Summer Flame Day 2019: Enough with the Crowds at Video Game Conferences

Let’s be honest here: Crowds at press conferences have never been necessary. They were useful for gauging exactly what superfans of the hobby liked seeing most among titles shown for certain companies, but it’s not like they don’t have other ways to determine that these days, thanks to the power of the internet. They can determine this through polls or seeing which games receive the highest levels of engagement on social media. After all, companies have to sell their games to more than big gaming fans and the press members that attend conferences.

These days, the crowds have overstayed their welcome. They’ve always provided their fair share of eye-rolling behavior at conferences, but they reached a new low at E3 2019 this year. The excessive cheering, wooing, and yelling touched my last nerve.

The Bethesda conference was the most grievous offender, where the crowd cheered and wooed for nearly every goddamned thing presented — or worse. There were presentations worth cheering for, like one for Tango Gameworks’ new title Ghostwire: Tokyo, whose concept was explained by very enthusiastic creative director Ikumi Nakamura. The same could be said of the presentations for Deathloop and Doom Eternal.

But there didn’t need to be any cheering for the Fallout 76 segment, a game whose missteps (to put them lightly) have been well documented. The addition of NPCs, which should have been there when the game launched considering how integral they are to the Fallout experience, was not worth celebrating. A polite clap would have sufficed.

Worse, the cheering interrupted the presenters several times, and visibly caught them off guard. Tango head Shinji Mikami was startled by excessive wooing when he simply wanted to introduce Nakamura, and it even caught Fallout and Elder Scrolls director Todd Howard by surprise. Interestingly, the cheering wasn’t as rowdy during the Wolfenstein: Youngblood segments that discussed how to get rid of Nazis. The crowd was either “woo’d” out by this time, since it occurred late in the conference, or it could mean something else. Video gaming tends to attract people of a certain type.

For as much of a bother as this was, part of me will be willing to let this slide if rumors about the crowd being served drinks before the conference started, which would go a long way towards explaining the more unruly behavior. But that part will only forgive them if they never do it again. The other part of me holds grudges, and will always remember this.

The Square Enix conference wasn’t much better this year, with people frequently cheering and yelling at the presenters during the segments for Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel’s Avengers. I can relate to some of them in being excited for the former title, but this was a bit much — though it wasn’t as bad as the worst segments during the Bethesda conference. Before it started, I was disappointed that the presentation wasn’t prerecorded like last year, but I really wished it was after the conference concluded — especially considering only three games out of several shown had presenters on stage.

There was one good segment that involved yelling at conferences this year, which involved Keanu Reeves. The crowd at the Xbox Briefing was excited to see him, and he was similarly happy to be there, which made for one of the more heartwarming moments of E3. But this was also primarily responsible for making the other conferences a chore to tolerate, considering it took place before those. The good yelling here indirectly encouraged the bad yelling at other conferences. Now that the guy who yelled “You’re breathtaking!” at Keanu will be gifted with a free copy of the Cyberpunk 2077 collector’s edition (the game he was there to promote, and of which he’s part of), this will get even worse in the future for attendees who want to create potential memetic moments.

It’s possible that I’m simply getting tired of cheering in conferences because I’m at the tender old age of 35, and I’ve conversed about this with people who are my age. But it was insane at E3 this year. Admittedly, there have been moments at press conferences that were improved through crowd reactions. I’ll never forget the jubilant eruption that followed the reveal of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess at Nintendo’s conference in 2004, and the “Online? What the hell?” reaction to the original Final Fantasy XIV’s reveal at Sony’s E3 2009; but those moments are few and far between. For each one of those, there have been several embarrassing moments involving people cheering violence, or whistling at attractive female presenters.

Enough already. End this before it gets any worse, which will happen. For as much as Nintendo was chastised for abandoning live press conferences at E3 years ago, they were ahead of the curve. This year’s E3 Nintendo Direct was welcome thanks to its comparative subtlety, a presentation that quickly went from one solid announcement to another in a hair over 40 minutes — shorter than any other big conferences. Devolver Digital’s presentation was also good, and it’s tough not to laugh at how their conferences actually have running storylines.

I don’t actually expect crowds for conference to go away anytime soon, because too many people still love the idea behind them. Once this gets worse, perhaps others will join those who agree that their time in the limelight is over.