BACK TO THE INDEX.
-By Philip Wesley-
-Posted May 9th, 2005-
-Like a super intelligent shade of blue, except orange.-
CHAPTER ONE
"In Which We Find Ourselves At A Beginning."
DMG Ice is a different kind of news and commentary website. Our E3 coverage matches our intent in this aspect. This is the first in an esteemed by none, reviled by a few, and met with slight apathy by the rest, chronicle of the events of E3 2005 and A-Kon 16 written in the style of an unimportant and mostly dead author. While I am sure that this author would not appreciate the simplistic drubbing that has been bestowed on him; I have yet to receive any calls from his team of mostly dead zombie lawyers. Curiously, the subtle difference between mostly dead and completely dead is not appreciated by those who find themselves in that state. This is the introduction to the coverage of E3 2005, and A-Kon 16. Both are "trade shows" by nature and thus regarded in various ways by various people of various trades. The first show is E3. The name E3 is a foreshortened term for EEE, which would have made for a far less palatable name for the trade show. No serious company, and no company that wishes to be taken seriously in some form or another, would honestly attend a trade show entitled EEE. Thus would their discourse with investors go something like this.
"Hello! I am the CEO of The MacroShift Company. My company is prominently showcased at EEE."
"What was that again, kind sir?"
"We were at EEE."
"Down that hall, the third door on the left. Don't use the third sink."
While we could ponder for hours on what would happen if the third sink was indeed used, that is not what this coverage is about. The EEE stands for Electronic Entertainment Exposition. The Electronic part of the name is a reference to the small bits of electrical current that power and run every single device shown at this trade show. For this reason, people with a propensity for carrying particularly large magnets are generally frowned upon when they enter the show area. The Entertainment part of the name is a contradiction of terms, as Entertainment is an entirely subjective term. Some people regard Football -known as Soccer in the un-populated wastelands of the United States of America- as a form of entertainment. This so-called "sport" involves men or women in unfashionable short pants, running around and kicking a defenseless sphere into nets. While they seem to enjoy this unabashed spheroid abuse, the ball does not seem to be partial to it at all. Unless the ball is a bit of a masochist, than fun and frivolity are had by all. The Exposition part of the name comes from the odd practice of all the major companies of trotting out whatever odd device they are hoping to pass off as both electronic and entertainment during the show. This is when a large majority of new games are exposed to the public for the first time. If a large majority of the public was exposed for the first time, this would be an entirely different kind of convention and would probably take place in Las Vegas, or San Francisco instead of Los Angeles or -as previous E3 conventions were- in Atlanta.
Los Angeles was chosen for the trade show because of the spacious amount of vast empty space available for the convention. It takes place next to the vast and empty space of the Staples Center, where a team known as The Lakers plays another game of spheroid abuse known as Basketball. While they are known as The Lakers, they really have nothing to do with Lakeing, because Lakeing is not a word. Oddly enough, the team of mostly tall, dark skinned, sex offenders is named after a slang term for a boat that is situated upon a lake. Another definition of Laker is that a Laker is a fish that lives in aforementioned lakes. IE: A Lake Trout. Why they have chosen to name themselves after fish or small water craft is beyond the mortal comprehension of Mankind, and if the concept were ever comprehended by Mankind, it would ruin his wrestling career more than what has already been done. This would prove most unfortunate as more people like him than they do Ric Flair or John Cena.
This trade show takes place in May every year for almost an entire week. The first two days of this convention are invariably tied up in registration and conferences that may be attended by those foolish enough to pay to spend time with people talking about subjects they could probably care less about. Subjects such as "In Game Advertisements," "Reaching Your Gameplay Goals," and "Aiming Your Game At The Female Demographic And Pulling The Trigger." The last five E3 conventions that the author has attended all had some sort of panel on how to attract female audiences. This is usually hosted by people who have never seen actual females or have ever been actual females. These appear to be rather fruitless as they may devolve into lengthy discussions on how Grand Theft Auto may appeal more to females if the hero was made to wear a pink shirt. The topic then devolves further into on a discourse on if the gay demographic is just the same as the female demographic and on why the female demographic believes in hygiene. Eventually, it is decided that games just need to feature large breasts to sell and that the female demographic is stupid anyways.
