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In around a decade of writing about video games professionally, I have never been to E3. I sometimes feel embarrassed about that, but there's a good reason for it: I absolutely refuse to believe that E3 is real. The concept is too ghastly to exist. An "expo", you say, where members of the press, public and development community are permitted to mingle? Freely? Pfff, come off it. You can't fool me with your countdown pages and offers of overseas employment. What kind of maniac would ever dream up such an experience? And how stupid would you have to be to put yourself through it?I jest, but only a little. E3 has always struck me as the sort of raucous mass-hallucination that is paradoxically most substantial when it's contemplated from a great distance - the distance from the Los Angeles Convention Centre to Future Publishing's old London office, for example, where it was my curse to report on E3 as Official Xbox Magazine's online editor for no less than four years. Which years? 2011 to 2014. So, in other words, from right before the Xbox One happened, when Microsoft was knocking us sideways with exclusives like Ascend: New Gods, till shortly afterwards. To put that in terms a Fallout 4 player would understand, this is kind of like being sent to cover a knitware gala in the town of Sanctuary, Massachusetts around, oh, the third week of October 2077.
In the course of those years I have come to wrestle with certain great truths about the human condition, truths I will now impart to you in hopes of turning everybody off E3 entirely and onto Gamescom, where they have tastier finger food. Onwards!
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