E3 2019: The Tea Is Weak

Before I give my own comments on this year's E3 conferences, I'll let Razorfist rant about them.

He ain't wrong. This year--aside from Nintendo--there were sparse offerings that really excited the crowd. As much as I like how Keanu and Ikumi came off, in a strong year they wouldn't have stood out like they did. Sony not bothering to show up at all is exactly as he says; they have nothing, and they don't want to get dogged for what they showed last year that didn't appear or disappointed. Much what we did see was sizzle--cinematics and staged stunts--and not steak (gameplay).

Fortunately we aren't wholly reliant on E3 presentations to push things anymore, and--as Devolver put in their show--it realy is increasingly irrelevant to do a live show when you can do a Direct video presentation; Nintendo proves that this works when you do that because Nintendo remembers what justifies their existence when so many others do not, and thus just shows the fucking games (and shows gameplay).

Memes aside, I don't expect E3 to be any better until the next generation of hardware is ready for launch, and after that I expect this cycle of suck and blow to continue until the industry collapses one more time. Fortunately there's a wealth of choice out there for games that are actual games and not walking simulators, crippled movies, frustrated novel abortions, shovelware to cover grifter payoffs, or other not-games claiming to be proper fucking videogame entertainment. My Steam library alone can keep me entertained for years and it's mostly older stuff before the cloud-stream-whatever-as-service bullshit took off; I can also go get MAME and download ROMs to enjoy my arcade games of yesteryear one more time, buy older consoles and used games for them on cartridges or discs, etc. so I don't have to tolerate this crap the industry looks to push.

And as for what I did like, I will be watching for the signs of suck regardless and letting others go first into the landing zone and await their reports before going in.