The interesting part of the show is that only those who are remotely connected to the video game or electronic entertainment industry may attend, although standards seem to be fairly low as musicians and people like John Carmack, who have no real business being there, have been spotted on the showroom floors. The people attending fall into a few different, color coded types. Usually there are four types of badges for attendees: General, Press, Exhibitor, and Limited. General is the lowest level badge aside from Limited. General is something that is either paid for or reserved for the lowest form of existence in the electronic entertainment industry: Retail. A large majority of those with a General badge are there because they had the fortitude and inability to form rational thought that has landed them an employment at a Radio Shack or a Game Stop store. Radio Shack is a store where people go to purchase electrical parts for fixing things they have broken while trying to fix the same things previously.
The next level is Media and this is somewhat debatable as the media is categorized as any kind of news reporting medium that has advertisements, current articles, and a business license. Many people work for tiny websites that copy and paste press releases into their articles and claim that this makes them solely better than other forms of media. The act of copying and pasting is the term given to placing ones hand on a computer input device commonly referred to as a mouse, and then pressing a button on that mouse to select or highlight some sort of writing for redistribution onto another place where writing is stored. A large majority of these input devices had a wire coming out the back of them that resembles a tail. Many people have figured that this supposed tail is the reason the device is called a mouse. This still makes very little sense as these input devices neither crave cheese and berries, nor do they enjoy climbing up the stockings of embarrassed maidens who have chosen to wear stockings on that particular day; despite stockings be very much out of style. There exists a subset of Media that makes their news articles in the form of a "BLOG." A BLOG is not some sort of rampant sludge beast from the third moon of Ka'lde'the'la'ng; but a slang term for a Perfectly Normal Web Ledger. A ledger is a term given to a collection of notes and thoughts about a particular item, or event. The web part of the word is taken from the often ignored idea that the internet (international network) is like the giant web of a particularly giant, ill tempered, spider. This idea is far from accurate as any sensible person knows that the internet is really more or less like the nest of a seagull near Redondo Beach in California. The nest is intricately developed from all sorts of odd pieces, and slightly foul smelling. Most of the time it sits there barely used, while waiting for some sort of boat, storm, or careless adolescent to destroy it. The perfectly normal part of the name is to prevent people from finding it to be odd. The people who "blog" their experiences are a bit like the people who own private diaries on public forum places such as "Live Journal." A Blog is a bit like a Live Journal that has placed excessive makeup on itself to prevent people from thinking of it as the tawdry whore it really is.
The level after this is referred to as Exhibitor and consists of those people who have paid a good and often large amount of currency to expose their products to the show attendees. They usually purchase several General badges for the many small time models, or disenfranchised drug addicts they hire to hang out around their product and make it appear to be desirable. They are allowed to enter the showroom floor before all other attendees as well as stay after the show for a nearly indefinite period of time.
The final level is Limited and this is for those who can only afford to go to the various conferences and not the main floor itself. These people usually have flashy badges with shiny colors to make them feel better about their sad and pathetic existence. Many of them may partake in another spheroid abuse game known as Golf. This is apparently a way of expressing their pent up anxiety over their low position in life.
There are various things that must be mentioned and noted carefully in this coverage, but I feel that if I went through all of them right now, you would feel that you really do not need to read the rest of the coverage as it would depress you to no end. I will take the rest of this subtle introduction to focus on the event that takes place after E3, and that even is A-Kon 16.
