E3 2012: Game news killed the video game star?

I always look forward to E3 like some of friends look forward to the NFL draft. I love the announcements, the energy, the big three trying to outdo one another, and, of course, hours and hours of new videos of the games we are all anticipating. But this year was different. A friend of mine asked me how I felt about E3 this year, and, like more or less anyone else who reads this post, I answered with a full, resounding..."meh." It was "ok," and there were a couple of surprises (more on that later). Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel like something was missing, and I'm not the only one. I found myself a bit fatigued, and (dare I say it) a little bored. And it's about damn time.

To be fair, we gamers are a ravenous lot. We consume games and gaming news at such an alarming rate that new gaming websites are popping up all over the place, competing for our views and trying to be the first with the newest, boldest stories. You need only look at the comments section anywhere on IGN, Game Informer, Gametrailers, or any numerous other sites to find evidence of our voracious appetite--these sections do not stay blank for long. We live in the information age, an era that prizes information on a global scale more than any other time in world history. Mass media saturation exists because we love it, we crave it. It's an addiction, and we're all hooked (my self included--I'm writing a blog for God's sake).

So what went wrong with the flow of information at E3 this year? Absolutely nothing. E3 did what it needed to. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all came out and made announcements about upcoming games, and the big N even showed off a good bit of Wii U. There were mistakes, to be sure. Microsoft's ending with Modern Warfare Black Ops 2 and it's leaning on the Kinect were admittedly lame choices. Sony's pushing the Vita was understandable, if underwhelming, but the augmented reality story book was 20 minutes of "what the hell is this." And Nintendo's lack of solid first-party software and it's reliance on the Wii U's ability to sell new versions of games that a lot of people already own make this new system a hard sell.

Yet for almost every lackluster announcement there was something to look forward to. Tomb Raider, Borderlands 2, Last of Us, God of War: Ascension, Far Cry 3, Dishonored, Luigi's Mansion 2, New Super Mario Bros., Hitman: Absolution, Amazing Spider Man, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 all look great, and they hold significant promise for the upcoming season and next year. We truly have a lot to look forward to.

But we already knew that. As per usual, in the weeks before E3, new announcements were being made about these games, and we, the avid readers we are, devoured that information as it was fed to us by sites like IGN, Gamespot, GameTrailers, and Kotaku. So, when the games were "revealed" on stage or in live demos, we watched, but we didn't salivate--at least not collectively. It's hard to get crazy amped about games that we heard about a week, a month, hell, a year prior to its presentation. We saw what was coming up, but like a crew of Oliver Twists, we always ask for more porridge...though we never seem to get the switch instead of the bowl...

Please. sir, can I have some more?

This is not our fault, and this is certainly not the fault of the online gaming news networks. IGN editors do there jobs and they do them well because we ask them, we demand them to. In fact, "fault" is perhaps a poor word choice for my part. I think what we saw manifest at E3 this year was the logical result of high expectation confronting the reality in the information age: with the saturation of news comes the consequence of no longer being surprised. We are, near literally, products of our time. Sure, we may get something awesome like Watch Dogs that we weren't expecting, but it's the exception that proves the proverbial rule. There's nothing "wrong" or "faulty" about this information model. It's just the way things are. Developers and publishers could keep tighter lids on their projects, but then what would happen to sites and writers who make their livings by reporting such news? It's a fragile information ecosystem, and it's constantly in flux. We all have our parts to play here.

Gamers are a forward-looking group, always awaiting our next meal. Appropriately, I can't help but wonder if next year's conference will offer the same outcome. We know there will be a new generation of consoles already, so that announcement will not be a surprise. The specifics of these machines and their software, however, will offer a bit more chance for excitement and anticipation. It's likely, however, that we'll know about them before the conference, as well as a few games to be on display, and it's equally likely that we'll see a few surprises as well. But, the smart money says that we'll see more of what we know than what we don't. Either way, we'll lap it up as quickly as it's delivered to us. After all, we're still very, very hungry.

Cheers,

--David