E3 is over, and all of the folks foolish enough to attend are heading back to the offices to pore over and disseminate the information they have amassed over the last couple of days. What this means is that for the next few days, most of the news you’ll find on the news sites will be some combination of a few things:
Title: Impressions/Preview of Game X
Content: I played Game X at E3, and it was good/coming along nicely, here’s some canned screenshots/movie and/or some ‘exclusive’ poor quality video of me doing poorly at the game.
Title: Interview with Game Industry Guy Y
Content: I sat down with Industry Guy Y and we talked about some questions that didn’t get answered at the press conferences. Industry Guy didn’t answer them either, but gave entertaining non-answers. Will overanalyze interview when we get back to the office.
Title: Analysis of Game Company Z’s press conference/E3 showing/marketing strategy
Content: Company Z did some things right, did some things wrong. Showed games that people wanted to see and didn’t show games that people wanted to see. Some games/announcements were surprising, some were disappointing. Overanalysis and possibly a minute-by-minute breakdown of ‘liveblogs’ will ensue.
No matter what site you go to, these three article constructs are going to be filled with the same things. Everyone who got to play the demo of Crysis is going to have a slightly differing perception of the exact same thing, but all feel compelled to publish it anyway. This unfortunately means that the things that differentiate the game news sites have virtually disappeared and the news scape is now a featureless grey mass of sameness.
But there’s always next week, I suppose.