Every year E3 brings a slew of new game announcements, and fresh news on highly anticipated titles. The event also gets a lot of attention from a particular subset of gamers: the fanboys. In this point-counterpoint article D.D. Nunavut and roygbiv argue for and against the merits of the fanboy and their part in the E3 Experience. First, we'll hear from D.D. and her rather anti-fanboy stance, followed by roygbiv, who sees a silver lining in having the fanboys around.

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Point-Counterpoint:

Are Fanboys a Bane or Blessing for E3

E3: Tuning Out the Stupidity

by D.D. Nunavut

With each year’s E3 comes plenty of expectations as games are announced left, right, and center, whether it’s a sequel to a popular franchise, or a new IP from an established studio, and we’re bombarded with hands-on impressions from hotly anticipated titles. Unfortunately, one of the other things that comes along with E3 is stupidity in all sorts of aggravating forms. The worst part is that it comes from all sides, whether it’s some random poster on an internet forum, or more official places like a press release, or something a high-level person at game publisher XYZ says. Even members of the media contribute to the problem (some of the podcasts to come out of E3 this year have been terrible for their unabashed bias).

More and more, I find myself focusing on finding developer interviews, screenshots, and video footage of upcoming games, and trying to ignore just about everything else. It’s so much better to just look at the footage, and piece together an opinion from that than sift through all of the other stuff that comes out of this event.

Obviously the games industry is still a business, and needs PR to help get the word out on new games, but some of the claims that are made each year just makes me think, “Oh, come on!” and not in the, “Wow, I didn’t know that!” kind of way, but more of a, “Do you guys not think you’re insulting our intelligence, or are you just a bunch of assholes?” kind of way. The worst offenders here are easily the three console manufacturers.

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Every E3, these guys have their big press events to yammer on about how “great” they’ve been doing since the last E3, pumping out statistics that seem to show that they are somehow the king of the hill in a current generation, and if it’s such common knowledge that this isn’t the case, and it would be utterly ridiculous to

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argue otherwise, they seem to find a way to point to some obscure stat that they excel at. It may not be important now, but in the future it’ll be “crucial to the industry.”

I’m not going to sift through every E3 of the last decade to pluck out some choice comments. More than likely you can think of a few yourself from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony with very little difficulty. What really makes the saber rattling so sad is how many people eat this stuff up. Go to any major video game message board and you’ll see them awash with how one company or another won E3. If a particular company had a particularly good showing at E3, that’s great. It means we have a bunch of potentially fabulous games in the work that not only could prove enjoyable to gamers, but act kick the competition in the shins to make better titles as well. However, a large number of folks lovingly referred to as fanboys reduce the whole thing to a battle of Us vs. Them, playing up their favorite developers, and putting down everyone else that they perceive as a threat. Everyone has their favorites in life, but they should at least have the guts to admit when someone else has done a good job, or be working on a game that has potential.

While the purpose of E3 is to get the word out about various games, there’s a taint to any ambitious claims (“Our game will max out what this system can do!”…upon release… “That quote was taken out of context”), and the fanboys take the bait and twist the claims into something even worse. What annoys me about this swell of stupidity every year is that it is so much more prevalent in this industry than in others. If I look at music, film, television, literature, and so forth, yes there are die hard fans, and dominant publishers, but they don’t take their claims and arguments seldom reach the levels of idiocy that one comes across with alarming regularity in the realm of video games. Their major festivals are a celebration of their chosen medium, and not a pissing match between the publishers and fans. I just wish E3, the event that has been the epicenter of gaming in the west for over a decade, could keep this in mind.

June 8, 2009

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