Fixing EA’s E3 Conferences
Well, looks like it’s that time again.
E3 is almost here, and my annual E3
Month is returning with it! The schedule won’t be changing from last year, but
just for clarity’s sake here's the schedule:
Today: E3 Editorial
June 4: E3 Predictions
June 12 or 13: Conference roundup and
thoughts
June 18: Best/Worst Trailers
Last year I kicked off E3 Month with an editorial about all
the different ways Ubisoft could fix their conferences and start doing shows as
hotly anticipated as Sony’s or Nintendo’s. And, much to my surprise, their 2017
conference followed nearly every single suggestion I made. Their show last year
ended up being one of the best, even better than Sony’s.
So I figured that if I have these magic powers that I can use
to fix crappy conferences, I might as well use them to help out the current
crown prince of bad E3.
No, not Bethesda. Maybe I’ll do them next year.
It’s time for EA’s E3 day of reckoning,
as we go over what to fix and change to make their conferences as anticipated
as (I can’t believe I’m saying this…) Ubisoft’s. The rules are the same as last
time: I can’t change the games being announced, just the way they’re being
presented. If I was changing the games we’d be seeing nothing but Mirror’s Edge sequels and single-player Star Wars games.
If you were to ask any gamer that
watches all the conferences at E3, I think you’d find a common ground as to
what EA’s biggest problem is: it feels like your dad walked in the room and
switched on ESPN half the time.
While EA Sports kinda has to be at the
show for investor purposes (sorta like how Forza
for Microsoft and Just Dance for
Ubisoft get a spot every year), it boggles my mind why it has to dominate the
show every year. At least the other conferences that have to slip in
investor-pandering games annually do a good job at getting them out of the way
either quickly or early in the show.
With EA, you get nothing like that.
Last year had three separate showcases for Madden
2018, and no, they weren’t all one after another. Also sprinkled in are NBA and FIFA showcases that continue to slow the show down for those who
aren’t interested in sportsball, which, let’s be honest here, consists of most
of the Twitch audience.
Because of the rules I can’t excise
the sports from the conference entirely, but what I can do is ensure that
they’re all combined together into one mega-montage. All the EA Sports content
you could ever want, all scrambled together in one. This way the people
watching the show for Battlefield or
indie games don’t feel like they keep getting interrupted by a different sport
every 10 minutes. With a montage we get it all out of the way at once.
We also won’t be starting the show with EA Sports anymore, nor will we shove it to the end. The end of the show is usually reserved for
EA’s biggest holiday season title (typically Battlefield or something Star
Wars related), and we’ll be keeping it that way. But opening the show with Madden of all things like they did last
year is a huge mistake, as it sets a pretty lackluster tone for the conference
going forward.
EA conferences usually consist of four
components: the EA Sports stuff, the annual indie game, the big showstopper
game from DICE (which has already been confirmed for this year as Battlefield V), and one other
bonus game thrown in there somewhere, like Titanfall
2 in 2016 or the brief glimpse at Anthem
we got last year. Why don’t we open with that bonus game again, like they
did with Titanfall 2 back in 2016?
That gets the core gamers in the audience invested right away and gives them
something to talk about on social media when the conference inevitably turns to
the sports.
That’s really EA’s only big problem,
but it’s one big problem. It’s reached a point where some don’t even watch the
conference live because of how ridiculously overstuffed with EA Sports it has
become in recent years. After a truly awful 2017 where the company displayed
it’s true colours for all to see and Disney yanking the Star Wars license away from them becoming a very real possibility in the near future,
EA needs to earn some goodwill back. And, as we saw from Ubisoft, a great E3
isn’t a bad place to start.
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned,
because next Monday I’ll be going through all seven of the major companies
doing shows this year and talking about what I think we’re going to see this
year!
This year’s E3 Month is dedicated to John “TotalBiscuit” Bain
Thank you for making the gaming world
a better place
R.I.P
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