In the wake of E3’s latest official death, maybe for good this time, I’ll offer my perspective on why it existed the way it did in the first place. The thing is, it didn’t start as an event for fans, as PAX did, and it didn’t start as a conference for game developers, as GDC did. It started as an event first and foremost for retail buyers, who were once, many years ago now, a critical part of the industry. These were the guys (mostly all guys) from Best Buy or Walmart who held the power to decide what products were actually stocked in stores. Today the physical game and movie section of a big chain store is a sad affair, but there was a time when this territory was very precious and hotly contested, since it was the main place you made money if you were a publisher of games. Therefore it was critical to get retailers excited about your new products, so they would buy lots of copies and dedicate a lot of shelf space to them.
Matthew Seiji Burns
- he I guess
- matthewseiji.com/
Matthew Seiji Burns is a writer and director who works on game-like things and other things.
I’m the guy who knows how the game industry works, so here’s how it is. I’m gonna lay it out for you. It’s all here, start to finish. How games are made. You wanna know how games are made? How we make games in the game industry? I’ll tell you. I’ll let you in on this. It’s not something a lot of people know. It’s not something most people know, maybe not something anybody knows. Games, they get made, it’s a mysterious process… but I’m one of the guys who does it. I’m a game dev. That means I make games. I’m no pretender who doesn’t know how games are made, trying to act like I know. I actually, really know. I’m in the industry, I’ve been in the industry. I’ve made games, shipped games, I’ve worked on games. I’m working on a game right now. And once you work on games, like me, you learn how the game industry works. Here’s something. Artists go like this, but producers go like that. Little joke for you. Inside game industry joke, you probably wouldn’t understand unless you make games, like I do. You might think you know this stuff but you don’t. There’s a lot of guys out there saying, oh, you have to program the game with the software code. Sure. That’s part of it, but you’re missing a lot of the other aspects. There’s the planning. There’s the fine-tuning. Not anyone can just make a game. It’s very complex. You can’t come in here and just ask how it all works. I can try to explain it, but it’s difficult to understand. There are lots of advanced concepts involved. There’s a lot going on with game development and the game industry in general. There’s a lot of different forces and factors. That’s just one of the important things you have to know. That’s why I’m here to tell you how the game industry works. I want people to know, because they don’t know, but I do. So I’m telling you, this is how it is. This is how games get made. This is how it works. I hope to shed a little light on the game industry for you. Feel free to ask any questions you may have. I won’t have the time to answer them because I’m so busy making games all the time. Thank you, everyone, for listening to me explain this. Now I have to go back to making games, at my job, which is a game development job at a game studio in the game industry, where I work making games.