For all you folks overseas, E3 was a summer event, held gloriously during the day under the glare of the season. For all us folks down here in Australia, E3 meant freezing nights, and even freezier mornings, because it happened in the dead of winter.
The first Broadcast Pre-Show of 2021 would begin at 10AM LA time, giving you time to sleep in, roll around, and take your time with breakfast. We here in Oz had to be awake by 2:59AM at the latest if we wanted to catch the pre-show streamed live at 3AM our time.
And though I might have grumbled under my breaths (breaths which you could see in the air due to the cold), any reservations I had about the early morning, the bitter chill, or the misty combination of both would melt away as soon as I booted up the livestream and settled in for the show. I'd bask in the glow of the PC screen as if it were a source of heat (which, in the puniest way imaginable, I guess it was). For all that my general aether at the time was bitingly wintry, E3 kept me warm.
At the tail-end of March this year, just when the Australian weather was beginning to dip its toes into colder temperatures, the Entertainment Software Association and ReedPop issued an official statement regarding this year’s iteration of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. A statement of cancelation. Summarily, there would be no E3 2023. It wasn't going to happen.
To many, the cancelation came as really no surprise. Nintendo, Microsoft, and even Sony had hinted at if not officially announced their withdrawal from the event, leaving many to wonder if E3 was effectively all but dead at that point. Matters were brought to crisis point when Ubisoft (of #UBIE3 fame) announced that it too would not be attending E3 2023, never mind its having previously promised to show “a lot of things” at the event this year.
It was a handful of days later when the powers that be issued that inevitable statement of cancelation, effectively pulling the plug on E3’s life support. Waves of mourning washed over the industry in response. Inevitable though the cancelation might have been, it was sad, sad news to receive nonetheless.
Many a eulogy has since been given and so many words have since been said on what the end of E3 really means for our ever-expanding video games industry. Now, as we broach the first week of June, as we get closer and closer to the week traditionally dedicated to E3, the very fact that it isn’t happening next week, this year, at all, feels more pronounced than ever, more real.
I’m feeling the Australian winter in ways I wouldn’t have felt previously. Previously, the cold of early June, though chilly, was thrilling. It meant E3 was on its way (oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open trade show). Now, with no E3 to look forward to, the cold of June is just cold.
Frosty and red-nosed were the temperatures I'd traditionally wake up to on early E3 mornings, but did I really feel the chill once I’d put on oodies, the coffee, the laptop light? Though supremely early in the morning or dreadfully late at night (because there is no in-between when you’re beaming an event from Pacific Time down to AEST), I was always kept brightly awake by the week-long flurry of announcements, celebrations, and excitements that only E3 could provide.
A click into the livestream and the screen would transform brightly into the sunny vista of the E3 grounds, the sun seeping through the lens of the camera-on-location and to my wide-eyed face, as if it weren’t the deadzone of night, but midday in America, the concrete floor of the Los Angeles Convention Center scuffing underneath thousands of feet.
Even in those years when the entirety of E3 was digital, did it really make a difference to us Down Here, where the event had always been brought to us digitally, anyway? All that blue light of the livestream via computer screen still tricked my brain into believing it was daytime (as blue screen light is always wont to do).
For me, E3 week would be a determinedly sleepless one. From that initial 3AM wake-up for the pre-show onward, E3 would be a non-stop buffet of caffeine and adrenaline all in the bid to stay as awake as long as I could, not wanting to miss a beat. I was there when Tetsuya Nomura unveiled the decadent, Team-Ninja-developed Stranger Of Paradise (prompting Square Enix to lock its international Twitter accounts so as to quell the equally-decadent backlash). Could I ever forget the tears that flooded my vision, or the joy that seized my heart, when Kojima announced his return at E3 2016 and was met with uproarious applause?
And while we're talking about iconic stage presences of E3 history, don't even get me started on the infinitely memeable presentation that Konami haphazardly put together in E3, 2010, which has been lovingly dubbed "the worst E3 presentation of all time". My friends and I have made a tradition of rewatching it every year since its reemergence on YouTube. To this day, I continue to quote Tak Fujii's ONE MILLION TROOPS as if t'were gospel.
Once E3 was all a wrap and officially over for the year, I’d crash harder than a computer but happily so, sleeping back all the hours I’d lost, with all the festivities of the Week Of 3 Es would carouseling in my heads in a magnificent montage, lulling me to dream big of the year in gaming to come.
Yes, there will be other events, other showcases, to take to the June stage in E3’s stead. I know I have Summer Game Fest to get excited about, and the PC Gaming Show, and eventually some Nintendo Direct, whenever that may be. I know.
But I also know that all of these are standalone, isolated events, each 'one and done.' None are set to bridge across the span of several days on end as was the way of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3.
Winters in Australia just won’t be the same without E3. I’m going to miss those too-early mornings, those way-too-late nights, those hearty cheers we’d shout at 2AM (sorry, roommates!) because Nintendo had just confirmed that yes, a certain Metroid title of decadal legend was real, it was happening. It was so well into development, in fact, that after ten plus years of profoundly nothing, it finally had a full trailer all of its own, and a release date to boot. Metroid Dread, first 'announced' in 2005, finally revealed at E3 2021, would be on store shelves in early October that very same year.
The song-and-Just-Dance of Ubisoft’s stage presence, the 6AM rush of a Devolver Digital skit (Nina Struthers’ ruthlessness deftly snapping us to attention). The comfy burble of between-show commentary, the coziness of the Wholesome Direct. Sizzle reels flickering in my vision like candlelight, a source of warmth amidst the cold and dark of this back pocket of the world at this time of year is now gone.