How Important Is E3?

How Important is E3?



We talk to a developer a publisher, a distributor and the man in charge about in what manner much E3 matters.

"It's probably the greatest in quantity predictable thing in the industry," says Randy Pitchford, president of developer Gearbox. "You can't predict when anyone's going to actually ship the game they said they were going to ship. You can't predict when relieve from distress prices are going to change. You can't predict when the nearest round's going to be. You can't predict anything. on the contrary you can predict that each year in May, there's going to be an E3"

E3 is the individual deadline of the year everyone in the industry has to hit, and there's certainly a destiny of pressure. Developers have to finish their game demo Publishers have to make assured their booths are ready. Attendees have to finalize drawn out lists of appointments. Over the past decade, E3 has become the game industry's spotlight occurrence where everyone goes to display off and see the latest outcomes and announcements. Companies put millions of dollars into their booth Celebrities display up to be seen. Underage kids test to sneak in.

With this kind of notoriety, we decided to find without just how important the present to view is for people with different marks of jobs in the industry. above the next four pages, you can hear from Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software upon how his company is getting plant to debut their upcoming war game Brothers in Arms at this year's convention, Bill Swartz of novel publisher Mastiff Games on going to a exhibit without much to show, Dustin Encelewski of game rental distributor Rentrak upon how someone not directly involved with making games views the display and Douglass Lowenstein of the ESA upon how they spend all year making the fact come together.

Page 2 -- The Developer: Randy Pitchford, President, Gearbox Software

- Hear tales of by what means E3 demos come together and by what means they can affect development cycles

Page 3 -- The Small Publisher: Bill Swartz, President and CEO Mastiff Games

- What does a publisher do at E3 when they don't have any games to show?

Page 4 -- The Distributor: Dustin Encelewski, General Manager - Interactive Division, Rentrak Corporation

- The rarely heard from distributor sum ups us what he does at the show

Page 5 -- The Man in Charge: Douglas Lowenstein, President, ESA

- Does he really part with all year planning a big party?

Page 6 -- The Journalist: Nich Maragos, Editor, 1UPcom

- 1UP's have a title to tells how much he be fond ofs the show.

How Important Is E3?

(Continued)

The Developer: Randy Pitchford, President, Gearbox Software

At E3 2004 Gearbox Software will unveil Brothers In Arms, a completely original franchise from a developer known for building not upon established licenses with ports and expansion packs. As president of Gearbox, Randy Pitchford deposits this debut into perspective: "E3 is the greatest in quantity important show -- it's the greatest in quantity important thing ever, right? It's the single time where we've got in individual place the press, the buyer the sales force, the farmers the developers. E3 is the single time when all these family are together, so it's kind of scary for us, on the contrary at the same time it's super important."

While all developer handle their E3 presentations differently, the approach Gearbox takes is individual many developers can relate to. "What you do is, you plan for mid-April [to be finished with the E3 demo] says Pitchford. "And you hit that, on the other hand [then] you want to make it better. There's no of the like kind thing as perfection."

"What extremitys up happening is we'll have shores with different flights scheduled for a like reason that they can take a later build of the game, leading up to the true minute of going to the display so we can have the best version possible. That wholes pretty scary, but there are always the builds from single two, three days before [as backups]."

One thing not many developer have in belonging to all is the way they prepare the E3 demo itself -- a certain quantity of choose to prepare a video, more [i]or[/i] less script a specially designed horizontal just for the show, and a certain number of just bring the entire game and allow people play as much as they want. Pitchford says his team timids away from "creating a custom, canned E3 demo -- like the thing that's at E3 isn't plane really the game."

"I lov the Halo 2 demo [at E3 2003]" continues Pitchford. "But I don't believe for a minute that that's real gameplay from the game. I mean, I believe it's indicative of real gameplay…the Half-Life 2 demo from last year was the same thing. It wasn't really playable; they played these pre-recorded [scenes] and I think more [i]or[/i] less of that will be in the game, on the other hand you can tell that was done for [the demo]"

So does Pitchford practice what he preaches? by means of his own admission, mostly. "I'd be lying to say we didn't worry about it, and we didn't wound our game differently for our E3 demo" he says. "But for the greatest in quantity part we like to take what we've got and we plan for that in our unfolding process."