Cruel Summer
I can see how lengthy video showcases of games sort of made sense in a world where plenty of people who weren’t used to being kind of stuck at home were kind of stuck at home for huge chunks of 2020. Not the greatest idea but practical-ish and a way to keep the wheels (sawblades?) of videogames industry turning.
With lockdowns behind us after some politicians decided we could just all get sick instead and that would be fine, it’s like these game showcases - outside of maybe one or two showcasey-showcase ones like Keighleygeddon that are huge draws and exist in their own worlds of money and hype - have increased in number but with few people considering whether that’s such a great idea.
I don’t really think they are. At least, not this many, at these lengths, with this amount of games. I’m sure there’s something that can be done around the format … just not how we’re doing it now. It’s adding to the grinding of people into dust on numerous levels.
Developers were like “crunching for E3 was killing us and so disruptive” and someone was like “okay, now we have 50 E3s. Have at it.”
“You can have an E3 and you can have an E3 and you can have an E3. You at the back? You got yourself your own E3! Get in!”
(See also: three Steam Next fests which would never have been necessary had a handful of weirdos not decided nobody should have demos of videogames anymore)
Thanks.
Journalists were like “our staffing has been gutted, we are so tired, our time is short, our funding lower and we can’t cover what we want like this” and someone was like “get the matchsticks in your eyes, one hundred games, six hours, let’s party - five showcases in a row? Yeah, seven next month! Come ‘ed!”
Thanks.
Streamers are already dealing with having to churn out so much stuff, they’re regularly being broken by the volume of work and someone was, again, like “we’ve got even more for you to do now AND on our schedule not yours so you need never find peace, it’s videogames for all eternity, chums”.
Thanks.
There’s the expectation that the public make a few hours of adverts into appointment viewing - or rely on the above folk to break themselves to help filter things in any way. And the public are opening up the news every day to fresh horrors and stresses and threats to their barest of comforts. But sure, take one, two, three, more, hours out to watch a continuous stream of adverts. That’s sure to be good.
Thanks.
At just about every level, showcases excessively add to folk’s loads and rather than step back and try and formulate better approaches… we keep on adding more and more of these showcases. More and more games being rammed into one after the other, after the other, after the other showcases. Stressing out more developers, more journalists, streamers, the public, making it borderline impossible to keep up (surely the point here is to do the other one) and still we keep finding avenues to drag more people into the hell we’re creating. Just another showcase, bro. This one will be different, it’s the Voles In Videogames Showcase, line the devs right up.
Yeah, erm. Probably not the best of plans. It might work out better if everyone was more comfortable, devs had more money and time for more wiggle room, journalists had more staff, more outlets, more money to cover more niches, streamers weren’t being pushed to overwork themselves as the baseline, and everyone else could get some chill. That’s not where we’re at though and adding to all that is only ever going to make things worse in the long term.
But I guess that’s never stopped videogames before. Still though. Maybe a rethink should be in order here before we break everyone on a hope and a prayer and for some adverts.