Last week I went to E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) for the first time. A lot of people in the gaming world associate E3 with the developers’ press conferences and that’s what sticks it people’s minds: trailers and gameplay for new games, release dates being announced, etc. The press conferences happen before the actual expo, though – this year there were press conferences on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (along with Nintendo’s on Tuesday morning) before the expo itself opened to press Tuesday morning and then to the public who had bought tickets Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday through Thursday both media and enthusiasts were able to wander the halls of the LA Convention Center and play all the hottest upcoming video games.

This hasn’t always been the case, though. In fact, up until last year, E3 was a media-only event. 2017 was the first time that people who weren’t a part of gaming press or associated with the industry were allowed to attend the expo. There’s was an experiment in 2016 called “E3 Live” which was a separate event – the public could attend (for free) a separate event where games were available to play, but the main E3 was still closed off from them.

As a person who has followed the E3 press conferences for many years and has also attended some other different conventions related to gaming (including MAGFest, RTX Austin, and PAX West) I felt like it would be fun to actually attend E3 this year and write about it. After all, who knows whether they will keep E3 open to the public in the future. So for this first article, I will be discussing the E3 event itself and how it felt to be on the floor. I will post a second part later this week that talks about the games specifically that I played along with other trailers I’m excited for.

Continue reading “E3 Breakdown Part 1: The Expo” →