E for All: First Impressions

by

Pig

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, used to be an unbelievable extravaganza of all things related to gaming. It was a beautiful, over the top celebration of gaming as both art and entertainment. It was the biggest computer show in the world, it filled every corner of the Los Angeles Convention Center, game companies scratched and fought to get prominent floor space at the show, and every gamer on earth wanted to be there.

Despite this, the ESA, the organization that put together the E3 convention every year, had recently become openly disdainful of their own creation. The reasons for this are unclear, but you could hear it in interviews given by ESA execs, you could feel it in the statements (both formal and informal) that they made, and their overall dislike for their own show was palpable. It was too big, too over the top for their tastes. After the 2006 convention, they decided to radically change E3, splitting it into two separate conventions: The E3 Business and Media Summit (E3BM), and the E for All Expo (E4All). The E3 Business and Media Summit took place this past spring, and it was, quite frankly, an unqualified failure.

Today was the first day of the E for All Expo. Where the E3 Business and Entertainment Summit had been deliberately designed to be a subdued event, a quiet venue friendly to press people and the gaming developers they sought to interview, E for All is meant to be the fun, exciting, and extravagant side of things. The E4All is supposed to be a big event, a media and publicity extravaganza, and we wanted to be a part of it. As a result, your favorite Wandering Goblin staffers got off our lazy butts, raced down to the L.A. Convention Center, and hustled our otherwise lazy asses into the event, ready to fight the crowds and battle the throngs of geeks to get stories our readers would want to read.

Well, we were in for a bit of a surprise.

We pulled up just as the convention was open to the public, at 3:00 PM. We drove right past the convention center: there was no line of anxious gamers waiting to get in. The crowded sidewalks, the vendors, the various wierdos hawking beverages and gaming paraphrenalia and passing out flyers were entirely absent. Not only this, but we got parking right in the parking structure, and found an actual spot to park inside of 1 minute. We parked right near the convention entrance, too. It was all suspiciously convenient.

We entered the convention center lobby and had to fight a crowd of exactly no one to grab our convention passes. From what we could see, this wasn’t a unique experience. The press, the paying public, the VIPs, the various vendors and hangers-on, nobody had to wait in a line. That’s because their weren’t any lines. Now, mind you, this is the first day of the show, and it was only Thursday. If this weren’t an E3 event, I might have thought this was pretty normal. But this is, supposedly, The Big Show, and last year it was a battle royale just to get our press passes. Honestly, I strongly suspect were were among the very few press people even there.

We’re not sure what this lone security guard is protecting. We just sure she doesn’t have to work very hard to keep it safe from the, uh, crowd.

We hustled up to the closest exhibition hall, which is South Hall. Last year it was jammed with gaming displays galore; heck, tt was a scrum just to get inside. This year wasn’t all that different; at first glance, the hall appeared full of exciting games, booths, and displays. And it was fairly crowded, which seemed like a good sign. We had begun to fear that the con was going to be, you know, sparse. When we entered South Hall, we were glad to see the throng of excited geeks and fanbois.

A decent crowd gathers around the EA booth.

We decided to reconoiter the area. You know, do a little scouting run, see who was present, and maybe arrange for a couple of quick developer interviews. We figured we’d take a look at South Hall, then head on over to West, then check out the various displays in the courtyard and the off-the-main-drag venues, then maybe even hit lowly little Kentia Hall and…that’s when Elvyra showed me the convention map. South Hall was all there was. E for All doesn’t exactly fill the entire Convention Center. It fills South Hall.

This is the whole show, folks.

Making the best of things, we hoofed our way around South Hall, and quickly found a handful of other surprises. The crowd we saw earlier existed in only that one spot, just inside the entrance to South Hall. The rest of the hall was pretty sparsely populated. It’s not like there’s no one in there; it’s just that it’s not a dense, or even a particularly large crowd. Some booths had small gatherings around them, while others had attracted only 3 or 4 patrons. You could walk up to pretty much any game you wanted and start playing. There was no line or crowd to interfere. I dunno, maybe from a gamer’s perspective this is a good thing….

We discovered that a lot of the floor space was taken up by food vendors. Many of the companies that were present weren’t ones we expected. For example, the energy drink Five Hour Energy had a booth set up in a nice, centrally located spot. We also discovered that a large area of South Hall had been partitioned off, as it was unused by anyone. It seemed that our initial impression that South Hall was filled by E for All displays was, sadly, mistaken.

This is a photo from behind the partition that sectioned off a large area in South Hall. At E3 last year, this was prime real estate. This year, it’s empty.

If you’re an old hand at E3 conventions, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that today’s E4All has something of a ?Kentia Hall? kind of feel to it. Kentia Hall was the smallest of the old E3 venues, and was filled with smaller name gaming companies. If a company made a joystick you’d never heard of before, that company had a booth in Kentia Hall. The difference this year is that E for All is, at least according to my memory, significantly smaller than even Kentia Hall was last year.

The XFX Challenge display is a good one. This crowd of four people doesn’t exactly reflect that, however.

Being an MMO news and satire site, the Wandering Goblin staffers were naturally interested in the MMO games present at the show. We knew that Warhammer was there, as we have an interview with them set up for tomorrow. Aside from Warhammer, the only MMO we saw at the show was Sword of the New World: Granada Espana.

Sword of the New World is one of the few MMOs represented at this year’s E for All. And this hottie is one of the few booth babes represented at this year’s convention, too.

On that note, we were seriously confused by some of the literature were were given by the E for All people. The official exhibitor guide for the convention showed several picures of characters from Hellgate: London. Try as we might, we couldn’t find any evidence of this upcoming action MMO (one that launches in less than two weeks) even being present at E for All. By the same token, Tabula Rasa is also about to launch (November 2nd), and we couldn’t see that they had come to the show, either.

Most gamers don’t care if Hellgate. Tabula Rasa. Blizzard, or Turbine has a booth at E for All. What matters to most gamers is that MonicaCashProductions is there, rockin’ the huge crowd.

There is an upside to all of this. There are a number of excellent game companies that have a strong presence at E for All. EA, for example, has a big booth, as does Nintendo. There are a significant number of lesser-known game-related companies present as well; this may serve as an opportunity for them to become more widely known, as more prominent companies are absent from E for All.

When a crowd this size gathers, being trampled by overzealous geeks is always a danger.

In a nutshell, E for All isn’t a huge gaming convention. It’s decently sized — I wouldn’t call it a small show — but it’s not as big as, say, BlizzCon or Pax. ComicCon, for example, is many times larger than E for All.

Even if E for All isn’t as popular as in years past, this cute couple seemed to have a good time.

We are unsure what to make of E for All at this point. It may turn out to be a popular show, the turnout may improve, and the gaming companies that are present may prove to be ones gamers enjoy. At this point, however, the show is looking pretty thin, and it remains to be seen if E for All will thrive or wither.

Tune in all weekend, as your Wandering Goblin staffers will bring you all the gritty details from the show floor.

Copyright 2007 by WanderingGoblin.com. All rights, even to this sparse article on a sparse gaming con, are reserved.