E3’s demise marks the end of an era for the video game industry

After gasps and fits and a death rattle that lasted nearly four years, the Electronic Entertainment Expo—or E3, the video game industry’s largest trade show—is now dead and gone forever.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which hosted the event, made the announcement Tuesday morning, confirming something most of us saw coming, but still hoped would not. It truly is the end of an era, though one that might have been inevitable.

E3 was a loud, raucous carnival, where everything competed for your attention, and the sound of games was cacophonous. Started in 1995, it was where big games made their splash. It was where new consoles were born. And it was where the industry came together in an often overhyped, but still seemingly essential, event.

I attended almost every E3 since 1997—missing only one for the birth of my child—so I’m as qualified as anyone to pen an obituary for this celebration of video games.

I’ll start with the obvious. E3 was an event. Giant booths, ludicrous parties, celebrity cameos—completely pointless, like Jamie Kennedy’s 2007 drunken appearance at an Activision conference; or superfluous, like Snoop Dogg who regularly showed up just to play any shooter he could find—plus closed-door meetings that meant you’d made the A-list. It was a show that topped all other trade shows, perhaps because, instead of getting a dry pitch about yet another pointless gadget, you got to be among the first to hear about (and often get to play!) a title that could become the gaming culture’s next obsession.

I remember that time I tried my hardest to eavesdrop on a conversation between Steven Spielberg and EA execs, fascinating sit-down conversations with former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, and trying out virtual reality on a headset made with ski goggles and duct tape in a back room, long before anyone had heard of Oculus.

It was a show that was born out of necessity, after the Consumer Electronics Show ghettoized games. As the industry’s sales escalated and a trade group was born, publishers decided to launch their own event to both meet with sellers and to be the sole focus of press coverage.

The E3s of the late ’90s and early 2000s were a different beast. The whispers and fear that would run through a publisher’s booth when, say, the buyer from Walmart was spotted were real. A good demo to that person and their team could have a huge impact on the annual revenues.

Times changed, of course. Buyers eventually met privately with publishers more regularly, and E3 became more of a media-focused soiree. But because the show had a unique energy to it, the excitement over E3 spilled into the larger gaming world. Players would try to sneak into the show, which was closed to the public. They would watch coverage on G4 (and later Twitch). And they would devour the thousands of stories reporters filed, looking for a little more information about eagerly anticipated upcoming games.

In E3’s waning years, the public was finally allowed through the gates, which made an already-packed show beyond crowded, but it let the people who make games connect directly with players.

The show going public might have been the start of E3’s demise, but ultimately it was mismanagement, advances in technology, and the pandemic that did it in.

The ESA failed to evolve E3 at the pace it needed to, giving rise to several E3-lite events. It never really embraced simulcasting parts of the show online, perhaps figuring the games media did enough of that. And the trade group took on some partners that, in retrospect, were ill-advised, not really understanding what the heart of E3 truly was.

The pandemic put an end to the class reunion feel of E3. COVID fears meant you no longer had a chance to have access to people like Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto or colleagues who only saw each other once or twice a year. Attempts to host a virtual E3 in 2021 fell flat, in part because the ESA did not have a grasp on how to run a virtual trade show.

There was a loss of institutional memory, as well. Rich Taylor and Dan Hewett, the two people largely responsible for the early and fondly-remembered E3s, moved on from the ESA, and the group failed to retain them as advisors to help guide the show.

And, of course, publishers learned that they could communicate directly with audiences via online presentations, saving themselves millions of dollars in the process. That, perhaps ultimately, was what struck the fatal blow to E3, as it made the show much less profitable. The loss of EA and Activision was bad; but when Sony and Nintendo, two of the show’s chief anchors, jumped ship, the writing was on the wall.

The video game industry can survive without E3, but it won’t be as fun. And the end of this long-running show that used to be such a big deal for so many people should be a warning to other trade shows—to never stop evolving and lose sight of what it is that makes these shows a success. One unexpected hurdle can end up being a permanent roadblock.

For those of us who went every year, June will never be quite the same.

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