Episode I

Charly Shelton is a travel and entertainment writer. For the last 16 years, he has covered many aspects of the entertainment industry. Now CV Weekly’s newest writer, Jake Bowman, will be taking on the video game review beat. They both attended E3 – the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest video game convention in America – and had different thoughts on some aspects of it. Charly has been attending E3 since 2004 and Jake attended for the first time this year.

Recently, they sat down and had a conversation about their experiences at the show.

Charly Shelton: So what did you think of the E3 experience?

Jake Bowman: Overall I enjoyed the experience but it was my first time there so I think that a lot of what I enjoyed was the newness of the whole thing and the excitement of being surrounded by a bunch of people who like the same things I do.

CS: So your opinion is clouded because it’s all shiny and new?

JB: Not exactly, no. [For me to] take an objective look at E3 this year [you need to] keep in mind part of my opinion is going to be skewed by what I read online and the online ecosystem that I’m a part of.

CS: And you have watched coverage of the show from years before, right?

JB: Yeah.

CS: So you’re familiar with the layout and what’s expected?

JB: Yes, though now my understanding is based on sources that I’ve read and some things that I’ve listened to. E3 moves in cycles; every three years or so you have a really big E3 and the in-between years are kind of downtime. And now, because we know with pretty much 100% certainty that Holiday 2020 will be the release of the new consoles [the Xbox Project Scarlett and the PlayStation 5], that means this year’s E3 was a little bit of a standby, like it was just a holding pattern for the release of all this stuff they’re going to talk about next year.

CS: Yeah, it does run in waves. This was [Harry Potter and the] Order of the Phoenix for getting ready for next year’s show and all the new games that will be on the new consoles. E3 2020 is going to be [Harry Potter and the] Half Blood Prince and E3 2021 will be all the new games for Scarlett, once it’s out, so that’s going to be [Harry Potter and the] Deathly Hallows.

JB: Yes and no. I think by E3 next year, we will have a price point, a look at the style and all the specs for both new consoles, for Sony and Microsoft’s new consoles.

CS: And they’ll probably be playable at next year’s E3.

JB: Which means that Sony will most likely make an appearance at E3, which is already going to make E3 much bigger than it was this year. On top of that, you’ll start to get game announcements for exclusives coming to each platform, you’ll get basically launch titles coming to each platform, so E3 next year is going to be like Deathly Hallows and Half Blood Prince combined into one, right? Then, with the following E3 2021 being sort of another holding pattern type thing, but you’re still coming off the high of E3 2020.

The conversation continues in next week’s issue of CV Weekly.

Photos by Lillian SOGAR