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7Jun 12

Do you enjoy being fed your gaming information through well-rehearsed prepared remarks? If so, the Electronic Entertainment Expo is for you! During this week in June every year, executives from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and others get up on stage in grand fashion and read pre-written speeches, delivering on-message remarks aimed at getting you excited about their upcoming games and products. This happened at every presentation this week, but there was one notable exception, and it came from an unlikely source.

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During Microsoft's briefing Monday morning, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone emerged on stage to talk about their upcoming role-playing game with THQ and Obsidian, South Park: The Stick of Truth. Instead of reading off a teleprompter and delivering planned out lines, the duo ad-libbed, and even poked fun at the event host, Microsoft. Parker mocked Microsoft's super-connected Xbox approach just minutes after the company officially confirmed the Xbox SmartGlass tablet. Here's what he had to say:

"How many times have you been watching an episode of South Park and thought:
'I'd like to be able to watch this on my television while hooked into my mobile device, which is being controlled by my tablet device, which is hooked into my oven, all while sitting in the refrigerator?' Parker jokingly asked the audience. "Well, we're not doing that. We're just doing this game."

This brief respite from the ongoing barrage of prepared remarks from executives like Phil Spencer, Yusuf Medhi, and others during Microsoft's presentation was more than enough to make me smile throughout a presentation that kept me largely stone-faced. Parker and Stone may have had that line planned in advance (they are, after all, comedic geniuses), but it didn't come across that way. It came across as spontaneous and genuine, two adjectives I never thought I'd associate with E3.

I understand why publishers and developers want to be on-message. They have a product to sell. And delivering a consistent message to fans and press is a means to that end. But being so strictly tied to a message can be problematic. In doing so, these people become corporate robots. They make me feel like I'm a consumer, rather than a gamer. Whether or not that's an issue of semantics is irrelevant, because I want executives to talk directly to me, a gamer. I understand that they have a boss to answer to, one who demands increased profits year in, year out. But I don't care about that. I care about the games. And I have a sneaking suspicion, you do, too.

6 comments
wyan_
wyan_

I think they are strictly tied to their scripts for another reason. They don't want to make the mistake of saying anything they may regret later. One single misstep can do a lot of damage.

chopsbenedict
chopsbenedict

I agree that the adherence to hours of prepared remarks can take some of the soul, if you will, out of new gaming news/information.  I see E3 as an event which, as you allude to, is strongly tied to the income and business side of this industry.  While I get more information (or at least better/more fun information) out of people in your position  interviewing, reviewing, or conjecturing, i see the corporate pow-wow as an opportunity to understand the people and motives which arent seen in-game (and dont shine through reviews).  Certainly there is a time and a place for everything, and perhaps my opinion would change after attending E3, but im not too upset about the prepared dog and pony every year

Dirty_Window
Dirty_Window like.author.displayName 1 Like

That said, as it's a big show they aren't going to leave things to chance are they? Would you like to listen to Reggie going "ummm" and "ahhh" every other sentence?

 

Funny is fairly easy to ad-lib. Serious and informative is not. 

SionRees
SionRees like.author.displayName 1 Like

@Dirty_Window  so you could stand on a stage and do some funny stand up strait off that bat, but just talking about the game you have spent the last year making is really hard. LOL

CodingGenius
CodingGenius moderator moderator like.author.displayName like.author.displayName 2 Like

If E3 represents the most-polished PR that multi-million dollar game companies can offer, then I feel sorry for the industry.

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