Editorial For: Thursday, June 4th

E3: A Lack of Focus

E3 is a massive trade now, no matter how you look at it. Although some people who attend the show suggest it is already too long at three days, other suggest it needs to go for another day or two. But, no matter how many days the show runs, there’s no doubt it’s hard to keep all the best games of the show on your mind, especially when some of the larger publishers have 25-50 new products they want to promote. It can be downright frightening as a press representative to show up to a booth and be ushered around to a slew of games for 30 seconds each as a public relations rep tries to cram all their titles into a half hour appointment.

Smaller developers who champion quality don’t have this problem – names that come to mind include Blizzard, Westwood, LucasArts, Crystal Dynamics, and Shiny Entertainment – but some of the larger publishers such as Cendant (Sierra et all), GT Interactive, Activision and Microsoft have so many titles it’s often hard to know where to start. However, this problem is intensified by the fact that most of the larger publishers don’t want to pick favorite games but rather try to present all their titles equally. Although this is a great concept – and no doubt eases tensions between developers – it’s the nature of a major marketing department to pick their triple-A blockbusters and promote those titles more than others. For instance, Psygnosis had what was by far the best booth of the show this year – They focused on five key titles and didn’t even bother the press with their other dozen-odd games although they were available if requested. The same can’t be said for other publishers who had far too many titles to present to the press in one fowl swoop and a lack of focus. Hence, I know I missed a number of key games at the show – After writing up my list of "surprise games" from E3 on Monday, a lot of developers e-mailed me asking why their games weren’t included. Some games clearly juts didn’t make the cut, but others were titles I wasn’t even shown by the public relations department of major publishers.

So, what’s the solution to this lack of focus at trade shows? Companies need to be willing to look over their slate of titles and pin down their big games and highlight those. Of course this is only a problem for some of the largest publishers in the industry, but the result will be healthy. Some publishers may counter with the suggestion that "all their titles are triple-A blockbusters," but we all know this isn’t the case. Sure, some companies may have more "good" games than others, but there is always room to select the cream of the crop and make sure everyone in the press doesn’t miss those games.

I think a lot of people in the press did miss some major games at the show, myself included. Although this can never be fully avoided, I think at future shows companies need to decide which key titles will really ruffle the feathers of the industry and make sure to aggressively promote those products. When I walk into a booth such as Activision’s, I don’t know where to start – there are a dozen major titles all under the Activision banner. Maybe one idea is to set up development studios for specific types of games – this is what Sierra and Interplay recently did – and thus companies can focus specific brands on specific titles instead of one over-arching publishing label presenting a sea of 50 products with no focus on key titles. If a company such as Activision or GT launched a number of genre-specific brands, these groups could focus on a few key titles in their division and be much more focused at trade shows and in their marketing materials.

I'll be back tomorrow with another editorial!

Geoff Keighley
Editor-in-Chief
GameSlice

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