I hear some of those plumbers can get pretty god-damn wild.

Mommar

E3's like a geriatric prostitution ring!

cookiesareafriend

Awww, does widdle ol' Rway Magwuire miss his widdle ol' booth babes?

Yeah, it sure is too bad you guys can't rely on flash and glitter to hype the public with false promises and doctored up footage (and teh boobies), now you actually have to provide real content. So I'm real sorry, all devs, that you have to actually start churning out decent products in order to put on good shows at E3. But it's what you should have been doing all along, asshats.

denki

I think the super close-ups are super high-larious.

Oh and @Mit: That was right on.

SnakesSolids

@Gantz: Your Trusted Friend in Science.:

No relation to Karen Carpenter I hope.

AlbenoEpiX

@Gantz: Yeah, but he's also been both a brooklynite and a generic Italian man, sometimes both. He changes roles all the time too. What we don't realize is that there is no real original Mario, just many, all of whom share in common a few similarities. They all wear certain colour clothing, gain abilities over time, and save princesses from large ugly beasts.

Wait a second...

Erwin

@Arsenicberyllium:

I haven't noticed a lot of it until this past week. Either way, it is getting annoying. Some things are funny once and then after that you are just milking it.

Muisee

@SolidOni: Oh, i totally agree. I just think its enough already. Pretty sure the ESA's got the message.

ApertureScienceIntern

@ApertureScienceIntern:

Why not? Maybe these corporate asshats will make a better E3 next year if they realize the rest of the industry is pissed with E3 in its current state.

SolidOni

@Elly: Fun Fact, Mario was originally a Carpenter in Donkey Kong.

Gantz: Your Trusted Friend in Science.

@Muisee: That's Kotaku's trademark.
They've done that for at least six months now. (I can't vouch for more because I've only been here for a year, and didn't really pay attention to the giant faces until six months ago.)

Arsenicberyllium

Dangit!
I was going to make the lame Plumber's crack joke.
But somebody beat me to it.

I think that describing it as a plumber's convention is a deep analogy to be taken on several levels.

For example, Nintendo's presentation was a steaming pile of shit, and Drano was needed.

The entire E3 was also highly pointless, and contained no new information for anybody involved, much like the plumbing business, which has stagnated for years.

And there were a lot of fat, ugly guys running the whole thing. In ugly outfits.

And while the pipe workings were rather different for each, it mostly resulted in the same boring crap transportation we've seen every time.

Arsenicberyllium

Seriously, what was so wrong with it? What does it really boil down to them complaining about? You're complaining you didn't have to spend as much money to build giant booths to attract retail store managers and other people who snuck into the event?

To the thousands of people who don't get to attend E3, E3 is exactly what these publishers make it. If the stuff they announce sucks or isn't anything special, it's their fault E3 was boring. They have the entire press in front of them to spread the news of what they announce. All those unnecessary people who are no longer attending can still find the news online and in print, like the rest of us have to.

I think all these people are just finding themselves more personally bored at the convention, because now they have to work most of the time and don't have tons of booths all over the place to attend to in their free time.

Mit

oh, one more thing @Muisee:

ApertureScienceIntern

ok, ok....E3 sucked. We get it. No more E3 bashing stories ok, Kotaku?

ApertureScienceIntern

Enough with the super closeups.

Muisee

There's more Mario at a plumber's convention than this E3.

Elly

Seriously, what does he have against plumbers? What did the plumbers do to you, Ray?

mizeriq

They really need to bring back booth babes. Otherwise E3 will be dead in 2 years. Alright I might of exaggerated a little.

Astrodust

Well at least the guys orchestrating E3 can't possibly hide from criticism of the event now since almost everyone seems to have disliked it. So maybe that'll mean improvement in the near future....though things change and with newer fledgling shows like E-For-All slowly rising up and the changing climate of the whole gaming scene in general I wouldn't be surprised if E3 just becomes a footnote sooner than later either.

The downscaling was one thing, but when I heard last year that the thing was held at some airport with the events separated literally drive worthy blocks between eachother I knew E3 was in trouble.

Kiyosuki

@Kiyosuki: lol it does, but at least Silent Hill is fun.

thecrimsonalchemist2

@thecrimsonalchemist2:

Sounds almost like a Silent Hill scenerio.

Kiyosuki

So it was like a hospital corridor filled with plumbers?

thecrimsonalchemist2

Loling at the Mario reference, even if it wasn't intended.

K_K

Hasn't this already been posted?

everybest

@denki: Huh? You might disagree with the man, do it smartly...

I don't think it was the lack of grandeur, it was the fact that everybody went for sterile and casual during E3 to cater to the expanded gaming audience.

Honestly? I don't think a return to excess will make E3 better either.

zoesch

So, if we roll all the exec statements we've heard so far all together, we can conclude E3 2008 was like attending an inappropriate plumber's convention in a stupid broken hospital.

Y'know, that actually makes it sound kind of intriguing.

freakout

@zoesch:
E3 needs the excess or no one is going to care.

Antic791

@Antic791: You kept up with all the news from E3 still didn't you? All the gaming press was still there covering it in full force too.

Who are these people that don't care? (besides the whiny execs)

Mit

Wow, what an insult to plumbers...

Shader

@Muisee: no, i dont think so

@Mit: nothing. interviews were held, demos were shown, games were revealed, industry bods mingled. it was just a slow e3 because not much really interesting is going on right now, and so, because reportage is rather lacking, your intertube media outlets have created pagehits by shouting a populist message like 'e3 is boring let TEH FANS back in'.

another 2 years and theyll flip flop back again for more fabricated controversy.

aestheticity

I don't think its E3s fault. I think its the gaming industry. Showing us projects 3-5 years out? Who the hell wants to track something they might be interested in for that long? Not me.

They need to keep that shit in their pants and in the year its going to be released give us the old "Excuse me while i whip this out."

Gaming sites like our very own Kotaku are also problematic. This is a very competitive industry as a whole, with gaming sites being very more so, probably because of the rabid fan loyalties associated with people who spend entirely too much time in contact with inanimate objects.

And so we wait with baited breath for our next big news story so we can comment something we feel is witty (just like this) and pray we get the social, social being what it is today, social recognition that we have begun to forget was possible with real life interaction.

As with anything else in life this too will become cliche. Eventually something that corporations infiltrate and strangle with ads nobody is effected by just to stimulate the bottom line enough so no one remembers that they just used your pension monies to build them some ginormous mansion in some far away non-extradition country.

Ah what the hell do I know.

invictus

First E3 was a ridiculous and trashy spectacle, now it's not ridiculous and trashy enough? Are you serious? Are you absolutely serious?

Fallom

Does the picture of this guy really gotta be so big and close up?

xJOZx

@Elly:
I get it!

ScarcticCG

@xJOZx: thats my question

ShadowScale

What he really means is that we've got some surprises comin up for us in Germany :)

Sony @ Leipzig = Win.

Kevin856

I think since that the E3 is only for people on the industry it has lost a lot of credibility at the eyes of a lot of peoples

DawnOfAshes666