Diaries of an E3 Virgin is a short series of articles about the E3 experience from a first timer on the floor. Here’s yesterday’s.
My day started at 6:30 am, after sleeping on the floor with a thin blanket and what resembled a pillow, but honestly didn’t do much for my head during the night. That didn’t matter though, because the hype for the day was enough to get me up and going. I sat through the Game Revolution team listening to the Nintendo Direct stream and prepared myself for what I would see on the show floor.
At noon, after wandering through countless blocks around LA looking for food, the doors to the show floor finally opened and I was able to take in my first full experience of what most of the public thinks of as ‘E3’. The show floor was a bright and flashy experience that quickly wore off. The real benefit came in the exclusive press appointments that we had each been assigned throughout the day.
After a short time of wandering the south hall (most of the third party studios), our first appointment was with Sega. We were treated to a demo of an upcoming Sonic game that had nothing to do with PlayStation, but was enjoyable to view nonetheless. Afterwards, Dan and I checked out Castle of Illusion and ran into David Jaffe (of Twisted Metal and God of War fame). He’s shorter in person than I would have imagined.
After a brief rest (E3 can get exhausting) I headed to my appointment with Konami. What I thought was going to be an exclusive press event turned out to be a PR rep that knew next to nothing about the games walking me around and reading me facts that were already known about them off of a couple of index cards. I got a press pass wristband that was supposed to fast track me to a playable version of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, but due to a long line and very few press specific stations, the wait took almost 45 minutes. The wait in line did one thing good as we saw Hideo Kojima coming out of the Konami booth to check out the show floor.
After Konami, it was a rush to Activision where I doubled up with Dan on his appointments. After we checked in we were taken to a back media lounge awaiting a Call of Duty: Ghosts presentation. This was more like what I expected the press appointments to be like. Exclusive previews of games away from the general public. Check out Dan’s Ghosts preview here for more on this experience. Next up was Destiny, but we wanted to try to get an interview. After a number of false starts, poor communication, and 15 minutes of waiting in seats next to Geoff Keighley, we gave that one up for dead and continued to our Destiny preview after a quick Doritos snack.
Destiny was another live gameplay demo (the same one shown in the Sony conference). Diablo III was finally a closed door demo that we actually got our hands on. This was the E3 that I was looking for. Finally. The bright and flashy lights on the show floor are fun, but I was eager to get the behind the scenes press exclusives that I was flown out here for in the first place. Diablo III was a ton of fun to play and we even got a short impromptu interview with one of developers. Stick to PSLS for the preview soon.
Then it was to the Konami booth again for a beer to wind down the end of the first day. Well, ok, the end of the day was the invite-only GamesRadar party with the open bar and Anthony dancing that really helped to relax us, but didn’t really help with the whole “getting up early for appointments” thing that is tomorrow.
Check out my account of the press conferences on Day Zero and stay tuned to PlayStation LifeStyle for more ‘Diaries of an E3 Virgin’ to get a glimpse inside E3 from the eyes of a first timer.
