E3 report #1

Ok, so this is no Reviewers report, so let me make that clear. This is about ME and my Day job at Mass Media Games and also accompanied by my Night Job as Sorcery Games.

ALL opinions are mine own, and not anything to do with Mass Media Games per se.

So in this report I will talk about My general experiences and the story of my opening day at E3.  Now I am missing out parts here that pertain to my Indie developments, that will all be in another report.

The day started early and I went to catch the Metro train from Simi Valley as I tend to each year. Driving into LA does not excite me at all. As it happens this year I was not arranging to meet anyone at E3, as all my mates appeared to be going on Wednesday and not Tuesday. I had to go opening day as Wednesday was gonna be a busy day going to my kids awards for Academics and Boy Scouts (in that order). Being a Dad has responsibilities and I love em.

Well as it happened the moment I stepped onto the train, there was me mate Nick, an ex-employee of Mass Medias from a short while back. I was so pleased to see him, as he has been working away in Colorado.As we sat down on the bottom seating area I looked up into the top seating area upstairs and Woah, there is another mate Geoff. This was awesome and he came down to join me and Nick, though they did not know each other (which surprised me). We somehow managed to talk ALL the way into Union station and then the rest of the way to the Staples Center.

Well we arrived and quickly got our badge holders and were ready to go go go. Only.. It was opening day, which means it does not open till 12 noon, and it was about 10am, gah! anyway Geoff went off looking for excitement and me and Nick caught up on whats been going on with him since we last chatted. I also filled him into on my current status with my latest Indie endeavour with Five golden Coins.

The excitement inside me and Nick kept growing as opening time approached. Yeah, it's sort of odd in some ways, after all the E3's I have been to and Still I get so excited about the next one hehe. We wondered through the initial crush entering the West hall and walked around fairly randomly looking at everything that was so exciting. Checking out all the people playing on the Wii U and such in the Nintendo booth. That place was so packed I hated it, the crush of people never ending, and chance to get hands on was frustrating, so we moved onto the ..

Sony booth. Now Sony is one of my main machines.We have done a lot of conversion for their machines and also we are very active in Playstation Home. I really wanted to see about how they were advertising the Big 50 Thousand Dollars Sweepstakes that they and we are currently running in  Midway3 and Home. But after we walked around the whole booth twice we were not able to find hide nor hair of Home. How odd I thought, so I asked at the information desk. Only they didn't know. Maybe it was in the restricted upper area, but the guard would not let me pass to go look. So after one more go around the whole booth we gave up. It seems Sony was not advertising OR even mentioning what I consider to be a powerful gaming tool in their arsenal. I was angry about this, and just don't quite know what to think at the moment. Maybe I just missed it?

After that I really wanted to get some BorderLands 2 gear for my Niece in England. So we joined the Queue and waited for about 30 minutes. But the line did not appear to move. How odd, so i went and asked a guy that was working the booth what was happening. To my chagrin I was told that the player would be pulled in 10 at a time and they would play for 20 minutes.. Yeah, you read that right, 20 minutes a person playing. So I estimated I would have to wait for nearly 2 hours. At which point I was done. I tried sweet talking the guy into giving me a T-shirt anyway, but no go.
I also came by later but the line was still huge, and I tried once again to sweet talk a couple of staff members into giving me a shirt, but to no avail once more.I really have no idea what they were thinking though, 20 mins a player, and not just funnel people through at whatever rate they want. Gah!

Then we went wondering off and got a nice expensive sandwich, which was a bit dry, but quite tasty. Then off we went again. This time collecting several shirts as we wondered around. Looked at plenty of stuff, like the new Assassins Creed, which wa sa baffling display of battle on the seas, only you appeared to be driving cars or motorboats the way those triple masters handled. Still the visuals were very nice. I also got to play some Warplane game and shot some peeps down, till I dived too far and could not recover.. the ground hurt me bad :)

The Xbox booth was a bright affair and in some respects I felt like i was in some part of a Tron movie. Still a very active place. It was amazing seeing so many fitness and Dance games around now. The only one I disliked with any passion was the one called 'Wii Fit U', which seemed a bit embarrassing with all it's bits of hardware required, and so far behind the Xbox and it's Kinect. Well it must be a big market whatever.

Last up for us was to walk around and I got some excellent T's for my kids with Wrekit Ralph on them. Initially everyone thinks they are mincraft images, but they are not.

By now we had to catch our train back to Union station and barely made it, as the train pulled into Pico, we ran behind it and up onto the platform to get in, phew. then when we arrived at Union Station, we had 5 minutes to get all the way to our Metro train to Ventura county. Though we made it with more seconds to spare. What a great time, what a great day.

E3 rocks.

Da Voodoochief