Summer Game Fest is dead!
It never really had a chance to be honest...
Summer Game Fest (SGF, going forward) took place this weekend, and well, we need to have a talk here, folks. I am not one to try and be the doom and gloom guy, but this was quite possibly one of the worst game reveal weekends I’ve seen in a long, long, LONG time.
We are not going to cover the games that were announced, what we are gonna talk about is the presentation and also the entire concept of SGF, the supposed second coming of E3, all under the control of a guy who to me will always be a Dorito Pope. We’re also gonna see how, with one company which is more or less accepting money for ad space, how safe game makers are playing it. Oh, and also, all you people who scream about indies, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you. Everyone is getting hit in this rant, cause after sitting through these and also living life. I’ve concluded that we need a new form of whatever we call summer game reveal season and not this pile of crap we have come to accept as a standard.
E3 was not great, but it is clear to me they were trying something.
I am not going to go into the history of E3, there will be enough clickbait for those who want to learn about that. But one thing about E3 that made it E3 is that, for the most part, maybe aside from a few years. It always felt like it was a level playing field for all the game companies to play in. A group set up a location, booked time, and gave space to all who paid, also allowing the console makers more time to show off exclusives and have big press days before people who paid or had credentials could go in and play some of, if not most of, the games shown. Maybe even some that haven’t been shown or were shown in the past, but have had some updates to them.
This was also usually the time when console makers would announce their new systems, have pricing, and other things. It was one time a year where the gaming community was glued to magazines, and eventually websites that we would refresh every minute to see if new content got up, or watch the presser and then pretend we’re news people and sit around and tell one another why this console or this maker is better and somehow think we had financial knowledge when in reality we were probably living paycheck to paycheck or saving our money from our jobs in high school to get the new games eventually.
Okay, kind of a sum up but more like a feeling, not a history, sorry, but needed to get that out there. Because, like it or not, we no longer have that center point, we can all converge and compare which console is better. These days, most consoles are revealed in company directs that they control and edit to show off items. Need to hide that thing you don’t want the gaming media to find out about right now? Back in the day, they could talk to you, and you had to work spin to not make it sound bad. These days, well, you don’t even have to do that, just show off the video and ignore the media! It doesn’t matter, because it’ll be lost in all the other stuff you’re direct had and not many people will notice.
At least E3 back in the day, and, hell, I’ll admit it is a product of its time, but at least it was like an arena battle where all parties obeyed the rules and had to deal with things. Today’s world with a in house PR team that edits clips into packages for mass consumption with the objective of not dazzling with brilliance but more with bullshit can just hit play and figure out the rest as we go. But, usually, what happens is the next thing happens, and everyone forgets that you did that, aside from the bullet points. So if you want to cover something up, it is honestly a lot easier now than it was back in the old E3 days.
All money to the Dorito Pope
Years ago, a man decided that video games needed an awards ceremony. Many people considered this not a really good idea, but it happened anyway because they realized something: people don’t care about awards, just new trailers. While I am by no means against an award ceremony for the game industry (though I think others are probably more prestigious, these feel like an MTV Movie award, honestly). What I am against is putting on trailer after trailer and ignoring, aside from popular genres putting the rest of the awards in the background so we can see what new Call of Duty is coming out.
Anyway, like it or not, they are in some odd way profitable, it is mainly because with trailers and world premiers, developers realized this is a platform to show stuff off, so if they pay enough money. They can, in fact, just drop a trailer and let it ride, then they can get some celebrity who barely knows about video games to come on and say how they liked that game that’s hot this year, when we all know they are reading a teleprompter. With the death of E3, the chief of salty chips saw an opportunity, and with a proven and safe formula, developers have come to show off...all the safe bets.
They are paying a lot of money for this commercial, and they don’t want to blow it with some high-concept crazy thing. Nope, we’re gonna go with a generic shooter in a sci-fi setting number 130,934,825,003.1234567, but this time because we want to subvert things, unlike others, we’re gonna add a craaazy and kooky character that doesn’t belong and destroy any sense of mood that we could build with tired and played out jokes. BECAUSE IT’S KOOKY!
There is a bias, and it’s an insulting one at that.
The real crux of the problem is very simple unlike old E3, where everyone knew the rules its now all about how much money needs to be given, and if we can say have an entire company buy out a day of, and this is where it really, really began to piss me off. Go back and look at the Friday reveals of SGF, and then go back and look at the Sunday event brought to you by Micro$oft (yeah, I did that.) Go on, look please let me know if there is anything different as opposed to today, I’m just gonna kick back here and check out “Imperial” by Jonathan Hickman
*opens comic up and reads*
Oh, you’re back...shit I didn’t even get through the first part of the book *sets it aside* alright then, so did you see anything different? Oh, you didn’t, but you thought the one on Sunday was better than? You did, but if it was the same thing, why did you think Friday was the worst thing in the world and Sunday was better? Well, there are two reasons for this, and it’s honestly once you piece it together, very clever.
