Dean's Preparations
I think theres something about E3-time that gets the industrys blood pumping. Be it from the new software (or hardware) being shown, or just the euphoria that is created when you realize, "Hey, Im going to Los Angeles to play games for a week"; its something magical.
Something this magical doesnt come easy though. As some may know, and most probably do not, Glen Bayer and I co-ordinate E3 for N-Sider every year. The majority of the time, Glen takes care of the registration for the show, which means getting the business licenses, articles, and IDs for all of our staff attending. I, on the other hand, get to do everything else -- this ranges from booking the hotel, scouting out airfare for the staff, preparing interviews and events, ordering tickets for extra-curricular activities; basically just doing a whole lot of stuff for the staff so that E3 runs smoothly and seamlessly.
This year was no different, for N-Sider, and more specifically, me. E3 started in June of 2004. Having booked the hotel that early secured an insanely low rate, but in early August word came to my telephone that the hotel we booked was going out of business. So, this meant an emergency rebooking -- which luckily, I was able to do on the same day I heard the news of my previous hotels cancellation. Between August and about November, there wasnt much to do -- most companies dont even think about E3 until about February or March, so that was our relaxation point.
You must realize that E3 preparations start immediately after the previous years show completes. Its almost like a new generation of consoles every year; we have to keep developing and planning and figuring out where were going to stay based on the previous groups experiences. So once airfare was out of the way, we had to start hassling the various public relations firms for information. This normally starts mid-April, but this year was very different.
Glen was able to secure us two positions at the Sony press conference in early May with ease. My job was to procure Microsoft and Nintendo seats. Microsoft was seemingly easy, I was in contact with their PR firm and was guaranteed three spots. Unfortunately, this quickly diminished to zero and after much complaining and string pulling, I was able to get one invitation to cover the Microsoft conference. Being a hardware year, everyone wanted to get to these conferences for one reason or another, be it free stuff, or new info -- everyone wanted to be there.
Nintendo was relatively easy. They tend to like our site for various reasons, because in reality, we do what they ask us, we just expect to get stuff in return -- and in cases like this, we did. You may or may not know this, but our E3 attendance this year was upwards of twelve people. Typically, for any press conference, youre supposed to get only, say, three invitations. I was able to secure all twelve of us to their show, and we even got a few of us in early before the general media (pure luck, more on that later).
Interviews are normally figured out before the show, and in the case of Denis Dyack (Silicon Knights), it was. Nintendo was sorted out on the first day of the show, and luckily we got to talk to our old friend, Tom Harlin of Nintendo of America on the last day of the show.
When we arrived in Los Angeles, the rest of the N-Sider crew was already there. Thats what happens when they arrive earlier than us. Some had been waiting for hours, well, everyone was waiting for hours -- we arrived at 2PM to a crowd of a few people happy that we arrived. We then proceeded in two different taxicabs to the hotel. There were about nine of us so we had to divide and conquer. Our cab got to the hotel in about 15 minutes and it cost us $39. The other group, well, we both left the airport at the same time, but it took them an additional 25 minutes to arrive at our hotel -- and I think their fare was $49 or so. Im sure one of the other retrospective writers will mention this in greater detail.
I should note at this point, that Brandon Daiker and Mark Medina were at the Sony press conference for this entire bit, and I was steadily getting ready to attend the Microsoft press conference -- this is the first year that N-Sider has attended all three press conferences. Weve gone to Microsoft in the past, but this is a first for us at Sony. Needless to say, it rounded out our coverage nicely.
I wont dabble much about the Microsoft press conference, except for the fact that GCAdvanced tried to use me to sneak in, but Id have no part of it! Oh, and I lost my cell phone in the cab -- but good news, I got my bill today, and there was no malicious use of it before I cancelled, so everything is okay on that front. The conference itself was boring; it was a bunch of talking by hipster baldy, and creepy Peter Moore. Then they had the Killers and Chemical Brothers play, it wasnt spectacular, and I left early. Aside from completely skipping over Perfect Dark 0, Microsoft really didnt have much game to show, it was a big to-do about nothing. Oh, and did I forget to mention they hired extras to sit on the stage and cheer for every game they presented, because the audience/media wouldnt? Hows that for marketing.
Nintendos press conference was a fun little story. The procedure for registration and waiting before the conference is the same every year. You give them your card, they give you a ticket, you wait in front of big doors and about an hour later they let you in. This year was very much the same, but with a little twist. As you know, I film a lot when Im down there, for our e3 video, and personal records and such, well, a small group of us tried something a little unethical this year. Since I had my camera, we filed our way to the front and walked in with other camera crews, a good half hour before the doors opened. So we set up and sat down. Jessica Dovey walked to the door and said "more of our media crew are out there, we need them to set up". The lady let her go, and she arrived with four more people of our group. Now, we didnt get everyone in early, but we were able to secure really good seats and save some for the rest of our group. Abusing power is fun.
As for the show itself, well, aside from a power outage on the first day (no worries, it was only parts of the convention center, not the whole thing), things went pretty well. Im in the same boat as Glen (having this be my fourth E3) and saying that E3 2001 was the best, but for comparisons sakes, heres my little chart in order of enjoyment:
- E3 2001
- E3 2004
- E3 2005
- E3 2003
Yes, I did it. I said last year was better; and it was. Reggie kicked ass, and took names. This year, Iwata -- played games, and made them. And I cant forget that Reggie got remixed. "My... Name... Is. Re Re Reggie."
