E3 Brings Back The Booth Babes, oh, and Developers

e3As not to be shown up by other conferences, E3 is bringing back the booth babes, the glitz, the glamor and the publishers and developers. All but NCSoft is reported to be making it to E3 this year and they’re opening up registration again, without having an invite only exclusive club.

Is it really that easy to breath life back into E3? It makes me question why they changed it to begin with as developers and publlishers were the ones reported to not want to spend the millions of dollars in cost to obtain a few extra eyeballs on their products. We all contemplated mini-conferences with each major developer to take the place of the big E3 where each confierence would focus on just a few small brands.

Now, we’re heading back to the way it always was… isn’t this what the big boys were trying to avoid? Apparently not, because they’re all signed up and ready to return and hype their product. Perhaps these same developers saw some falling trends and realized E3 is needed to push their new games?

Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and all their friends are back again to battle, this is like a long awaited Street Fighter sequel. The new Super Smash Bros Brawl of press events with the hot chicks in tow hoping to flash the lights upon their awesome next greatest game development.

Will this really reinvigorate the conference? Will it cause other conferences like TGS and GDC to lose attendance this year? We know many mainstream press folks are sighing as they realize they’re going to all have to show up and really work the show, for them this is business and ratings. While a few of us are impressed by the anime clad chicks, most of the folks there are actually working for a living.

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Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?

I remember a day when old RPG games had either a level cap or a definite ending. From Pool of Radiance to Secrets of the Silver Blades to Final Fantasy the game had a final boss or stage and often had some type of level cap. Today, gamers don’t want it to end, they’d rather have the option to wonder around aimlessly or completing minor quests in order to soak up every ounce of money they spent on the title.

linkNow even Bethesda is saying “we’ve learned our lesson” from the whiplash of ending their game title and capping levels. Gamers want to go back and re-try content they missed, they want to run side quests and talk to everyone in the world they want to grind themselves to über powerful levels and become a god in their fantasy world. Can you blame them?

You can’t really blame them for wanting to maximize the content, although it’s slightly more evolved than RPG’s of old. Perhaps it was World of Warcraft and other MMORPG’s that brought us to the stage in life where we all want to squeeze every last RPG dime out of the title. As a kid I wondered the world of Hyrule and covered every tile of graphical color, burned every bush, bombed every stone looking for all the content. However, even Zelda had an end with scrolling credits – you didn’t just land on a platform with your master sword and a dream.

Other titles have used level caps to limit you and draw you into the next release of the game. This was popular in the D&D world because the game is designed to target specific levels of difficulty. They may only allow you to gain level 10 because the enemies are no tougher than level 13, allowing the challenge to be good but not overwhelming. If they allow you to get to level 50 they’d have to design the game so all the enemies grow powerful along with you — that’s not always a desired result.

Final Fantasy is a popular franchise that typically allows you to grow infinitely powerful depending on how much time you want to spend repeat killing the same enemies. Gamers aren’t always into the grind, they just want to grind “enough” to make the challenges a little more do-able.

Today, however, with larger storage capacity, larger development teams and the desire to build more value into your gameplay experience titles have dozens of side quests and sub-plots that are totally optional. The result of so many sub-quests results in a player who is much more powerful at the end of those quests compared to a player who sticks to the narrow path of the main plot. So, games much grow dynamically challenging to keep the fun per dollar high.

Do you like your RPG’s to have a definite end and a high but capped level?

XBLA’s Braid Needs More SalesXBLA’s Braid Needs More Sales

XBLA offers great opportunities for the indy developer but everything comes at a price. Over the last three years Braid‘s developer Jonathan Blow spent a reported $180,000 to create the popular Braid title on Xbox Live. He’s going to need a lot more sales before he can celebrate the highly valued, highly reviewed title.

The Independent Games Festival was kind to him, giving him the “Innovation in Game Design” back in 2006, since then he’s put his money where is mouth is; his own money. There are good times and bad times when you’re discovering your dreams. The reviews surely made him feel great about the work he has done over the last three years but a review won’t pay the bills.

It may be a hard road ahead for Jonathan, hopefully at least breaking even on the project. Although he may not look back at the game as a financial success we can only imagine he’ll have a lot easier time getting funding or publishing for his next title, if that’s the path he chooses.

(Thanks, Kotaku)