E3 has been permanently canceled

Goodbye E3

On the one hand this is probably a good thing. E3 was responsible for a lot of hype culture and wasn't necessarily good for the industry. Plus all the best parts of it like press conferences can still happen without the show, though Keighley gaining more control of industry hype is...bad. So is the platform holders and publishers having even more control over the message. But overall, E3, kind of bad, good riddance.

On the other hand as a game fan it was fun. And as an old person it was tradition. So I'm going to miss it a lot even if it wasn't a good thing. Goodbye E3, thanks for the memories and even the inevitably disappointing hype trains.

I swear, posting the Hottest Mess poll unleashed some curses around the industry. Not that this is particularly surprising given how thoroughly the ESA mismanaged E3 over the last half-decade, but I didn't expect it to be permanently shuttered in mid-December.

I won't lionize E3 because it had its problems, but Keigh3 is really not a good substitute. This TGA put a pretty sour taste in my mouth for Keighley-run things. It's even difficult to suggest something like the E3s of old that were directed more towards games media than, say, a PAX thanks to the decimation of the media landscape over the last couple of years. But like you said, it was a milestone in the year of gaming, and I'll miss it to some extent. On the plus side, at least they can't doxx every journalist again now.

@allthedinos: They can still dox every FORMER journalist!

If it makes you feel any better I don't really think of this as a 2023 hot mess. This is more of a cold mess that corroded the foundations until it collapsed over time. Nothing specific happened this year, it's just a series of external events and a failure to adapt. Not hot mess material, compared to Unity suddenly demanding a bunch of money from nowhere or Embracer looking at its balance sheet and suddenly screaming "fire everyone!"

I have no love for the ESA, but watching more and more major events fall to one person is worse imo. Keighley's production company now assists with Summer Games Fest, Gamescom, and The Game Awards. That's three major events throughout the year where he directly profits.

Whereas the ESA had some responsibility to serve the industry (which is pretty laughable given their track record), resting that responsibility in the hands of one person doesn't seem wise.

Not to mention Keighley already has an inconsistent at best record of responding to issues within the industry. Either taking too long or ignoring issues altogether.

It's a shame E3 couldn't continue but hopefully whatever replaces it is an upgrade.

Wow, eveyone was talking about how this year's Video Game Awards made people miss E3, only for this to happen? I'm putting my Tinfoil Hat on and say the timing is too good. Anyway, goodbye E3, I will always remember the good times and the embarrassing times. Keighley is something else...

I felt the writing was on the wall when it came to E3 the minute Nintendo started doing Directs

Keighley makes events that fill his wallet. That is why indie games, despite his assurances otherwise, feel like such an after thought during Summer Games Fest. Also, understanding the human element to games development is something he's never visibly understood. That has been the case for years. E3 might have struggled during its twilight years striking a balance between providing major and minor labels with a showroom or convention similar to every other tech industry.

With Keighley now commanding every major game exhibition short of the PAX related ones, the criticisms of Keighley's events are even less likely to enact change. He's going to dig his heels in and splay out his arms while echoing "I'm all you got!" to both hobbyists and developers.

Like it's a little sad but in a way like if I learn a business near me closed down that I've never been to and only heard bad things about but I've sure heard of it for a long time.

@zombiepie: I agree that Keighley has never understood the human element of games but certainly E3 never tried that either.

I think the Keighleyfication of games hype is bad but there are alternatives. Publishers can and do run independent press conferences where they present their own stuff (and that's what most people actually remember from at least the last decade of E3.) There are indie collectives that also put together showcases outside the control of Keighley.

Ultimately the best hope we have is that Keighley's events act as the central platform that sets the press conference timing for other smaller events to orbit around. E3 acted this way and those other events were often much better than the official E3 events. True E3 was really about sharing things with journalists on the show floor, and we generally only saw snippets or read journalist write-ups. Those showings can be done virtually now.

I will miss having everyone in the industry in one place so that they could visit the Giant Bomb couch though. Those Gerstmann interviews were legendary.

"what is dead may never die."

Farewell to E3, I had good memories of watching trailers on each video game product.

Going to E3 was kind of one of my big dreams as a kid. It feels silly to think that now, knowing what E3 became and what it maybe always had been.

The world has moved on, but it still feels weird that the ESA never managed to make E3 work as a fan event. Gamescom and TGS each still pull in a quarter of a million people yearly.

Thanks for the memories E3 and at least we still have Electric Showdown to dip into some nostalgia.

I can’t even imagine an E3 happening in 2024. No chance a hardware manufacturer shows up, and even trusty old Ubisoft has figured out “hey! All we need is a camera, light, mics, and a trendy blazer or two and we can shoot this in our office!” Also, not only had the show outlived its usefulness in the last 10+ years, dev cycles just aren’t what they used to be. Long gone are the days of journalists getting tons of hands on demos at any of these things. The publisher wants to control the message and it’s not like 2001 when you can turn MGS1 into MGS2 in about two years. AAA Games regularly take 5 years and $300m to make. Back in the day E3 was all about “holy crap these are games I didn’t or barely knew of that I’ll get to play in a few months.” More recently it’s been Cyberpunk 2077. Show a fancy trailer, a date 4 years in the future, have a hands off demo 3 years later. Push it back a year, etc.

I’m not sure what’s next. It’s not totally keighley’s fault, the proliferation of YouTube and Twitch and the downward trajectory of write-ups on websites like this one is a byproduct of our visual-centric shrinking attention spans. The games market balloons more and more into mainstream culture, and the amount of people who want an in-depth interview with a developer gets smaller and smaller as the hobby grows bigger. People want the flashy trailer, and I think a larger portion of the audience can’t differentiate between gameplay and fmv than us here would be able to reckon with. They want the new announcement. And let’s be honest, most people want celebrities and don’t know how many people it takes to write and direct and code a game. They want Keanu Reeves being psyched and Jordan Peele shaking hands with the weird dude what made metal gear. I don’t think that’s GK’s fault, it’s the reality of the situation.

I’d like to see GK’s thing merge with something like DICE. Industry voted, jury of the peers. Like an Oscar’s that also debuted crazy awesome movie trailers for the upcoming summer. There should be a happy medium. Hopefully the backlash against short speeches this year makes them realize there IS a passionate games audience who just wants to celebrate the year in games. But I doubt it, the thing keeps making money.