E3 Media Summit Returns To LA

Kotaku notes that the E3 Media Summit will be heading back to LA in 2008. Complaints about the long walking distances last year prompted the move, but the invite-only business-oriented nature of the event will remain. "In the press release sent out this morning the ESA said the event will 'continue to focus on the business of the computer and video game industry, with an emphasis on press events and small meetings with media, development, and other key sectors. While there will be opportunities for game demonstrations, the 2008 E3 Media & Business Summit will not feature the large trade show environment of previous years.'"

It doesn't matter.

[stonecypher]

E3's real strength was in allowing the move from a dedicated amateur to a young professional; that's how I got my foot in the door, way back when. By closing their doors to professionals, they've lost that. In the meantime, they've been doing such an appalling job with their seminars for such a long time that the actual professionals had already by and on the large stopped going; they're at GDC, and I hear there's actually an increasing group at PAX, though I haven't been to the latter. E3 cut off the thing that made it not just dominant, but in fact valuable at all, and even were they to throw the doors wide open again and to bring their prices down to something that the kids can manage, they've lost the momentum they had.

Top that off with a ton of bad will: E3 started a for-pay "social networking" system to connect the kids to the pros, charged a hundred bucks a head, and then didn't invite anyone from that list to the new show, making the networking thing utterly useless (it was borderline fraud, in my opinion - there was never anything to the system other than access to a room at a show that nobody who bought in was even allowed to go to.)

There may be a show going on under the name E3, it may be run by the same people, and it may be in the same location, but the E3 that we all knew, and sort-of loved, is gone forever.

Re:It doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not been to GDC, but I've heard naught but good. It's what E3 should have been from the begining: A collection of developers shooting shit and giving demonstrations while the Journalists hobnob and gather spicy info.

I can say that PAX is a great place to be for anyone in gaming: It's a finger on the pulse of Gaming culture. The expo hall is great for display, sure, but it's what goes on in the Freeplay and Lounge areas that really make up the meat: You can see exactly what people are playing, what they're trying, and what they're dissing. It's you and 30,000 of your closest friends playing vidjamagames for a weekend. It's not going to get you as much OMG NEWS as a developer conference, but it's at the epicenter of what is rapidly becoming the biggest pasttime in the world.