Update April 1st, 2022 10:15 GMT: The ESA has officially confirmed that E3 2022 will not go ahead in any form.
E3 2022 should be just a few short months away, yet here we are and it’s not clear what the ESA’s plans are for this year’s event. In fact, we’re not even sure if there will be an E3 event at all.
E3 2020 was the first time the annual gaming event had been cancelled in over 15 years. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, gathering thousands of people into the chilly convention halls was not advised, so the event was called off and shifted to online.
E3 2021 was also a digital-only event, with publishers and developers trying to drum up some excitement with a variety of livestreams and an endless barrage of trailers. It still made sense; the pandemic was going nowhere and the ongoing health concerns were completely valid. Vaccines had yet to be rolled out fully and new variants were sweeping the globe. Plus, America was still closed to the rest of the world and would not re-open until November 2021.
So what about E3 2022?
If you, like me, had dreams of trotting through the halls, racing to find the nearest bathroom after chowing down on a questionable hot dog from one of the many street vendors that litter the curbside of the L.A Convention centre where E3 takes place, dream on. It’s not happening this year.
The ESA – the organisation that runs the annual E3 event – confirmed back in January 2022 that there would be no physical event taking place in Los Angeles this year due to Coronavirus.
Does that mean we’ll have another digital E3? Maybe. But also maybe not.
In a statement to IGN, the ESA “could not confirm at this time whether or not there would be a digital event this year,” and nothing has been said since. The official E3 Twitter account has been silent since last year, and the E3 website hasn’t been updated in a long time. The silence is deafening.
Normally, the dates for the next E3 are announced before the current E3 has even finished. This happened in 2020, when the dates for E3 2021 were announced, though it was with a disclaimer that a physical, in-person event may not happen.
This year? Nothing. By the time the disastrous E3 2021 wrapped up, no dates for 2022 were set. And with that in mind, and considering there hasn’t been a peep from the ESA despite the usual June dates being just a couple of months away, it’s looking unlikely that there will be an E3 2022 at all – physical or digital.
Digital E3 Was a Failure
The shift to a digital event for E3 2020 and E3 2021 was not exactly successful. For fans, it was nice to be a part of the conversation and not just catching poorly snapped photos of the show floor on Twitter. To be able to livestream any event that takes one’s fancy is certainly convenient, and with everything being saved as video-on-demand, it made the event less about being at a certain place at a certain time; you could catch up whenever it suited you.
However, for media and exhibitors, it was a true pain in the backside. Publishers and their PR teams trying to show off their games via streaming on Discord is not ideal. They couldn’t guarantee a captive audience – I know I wasn’t paying attention half the time as my screaming son ran riot around the house – and technical issues are bound to arise, and they did. I was part of one preview group where we heard everything, but saw nothing.
For media who typically attend E3, it made the event a real slog. The E3 portal website was nigh-on pointless, and rather than being an event to be excited about, it just became a few days of being tied to a desk, when usually, it’s a time to unwind, chat with one’s peers, and enjoy the L.A sunshine… and smog.
The Future of E3 – Will E3 2023 Happen?
E3 is an expensive undertaking, and many independent developers and smaller publishers can’t afford to spend big on a fancy booth. The shift to online democratised E3 in a way it had never been done before. Small, independent game developers could hold their own livestreams from their tiny offices or bedroom workspaces and slap “E3 2022” on it and be a part of the conversation, whether they were officially associated or not.
The big players, like Ubisoft, Square Enix, Bethesda, and so on, stuck by the ESA and kept the E3 2022 association close and official, and probably at some monetary cost. There’s no need now – just throw out a Tweet, email the gaming outlets on the mailing list, and tell them you’re hosting a special livestream on YouTube and Twitch and, well, there you have it: the modern, digital E3, and all without paying the ESA a penny.
Personally, I’m hoping E3 2023 is a return to the good old pre-Covid summer days. A livestream is convenient, but you just can’t capture what E3 is all about when you’re sweating like a pig at your desk. Fingers crossed this virus buggers off before next June. I want my questionable hot dogs and the liquid regret they produce, thank you very much.