E3 2022's 'In Person' Event Has Been Axed

Seems perfectly sensible really. There's no indication things will be that much better soon, and it's much cheaper to just not bother than to cancel last minute.

Of course there's a lot of these conferences, in many industries, that have been held just by habit for a long time now that won't come back I'd wager.

Developers just need to make compliations of Gameplay of upcoming titles and stream them live. Thats all people really want to see

They need to just cancel E3 altogether, most of the big boys don't turn up anymore and last years was go damn awful if not the worst E3 I've ever seen overall.

Everyone should host their own shows/directs throughout the year instead and make it spread out so there's always something to look forward to seeing

@UltimateOtaku91 This is definitely the way things will be. Not just in the gaming industry, but the whole "Expo" market as a whole is on a downswing.

My other interest is watches, and the biggest event that's been going on since the 50s or something is basically dead. Even big conservative Swiss watchmakers realise that its FAR cheaper and more effective to hold your own shows or market direct to customers online.

Why should you have to share the day's news cycle with your competitors when you can do everything on your own terms.

Why have Oscars when you can just privately mail out awards and release names winners in the Style section of a few different news papers with a few different categories scattered on random days across 4 months? Much better news cycle, right?

Honestly in this day and age thing like these just ain't needed, not when MS, Sony, Nintendo or any publisher can just do their own presentation and release it online

@PhileasFragg What do you mean? Things are much better now, health-wise. Omicron presents as a cold and is boxing out the more dangerous variants. The “scary” part is about how many people get it at once in a company. This is about companies who can’t afford for multiple workers to take sick time at the same time.

This is no longer about public health, and I’m starting to wonder if it ever was.

@2chanaddict What happened? The pandemic of people who can’t admit they’re wrong happened.

@FullbringIchigo E3 isn’t just watching videos. It’s hands-on experiences, having conversations, creating buzz among media, speaking with buyers and vendors, finding hidden gems, etc. Handshake deals and information brokering.

When it happens online it’s all mediated by the technology and stage managed by PR. It loses a lot being Zoom meetings where the communication is uni-directional and the audience can’t talk amongst themselves and is being watched as well.

This is not E3. It’s The Game Awards.

@Chaudy @UltimateOtaku91 @PhileasFragg Expos aren’t just PR events and “news cycle” is the absolute wrong metric to judge their value.

Even at a basic level, people coming together is never a worse thing than everything being individuated, isolated, and atomized.

Even on a personal level, this is a place for the industry to network. People meet people and look for job opportunities or to scout new talent.

Eschewing the expo maybe good for some business (see Nintendo), but it’s bad for the people in it.

@Spiders "Things are much better now, health-wise."

Perhaps from a year ago, but there's no real indication that there's going to be much of an improvement by the time of E3. Big conferences are still a big risk, and if they had to cancel at the last minute it would cost a fortune.

"This is no longer about public health, and I’m starting to wonder if it ever was."

It is still about public health (and if they can get/afford insurance for the event), but the Expo business has been on the way out for a while, and it was increasingly not worth it for companies to attend.

@PhileasFragg We're just going to disagree on the "public health" issue. The fact that the CDC guideline for self-quarantine changed from pressure by the airline lobby should be all you need to know. If you want to say personal health is still a factor, i.e. internal pressure in companies from employees who don't want to be put at unnecessary risk, I'll agree to that, but "public health" has divorced itself from any scientific basis, and the only thing worth debating to me is how long ago.

Either way, I don't think we should be dancing on the grave of expos. It takes a lot of technology to replace them, and none do as good a job. I'm not taking about just the "news", but the presentations, the meetings, the afterparties, the camaraderie, the networking, etc.

Even on a just personal level, expos give me a lot of positive energy, and all these online proxies for face-to-face interactions drain me of energy.

Maybe sterile Zoom afterparties and monitored interactions are the inevitable future, but I'm not celebrating it, and I don't think we should be so quick to devalue everything that can't be substituted with tech.

Mass formation psychosis