The Liquid Architecture blog

The Escapist, essential reading every week, posted a great article on this week on the state of game industry conventions, post-E3.

As an E3 veteran, I can see why the ESA pulled the plug on the show. Those cavernous booths that EA, Microsoft and Sony put together year after year had to be crazy expensive (in case you missed it, these things were huge – I hope someone’s planning a memorial to the brave young men that got lost and starved to death in Sony’s E3 2004 space). Also, there’s no way to track all the expenses for invite-only dinners, private parties, bands, and staff per diem back to actual game sales. The fact is, this media-and-industry-only show reached critical mass right around the timeany fan could become a journalist with a blog like this one.

On the other hand, E3 was a blast! And more importantly, it was a one-stop show for face time with the gaming press, retail purchasing directors and developers. Out of the bumper crop of replacement shows to surface since the end of E3 (as we know it), I’ll be interested to see which ones actually stick around for a second year. IDG World Expo’s E for All had a rough opening this year, but if anyone can right the ship, it’s the people that gave us MacWorld and, well, the original E3.

By all accounts, the Penny Arcade Expo is a stellar time for fans, and it just keeps getting bigger. Multipurpose shows like the Wizard World comic conventions and Digital Life have done a decent job with fan service as well. They don’t, however, seem to have any solution on the table to replace the business functions of E3, like formal retailer meetings or press tours with specific company booths.

The Big 3, and a few huge publishers like EA have supplemented their stops at the open-admission fan shows with their own invite-only press days, usually at their offices, under their control. Honestly, it works great, and I’m sure the whole thing can be done for a fraction of their staff mini-bar expenses in LA during E3 week in previous years. I’ll be interested to see if the Game Developers’ Conference, the reorganized “Min-E3″ invite-only show, or a new event entirely meets the critical business needs that have gone unserved since The Big Show went away.