E3 2016 Buzzword bingo and other things.
E3 is a massive trade show so expecting spontaneity of any of the big conferences is akin to being surprised at the sun rising, however it is "just games" and seemingly written by people that got the job because they once looked over someone's shoulder in a bowling alley as they played asteroids. This means scripting, humour and self awareness is somewhere around the level of a bad let's play would call it out. Or in other words it is the perfect conditions to set up for buzzword bingo. For those unfamiliar with the concept there are two forms
1) The brandy swilling armchair cynic.
2) The in the room hero.
The general idea for 1) is you fill up your card with buzzwords, mostly meaningless marketing terms, game specific concepts (rereleases and such), and when you fill a line or get a full house the others on your chosen IRC channel (or reddit twitter blog if you have not been educated in internet) give you a hearty congratulations.
The in the room hero has a card and when it is filled you get to stand up, make an obscene gesture with both hands, shout out bingo, better still bookending that with profanity. At this point the universe injects a bitching guitar riff into your head and you variously get fired, attacked by someone that legitimately uses the word synergy, or asked to leave the job interview, courtroom, funeral or wedding. However you are then cemented as an owner of a serious pair of brass ones. Alas statistics would have nobody reading this being there to be able to do that, and even if you did you would probably be drowned out by the people cheering when a company claims they are adding achievements to a tarted up rerelease of an old game (compilation).
Next year's failed technology category
Each year we tend to see a magical technological innovation that is designed to jumpstart the hearts of investors watching, and possibly then monitor it with said same device, but will ultimately amount to nothing or a become a failed product, either at market or in the imaginations of game players.
The most notable in recent times for me was the failure of second screen. A pity for me as it was probably the only thing I have seen that had some potential to do something for the ailing local multiplayer scene by virtue of allowing for types of gameplay not commonly seen.
Previous ones have included streaming services, 3d screens and in the failing to achieve much other than a padded wallet (though that is probably mission managed) everything Nintendo has done to controllers after the gamecube.
The sensible money is on VR this year as most of the players seem to have something, or indeed might own something, but it does not quite feel there just yet. The dark horse is console upgrades attempting to be justified.
The shatterer of optimism moment
For those that have not yet reached the age of reason, and thus gained a sense of jaded or detached cynicism, you could be forgiven for thinking good things are to come. Reality is cruel though so your armour of hope and dreams is revealed for what it is. Bonus points if you can pull off a Microsoft exclusives moment; a few years back Microsoft proudly announced that the rest of the show (the better part of a hour at that point) would be dedicated to exclusives, despite exclusives being a concept that was already on the way out. They lived up to that claim... by predominantly showing Kinect games. Best bets on that being Nintendo manages to undo some of the things people read into previous footage, gets us to think the new Zelda is in fact not going to be a poor effort at an open world game, and then has it all come crashing down upon closer examination.
The ray of light moment
Those that can manage to curtail the desire to be an in the room hero can then get jobs within the industry, at this point they can emerge at points in e3 to skewer things about it. The all time high score here goes to the South Park guys. If you are boring though then you can just pick a game that plays like something you want to play.
The false dawn moment
Also known as trying too hard. If you reckon you can see into the future then you can try to call this year's Overstrike but in reality you will probably want to limit yourself to calling this year's Sunset Overdrive.
The year of the ?
Usually by accident there appear to be certain patterns in the shows that people recognise. It then means such a thing will feature prominently in the upcoming year. Bows, spears, decapitations, cars and zombies have featured in previous years.
Overly sensitive/social justice year of the ?
When others are variously getting bored at the preponderance of cars or excited at the large amount of spears we might get to play with in the years ahead, or sports game fans are getting excited at this year being the passing game or something coming back as DLC that was missing from the previous year but not the last 10 prior to that, we have the social justification for their existence lot complaining about something.
FAST6191 mostly plays Tetris and minesweeper these days, if it looks like there were no real references to e3 2015 then you are good enough to spot the pattern for this year's "year of the ?". There was an attempt to watch them after the fact but even with the magic skip button to get through the boring parts it was still abandoned.
