From June 12th — 13th, The Los Angeles Convention Center held 2018’s E3 event. The event itself is the largest gaming convention to date — showcasing the biggest and brightest talent in the industry and enabling loyal patrons and gamers to get a first look as well as play the newest titles.
It’s also a great opportunity for developers, researchers and industry representatives to get to know their audience, get feedback on ideas or products as well as network.
People are eager to flock to this event and their keenness is only increased once they see exhibits showcasing their favorite games to play for free.
This year was the second year the event was open to the general public and for this reason — in order to minimize some of the disarray experienced in 2017’s event, the times were slightly adjusted so that the industry professionals had a chance to chat before the chaos ensued!
Two of our troops — Andy Spedick and Shane Smith, were on the ground of this mammoth event and came back with a whole host of new insight and a rundown of the days’ events.
Overview
VR experiences were a very popular aspect of the event in general, along with some A-list titles such as the much anticipated Super Smash Brothers Ultimate and Pokemon Lets Go — which dominated the main room. Other popular offerings like Jurassic Park Evolution, the new Fallout 76 game as well as Black Ops IV were prominent in other areas of the event. Needless to say — some of the queues were insanely long and filled with gamers yearning to get exclusive access to these new releases.
Where VR was concerned, the largest exhibits included VR World by Playstation and a VR version of Fallout. Encouragingly, these exhibits received a consistent and constant flow of wild-eyed and excited first-timers, as well as established VR enthusiasts looking to enjoy the latest advancements and titles.
Mixer — a fixed-position shooter game had it’s very own gatling gun and a standalone station which had queues for days the whole event. Creed — a VR boxing game and Blood and Truth — an action-packed first-person shooter also seemed to be top games of interest.
Key Takeaways
What our team members Andy and Shane saw throughout the 3-day event was that of the people they networked and spoke with (mostly those in line for VR games), almost all had their own VR rig set-up or had a keen interest in VR in general.
When the guys approached bored looking queuers or VR enthusiasts, we learned that although people found the new VR games very impressive — they still lacked a sense of story and suffered from a lack of true immersion through that missing component.
More than 50% of attendees our team spoke with seemed excited by the potential of VU, especially when exposed to some of the in-game content, particularly the look and detail of the apartment building we were showcasing to people throughout the event.
We saw a huge appetite for VR evident in the long queues, from talking to attendees and exhibitors which were fully booked for demos within the first hour of every day of the event!
One really exciting takeaway was the discussions we had with a group of developers from Eastern Kentucky University who had won a development competition winning with the prize of getting featured at E3. They were extremely interested to learn more about VU.
We received a lot of encouraging feedback on the VU platform and who knows, perhaps you will see us at an event like this in the very near future.
The whole event left the team with a very positive sense that VR is not slowing down and there is 100% a big market for adopters, which can only propel the industry further in the best way any industry does — with the help and support of its patrons.
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