Since I heard “the news” about E3 I’ve been intending to write about it.  The trouble is, I’m not sure what to write.  There are so many people who heard about it and said, “Yeah, ok,” that I feel as if I’m old-fashioned for wanting it to stay.  Like an old woman chasing whippersnappers off the lawn and muttering about the good old days.  In my day, we had a huge show for videogames! It was all light and sound and thousands of people packed together to watch beautiful women strut dressed as fantasy characters! Yeah. Those were the days.  Not like those ho-hum press conferences nowadays.

I’ve attended E3 four years in a row: twice as a Frag Doll and twice as an overjoyed gamer sneaking in on a friend’s laurels.  I admit the years working it aren’t as fun as the years being overwhelmed by it.  That doesn’t mean they weren’t fun at all.  Even when I was going crazy and my feet hurt and I was so exhausted I wanted to cry, E3 was a once-per-year no-holds-barred celebration of everything gaming.

Now it’s more or less canceled.  Sure, they say it’s not “gone” but what it’s going to become is not E3, even if it has the same name.  Is it wrong to be a little sad about that?

It may actually mean good things.  We’ll have gaming events all year, and they’ll be more targeted so smaller developers stand a better chance of getting attention.  I know all this, and it’s lined out as a “good thing” in terms of logic.  It’s still a kick to my nostalgic gut.

Next year I won’t walk on the carpeted aisle that separates the space-age Nokia world from the flashing blue Ubisoft world, pretending it’s no big deal that I’m there, pumping through the veins that make the industry run with thousands of other people pretending it’s no big deal.  I won’t sit in a comatose state at the Frag Doll community dinner on Friday night, trying not to snap at people just because my feet hurt and I’m irritable.  No guessing which company is in which hotel this time and feeling a little leap that Shigeru Miyamoto might be sleeping in the same building!

Maybe I’ll travel more… have a chance to see more games and meet more developers in a setting where we can actually hear one another.  Maybe I’ll see more of what actually goes on and less of the circus of lights.  I’ll accept it.  Stomping my feet and throwing a fit won’t exactly make the ESA change their minds.  At some point I’ll be happy about it.  Not now, though.  It feels too much like the end of an era.