Forget The Lack Of Booth Babes; Next E3 May Be Missing Exhibitors
from the and-so-it-goes dept
Running a big conference ain't easy -- especially in the tech field. Even Comdex died eventually -- though it had clearly been on the decline well before the final towel was thrown (to Greece, apparently). However, it's still a bit surprising to potentially see a similar fate hit E3, the big video gaming conference held every spring. While there are conflicting reports concerning whether or not the show has simply been scaled back to bring it back to its roots, or if that's simply an attempt by the organizers to save face after all major exhibitors pulled out, it certainly sounds like some of the messy behind-the-scenes politics of conference culture is reaching the public. More details are supposed to be released later in the day Monday, but from what's been said, it appears to be a case where the various exhibitors teamed up to try to get a better deal out of the Entertainment Software Association, who perhaps thought they were bluffing -- leading the exhibitors to prove they were not. Of course, many people perhaps felt that E3 headed downhill after announcing its (mostly ignored) plans to ban "booth babes" at the last event.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Sigh.
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Well...
All the flash - the booth babes, massive screens with trailers on, etc - would be better placed with a show accessible to the public, but without the public access the point is lost and just turns into pure hype, and nothing more.
Plus, with all the competition in setting up the most amazing looking booths, the smaller companies get lost a bit. When they DO try and setup a booth to market their game, they probably end up wasting more money pushing it at E3 than they would have ignoring E3 and releasing the game anyway. So it'll help the smaller developers.
And in general, I'd prefer developers spent their time and money more in the game itself, rather than splashing it all out into a big show in an attempt to stir up enough hype ensuring their game will sell. A game which, due to the loss of funding and work time, may never quite turn out to be as great as it could have been.
A downsized E3 may focus more on the special aspects of games too, such as technical advancements and the like. If it does, it could possibly make it harder for some companies to market their games via the show...but it could also encourage them to come up with better and more original ideas for each of their games, helping to push industry standards a little faster (as opposed to waiting several years for the next Half-Life, or *insert innovative game here*).
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E3, what is it good for, absolutly nothing...
removing that constraint will still yeild us the infor we need, just spread out over time, you no longer have to worry about your title not making the best of E3 or some other arbitrary goal... you can be best of right NOW when you release the information...
Just like the media E3 is being ignored due to people getting their info from the internet... heck I even got my info about E3 from the internet too.... does anyone still actually go to E3?
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Perhaps the game publishers and hardware OEM's should create an alliance of sorts and to their own expo.
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What an irresponsible comment.
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Excuse the typos...
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They lost, so they quit.
Sony and Microsoft got nothing but bad press out of E3 this time around. Why? because they deserved it, but only when compared to Nintendo, who actually showed they knew what it took to put on a good exhibit (First: have a product/concpet/innovation worth exhibiting).
It comes as no suprise at all that exhibitors would want to stop paying for bad press. Is it a sad day? I don't think so. I couldnt care less about exhibitions anyway. I only went for the booth babes.
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Re: What an irresponsible comment.
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Ridiculousness of PC-ness
Just like guys like violence. Some women like violence but guys are more aggressive. It's biology and the last thing I want in my games is political correctness. Nobody's asking ladies to like it, nobody asks guys to like sappy movies or the Lifetime channel, but give me a break. Booth babes never bothered anyone.If you can get the work, go for it. More power to the ladies. Noone thinks their vapid or dumb, they sell an ideal and that ideal wasn't sold and suddenly noone wants to go to the show. Shock and awe...
Life sucks, ok. We play games to get away from real world issues, thats why there aren't a deluge of political and socio-political simulators on the market. People like to dream, people like to fantasize. Every expo has "babes." Try going to the supermarket and looking at Guns and Ammo, an excersize magazine, or a car modding magazine. There are "babes" everywhere. If women really wanted to change things they'd develop games other women liked and then they could have booth "hunks", I wouldn't care at all. But really penalizing someone because you don't like something and it doesn't hurt anyone is both ignorant and stupid. Why not do away with those violent and brainless saturday morning cartoons... oh wait, the PC police did that already. Damn.
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Re: Ridiculousness of PC-ness
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Re: They lost, so they quit.
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Re: Re: What an irresponsible comment.
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Re: Re: Ridiculousness of PC-ness
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Re: Ridiculousness of PC-ness
I would LOVE to know what any of this has to do with being PC though...
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I disagree with the booth babes.
There is no experience as amazing (or hilarious) as seeing Ron Jeremy walking through the Venetian with an entourage of about 10 nearly-naked women.
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Just so that it's clear.
- The expo is getting more expensive. Everything from travel to hotels to the show itself.
- The press for your product is getting diluted because more of the same is being shown. We've looked at the impact of a "good" E3 versus and "bad" E3 and the cost is just not justified! THIS is the #1 reason from my perspective.
- More restrictions on the booths - everyone is getting squeezed into the same space. More booth restrictions. Exhibitors raised MUCH more of stink over the noise issues than the booth babes. LA is getting played out as well.
- Competition is getting more fierce. Devs are becoming more leary of showing their hand. If they control when certain information is released, they are much happier. If you don't show it, no one will come.
Those are just starters. Give THOSE items some ink as opposed to whining about booth babes only.
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Yeah
They are probably all staying home playing WoW these days...
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booth babes
Apply proper innuendo and evil grin here....
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Re: booth babes
Just use "heavyw8"...makes more sense to me...
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Re: What an irresponsible comment.
Did you actually bother to read what was written? Nowhere do I say that the boothbabe issue was an actual issue in the demise of the conference. I used it as a humorous aside.
I guess I forgot that not everyone's web browser recognizes humor tags.
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Confirmed
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Re: Re: What an irresponsible comment.
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Just like the telco's.
There was a time when E3 was magical, every kid who knew about video games wanted to go. There was something worth going for!
Now we get video's of PlayStation3, video's of Metal Gear Solid and video's of how well the next nVidia/ATI card is, for somebody's new platform.
The kids no longer crave the E3 experiance. There's nothing worth anything there. It's all the same crap they pulled out last year and the year before and the year before that.
If they innovated, created something new in the space, they would attend E3, they would have to show it off and get, maybe, some well deserved hype from the "hype machine" that is E3. The same hype for the same old products just doesn't cut it.
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jonny
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jonny
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jonny
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jonny
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jonny
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jonny
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