The Holy day of E3

Since this is a blog about Videogame culture, it would be a bad thing to not talk about the holiday of the Electronics Entertainment Expo. We don’t normally call it a holiday, because the word expo and business tend to be the major push. However, if you look at it from the lense of cultural experience, it transcends the business aspects being shown.

This is the chance for the great speakers and shaman of the culture to speak and tell us where videogames are going. For the most part they spoke about VR, new consoles, and OWSH. What each group also did was attempt to show how they were going to approach these subjects, and why this was a good idea. It was a holy day that will make us antsy for the holy month of game releases in November. In the end though, Zelda won out.

The big presentations were by various companies, and in all honesty the majority could be described by VR OWSH. Virtual Reality and FPS are major gametypes today, and we got so much of it. How about 3 major VR platforms all vying for your attention, and wallets. Did I mention the cheapest VR experience will be about $800-$900? Well that is the Playstation way.

To get the best time with that VR you need to spend extra money on a computer or console. In fact, Sony and Microsoft have updates to their consoles just so they can properly play at the needed specs a VR mask asks for. Both were talked about lightly by the companies, but the major push was to the games that would play them. Sony showed off piloting an XWing with goggles on.

Microsoft did something a bit differently, and it should be talked about. They now allow cross play between Xbox One, and PC’s. In fact, if you bought it on XB1, you can play it on your PC. If you got a highscore, it will even show up on the PS4. This crossplay design allows Microsoft to push PC and have their system as a sort of first time gamers PC.

Oddly enough, this might mean a win for the big three companies. What you need to understand is that Microsoft got into consoles to combat Sony claiming the PS2 was a possible PC. The PC in the living room has been pushed by the companies for the last two generations. You want Blueray and Netflix? They both have it ready to go. You want videogames? They can do that.

In fact most of the 3rd party companies basically treat them like one console with different architecture. The games end up exactly alike, and the PC version will have slightly better specs. It gets weirder when some companies have made their games look poor on the PC just to match up things with the other two consoles. With XB1 as a PC, it means Microsoft can push PC, and not try to keep up with the consoles business. In interviews, Phil Spencer has said that upgrading a console will become a more common thing. Instead of having a single system with a specific set of specs, and then a new system at five years, they would upgrade the console often enough, and let the buying figure it out. Sort of a Smart Phone style console.

All of this is because the PS4 and XB1 could not easily play games at the new HD resolution of 4k or 3840 pixels × 2160 pixels. Most VR headware need 4k resolution to make 1080p from two angles. You may have heard about how powerful the consoles were before hand, but that was sort of a ruse. A similarly priced PC was actually more powerful than the two. This was known from the very beginning, and several articles pointed out to these mistakes. Sony and Microsoft probably did this on purpose because the generation before showed that all the extra specs didn’t work as well as they wanted.

Because of this, Sony and Microsoft are reconsidering how to go about their own release schedule. With the PC in the Livingroom thing not really going anywhere, and also being disrupted by Smartphones, Microsoft has every reason to leave and let Sony play out the market they want.

At the same time Nintendo has first party titles that everyone wants to play, so people will buy their console. This generation in fact, I bought a Wii U, and a laptop. The lappy needs to be upgraded soon, but I have not regretted the Wii U even once. I just bought Dark Souls, and know that my computer will run it just fine.

Either way, the PC, Sony, and Microsoft consoles are starting to emerge into one. The companies are each winning in a different way, and making money off of it. That’s an interesting set up, and I am kind of shocked to see how it is happening. Microsoft has even said they will support all the VR headware. This has brought up questions about the AR system they have presented earlier.

The 3rd party companies pretty much showed VR games, or FPS games that could be VR. If it wasn’t that, it was Open World Survival Horror, and some games combined the two.

The Open World Survival Horror genre seems to have come from the Skyrim and Minecraft games, and then some other smaller Survival Horror types. The basic description a world to explore at your own leisure, and weapons that can break down as monsters attack. There were swarms in some, and giant open fields in others. It felt like this was all Ubisoft had to offer. One OWSH after another, but with some different stylings. The games would lean on which one to emphasize more depending on the game. Some were more horror, and others only made you scared of heights. You could be an extreme sports enthusiast, a survivor in a virus laden New York City, several different soldiers out to track down terrorists, or a driver.

There would always be one or two games that made an exception. For Ubisoft it was the South Park game, which I laughed at pretty hard. Then there was whatever Kojima had at the Sony show. Quake was just a deathmatch shooter from Bethesda. Microsoft is trying to turn Killer Instinct into something like Super Smash Bros, IE a way to sell other games through a super popular one.

This leaves us with Nintendo. They did not have a presentation. Instead, they had an entire day play session with a single game. Usually that sounds like overkill, but it was Zelda, and it seems to be the master OWSH. Weapons break, arrows run out, you can snowboard on your shield, climb mountains, soar in the air, ride a horse, cook, hunt for food, take on random badguys just hanging out in the area, and find several dungeons. The demo area is a small part of the much larger map, but it was so big most testers didn’t even pass the same areas in their demonstrations. They would spend an hour just cooking, or an hour showing combat techniques by taking on random enemy encampments.

There was no mention of VR at all. They also did not mention the new console coming out next year. Other games were shown the next day, and a new Pokemon was one of them. It was mostly RPG’s and other games for the 3DS.

The last day of the show was the big event. The presentations and videos were shown off and put onto the internet the previous two days, but this was the day of voting. The common members of the tribe would go out, and play the games they were most excited for. It turned out to be Zelda. The line for Zelda was 8 hours long, and caused a stampede when the doors opened up at the show. Most of the other booths were ignored, or seen later on. The expensive VR games impressed, but the price tag seemed too much. The other OWSH games were not as well designed or presented as this one.

In fact, here try out an hour long video of it.

This helped predict the coming changes that would happen this year, and the next for how videogames would be treated. The common members showed their vote, and will likely show it with their wallets as well.

E3 is also a holiday for the common gamer. This is the chance to celebrate games with other games at a specific time of year. It’s true, other conventions have taken on more prestige and visitors. While E3 has shrunk, PAX has grown to enormous numbers. When we talk about E3 though, we speak of it as if it has some type of magic. This is the time of year when we all gather together to look at games.

The presentations take on the form of the great shaman and men of god proclaiming the will of the gods to the people. They are also the chiefs attempting to sway the common man to their ideas. Even being able to make a presentation is a great honor, as is having a booth. The show lets the respected members show their power and wisdom in trophies and trinkets -swag and games to play- but also in the presentation of their grand deeds -the fun stuff to look at in the booth.

This helps us prepare ourselves for the great flood of games in November. By that time we will have fully decided, and shown our vote with our own wallets. But it is also a way of showing our place in the society. Will you spend the night waiting for the midnight release, order it through amazon, or just download it? Will you post pictures of your great game, and declare your love of it? Will the game fulfill your gaming desires? All of this was started this last week.

So, what is your great wish from E3? How have the videogames touched you? As for myself, I sort of want to play Bloodstained, the VR Star Wars looks like fun, as does VR Star Trek, but yeah, Zelda has me won over completely.