As I write this, it's Saturday morning, June 4. I have around five hours to pay my bills, finish my laundry, and leave for the airport. It's raining--hard. There's a howl to the accompanying wind that lets me know that I'll be hydroplaning my way to Brad's place this afternoon, and we'll probably get to the airport just in time to see our flight get delayed for a couple of hours. At this rate, the entire state of California will be underwater by the end of the weekend. If I had a submarine I could pack, I would pack it.
Once all that travel garbage is out of the way, we'll be there. We'll be within spitting distance of the Los Angeles Convention Center, and we will again do battle against the Electronic Three. Here's what you can expect from us next week.
If you remember last year's presentation, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. We've again found a house--the exact same house, actually--to commandeer for the week of the show. This might seem kind of ridiculous, getting a house instead of renting some nice, clean hotel rooms, but the big functional difference is that the house isn't bound by awful, hotel-grade Internet. Seriously, in most hotel rooms I can't even watch low-quality Youtube clips, let alone stream HD video out to the free world. The house will let us run a nightly live broadcast, where we'll try to talk about the events of the day while joined by a menagerie of guests from across the game industry.
That live broadcast will officially start on Monday night, and we'll be live every night from Monday through Thursday. Getting that show to start at a regular time is a beautiful dream, but getting out of the convention center, back to the house, and ready to go is an uncertain process. It's our aim to be up and running at 8PM, PDT. Thursday might go a bit earlier, since the show floor closes a little early that day. We'll probably also get on for a bit on Sunday, if only to test out the gear and give it a dry run.
During the day, we'll be out in the field, shooting interviews and other things on the show floor that will be hitting the site throughout the week. We'll even throw some proper writing in there, for those of you that tire of seeing our stupid faces. The nightly live broadcasts will be loaded onto the site as audio, as they were last year. We will again strive to show you E3 in a way that no one else would.
I wish I could run down a list of guests for our broadcasts, but some of the names we're lining up has me in a real "I'll believe it when I see it" mode. We'll be bringing together some old favorites with some fresh faces that, if you follow the development of big video games, you're probably already familiar with. I can confirm, however, a name that won't be joining us this year. After giving him a call yesterday to ask which spectacular jacket he'd be bringing to the show, I discovered that one Paul Barnett is not making the trip this year. I know, I was pretty broken up about it, as well. He will be missed. We're also currently waiting to hear if John Vignocchi will make it out to E3 this year. Get well, Johnny!
OK, I should really get packing, I've been putting it off for a full day now.
[UPDATE}: Word from Johnny is "I'm gonna make it for the show come hell or high-water. i'm supposed to get out of here tomorrow, maybe Monday at the latest."