Gamescom 2015: EA, Microsoft, and the hell of conference keynotes

During the EA Gamescom 2015 keynote there was a moment when it became clear that no human brain – better, no humanity – had any input into its creation. Said moment came after a showing of The Sims 4, wherein VP and GM of the Sims studio Rachel Franklin took to the stage to expound the merits of the control players have over the game. She then went on to say she wanted her own moment of control, right there and then, like fucking ZOD, and promptly called in a troupe of performers to dance on stage. She took selfies with these performers, presumably as evidence for the Hague. Turn the sound off and look at the shocked and appalled journos in attendance, the dancers precisely filing in and out, and it seemed less a conference about games and more a techno-futuristic remake of The Godfather Part II's Havana coup scene.

Welcome to the world of video game press conferences.

Sony wisely decided not to have a keynote this year, for reasons that I like to believe are rooted in good taste but mainly are about appearing at another show. Still, its absence is welcome, because these things are bad. Colossally so. They are no different to Jordan Belfort getting on stage to sell some course on being a massive fraud. They are selling you the pen. At least you know what you're getting with a pen.

Microsoft kicked things off yesterday, with a lineup of shooting and driving games which are different because you can control time or drive through puddles or have breasts while you do these things. Not that there's anything wrong with showing off big games. But the manner in which they do so is always so cringeworthy as to make you want to put your foot through every device you own, lest the keynote comes back, Jason-style, to wreak more havoc.

Things started badly, when Phil Spencer took to the stage in his dad's suit jacket (seriously – the cuffs were so long they may as well have been hems) to introduce the show and tell us about the selection of iconic Microsoft characters – and their games – we were about to see. I won't even bother explaining it: this sums it up perfectly.

ALL YOUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS - WHO - THE GUY FROM GEARS - HALO - LARA CROFT - A CAR pic.twitter.com/9kcFIZr77w

— [aris laughing] (@penismanlyguy69) August 4, 2015

Following that was a cavalcade of nonsense that seemed unstoppable. No-one could speak, for one – almost every single person fudged their lines badly, tripping over sentences, at one point just stopping to gather their thoughts. Was there a problem with the autocue? Maybe, but still. Loving technology is what got us to this damned predicament in the first place.

When people weren't forgetting their words, or laughing mid-sentence, or calling one of their games 'Killer Instink', or looking really fucking uncomfortable, there was a whole avalanche of bad. Some 'shoutcasters' got on stage to attempt to pump some life into a showing of Halo 5: instead I just dreamed of pumping them full of hollow point ammunition. One of them was introduced as Richard 'Simms' Simms – let that settle for a moment – and was so comically northern that in a past life the only way he'd get on TV would be to either a small role on Bottom or appear as a minor character in Alien3.

But no, there he is, shouting, gibbering, along with his mate, an android so bland when I try to remember him I get a mental page not found. Forza's Dan Greenawalt came out to demo a new version of the sim: a combination of the fact he looked like he hadn't slept for a year alongside his obsession with numbers made him seem less game producer and more Bletchley Park researcher.

EA's offering was even worse – not for the games that it showed or didn't show (Mass Effect), but by how vapid it all was, how devoid of anything approaching a genuine emotion it felt. Sigurlína Ingvarsdóttir, senior producer on Star Wars Battlefront, got on stage and told us all what an honour it was to work on the title, conveying this information with a tone and delivery which felt like she was telling the White House situation room she was being treated fairly and no harm had yet come to her from her Lucas-affiliated captors.

There were yet more problems with teleprompters/speaking/nerves. David Rutter from EA Sports came out to tell us about FIFA 16, and while he mustered enthusiasm he sadly deployed it in the saying of the word 'banter' roughly sixteen-thousand times. At one point he even said – and I'm not even fucking joking here – "Rich football narrative". Still, at least that wasn't as bad as when someone in the crowd – a journalist? – won tickets to Spanish football's El Clasico, which will surely go down well with the famously non-rabid corners of the internet.

Other nonsense occurred: lots of games were billed as pre-alpha, which makes me wonder if anyone actually knows what pre-alpha actually means anymore. The Garden Warfare guys unveiled Grass Effect – ho ho ho – piling puns on top of puns until it felt like you were listening to an audiobook of The Sun.

There were good moments: Unravelled looks gorgeous, and although the chap they wheeled out – nervous, clutching a little Yarnie toy, eyes darting like a Dota player at the Adderall counter – to introduce it still looks like he may burst into tears at any moment, followed by an intercom message for his mum to come get him, his passion was a far cry from the droning monotony of the slick, empty others that shared that stage.

Simply, these conferences are a no-win situation. No Mass Effect? Fail. New Mirror's Edge? Too much combat. Unravelled? Listen to yourself man, you're hanging with nerds. That they're then presented essentially as glorified shareholder meetings, big on buzz and light on substance, doesn't help. That they're then presented by some of the most boring people on earth, each of which seems desperate to appeal to an audience that changes every five minutes, just doesn't work. At one stage in proceedings, Liverpool's all-time greatest own-goal scorer Jamie Carragher asked Gary Neville "What's the point?".

What indeed, Jamie.