Diary of an E3-Man

The following are raw notes taken from E3 2018 Press Conferences. They are a mixture of details and opinions. The idea to post these is to show what it’s like to furiously write down notes in an effort to turn those notes into an article as well as whatever. It also portrays whatever gut feeling towards something was felt as it happened. The first section of notes are things I wrote down after the conference was over; what were the things/thoughts that stuck with me afterwards. The second section of notes cover the more play-by-play of the conference as things were happening what was being jotted down.

EA - E3 2018

Things That Stood Out After the Show:

• Thin showing

• Even sports games showcase section seemed limited

• No story mode for Madden/Sports games?

• Surprised there was no “surprise”, they really needed to say Skate or something to that effect on stage to help win the “hearts and minds” contingent

• Confusing message for Anthem

• What is the game trying to accomplish (ethos/pathos for this game)

• Tried to mention story background of Bioware on previous games but didn’t really give any sense that what people fell in love with from Bioware will be in Anthem

• Trotting Battlefront 2 on stage for any significant amount of time seemed like a bad call, (that game is so poisoned except for the small contingent that is going to keep playing) especially on the same stage where they tried to “own up” to their embarrassing 2017

• This further exemplifies the thin showing they had

• Strong pivot to wearable/cosmetic loot/DLC

• Several mentions of “no lootboxes” as if that was supposed to be the “hearts and minds” victory

• I cannot comprehend why now, companies think it’s time to trot out streaming game services. EA is not alone as Phil Spencer and Yves Guillemont are talking about it peripherally too.

• The internet infrastructure in America is still not strong enough to do this

• We are now in a country with strong data caps and potential ability for slow downs on services by those data companies

• EA certainly has cornered the market on sympathetic, loveable, speaking from the heart indies devs to EA Originals

• Honestestly, others, namely Sony and to a lesser degree Microsoft can learn from this

• Sony barely has anyone speaking on stage anymore, EA has shown that having a dev on stage speaking earnestly can go a long way to creating affinity towards that game

Re-Watch:

• Battlefield V destruction / moveable deployments / fences and windows tech is pretty neat

• Battlefield V Battle Royale (of course)

• “War Story” tease seemed intriguing

• Fifa ‘19 got that UEFA license which was tied to Konami’s Winning Eleven series

• This seems to be the new thing with this years game?

• Probably a big deal for Fifa players…

• Includes special tournament mode / career mode

• Unravel Two still looks unbelievably good

• More “playful”

• Co-op or single player

• Cool backgrounds with ghost people?

• Co-op zipline / tethering is a cool idea

• Sea of Solitude (SOS) newest EA Original

• Much like the first Unravel, I’ve never been more ready to support a heartfelt creator despite not all-the-way knowing what exactly the game is

• I hope this sweet lady is successful

• Rad world / concept - bit of a Heavenly Sword vibe from the concept

• Transitions on the conference are really bad - No flow from thing to thing

• Reminds me of making several different things for dinner which could be good, but nothing goes together, it’s not cohesive together

• Madden ‘19 bit seems utterly confusing

• Ju-Ju is a pretty good speaker all-in-all

• EA STOP PUTTING COMPETITIVE GAMERS AND STREAMERS ON YOUR SHOW

• It’s truely teeth grinding

• KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

• People watching this want to know more about / see Anthem, BFV, and those EA Originals

• Command and Conquer mobile game seems extremely Clash Royale

• Another awful transition to this game

• Honestly if this is Clash Royale without the unbelievably horseshit Pay-to-win model, it could be cool

• However, EA, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

• If this makes a ton of money and keeps the lootboxes, etc. out of AAA games - good, I guess?

• EA (halfway) apology tour continues

• Nobody actually has apologized for their 2017 year of bullcrap - they just keep saying they’re trying to be better

• I hate to say this, but, playing the charity card in the same breath of their non-apology really is coming off badly

• They really should have, perhaps, considered having one of those charities being gambling recovery related?

• Anthem seems to be ending the show

• Good to have Casey Hudson and multiple Bioware employees talking about the game

• Really should have had live gameplay first then the Q&A section after - just badly paced out again

• Again, barely showing anything here for a game 8 or so months out

• I do not understand the video they brought for Anthem (and Battlefront 2) it’s all short video (like extremely short) looping over again

• Again, EA at least is giving devs a chance to talk about and represent the thing they are building which has really escaped other prominent E3 conferences

• I’m having bad feelings about this release date, there is either no way it hits, or this is gonna get a ton of patches because they didn’t have time to build the game they wanted

• Characters look neat, but maybe too generic / too much like Destiny

• Weapons look a little whatever… Doesn’t match the high tech look of world and suits

• Did weapons not evolve with everything else?

• Another “no lootboxes” cheap pop attempt

• STOP ROTATING CONCEPT ART IT’S A REALLY BAD LOOK FOR A GAME LESS THAN 1 YEAR OUT

• This game seems to be struggling to differentiate between Destiny with what they have shown

• Suits / some sort of Ghost-like talking buddy

• Everyone is going to want to be the Storm class because it’s the only suit that looks different / has any pizzaz

• Boy, that was such as odd way to end - whole thing felt toned down - really needed to show gameplay first then have the sit-down talk after and save the Q&A for the aftershow(?)

• Again, truly and utterly shocked they didn’t have an announcement of Skate or Burnout or something of that ilk to win the “hearts and minds” that Sony has gathered in swaths over the PS4 era