Even though I’m a million years old, I can still remember being a little kid at Christmas when the world was full of possibilities. Back then we’d get the Sears Wish Book which was full of toys and games, and leaf through it and daydream. I knew a lot of the stuff in there I’d never get, and even at that young age I knew some of the stuff that looked cool (X-Ray Glasses!) was really junk, but it was still fun just to look and daydream.
These days Christmas is more or less a non-event, but on the opposite side of the calendar is E3. I *love* E3. I’ve only actually been to the show a couple times, but I ‘attend’ it remotely via TV and internet. And I just love looking at the reveals and trailers and daydreaming about what’s possible in the world of gaming. Some very few games go on the ‘Day 1 Buy’ list, a good number more go on the ‘Keep an eye on this’ list, but the vast majority I just let kind of wash over me.
I doubt that I’m alone in enjoying the spectacle of E3, but sometimes it feels that way. As I surf around the blogosphere, it seems that every year more and more words are devoted to aggressive apathy towards the show. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s fine not to care about the show, but what I don’t understand is why people need to make a big deal about not caring about the show, or about the games that are shown there.
We can’t make ourselves like stuff we don’t like, of course, and our blogs are our blogs. I’m not saying folks shouldn’t vocalize their “Meh” reactions to E3. I’m just saying I find that it’s a little sad. After all these are games; we don’t need them to survive or even to be happy (I hope). A preview of a bad game, or a game that doesn’t interest you, doesn’t harm you in any way.
I just think a lot of us are becoming rather cynical these days. I’d love to remove all video and computer games from the world for a year or two, and then re-announce them via E3 and see if that could re-kindle the joy. Maybe if we weren’t exposed to games 365 days/year we’d feel less apathetic about them.
Trust me, if they had showed something I was excited about you’d hear the joy 🙂
Well that’s kind of my point. I find it sad that you, as a gamer, couldn’t find anything to get excited about in the hundreds of games that were shown. To me (and this is just my observation, and I don’t know you at all, so I could be wildly off-target) it just seems like your filters are getting finer and finer, to the point where now nothing gets through them. Or at least, nothing got through them this year.
Again, it is what it is and I don’t mean to come off as though I’m saying there’s anything wrong with that; there’s not. We all feel what we feel. I just find it kind of sad.
I was excited about a couple games. Granted, not as many as I thought I would, but there are definitely some I just can’t get my hands on. I choose to focus on those instead of bitching.
I was just thinking this today…that by all means people should voice their critiques and negative opinions. But why do some express it with such vitriol? I’m okay with cynicism…but the whole dump-on-everything attitude is something else entirely.
Can’t WAIT to get my hands on, that is.
I was a bit poo poo on the conferences except Ubisoft and EA. I love their titles. I think I would have enjoyed this E3 more if I was there. I enjoyed the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim demo so much I did a write up on it. Ms.MMOGC is infatuated with SWTOR and she had plenty to say. The positives are out there but I think most of the negatives are from the Big Three. Except for the PS Vita I was the same old thing from Sony and Microsoft. The Nintendo U was something unexpecting but only being to use one Wii-pad on the system as it stands now and the demo reels consisting of other console graphics I’m a bit withdrawn from what they have to offer. Being a couch exhibitor I enjoyed last year’s E3 from home than this one.