It's the biggest eruption on the game schedule, but this year there will be a conference-shaped hole in player schedules. Los Angeles video game industry giant E3 2020 has been canceled due to fears of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The announcement wasn't shocking given the current state of the pandemic, but it will come as a blow to the gaming community, which has been celebrating E3 for nearly 25 years, with 2020 marking the first time the show didn't take place. This is an opportunity for developers and publishers to share information about their latest games, collect media hype, and most recently, let the public in as well for a quick peek at what's gracing their PCs and consoles for months and years to come. . . However, recent E3 shows have questioned the relevance of the event. Increasingly, major game announcements are made independently of E3, with some companies choosing not to exhibit at the show entirely. On the eve of its PlayStation 5 reveal, Sony has stated that it will not be participating in E3 2020 (before the current health crisis), while Nintendo has preferred for years to host its own web feed rather than an E3 conference (although it still has a substantial presence on the show). And so, it seems, all this year. Building a stand, sending teammates to the site - all this represents an expensive gamble for developers. But one thing can cost more than anything else: time. And the cancellation of E3 2020 as a result could be a boon for overworked teams.
crunch demo
In recent years, the games industry has opened up to its destructive culture, in which staff are encouraged (if not forced) to work grueling long hours to get a finished game out of stores in time for an appointment. . Fixed output. Participating in E3 can dictate some of the worst fears imaginable, as developers rush to put together a "vertical slice" of polished gameplay for a title that's months away from completion. This can be incredibly stressful: so much depends on the first submission of a game, and the turnaround time to get even a few minutes of gameplay can be brutal. It messes up, and it can be hard to recapture the lost hype a game was meant to generate. "From a pure development perspective, an E3 demo tends to be a massive distraction," said designer Sam Bass, who worked on E3 demos for Star Wars: Force Commander, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, Goldeneye: Agent Rogue. Kotaku said. "It derails a lot of the team from him over 1-2 months, which is often essential development time and often leaves them pretty exhausted." The E3 demo is also probably smoke and mirrors about what the final product will be. Think Bioware's anthem reveal: a stunning take on a shared-world jetpack sci-fi shooter... that's become one of the most annoying online games to launch. And even more notorious was the incredible demo for Gearbox's Aliens: Colonial Marines, which claimed to be a mind-blowing cinematic recreation of one of the greatest action movies of all time... but sent as a mistake, ugly, to half-finished. In both cases, neither turned out to be representative of the finished product. It is possible, of course, that the work that should be part of a demo becomes more like creating a sumptuous trailer, a major and carefully managed task. But at least it happens without the fear that a live demo, with its potential for bugs and glitches, will mention it. And so, with no delay to reach E3, this could be a surprisingly successful summer for game developers. They will be able to focus on what really matters: making the best game possible, instead of modifying a small part of it. As a result, we should all end up with better games and teams with less work.- E3 2020: what you need to know after cancellation