"E3: Eww, Eh, Excellent" is a running feature detailing my impressions on the big things, the little things, and everything in between from E3 2007. It should be noted that these impressions are written from my viewpoint as an industry outsider and a simple enthusiast - one who cannot be at E3 in person. Also, at this point, E3 is so two weeks ago, but there's still something to get off of my chest. Thus, this will be the last full Eww, Eh, Excellent before I close out with a blurb of the smaller things. This will be posted everywhere I have a (sad, little, unnoticed) presence - trigames.net (always first), Gamespot.com, 1up.com and MySpace.com, and cannot be re-posted elsewhere without my permission.
E3 Awards: Eh
Every videogame publisher loves awards and distinction. Editors' Choice. Random Website's Game of the Year. Platinum Seller. As readers, we appreciate the information and dinstinction that these awards provide. Didn't play Gears of War or Twilight Princess yet? Not too keen on reading their full reviews or even looking for reviews in the first place? Surely, Gamespot and 1up's 2006 Games of the Year (respectively) are surefire hits for the discerning consumer.
There's one set of formal awards, though, whose merit comes into question depending on who you ask. These are awards for conventions and trade shows - awards that are given out to games that aren't even complete yet. Most famously, and recently, we've got our E3 Game of the Show and Best of E3 awards.
At E3 (and other similar conventions), a multitude of games are shown and in multiple stages of completion. Sometimes the game is merely teased - take 2005's Killzone 2 trailer for the Playstation 3 platform, for instance. Last year, Halo 3 had a similar teaser.
Many of the awards given out are explicitly described with what they are actually awarding - the above teasers would have qualified for "Best Trailer" at many websites. That's all well and good. A trailer is a trailer - no one (I hope) will mistake that for a full game that you can buy off of retail shelves and actually consume.
The E3 Games of the Show awards, however, start to bring us into misleading territory. Imagine, for a minute, that you're a journalist at E3. You've just played the latest build of some game that seems to be shaping up remarkably well. The game isn't slated to ship for quite a few months, and the only play time you've been given is the few minutes on the show floor or at the interview session with the publishers. But for what you've played, and for what stage of development it's in, the game is enjoyable through and through.
Your readers demand to know what your opinions on E3 were. They demand awards be doled out, because - hey - everyone likes to see a fancy website or magazine layout with trophy graphics and lists upon lists of game names. You're assigned to the awards committee, and you're tasked with voting on your game of the show. You throw a vote in for the aforementioned game, and it ends up winning E3 Game of the Show. This is great - your readers now get to understand which games were shaping up very well and what to look forward to. There's certainly nothing wrong with giving information and laying down your opinions, after all.
The problem starts to creep in when information starts to be used in misleading ways. Take a look at the box art for Sigma Star Saga, a hybrid shmup-RPG for the Gameboy Advance. On the right-hand side, there's a huge "BEST OF E3 2005!" stencil. As it turns out, the game didn't end up being an incredible experience. It's certainly a decent game, a game that innovates and takes risks by combining two worlds-apart genres. However, it's received a "good but flawed" critical reception.
Assuming that we're taking critical reception as a proper benchmark for quality, does "good but flawed" sound like a game that screams, "OMG THIS WAS GAME OF THE SHOW U GOTTA BUY NOW"? Of course not. But such tempting top-billing on the box might convince you otherwise if you haven't had the chance to catch up on the in-depth reviews. You grab it off the shelf and open it up only to be hit by the sobering fact that it's not as hot as you thought it was. Like that guy or girl you spotted in that bar's dim lighting, the morning sun doesn't shine too kindly upon the game and you're now questioning why you jumped at it so eagerly.
Whose fault is it? No one's, really. The show is meant to showcase up-and-coming games - not necessarily those that are already complete. The journalists are here to inform us in the simplest, most efficient way possible about just which games are coming along nicely. The publishers? They're here to sell, and I'll be damned if they should "refuse" the awards they've been given. In fact, in Sigma Star Saga's case, Namco probably needed all the help it could get in promoting the WayForward-developed game; as a low-profile, no-name IP effort, it was likely that your average passerby wouldn't pay any mind to the game without some kind of box-art hype.
I certainly can't - and won't - cast any blame on anyone for the entity that is the E3 Award and how it affects consumers. That's why I'm not decidedly "ew" on the awards. It's just simply unfortunate that the end result of logical use of this type of information ends up being misleading.
How do we fix this? Do websites and magazines stop drawing up pretty emblems and graphics for these awards, so that publishers no longer have an easy way to slap a new sticker on the box? Do we shift to a sty1e that Electronic Gaming Monthly has tried out, where E3 coverage is contained in a very deliberately titled "Opinionated Guide to E3" sporting a disclaimer that no, these are in no way awards or "Worst Of" demerits? Do we get rid of the awards altogether and reduce the coverage to editor roundtables, where opinions are given but labels are withheld?
Perhaps the better questions are, can we fix this at all - and do we even need to fix this? Maybe it's futile, and consumers simply need to buckle up and rely on more than the front of the box or any pre-completion awards. Perhaps we'll all develop a Pavlovian response to box cover pull quotes and award stickers and, after getting burned at the cash register a few times, learn to not judge our books by their covers.