Los Angeles-E3 The Final Chapter

This week, I'm in Los Angeles, California.  This is the fourth - and final - post of the trip. See the previous post here.  I'm at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), a big trade show for the gaming industry each year.

It occurred to me that you may think my job is to walk around the show floor and take pictures/videos for my blog.  Actually, everything for my blog comes from about 90 minutes of running around the E3 exhibit halls.  The rest of the time, I'm meeting with developers - talking about marketing and technical issues related to their games.  Some meetings are easy - just strengthening the relationship between my company and the developer.  Others are trickier, when there's a problem with a game, or the overall relationship.  Still other meetings give us a chance to look at some games that aren't even announced yet.  In this case, the game publisher doesn't want to show it to the public until they feel it's polished enough - but they want to work on some sort of deal with my company.

One meeting was pretty unique.  I had a chance to sit down with a legend in the gaming industry. His name is John Carmack.  He was one of the founders of id, creating games like Quake and Doom.   These were some of the watershed moments in game technology.  The guy is brilliant.  Exactly what you would expect from a mad scientist, who understands how to move pixels across a screen like nobody else.

This year, John took some time to work on a pet project.  He was disappointed with the state of "virtual reality" devices.  If you remember back in the 90s, the promise of a virtual world that you could see through a headset, was shown in movies and TV.

The reality is, that none of the real technology could ever measure up to what was shown in those movies.  Even with special headsets and goggles, it still felt like you were staring at a movie screen about 3 feet in front of you.  I won't go into too many details, but Mr. Carmack has solved some of the problems.  I tried the new system he's "hacked" together...and it's the real deal.  E-mail me if you want to know more...

John showing the device to a reporter

Neal takes a turn with the device...

Now, for some of the pictures and videos that I couldn't fit into previous posts.  All of these came from the E3 show floor - all taken on that first day ; )

If you have little kids that like videogames, they have probably played one of the Lego titles - Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, etc.  There's another Lego Batman title coming.  They built 6 -foot Lego characters (Batman and Robin) for the Warner Brothers Interactive booth....

Electronic Arts (EA) is the second-largest game publisher in the world.  They dominate the sports game categories.  Their best-known game is Madden NFL, which usually sells millions of copies.  Their booth was amazing...with video all around the place.  Here's a look:

During lunch, we found some food "trucks" out behind the convention center.  I went for a grilled cheese sandwich from the Melt truck.  Melt is a restaurant in LA that serves "gourmet" grilled cheese. It was yummy:

If only I had red hair like those girls behind me...

One final booth is Wargaming.net.  This is a company that started in Turkey, with a simple online game that let you play with WWII tanks.  They became really, really popular and have now expanded across the globe, and added both battleships and airplanes to the mix.  To promote the new additions, they had an actual P-51 Mustang outside of the convention center, to grab attention:

Their booth had nearly 100 PCs for people to play the game together...in huge tank and plane battles...

At the end of the second day of the show, my company held a special party for all of the game developers and industry partners that we work with.  Right next door to the Los Angeles Convention Center is the Staples Center - the arena where the LA Lakers, LA Clippers and b all play. This year, the Kings just happen to be in the Stanley Cup finals for hockey.  They were ahead in the finals 3 games to none.  That night was going to be the final game of the championship.  Our party was right next to the Staples Center, in a very fancy restaurant.  We were warned that should the Kings win, the crowds that were massing downtown would "celebrate".  In years past, this also meant riots.  The area was ready to celebrate.  They built this huge sand sculpture for the Kings:

Here's a quick look at the Kings fans starting to assemble, from the viewpoint of our party:

If that wasn't enough, I was also sponsoring an additional event that was also next door, at the Nokia Theater.  The event is Video Games Live.  It's a concert that has a full orchestra playing some of the most popular game soundtracks.  It's a really amazing production.  As one of the sponsors, I spent time backstage - and even went onstage to giveaway a couple of laptops to some contest winners.  Some images from the evening:

Before the show started, from my audience seat

Backstage, during the performance - full choir sat behind the orchestra, to my right

It was a wonderful evening...and I enjoyed several of the pieces that were performed.  It reminded me of the actual "art" of videogames.

Normally, I would just end things there - and finish the blog entry.  However, I wanted to add something, particularly after experiencing some of the most creative parts of games, at Video Games Live.  I noticed this year, that the level of vulgarity and over-the-top violence in the "mature" games has risen to new levels.  The number of games with really repulsive cursing was more pervasive than I've ever experienced before.  To the point where I couldn't even watch some "trailers" of upcoming games.  It's a sad commentary on how lazy some of the people in the industry have become, with "shock value" used as a "crutch" to try and get a game to stand out - if it can't on its own artistic merits.  It's sad, really.  At a time where there are beautiful examples of art and creativity in the interactive entertainment industry, we have this kind of content pushing forward.  Some say it's just the way of the world.  I say it's pandering to a narrow demographic of the 16 year-old male that people think can't express themselves in anything but vulgarity and violence.  I know that's not true...and I hope things get better.  I've talked to others in the industry, and I'm not alone.  OK, I'll get off my soapbox for now ; )

Other than that - E3 was a truly great experience.  Hopefully, you had a chance to see that in my blog.  I know there were a lot of pictures and videos...thanks for your patience ; )