The Real Game Killer

Forget Jack Thompson. Forget Hillary Clinton. Forget your parents. There is a real game killer out there on the road, and its name is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, a.k.a. E3.

This ninja-like killer attacks not only the weary video game journalists and bloggers, which are the main target of this expo, but also the hardcore gamers that innocently follow its events thinking they will get a taste of the future of gaming. What they get instead is an overload of "infotainment" speeches and demos that re-hash what has been said before in multiple press releases, with some dubious claims thrown in meant only to tease the weary audience.

And the worst part is, most gamers will not feel the effects of this stealthy killer until a week or two after the expo is over. All of a sudden, perfectly good games will end up traded unfinished, consoles with half their potential untapped will be thrown into a dark closet, and speculation about any slip of the tongue from industry execs will dominate gaming blogs all over the world, none being the wiser as to what caused the personality shift.

But this year, dames and gentlemen, E3 delivered its deadliest blow yet by giving us its announcements in a form previously reserved only for political campaign speeches. And the mud-slinging still prevails today, with no end in sight.

Will the gaming industry survive E3? I, for one, like every year, avoided going was unable to secure tickets to E3, but I wasn't spared: I foolishly followed its events like Indy followed the Lost Ark, and got trampled by excessive information, too...