Watched a bit of the Geoff Keighley stream earlier on. Sadly I missed the reveal of Metal Slug Tactics, which is an awesome thing to know exists nonetheless — but I found the rest of the show so excruciating after a while I had to turn it off before it finished.
The trouble with shows like this is that they feel so false. Every time some corporate representative from a company (let's face it, from Activision) stepped out and started waffling on about delivering the quality and excellence their consumers expect from their robust content roadmap, I just wanted to wring someone's neck. None of them actually said anything; it was all just empty management speak that didn't reveal anything whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Geoff Keighley kept commenting on how he was "honoured" to feature certain indie titles in the presentation, and my only thought was — if you're that honoured to feature them, why not actually invite the developers on to talk about them? I suspect most of the developers of these "honourable" indie games would be far more interesting than Generic McGenericpants from ActiBlizzard tellling us in a flat monotone about how "the team feels passionately" about something that doesn't matter, like the supposed "story" in a competitive multiplayer shooter.
Every time I see a show like this I think about all the words I write every year about the games I love. I think about how enthusiastic the people I talk to online are about the games they enjoy. And I think about how little of that comes across in these woefully artificial corporate presentations.
I'm not saying everyone on stage needs to be a screeching, frantically gesticulating YouTuber — the prevalence of the concept of "Influencers" can eat a fucking dick — but it'd be nice to have a gaming event that remembers what a love of gaming is like, rather than feeling like a corporate quarterly all-hands meeting that no-one is really paying attention to because nothing of any real worth is actually being said. I left them behind with my last job; I don't need them in my entertainment!
Ah well. I wasn't expecting much from the presentation and as such I wasn't really disappointed. As always, the most interesting news tends to show up when you least expect it.
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