sims 2, which Electronic Arts is hoping will be as huge a hit as the original.

Serving as a refuge from the overload of pulsating videoscreens, I attended several of the conference’s panel discussions. This comes to my one little beef with the conference, and that’s the lack of communication between its workers and the attendees. The first workshop I just walked into, but the next one I all of a sudden needed some slip of paper allowing me as press to attend. The days of sticking a little card with press written on it in the brim of your fedora are over, I guess. I know it’s to control crowds, but no one told me. I went to workshops later in the week, where a worker was still informing another worker to make sure to collect the little magic slips of paper. All I ask is that I don’t have to go to three different people to find out what the rules are. Sadly, I witnessed the same problem happening to exhibitors and even to people who dropped loads of cash to attend.

Some of the attendees that I talked to said they felt the panels at the Game Developers Conference were better, but I didn’t go to GDC so I can’t compare. What I did discover is that the best panels I attended were the ones with the best moderators. I can also say that regurgitating information from a press release is a waste of people’s time.