After a long Monday of waiting for a mission, getting drunk and staring at the ceiling fan, our orders finally came through: We were to assemble at 7am in the hotel lobby, load up and head out to the convention center. Those of us who are with the Press Corps planned to attend the 8am “Press Breakfast.” The rest headed to Mission Control to guard the coffee and set up the wireless.
Surprisingly, all went as planned, and by 7:45 we were at the convention center. As we stood in line outside of the West Hall Theatre – all hands present, accounted for, showered, shaved, dressed and smelling sweetly – two things became clear: 1) We were most definitely on our game; and 2) E3 was not.
The “Press Breakfast” (for which we had RSVP’ed) was suddenly full and we could not get in. We were then asked to go to the “other room” – the kiddie briefing room, apparently – where there was sadly no food. Not good news for the half-dozen game journalists who had skipped the free waffles at the hotel. We were therefore sadly under-caffeinated during ESA President Doug Lowenstein’s brief, yet poignant opening remarks. Hopefully we didn’t miss anything.
The Basics
Doug repeatedly cited a report commissioned by the ESA which hinted that video games may be playing a larger role in the world economy than has been previously recognized. His remarks, while obviously targeting the larger media audience, and in spite of the obvious bias, did have some merit.
I’ll be writing more on this in the days to come, but for now I think it would be sufficient to say that the ESA is hoping to generate a wider acceptance (and perhaps appreciation) of video gaming as a whole by targeting the penetration of the industry’s technological innovations into other markets.
Look for more news about “how gaming has changed the world” in the coming weeks. Hopefully Al Gore won’t claim to have invented the Dual Shock controller.