Where as E3 is a sober and very flashy event, A-Kon is an event that is much more low-key and subworldly. A-Kon is an animation convention that is not unlike Star Trek or Baseball Card conventions, aside from its invariably high opinion of itself that it is somehow much more classy than an aforementioned Star Trek convention. A-Kon is not to be confused with Akon, which is an entirely different type of event. Akon is not only an entirely different kind of event, Akon is apparently a person who splices words and samples of chipmunks into songs with future annoying ringtone potential. A-Kon is short for Anime Convention, except that convention is purposefully misspelled to reflect the intellect of their primary audience. Anime is slang for animation and is usually ascribed to animation made in countries that are not in North America, by people who believe that all animation made on the American continents is somehow rubbish. There are a few rather interesting parallels between the two events.
A-Kon and E3 both have conferences, except that the ones at A-Kon are mostly free as they are more depressingly inane. Things such as "Anime Karaoke" and "DDR Tournaments" are the normal pace for this show. There are some conferences that handle heady subjects as "Internet Relationships: Love & Sex in a Digital Age," "Japanese Traditional Flower Arranging and Dance," or "Once And For All: The Boys Of Gundam Wing Are Not Gay." There may also be conferences centered upon various internet published comic strips and animation like "Ill Will Press," "Megatokyo," and "Something Positive." Internet comic strips are comic strips that are either too good or too bad to be published in your local newspaper. The authors of these webcomics usually reserve their opinions on whether it is the too good or too bad part which applies to their works. While they reserve these opinions, they certainly are incapable of not talking about them to the annoyance of a few of their fans. Their main demographics consist of people who found their comics while browsing the internet and read the comics because they were too bored to download unhealthy amounts of pornography instead. Although there really is not much of a difference between many web comics and pornography. Some of the web comic artists have unusual ego or self esteem problems. Thus many of these conferences seem to go like this.
"So, I was wondering: Why the Zombies, and will you ever kill off Piro?"
"As God as my witness I hope to kill off Piro, myself, and half of my town someday!"
"We love your comic and cheerful disposition, impregnate me now!"
Companies like Bandai attend both A-Kon and E3 to announce new products, purchased animation licenses, and other things on which to waste your money, time, and the precious few brain cells you have not lost through breathing the air in Los Angeles or Dallas, Texas. Dallas, Texas is where A-Kon takes place and it contains less water than Los Angeles, and more gay people. Unlike Los Angeles, the gay people are all armed to the knickers and up. Coincidentally, the Knicks are another spheroid abuse team; but have suprisingly nothing to do with A-Kon or E3. Because of the presence of large companies, both conventions feature outrageously high priced food; but A-Kon features a lot less beer. This sad fact is lamented by most convention goers as the repercussion of A-Kon's acceptance of people under the age of 18.
An interesting thing to note about E3 and A-Kon is that they both tend to attract a large amount of low class models, prostitutes, and drug addicts. The difference is that at E3, they call them Staff, and at A-Kon they call them General Attendees. Most of the General Attendees at A-Kon are hyper, over-endowed, underage girls who think the best way to show their appreciation for the sharing of Japanese culture is to dress up in vaguely obscene costumes that partially resemble either Asuka from Evangelion, or a dying goat. I will address the phenomenon of this sort of "Costume Play" or "Cosplay" in a future article. That article may also touch on an entire sub-class of cosplay known as "Furries." This is a frightening prospect unto itsself.
Like E3, A-Kon is remarkably old and yet no one has stepped forward to end its life or teach it how to drive a stick shift. A-Kon is followed by the number 16 this year and that denotes that this is the sixteenth year the convention has taken place. This is a stupendous accomplishment as A-Kon is now old enough to be married in more states than in the previous year. Many people hope that A-Kon will be able to find a date to the homecoming dance or it will be terminally depressed. When conventions become terminally depressed, they tend to lash out at other conventions, or cut their arms with heated paper clips in an attempt to ease the pain of being alive, stupid, and depressed.
Somewhere the last dying breath of an orange and black striped spheroid escaped from inside of its hollowed body as the children looked on. There would be no Basketball today.
Article by Philip Wesley
The DON'T PANIC series of articles are an homage to the late (and unfashionably dead) Douglas Adams.
Property of DMG Ice, dmgice.com, and the original author as expressed in the by-line.