I’m on the thirteenth floor of an apartment building in Los Angeles. Below me are bars, nightclubs, coffee shops, and a multitude of people from various points of the socioeconomic spectrum. Some of them own dogs. I like dogs. I also kind of like Los Angeles, even when we have to call 911 after stepping over the catatonic husk of an unresponsive sidewalk sleeper.
Los Angeles gets knocked for its perceived superficiality. What massive gathering of individuals isn’t superficial to a signifianct extent, though? LA’s just self-aware. In turn it makes us more self-aware, like when I put on my sunglasses not to avoid wrinkles but to look distant, aloof and dismissive while walking among the sweating masses. LA doesn’t just introduce us to our inner egotist; it lays bare how we would act if there was nobody to judge or shame us.
I’m in LA for E3. E3 is a trade show for videogames. It’s like Coachella for videogame ads. Over the next four days almost everything I experience will be a commercial in one way or another. E3 isn’t about art or trumped-up notions of community. It’s about advertising. It’s about selling the press and retailers and the public on upcoming products that will hopefully eat up both column inches and shelf space. It’s pure hype and artifice, but so transparently so that nobody of a rational mindset should ever feel the need to complain about it.
E3 is everything you fast forward through on your DVR distilled into a week of face-to-face meetings and hands-on (and off) game previews. And I’m here for the whole week, discussing and analyzing every major announcement exclusively for Paste. E3 is the G8, the World Series, and the Bilderbergers of videogames in a single oppressive week of variably fascinating news blurts. If that sounds like fun then please blurt along with us all week.
Later today we’ll be writing about the Microsoft and Sony press conferences. Tomorrow is Nintendo’s press event. Throughout the week we’ll look at what various other videogame designers and publishers will be releasing throughout 2012 and into 2013. Obviously Paste isn’t the only outlet covering this massive monument to conspicuous consumption, but we’re probably the best, or at least the most bemused, so please stick with us. We’ll definitely stick with you.