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Some people here and there are saying that E3 is lame this year, on account of there being no girls dressed up like masturbatory chain mail wenches. And, of course, the event is Industry Only for the first time which means no wretched, nerdy bloggers spewing praises onto the internet. I am wondering if this is where the bubble breaks, where the uprising of the video game medium checks itself and realizes that the whole movement has been reliant on flashy graphics designed to appeal to kids with severe ADD. Without the hype, will we still buy the exact same repackaged games again? A shooter is a shooter is a shooter.

This is rhetorical, of course. The E3 hype persists, just in a more heavily filtered format. News still trickles through the "big" sites, the "best" sites and we are treated to the sterling opines of their "official" mouthpieces. News also comes through Xbox Live. Kyle (and me, to a culpable extent) has been furiously downloading the game trailers as they're released into the digital wild. Halo 3, Mass Effect and Lost Odyssey look predictably sharp and sexified. The Blue Dragon people were kind enough to provide an expansive demo, which I played because Kyle thinks RPGs are garbage and I think they are Professor Jesus. But amidst all this hullabaloo, it's exciting to think that video games are now well-entrenched in the distinguished practice of marketing themselves ceaselessly.

Look at movies: you go to the theater, you check out a ton of posters and weirdo installation art pieces for other movies. Then you get a seven dollar bucket of popcorn. Then you read an awful free glossy magazine about movies. THEN you see trivia about other movies on the screen, followed by trailers for other movies (which some people get more excited about than the actual feature film they paid to see. Think about the crap that gets released a month before a Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, and you'll see what I mean). The movie industry is an insular circle jerk: the business of cinema loops back in on itself very effectively. Everything's designed to keep you thinking about movies in general. If you're thinking about movies, you're not thinking about TV or hate-fucking or any number of other uses of your valuable time and dollars.

Okay, so video games are well on their way to this Stygian point and I said that it's exciting. Really? Well yeah, because if media industries are going to eat our brains then I'd like to see my medium of choice up there competing with the big boys. Growing up, if you will. If you haven't noticed, gamers are very self-conscious about their hobby - it goes back to the days where we had to hide the basement with the Colecovision so our parents wouldn't yell at us for being such losers.

Posted by Chris at 07:53 PM >> Commentations (5)