The Shady Side Of E3

At first glance, the Electronic Entertainment Expo seems like little more than a fun showcase of the gaming industry's latest and greatest. Big companies always come decked out with their fanciest stuff, showcasing the shiniest in new graphics, consoles, and experimental hardware. E3 is a chance for us, the consumers, to catch up with our old pals Master Chief and Mario, and to revisit old favorites made new again via surprise sequel announcements. And then there's all the new IP and technology unveilings, as well. On the surface, E3 is a place of pure joy for gamers.

Beneath that endearing facade, however, is an expo that has lied to you, deceived you, and even endangered you. And, unfortunately, there's very little hyperbole there — E3 isn't just gaming's cultural Mecca, it's also the industry's worst nightmare. Get ready to find out how E3 has, time and time again, betrayed gamers and evolved into the industry's shadiest showcase.

While fictitious gameplay demos are infuriating enough, they're not the only trick in the book that publishers have. Case in point: fake "live" gameplay demos. While these demos can showcase a version of a game quite close, if not identical to the version that will release to the masses eventually, they're pre-recorded so that no unscripted shenanigans can occur. This means any glitches, bugs, out-of-bounds areas, or underdeveloped aspects of the game in question won't be present, since everything's been recorded ahead of time. That's fair, right? Well, not when you consider these same publishers sometimes have someone pretending to play the game "live" on-stage so that people think a game is being put through its paces in real-time.

While this isn't a major issue given that most AAA games release in perfectly acceptable working order, it does hide the pitfalls of games that publishers might plan on rushing out a little unpolished. However, in the case of games that are a bit trickier to ensure the performance of, such as Kinect games, this fake "live" demo trick becomes seriously sinister. How many people can say their time with Star Wars Kinect was anything remotely like this staged E3 demo, wherein things seemed to work perfectly? We'd venture a guess the Kinect's far-too-immediate responses to the E3 presenter's gestures onstage are a good indicator that this flawless demo falls squarely under our "live" presentation fake-out umbrella.

Perhaps publishers need all these tricks and deceptions to gussy up their underbaked products because they're spending too much effort on showing them off in the first place. After all, it's not as easy as simply cutting out a slice of a game and playing it for a live audience. A lot more work goes into E3 showcases — sometimes so much work that resources that could've gone to the game itself are reallocated for E3 presentation endeavors. It's self-defeating and downright stupid from a "let's make the best game possible" standpoint, but this approach is often taken because many shareholders believe top-tier marketing is more important than producing a top-tier game. That's the power of short-term thinking!

Situations where this E3-first mentality has hurt development range from those detailed by the unknown, confidential leakers of unnamed studios to the more public cases, such as that of Halo 2, wherein the poor devs at Bungie produced an entire graphics engine that ultimately only ever ended up being used for the E3 demo.

There's nothing worse than when companies use E3 to generate phantom buzz. While it makes sense to drum up hype for a game that's right around the corner, which Bethesda likes to do, other publishers like to use the expo for games that are years, if not decades, away from ever seeing the light of day. It's downright cruel. Square Enix is a constant offender when it comes to this shady element of E3: be it The Avengers Project, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, or Kingdom Hearts 3, Square Enix is constantly dangling carrots in front of gamers' mouths — carrots they often won't get to taste for many, many years.

Why do it? To make people starve for more, of course. All eyes and associated press coverage are always on publishers like Square at E3, solely because the company has fed just enough breadcrumbs to their loyal consumers to give them hope and anticipation for real announcements. It's manipulative, scheming, and one of the worst parts of E3. And Square's not the only company to use E3 to market phantom products like this — Ubisoft does it too, like with Beyond Good and Evil 2. Or Sony, with its infamous The Last Guardian.

Something Microsoft's had a hard time doing in the 2010's is securing genuinely exclusive titles for its Xbox library. Due to its inability to just buckle down and pump out good first-party games, we've been subjected to the bastardization of the term "exclusive," as the company plays with ways to make the term mean less and less each year. There's been the "temporary Xbox exclusive," a la Rise of the Tomb Raider, wherein Microsoft pays a third-party publisher to get a game on its console first. There's been the "timed exclusive," wherein formerly Microsoft and now Sony claim its console gets Call of Duty DLC exclusively* (*for a few months). And of course, how can we forget the "console exclusive" — Microsoft's neat way of saying a game will be on PC too, so it's not really exclusive to Xbox One as long as you own a decent gaming PC.

Though Microsoft's the biggest offender, it's not a crime exclusive (heh) to them. Publishers and hardware manufacturers use E3 (and other conferences such as Gamescom) to stave off the bloodlust wrought by consumers seeking armaments for their battles in the console war, a war arbitrarily fought with exclusives. Will the day come when the term "exclusive" can be de-weaponized? Maybe. But not any day soon.