The Game Trust at E3

So E3 2008 is finished. Some booths, sadly, began inexplicably shutting down early on Thursday afternoon, hours before the show was even officially over. It was as if some developers and publishers couldn’t flee the L.A. Convention Center fast enough. De-bug units were boxed up. Plugs were pulled on the plasmas. The coolers filled with Diet Pepsi were carted off.

E3 2008 didn’t end with a rollicking bang. More like it curled into a ball in a corner and had itself a little cry.

Usually I walk away from the show with a handful of games stuck in my subconscious; games that impressed me so much that I literally will mark my calendar with their release dates and start counting down the days. (Open a window; smells like nerd in here.)

But this year, there’s not much for me to get worked up over.

Resistance 2? Sure, fine. Gears 2? OK, why not. Fallout 3? Spore? LittleBigPlanet? Rock Band 2? I’m sure they’ll all be terrific. But that must-play feeling? I don’t have it this year.

Maybe that’s because the bad news outweighed the good. What should have been a banner software year—we’re nearly at the midpoint in the 360 and PS3’s hardware cycles; now’s the time for the transcendent games to start appearing—turned out to be non-event. Microsoft played too much “me-too” this year, with their Rare-developed Miis, and their fake Singstar (called Lips). Sony teased with a pre-rendered God of War III trailer that featured no gameplay, then ended their presser with the disappointing M.A.G. (that’s Massive Action Game, for those of you who didn’t get the memo). And Nintendo basically decided that they deserved to take the year off, giving us non-entities like Wii Sports 2 (a year too late) and the embarrassment known as Wii Music. (Oh, and a new Animal Crossing…which apparently will be alarmingly similar to previous Animal Crossings.)

No swag, no booth babes, no games (at least no big surprises), and no real news.

Why exactly did we leave behind family members (and more than a few cats) to spend a hot July week in Los Angeles again? Just so we could spend our nights in crappy hotel rooms, and our days wandering the near-vacant L.A. Convention Center? If this is how E3 is going to play out from now on, I’ll stay home and trim my nails next year, thanks.

Tags: Blog, E3, Scott Jones