E3 Post Mortem

I'm back from E3 for about a month now so time for some postmortems!

Left here on sunday morning and arrived there on the sunday evening (thanks to the timezones!) without any notable trouble. The monday was kind of boring, in the morning trying to find out where our badges were, as Activision was kindof unsure who exactly had them. After driving to their offices in vain we got them from someone at the convention center itself, so we could quckly pop in and see our stand (then still under construction). The thing was huge, much bigger than I anticipated, and the finish looked kindof metal as well. (I feared it would look to plasticy) People where rushing to finish everything and they politely indicated that we should bugger off, by almost driving us over with a crane.
That afternoon we went to the Grove, wich is basically a themed shopping mall. From the outside it looks like any other American mall comprex but once inside there is a big open air fake european village, cobblestoned streets, fountains, a little park and even a tram driving up and down the street. All of this complete with a French restaurant. (They got very good food there for American standards ;) ) I guess you have to come all the way from europe to see,... an european village :D

On tuesday we went to universal studio's, wich to my surprise turned out to be some kind of themepark. Honestly I taught it would be something interesting about how they make movies, but oh no, they had a speaking Shrek donky bot instead, and cartoonists, and 30 minutes from here panels and... the one ride that shows you something that relates to the word studio, is the one where you get so sit in some oversized golf cart and they drive you around the film sets. Half of these are actually fake and set up as part of the ride, since they got these piston animated walls crashing down, complete with parking the golf card on some shaky plate! All of this acompanied by this overly girly guide who taught she should attempt to act as she was taken by surprise when the next wall came pistoning down. At least we got to see one real actress!

Wednesday, first real day of E3, whee! Full of youthly passion I got up early that morning ready to spot some games! The first thing I got to see was,... people, as soon as you even dared to show up in the hotel lobby, there they were, lots of them... all wearing these funny badges around their neck, and some game T-shirt they got for free last year (I saw lots of them with Doom3 t-shirts man they were sooo last year!) after following the hord to the convention centre, we had to have our bags checked, in case anyone was trying to smuggle games in I guess, no place for that on a professional event!
We were lucky that day, the show opens at nine for people with exibithor badges but only at 10 for "the hord", so we could sneak in and have a look around while it was still relatively quiet. We had a mission to go out and spot the main things and then go and brief Paul about that, so he could answer any questions the press may have for him... that meant straight to the Microsoft stand to see the XBox 360. They surely had some nice games but they weren't that amazing, in the end they just looked like PC games made for the most powerfull pc's around. Next on our list was Battlefield 2 a bit disappointed about the graphics but it still looked like a cool game.
During lunch we luckyly escaped "the hord" once again, we went to eat at the Activision buffet and got sometling light and healty instead of chips and burgers. They also did these very small (in diametre not in height) pizza's as well, basically a small bread with cheese on top! Appartenly the food you buy on the floor is shit, well not really of course, it just tastes bad. And man the qeues for food are just as bad as the one for starbucks, long, to get coffey from a cardboard cylinder. In the afternoon we saw more games!

Thursday meant more gamespy-ing (sponsored link!) wich involved pushing people aside or queuing to get into cramped little exhibition theatres (thanks god they were aircoed most of the time!) after seeing some more of the supposedly 5000 games on display at the show (whee we made one of them!) we discovered the Nintendo stand, qeues again, but now they were handing out these cute Nintendogs keychains (i.e. little furry dog keychains) so we dragged ourselves into the que and totally surrendered our free will, swore an oath to Nintendo, and told them we hate Sony, in order to get hold of one of these cute things.

Later that day the activison party was on the agenda, splashdamage had only got four invitations and I was not on the list, but I went anyway assuming I was going to get in. At the door they started being fussy since apparently they were overbooked according to fire regulations so a strict invitation only rule was enforced... lucky someone from activision saw us and started talking to us while we were still standing in the doorway, the people at the door kindof lost interest as the two people behind us were also trying to get in without invites. I quckly sneaked in for an evening of walking dinner and italian import beer! Later that night we went to the fancy-trendy pool-bar on the roof of one of the the downtown hotels. LA weather provided that we could sit there comfortably enjoying the view :)

Friday, the last day of the carnival, in the morning I went around to see even more games, I even went to see all the weird stuff in the Kentia hall (where the really small and unknown companies have their exhibits) I saw 10 different cd-rw repair kits, a few weird input devices, and some korean company wich sold boxes with flashing leds. I'm unsure what they were for but I think they were to give like a piece of jewelry to someone, as soon as you opened it the whole thing starts flashing, sweee-eet! Luckyly for my sainity the show closes at four on friday, so around three I headed over to the Activsion stand to await the end (of the show that is!)... at four they actually play some weird sort of "last post" theme to indicate the show is over, kindof sad, the end of three days of people, people, people and some games.
That evening we were celebrating! Our game had had a good reception among the public and we were going for dinner (in the italian restaurant at the Grove, they probably taught we were homesick or something) and later to the new Star Wars movie(eek forgot the sub-title again), anyway ten minutes into the movie I fell alseep, only to be woken up like one minute before the end. I guess I was just really tired, or was it the movie.... the two extra dry martini's I had a the restaurant (complete with olive!) won't have helped keeping me awake either.

Saturday I met again with Willi (first met him at E3 on thursday, after having known him online for about two years) we went to see Blur Studio's where he works, they got some very cool offices altough he didn't seem soo exited about them... I guess if you have to work there every day ;). Later we went to Venice and mussle beach, the name gives it away, body builders, but in fact there are more werdo's there, the guy dressed in white with a turban and an electrical guitar on rollerscates being the one of the extremest examples :) It looks very nice to live in LA, large spacious appartments, nice weather, beaches, big paying movie companies,... London certainly lost some credit there, oh well we still got time.

Sunday, more sitting in metal crates trying to stay hydrated... we had a cabin attendant that looked like Marget Tatcher.. I guess that's what you get when flying BA, let's try Singapore Airlines next!