E3 is a special time, when all the world's games press (and about three million other professional chancers) head to a single building to battle it out for the one bar of wifi that is allocated per year.
Snark aside for a moment, there's no denying that E3 is exciting. Many (myself included, before I went and realised it was hell) dream of going, and if you live in Europe you'll be lucky to attend. But it's not all just new games, big interviews, and executives wearing T-shirts under boxy suits, like a human embodiment of the money/class maxim. There's other stuff, too, that's just as important. Here's the inside line on the most high-profile games show in the world.
The plane out there
Unless you live in Los Angeles – and if you do, you have my sympathies – you'll probably have to fly out there. In doing so it's highly likely you'll run into a selection of games journalists, many of them so deplorable, in possession of so many terrible opinions, that you'll wish you had a parachute.
Only joking. Generally, members of the games press are good people, and in the boring confines of economy class are actually quite pleasant to talk to. There's usually an atmosphere of excitement and dread in the air, as people compare schedules, drink free beers, and ask each other which parties they've been invited to, before laughing nervously and wondering if the guy in seat 32A who just looked over is a member of GooberGate. Mostly, though, as with any transatlantic trip, you watch movies and wonder just how much you can recline your seat. (Answer: not enough.)
'Conference Monday'
Monday is conference day, where Phil Spencer, Andrew House, and other executives take to various stages to show off their wares, make promises, and generally embarrass themselves. Microsoft hosts its at the Galen Centre, housed in an area which like most of LA is like Croydon with slightly less gun crime. A long line stretches around the building pre-show, as everyone realises they've forgotten their suntan lotion and are, frankly, fucked. Inside, it's a vertiginous hall, packed to the literal rafters with press, pundits, and paid for whoop machines pretending to be human. Michael Pachter once accidentally(?) touched my hand in one of these, and now I too have the power of talking loads of shite.
Sony's conference follows – with quick stops at EA (fancy) and Ubisoft (no idea) in between – and takes place in the LA Memorial Sports Arena, which is next to the LA Memorial Sports Coliseum, where rich Los Angelenos hunt homeless people for sport. Said stadium, with its palm trees, plaques, and statues, is a historic landmark in the US, having held the Olympics and being home to a college American football team. It's a fitting tribute to the twin goals of definitely-not-nuh-uh cheating at athletics and turning teenagers' brains into mush for our entertainment.
Anyway, the Sony conference is popular with journos and other known freeloaders, as the car park outside the venue is famously populated with food and beer trucks, selling everything from burgers to curry, to go along with the impending sense of doom that only being in an LA car park can bring. As for the conference itself, it doesn't change much year on year – someone will fuck it all up attempting to show off their new game, someone will blank out and forget their words, terrified of the thousands of assholes watching them behind identikit MacBooks, and it goes on for about four hours too long. This year there'll be no Jack Tretton either, which is a loss as he spoke well and always looked like a comedy gangster from the 1930s. A true shame.
The show
Tuesday is when the show proper begins, and getting into the main floors is like the last chopper out of Saigon. Inside the LACC is a series of paths, stairs, and escalators designed seemingly by the stupidest bastard on earth. An example: the media room is literally the furthest place in the building from the South Hall, where you'll be spending most of your time. It's a ten-minute hike between them at a leisurely pace, and trust me, if there's one thing game journos know it's leisurely pace.
When on the show floor itself – which requires more ID to get in to than the country which houses it – it's like Disney World, without the underground labyrinth and secret police force. Gigantic booths, idiots walking around in costume, the faint sense that no-one has a fucking clue: it's glorious. A lot of appointments take place at these booths (there are meeting rooms off the show floor, but they don't scream 'LOOK AT MY MONEY'), which leads to tense stand-offs as tired, emotional, hungover PR people attempt to shepherd journos past the cue of normies. Suffice to say, this does not always go down well, even when you're clearly better than these people and clutching a lanyard that says 'See Yah'. Assholes.
Which leads us to...
Behind closed doors stuff
This is where the real meat of journo-E3 takes place. A lot of the time you'll be sat in small, dingy rooms sat opposite men and women so tired and stressed it always looks like their next answer is going to be 'I already told you – sob – I don't know where the nuclear weapons are'. Occasionally, somebody will say something interesting, but on the whole most interviewees are media-trained machines.
No, the good stuff comes in the form of hands-on, where you do what you're there to do: play games. It's not the best environment, what with the noise and the people behind you tutting and the games journalists. But there's always a short burst of excitement when you know you're about to play something you've been waiting ages for, no matter if some prick from Gamespot is whining about being 'first in line'.
Toilets
As you may have noticed, video games are not the most diverse of industries. Walking the show floor at E3 is akin to ambling through a convention dedicated to Jonah Hill's character in Superbad, but with worse clothes. This means that the men's toilets – of which there are many, but not seemingly enough – are often filled with queues of people, each filled with more coke and pizza than most student dorms, eager to relieve themselves. The net result is a rough equivalent to the portal to hell from Doom. Why do you think DoomGuy was so poorly armed? He'd only gone for a piss, after all.
Anyway, the toilets are an atrocity, the sort of thing Michael Buerk used to lead the news with, compounded by the fact that – as noted by Charlie Brooker – most Americans aren't bothered about hiding what they're up to. During E3, for your sins you will need to use the toilet (sorry, bathroom), and once it is done you'd never want to do it again.
Parties
Oh, there are loads of these, most of them held by publishers. I know, the corruption. Nothing screams collusion more than attending a party being DJ'd by a 17-year-old billionaire you've only heard of in a Vice tweet, and filled with games journalists and PR flunkies who don't like you very much because you gave their game the frankly appalling score of 8/10. The drinks are free, though, and these occasions are also often good for watching people fall down stairs while mad on booze.
And that, essentially, is all there is to E3. Apart from the jet lag. Or the terrible, overpriced food. Or LAX, which has the gall to hang a big Rolex clock on the wall of a building which, for the most part, looks like it was recently shipped in from Guantanamo. Despite all this, it's still all worthwhile. See you there.
