Is it just me or have NA video game conventions really gone down hill the last 5 years?

Tiller

 I used to look forward to these big game conferences every year, now it just seems like they are rarely even mentioned.

Seriously,
E3- was meh
PAX- east and west were flops did East even happen?
GDC- hasn't been anything consumer related for years
CES hasn't been much specifically game software related in a long time, but more geared towards the hardware.


I'm sure I'm missing a few.

 It seems like the game focused media stopped really covering these events like they used to and now mostly focus on the few measly games as they show up with no mention of the event itself. What they have to report on is usually a high level overview of what happened; nothing exciting. A lot of game sites rarely even feature what came out of these events in the form of a list and you have to really dig for that list of new upcoming titles; which always leave out the interesting Indie games. New big announcements don't even happen anymore at these events. Could be possibly because most publishers want their own day in the sun, but if you don't have the event to look forward to hearing these big announcements, most times you end up missing any such announcement all together. 

Live stream events are a thing of the past as well and any videos of the event usually show up in the form of a 4 min Youtube video days later. The bigger publishers have seemed to scale down their AAA game title production which might also be the reason the media isn't as interested in detailing as much, and since the indie developers can rarely afford these events, your only hope of finding a new indie game is to watch Steam since once again, most big game sites don't even bother to mention them.

 Maybe the indie developer is where we need to look to for new and great games since lots of new interesting titles are constantly coming out. You just gotta really dig for them since they rarely can afford to make it to game conventions and the ones that are (Hello Games) usually produce over-hyped flops.

I probably didn't need to go off on that much of a rant about it but I really feel like game conventions are almost pointless these days.

With all that being said, do you feel game conventions have become super irrelevant as of late? Why do you think this happened? Is indie game market the new future in gaming? thoughts?



/discuss

Nasa

In the "old days" you had to wait for the E3 reports in magazines. Now you know mostly what will be shown because of rumors on internet or released trailers or other info. Also early access makes that studios have to show the game earlier than before.

Sovrath

Tiller said:

I probably didn't need to go off on that much of a rant about it but I really feel like game conventions are almost pointless these days.




/discuss

I went to PAX East and had fun.

And went to PAX West last year and enjoyed it.

To me, "pointless" is up the the individual. Though I have to say, PAX tickets sell out in seconds so I don't think it's pointless to a lot of people.

There are so many places for media to get news, including being invited by studios, I don't really think they "have" to be there day one. But I don't think that makes them pointless. Aren't they an in person event for players to get their hands on games, meet people in the industry as well as meet fellow players/gamers (whatever) who love the hobby?

Though I do see PAX articles on this site.

esc-joconnor

i think it's not limited to NA, there are very few gaming studios that are allowed to make good games recently. I say allowed, because I'm sure the bulk of game devs and artists want to make awesome games, and are capable of doing so.

Azaron_Nightblade

What @DMKano said. A lot of what used to go to the E3, has over the years shifted to Gamescom instead. Which is pretty massive these days, and many devs save their big reveals for it now, instead of the E3 like they did in the past.

laxie

Definitely agree with others - there has been a shift from E3 to Gamescom.

I used to live close to Gamescom when I was growing up. Going there was akin to visiting a local fair, not at all a large media event. This is about 10 years ago. Most of the stalls were small upcoming developers. Playstation and Xbox had their section, mainly promoting their services in general. The main EA presentation actually took place in their booth on the main floor, with maybe 50 people sitting on a round bench watching the TV with a few trailers.

This is very different from today, where publishers are starting to save their big announcements for Gamescom rather than E3.

I wouldn't agree that live streams are a thing of the past. They have become more interactable and mainly about community engagement. This is in contrast to being simply a live transmission of an announcement. As a result, you see most of the live streams happening on Twitch and Facebook, rather than on privately hosted websites with an admission ticket. With what Facebook and Google are going for, I don't think this will dwindle down - if anything, we will see publishers hiring staff to do live video engagement almost 24/7. 

SavageHorizon

E3 was never as good as GamesCom, E3 wasn't for members of the public where GamesCom is an actual gaming convention for the gaming public.

There was a reason ArenaNet first showed GW2 at GamesCom and not crappy E3 elite. 

SBFord

With live streaming and a constant flow of information from developers, conventions have pretty much lost their "SURPRISE" appeal for everyone. We can watch the big shows via Twitch and report on them from there AND avoid conventionitis, the common illness you get to come home with every single time.  

Albatroes

SBFord said:

With live streaming and a constant flow of information from developers, conventions have pretty much lost their "SURPRISE" appeal for everyone. We can watch the big shows via Twitch and report on them from there AND avoid conventionitis, the common illness you get to come home with every single time.  

We can still be "surprised" by how underwhelming some of the titles actually are upon release, i.e. Watch Dogs. A lot of people were surprised with that one lol But maybe that just applies to Ubisoft in general to this point.

Renoaku

Pretty much only reason I would go to a convention is to see Art-Work & Cosplay, besides that nothing is new to gaming really only game developers that never listen to its customers, Over & Over again, and then some of the biggest MMO Flops to date which I don't even think made it to convention.

The exception possibly being Crow Fall & Ashes OF Creation, but I am still waiting to see how the developers do on these games hopefully its actually something great but every MMO to date I see as a failure including recent games such as Dark & Light which may not be a full MMO but the company itself has a bad rep for failure with both "Black Gold" & " Age OF Wushu" for example and took a perfectly good game which should be a MMO and from what I understand made it server hosting based.

But for the most part I think a lot of people are getting tired of MMORPG games everything I am seeing like "Guild Wars 2" sure its still got players but its not nearly as active as it was, I miss seeing games like the original Ever Quest, or Planet Side 1, even NeoCron for that matter not all these re-makes of games that are complete trash in my eyes games that could be so much better if developers took the time to actually put thought into the game as it was being designed.

The only exception to possibly seeing a decent MMO is Elder Scrolls Online, it still lacks so much content it could have done way better on but the only game that has been released worth playing IMO, we see how Arche Age & Black Desert took turns for the worst over the years including the whole P2A /P2W aspect of BDO recently.

But then when it comes down to it its not always the artists that are the problems games like BDO have decent character models, decent graphics, even some games with good sound-tracks / composers, but in the end its the developers decisions who develop the core game-play and throw in P2W mechanics or flat out ruin a game.

Azaron_Nightblade

Renoaku said:

But then when it comes down to it its not always the artists that are the problems games like BDO have decent character models, decent graphics, even some games with good sound-tracks / composers, but in the end its the developers decisions who develop the core game-play and throw in P2W mechanics or flat out ruin a game.

Not just devs. Publishers have a huge say in the P2W mechanics. A good example was the differences between the NA version of Aion, and the EU version of Aion. The EU's publishers, GameForge, nickle and dimed you to death, while the NA version was perfectly fine to play.