Conferences or the Rest? What about E3 tickles your fancy the most?

I think the conferences this year are going to be really exciting. With all the consoles out now, this year should hopefully be all about games.Stuff that was probably too rough to show last year should be in a better shape this year and I'm hoping/expecting there to be quite a few unannounced titles as well. I'm super pumped for E3!!

The prospect of the announcement of an interesting new IP...

The conferences and the after hours bombcasts for me. Everything else is what used to be in Kentia Hall because it was too small and weird for the conferences. Nobody saves anything for the last day. It's all presented up front in the conferences.

Gotta love those E3 haters though. Remember the top 10 reasons not to go to E3?

Why's the Nintendo thing an abomination? From what I've seen, the Nintendo Direct things tend to be OK.

I love the conferences. I rest my case:

Sure, it's a fun little thing. But it's E3. I want them to put on a big live show. I want excitement. A pre-recorded video just isn't the celebration of videogames that I want from E3.

It's an abomination because it's an understatement. E3 is about going big! What Nintendo is doing is more like going home.

I don't even understand what this poll is asking. The only thing I care about is trailers, so which option do I choose?

I love watching the conferences because they give me a taste of the big titles that are on the horizon and I love the rest because of the sheer amount of information that comes out of E3. Last year I took some of my excess PTO for E3 week and I still felt like I didn't have enough time to consume everything.

I love the stuff Giantbomb does too. Last year they had Cliff Blezinski and Jonathan Blow appearing together...need I say more? Every day they did a livestream and they were all like 2-3 hours long. It was amazing.

I remember ordering the Gamespot E3 DVD set when they showed that Half-Life 2 physics and lighting demo (the mainstream debut of the gravity gun I believe, it was like a 10 minute demo) and I thought being able to see the press conferences in full was the most supremely fascinating part of the whole thing. Now that I'm on Giant Bomb pretty much all the time for my gaming conversation/news, I find the live streams of the conferences on this site to be unimpeachable. In fact I'd really, really love if the dudes just watched the conferences from the on-site couch this year and offered their commentary before and after. It worked fantastically for the PS4/Xbox pre-launch stuff.

I guess the conferences because that's where most of the important announcements come from. I don't know, at this point I'd much rather these companies just put out their info without trying to make a spectacle out of it. Just put out your trailers, show your demos, and move the fuck on with it. If EA brings out another rapper to say "Yo dawg, I love *insert EA Sports game here*. That ish is tight, I play it erry day", I might actually go insane.

@manmadegod:

That was the greatest thing I've ever seen!

I really like watching the conferences, but I LOVE watching the bomb team sit down at night and talk about the days events with guests and watching they're shenanigans.

I guess what I'm really asking is if you value the big E3 conferences, or if you are like Jeff, not really seeing the point.

I come for the conferences, stay for the 'floor coverage'. The latter can be pretty disappointing some years though, which is why I also really enjoy the roundtable type interviews that this site usually does (altough sometimes they can get a bit too chaotic).

Edit: What @therealmoot said.

Man...All of a sudden I am really excited for this years E3! This thread has birthed something inside me that I can't explain.

Can anyone make June come faster?

Look, it's easy to be jaded if you're there, but the press conference thing is actually a cool opportunity to get a message across to the gaming community at large. I get the feeling that US, and specifically SF-based outlets at times forget that the footprint of GDC or even PAX is exactly zero for a huge amount of gamers. You're not there, nothing gets broadcast other than a few announcements or inside baseball panels and nothing ever feels big unless you're physically there. It's very much a local event.

Which is why it's fun for the journalists covering it.

E3? Not so much. But it's big and bold and it's produced, so people who are not there get the feel of being there through the press conferences and the coverage. I understand where Jeff's "jaded vet" angle is coming from, but it's important to remember that unless you're putting out a game, you're not going to these for the experience, you're going for the material you put out. Whether a site like GB could provide the same coverage without being actually there... well, maybe. Maybe the only parts that matter are the parts that are broadcast anyway, so they could just sit at the office and talk about it. But I'd rather go without GDC coverage and get normal content that week than go without E3 coverage, much as that would suck for the guys themselves.

Honestly its the Giant bomb live shows. God its going to be weird without Ryan this year. They are however my favorite thing not only because I love the bomb crew but because you get pairings of game devs in the same room that make for some real interesting moments.

Conferences. New game announcements make me giddy like a little girl.

I love the press conferences. I love how extravagant and flashy they are. I love when things go wrong such as a game freezing during a live demo or the Wiimote not working correctly for Miyamoto when showing off Twilight Princess. I love it when things are embarrassing like when Ravi Drums was doing his thing or during most Ubisoft conference messes. I love it when the energy in the room is palpable like during Sony's E3 2013 conference or when Super Smash Bros. Brawl was announced. I love it when a conference is totally boring, and you can just feel everyone in the room sink into their seats and see the constant stream of negativity and snark via social networks and forums.

