Those who are on VJN have already seen this topic, but I couldn't get the forums working here the other day when I posted it so I'm doing it now. Anyway, always good to get a discussion going two different places...

So as we all slowly recover from the week of no sleep, heavy drinking and backlog of writing that is E3 I'm curious to know, what did everyone think of this year's show? I'm happy to see a bit of the pomp and spectacle back once again, even though it did make it a bit harder to work than previous years. If I could make suggestions going forward, it would be these:

1. Reduce attendance a little so as to ease crowds a bit. This might not be possible though if the ESA needs a big crowd to cover show expenses. In which case...

2. If the show stays the same size, wall off a section for the journalists and those doing business and create a separate area for public demos. This way everyone gets to see the same demo and nobody who's on a schedule has to wait in line for an hour or more just to see one big-name title.

Overall I think this year's show was much improved over the last couple but yet still wasn't so over-the-top it became a circus. What about you all? Thoughts? Comments?

Just as you told, it was a week of hard working. We all need to agree this show was alot better than the E3 previous year. Even Cammie from Nintendo was doing alot better than previous year!

I agree with you on the second part. If I'm correct, they are doing such thing at the Leipzig Games Convention previous year. Having two arena's only for press and the others for the public. This way we could play games without little boys breathing in our necks.

That second idea has merit, but it may be dangerous for some of us in "smaller press." This was my first E3, so I don't know what it's been like "behind closed doors" during previous years, but there were times during the show that I felt I was being ignored because my publications aren't "big name" enough. This is fine - it's all business, why should a guy who's websites get a few hundred thousand views a month take precedent over one that gets millions? ...but my concern is that if there is a a "segmented' show "small press" will get press passes to the "public" show.

This is probably unlikely and paranoid, but it is a concern of mine.

...all that said, I think it was great compared to what I heard about previous years. The "size" seemed okay for me, I only got held up behind one or two people in line, otherwise things moved pretty quick, or I had no lines at all.

Very exhausting though - we need a bigger crew for next year, to spread out the workload.