When Glen and I interviewed Tom Harlin and Denis Dyack, both expressed very much the same views as us -- the show was lackluster, obviously Toms story was a bit skewed, but in conversation with Denis, it was very much a forced-showing in terms of hardware. No one was ready, not even Microsoft -- and because of that, it made the show very disappointing for a lot of people. I didnt expect anything playable, but you have to remember, my first E3 was when the GameCube was revealed. Nintendos booth was amazing; it had bubble machines and an elaborate waterfall/fountain entrance, and this year? Its the same god-awful design as last years booth. For shame Nintendo, for shame.
Over the years E3 has lost its magic, its less fun than it was, and more of a pain in the ass to see 50,000 "Exhibits only" people cutting in line and being general assholes. And why is it, on the last day, its like a grade school field trip?
Im going to avoid talking about the contents of the show, as our coverage and no doubt other staffers will speak about it -- but Ill talk about the staff events, which is what youre reading this for. How did N-Sider live together for a week and not kill each other?
As I said earlier in this article, I planned a lot for the staff to do, so wed avoid getting cabin fever and going all deliverance, er, wrong movie -- how bout, psycho, no? Uh, Scream. There ya go, so wed avoid going all "Scream" on each other.
After the Nintendo conference on Tuesday, we ordered a very large pizza; it was bigger than the tables we sat at. On Wednesday we took another trip to Hollywood for an evening dinner, and then on Thursday we headed down to the Arclight cinemas to see "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" on a nice digital screen. Yes, we got opening day digital tickets, they were great seats too. Thanks me!
But our trip to the Star Wars saga's completion wasn't without surprises. We had to leave the show floor early to get to the Arclight on time. We left at approximately 3:30 and got to the hotel at 4:00PM. Everyone who attended wanted to get stuff together, and well, we ended up leaving the hotel for the subway at 4:30 - the movie was at 5:15 and they don't let anyone in after the start time. So we hurried to the subway (MacArthur Park) and had our hobo encounter (read further down this page) which divided the group up into a 3/7 split. Myself, Amanda, and Ricardo already had our tickets and heard the subway cars coming. So we ran downstairs and got on the train. We thought we were on the right one. Sure, they were going in the right direction, but how the LA subway system redline works is sometimes, every so often, one train takes a different route and services other stops. We were on that train. After freaking out, and experiencing this bad luck, we arrived at the next stop to see the train going back to our previous stop just arriving. We ran out of the train accross the platform and I slammed into the door to make it open back up so Amanda and Ricardo could get in the train. We made it back to our original stop, and remarkably, got on the correct train. We did not know where our group was, as we were still a 3/7 split. When we finally arrived at the Sunset/Vine stop, we were jogging at the door waiting for it to open. As we started running out, we see the other seven of our group bursting out the doors too. They were extremely surprised as they knew we had gotten on a train before them; regardless of this, we ran to the theater (a good quarter mile) and made it just in time! I mean really, what is a Star Wars experience without Body Odor?
On Friday, some of our staff went to see Craig Ferguson, and a lot of us decided to crash and relax. This is when we had our little Band Brothers concert. Seven of us crowded around and selected our instrument and played everything from Mario to Mozart, and we loved every minute of it -- This spawned discussions of when it should come to western market and other games that wed like to see. Most notably: Mario Paint DS -- WiFi.
Could you imagine the repercussions of Mario Paint DS? Its perfect. Imagine sending your animation to a friend over the WiFi network, and he composes music for it, then sends the music back, and youve made a short film. I think the applications for something like that would be insane, and fun. Do it Nintendo, or Ill get you and your little Nintendogs too.
On Saturday, Ben and Adrian went for a tour of the Los Angeles Film School, and Amanda and myself headed to Universal Studios -- as for what the rest of the staff did, Ill leave it to them to tell, though it may involve dead homeless people and a digital camera.
While this may be a tad inappropriate for a family oriented website, Im going to take a page from Nintendo Power and be a bit edgy here: On Friday night, Ben had a little run-in with a very intoxicated and "lonely" Latino woman, she was 26, hes 18. Lets just say he got pulled into a stairwell and was almost corrupted and violated! But fear not, Ben escaped with his conscious intact and we all had a good laugh about it. Ben was drunk at the time.
An E3 retrospective wouldn't be complete without some of our homeless people encounters.. Last year was the guy who wanted a nickel for a beer (I still want to know where beer is a nickel...) anyways, this year, we were heading down to Hollywood for Star Wars (Thursday) and we were all procuring our subway tickets. A homeless man came up to me and the conversation went as follows:
Homeless Man: Yo man, buy this daypass only a buck man!
Dean: No, it's okay
HM: Why not man? Aren't you American?
Dean: No, actually...
HM: You live in a state right? You part of this country, you chose this government!
Dean: No.
HM: Where you from?
Dean: Canada.
HM: Well, why you supportin' the system?
Dean: I'd rather buy my own.
HM: Well you are supporting the man!
Dean: That's okay.
HM: NO IT'S NOT, BUSH IS EVIL.
*Dean Walks away*
So there you have it, in a nutshell thats the way I looked at e3 this year -- one thing I must not forget however, is the day we left, we decided to check the other room for lost articles -- and well, our good friend, and staff writer Joshua Langley, decided to leave a good portion of his clothes behind. They still remain in that hotel to this day.
That is all.