1. Friday was so bad that all they had to do was just not fall over, and you will actually be impressed with what you saw.
2. The non stop assault of trailers and flashes of “World Premier” and “Play it on game pass” overwhelms you and makes you think, you in fact are seeing washes over you like a tsunami, when really if we cut out all the stuff with the patron saint of Frito lay and company it would probably be on par if not less than what you saw to day. It’s almost like they had a lot of small things but not enough to carry a long-form topic...like a content blast...interesting.
I invite you to go look at the actual list of games announced on a gaming media website and compare it to one another, cause I recalled on Friday night, while out for dinner, checking on occasion, thinking there was a lot, but when I saw the last, realized there was not much. To be honest, what sticks out in my mind from Friday is Kenny Omega cosplaying as various season three Street Fighter 6 characters and laughing at the stupidity of the clip. But not mad at it, actually genuinely funny.
That’s the trick they are doing, it’s a lot of nothing but packaged in a way that it seems important, and the fact that there is no breathing room fools you into thinking it was a lot when it was not. As for the games shown, this is where I got insulted cause everything I saw, honestly, made me indifferent; nothing stood out as “oh that’s cool,” it’s all safe, all the same, and in the case of Sunday, powered by your Spotify playlist. As a creative person (insert plug for The Dominant Ones here), I got annoyed as this is what passes for cool now. There was not much gameplay, but man, did they dazzle with that CG and cinematics, and remakes of remakes of remakes that I think I own from a console or two ago anyway.
Don’t worry, indie gaming will save us…
I’m just gonna be honest with you here… NO IT WILL NOT!
Indies are just as guilty of doing the safe thing, for every new idea there are at least ten games that use the following terms:
-Cozy
-Rougelike
-Farming
-Driving in a quirky area (think Desert Bus)
-Pokemon Clone
-Cuphead Clone
-Some sort of power washing (simulators or demolition of something)
I mean, it is to the point now that I hear Rougelike and my attention and or excitement of what I am seeing instantly turns my brain off.
My brain, after hearing Rougelike
They seem to be a penny a dozen and all the same. Anything that has a quirk to it doesn’t even feel natural anymore, it is just quirky for the sake of standing out. In reality, it just blends into the rest of the endless void of indie games everyone wishlists, then buys on a winter or summer sale on Steam.
I like the concept of an indie game, I like the image we create of the programmer with an interesting idea coding away somewhere on their free time cause they have a passion. I sympathize with that, but honestly, a lot of so-called indie games anymore feel like cash grabs and not a lot of work. This is the perspective of a buyer, not a developer. I don’t know if that changes, but now, when I see indie games, I just roll my eyes and forget it exists by the end of a direct.
Okay, so if you’re done shitting all over gaming, do you have any ideas on how to actually fix it?
Well, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this. See, you are taught to never leave a reader feeling worse than when they started reading, you have to give some hope. So here are some ideas:
1. Less directs through the year: I don’t know if this is even possible, cause I mean if I am running a thing to get attention, I want all eyes on it. But in theory, like the old E3, maybe have a neutral ground and everyone takes their shot kind of thing.
2. Less games: Okay, so this sounds rather odd I know, but part of the issue is; there is just too much shit and not enough time! Most of this is, as I mentioned, clones of other successful things, but when you keep cloning, you degrade the original to the point that the clone is held together by super glue or duct tape. If there were better content throughout the year instead of a constant flood, some games would be better for it.
3. Educate yourself: I took a mass media course in high school back in the day, it’s where you kind of learned a lot of tricks that are done to market or fool you. Knowledge is power, but if we all realize what they are doing, they may rethink things. Also, it won’t be as insulting to us as maybe some new, unique ideas could come from it. So, next time you watch a direct, study it a bit, see how the presentation is done. Remember: it’s all marketing, it is all made so you want it, ask yourself if it is truly something you want.
4. Don’t feed the beast: The highest of high leaders of triangle-shaped snacks wants your eyes, he wants your attention, because it gives him money. Also, it gives him a chance to flaunt his friendship/cucking with Kojima. If we don’t pay attention, then he has no power, and thus companies are less likely to give him money. It may also breed competition, and that allows us to get different views and maybe different games than what we are seeing.
Final Thoughts:
Honestly, this weekend kind of confirmed a few things for me at least.
I am not the target demo for gaming (and that is okay to a degree)
Almost no games caught my attention.
If anything, Microsoft has managed to push me to redouble my efforts to get a switch 2, because if this is the future, I want no part of it.
E3 is dead, and after this weekend, Summer Games Fest is also dead to me as it’s nothing but a shallow husk of marketing that has no substance behind it other than to rake in money. My only real hope now is Nintendo just decides to drop a Nintendo Direct next week in a hold my beer moment, so we can see good games and content instead of the same old shit. Though right now, I feel like I’m gonna be disappointed.
-The Chaos Director
So many of my own frustrations here too. I'm optimistic about gaming geberslly but tired of these dreadful showcases and the indie circle-jerk when every game is a rogue-like, survival-crafting or farming sim.