This is an event that only happens once a year. To me, the conferences are what make this particularly special. They're the highlight of the "video game Christmas" that is E3. For years, I've anticipated E3 because of the conferences and, even though they're not always the greatest experiences in terms of news, I can't say I EVER regretted watching a conference. They're just so much fun and I think it's ridiculous that, suddenly, people are being made fun of for enjoying or being excited for these conferences. I don't care if they're "unnecessary". I don't care if it's just a "dick-waving contest". I don't care if news could come through in any other way more "efficiently" than a bloated press conference. That's not why I watch these things. To me, they're fun. I can guarantee you that I'll have a lot of fun watching this E3's conferences as well. If people don't like them, they don't have to watch them and they can just read bullet points in a gaming blog article after the fact.

@seppli: Well, I think it's good that there is a central event that these companies can plan for and are forced to compete with one another for publicity. This way, the most promising stuff doesn't get overlooked. As far as having people stand in front of audiences in auditoriums and introduce other people and spout platitudes about their games, I don't see the point.

I love the whole week! The weekend before when we get tidbits of what's to come (or just rumours), then the conferences kick off and the tone is set for the rest of the week. The next few days when you get more game footage and find stuff you hadn't heard of previously. Like @seppli said, it's the week that lets you know what the big stuff is that you can look forward to the rest of the year. A nice big celebration.

GET HYPE!!

I like the conferences, but the after-hours podcasts are always something special. Though without Ryan hosting-

...I'm sad now.

@fluxwavez: This describes my feelings about E3 perfectly.

Very well put indeed.

Conferences, and more specifically the Big 3 (or 2, now). When done right, they're the State of the Union speeches for the platform holders. Here's what we've done, this is what we want to do and here are some games that we want to highlight because we feel they signify what our platform is about.

When done wrong... Well, it's nice to know where those GIFs come from.

I rewatch press confesses that is how much I love theme.

I literally only care about game announcements/trailers/videos, etc. I don't really like watching video game people talk on stage anymore, because almost all of them come off as complete jackasses. Sometimes in a really funny way, sometimes in a really insulting way.

The rest I'm always hyped for some surprising new game that will speak to me. Conferences are so boring.

I like announcements and most of those are at the press conferences.

Conferences are the shit. They can obviously tun out bad (Mr. Caffeine anyone? how about Shaun White's Snowboarding for the Wii?), but every now and then, someone pulls a "Sony 2013" and just turns the hype up to some next level shit. The reaction they got was crazy and it's moments like that that make conferences worth every second.

The conferences and the night Bombcasts always make E3 super enjoyable for me.

I enjoy watching the conferences. Yeah, there can be times when they're boring or awkward but I still feel they are worth it to watch. I can finish watching and not be any more persuaded to buy a game or a console but I'll still probably be glad I watched.

Also, I've quite enjoyed the videos in the past where the crew would commentate over the conferences (they haven't done that for e3 since they're actually they're in person, which kinda sucks). If they decided they didn't wanna go in person to watch the conferences and instead have a live stream in their hotel room where they watched it with us, I'd enjoy that.

I'm fairly sure my only interest in E3 is that I used to be into it at one time, and now I'm all... well... this is a thing I did once? So... I guess... I'll watch a little bit of it. ?

I love the conferences, but I love talking about them even more

Ubi-soft!!!!!! So good. Every year. I actually make a bag of microwave popcorn with a nice glass of ice tea for the Ubi shows. God it's so good. And they're making great games lately too so that's a nice bonus.

If you just press the same button, like xxxxx or yyyyyy or xxxx or yyyy......... you be sucked.

But the best part has to be the silent hill guy standing RIGHT behind the other speaker. No idea what is going on there. It's an awesome train wreck.

I guess I care less about the spectacle and more about the volume of crazy crap that gets announced. Press conferences are usually train wrecks, sometimes hilarious, sometimes just cringe inducing. Chances are, Ubisoft and EA will be the latter.

Also gotta love Giant Bomb's livestreams.

The press conferences, although, in recent years, they have become very "mainstreamed", so to speak. Especially Microsoft's, so fucking hard to watch.

For me, it's kind of exciting to see the conferences from my own comfy chair. I also greatly enjoyed last year's Gamespot coverage with developers last year on their stage.

I like the stage show where we meet the executives that make it all work. I like the company explaining and demonstrating its vision going forward. I like the connecting of ideas that a company must do to put on that show. I like the lead designer being on stage with his lead producer playing their game for everyone to see.

Most of all, I like hearing if I sense passion at for their game or is I'm seeing a hollow stage shows full of actors delivering poorly conceived lines of dialogue meant to sound extemporaneous. Microsoft has made an art of bringing sports stars, children, and blog-mommies on stage to sound stiff and badly rehearsed for their stage shows. Microsoft confirms the wisdom of the old W.C. Fields saying, “Never work with children or animals!”

Last years press conference proved the formats viability to me. Sure, maybe they could shit the info out like nintendo is doing, but it's so much more entertaining to see them go up on stage, rip each other to shreds, do stupid things, and have things break in front of a live audience. It makes announcements more interesting from an outsider perspective (why do you think people always ask 'how do I get into e3'). It's obvious it sucks for everyone on the inside, but it elevates the announcements to such a higher level for the people that matter the most (the people who will be buying this shit). Since nintendo started the nintendo direct stuff, I've paid less and less attention to what they are doing, and it's because the spectacle is gone.

Late night daily bombcast is really the only thing i care about during E3.