This week’s episode is focused on the press conferences of E3 2012, and true to the Podcast’s name, there is much loathing to be had.

LINKS

• Be sure to check out Leanne’s podcast 8-Bits and Pieces
• This week’s music performed by Powerglove
• This week’s music also featured guest vocalist Tony Kakko of the band Sonata Arctica

THOUGHTS

This was an interesting week. I’m learning more about Audacity and its tools, and while in some ways I’m getting happier with the finished product I’m also not so happy with some of the production. Skype MP3 Recorder seems to have issue dealing with multiple people speaking at once. Recording directly into Audacity, such as I do with the opening and closing, pulls in a lot of background noise that I don’t know how to get rid of. Most of all, I’ve noticed that most of the time in the Podcast it feels like there are only two people having a conversation rather than all three. This happened quite frequently last week, too. I don’t know if it is a problem with the one-topic concept, however, where the conversation is more free to move and change throughout the hour. These are things to consider moving forward.

I did enjoy having Leanne on, however, and she really pulled through as a last minute addition. She made it a much more interesting Podcast than if it were just me and Matt talking the whole time. I’ll be seeing if I can loop her in more in the future when she’s not bogged down in her own podcast and activities.

As for E3, after recording this podcast I gave it some thought and also read some interesting articles on the topic, and I’m beginning to think there’s a lot of reasons people are so upset this year, and it may not just be the fault of the show itself. The Internet has changed a lot in a mere decade. I remember being in high school at the turn of the century watching a collection of thirty-second low resolution clips showcasing individual games for the Xbox and GameCube. Entire press conferences weren’t streaming yet. The consumer could only grab as much information as was provided by the press, and most of it was only hitting the public for the first time. When they first began streaming press conferences, the new consoles were all getting ready to come out. In fact, the first Press Conference I recall streaming was the debut of the Nintendo DS. With new consoles comes new surprises.

In recent years we’ve seen a major change in how game developers hype their games. They don’t always announce them at E3, they stage leaked information to get buzz going, and screenshots and video clips are all over the place. Ten years ago, even if Dead Space 3 had leaked early, I imagine E3 would have been the first time anyone outside of the press would have seen any footage of it. There still would have been an element of mystique and surprise. These days the media is over-saturated with this sort of content. Everyone is looking for something to wow them, and while it may have done so a number of years ago, there’s no such shock now.

Or perhaps there really were few surprises this year compared to a decade ago. That same press conference that Nintendo showcased the Nintendo DS Microsoft announced Star Wars: Republic Commando, a previously unheard of game. It was the first of many that day.

In any event, it is possible that E3 is changing because the enthusiasts, consumers and press are all changing as well. In any event, it is interesting to see this dark cloud of negativity over this year. Maybe it is all in our heads, or maybe times are just changing, but even trying to view it from a different perspective fails to get me excited about most of what I saw.