With E3 being a week away, I thought I would impart my vast wisdom to those who are putting on a press conference, so that they put THE best conference imaginable. One that does not disappoint their fans, shoot them in the foot for the rest of the financial year or cause them to back pedal on stuff they have said cannot be changed.
1. Pre Show Preparation
First off, you have to prepare yourself for your conference. This is the big one, where all your new IPs and shiny new products are going to be announced. So, make sure you leak most of the big announcements beforehand in order to take the pressure off yourself. You don’t want your fans and customers to be overwhelmed by the onslaught of new games do you? Just remember to vehemently deny these leaks if anyone asks you about them before the actual conference, even though they are 99.9% legitimate. You want to leave the world in suspense, right? Just in case you are performing an elaborate double bluff to keep your fans on their toes.
2. Choosing the Hosts and Guests
Now, you have to pick your host. Remember, this is the person who will be the face of your company, who will be the person on which all scorn and love will heaped on after the conference is done. What you shouldn’t do, is pick a knowledgeable, articulate member of your company to clearly present all the exciting things you have to offer. Instead, pick a random celebrity who probably has no interest in gaming at all to host your conference. Their randomly reading words they have no clue about off a teleprompter, is much better than having someone who has a deep knowledge and clear passion for games present at you conference. If you can’t get a random celebrity, just pick some random schmuck from your marketing department, hop him up on caffeine and put him on stage. What could possibly go wrong, right?
Usher. Now that’s a guy I want in my video game press conference.
As for guests, pick people who again, obviously have no clue what they are talking about and are just appearing on stage for a quick paycheck. Get a musician who many of your audience probably dislike to perform on stage, get comedians to mock your own press conference and call random sportsmen up on stage because what fans watching your conference really want to see, instead of new game announcements or information on your console.
3. Choosing your stage demos and trailers to show off
This stage is the core of your presentation, what everyone watching is going to remember and get excited over. To that end, demo games that no-one cares about. Get children up on stage to demo motion control games, get people with no rhythm at all to show off rhythm games or even better, get your demo to freeze on stage to keep people in suspense about what might be on the way. Also, don’t bother checking if your controls are set up properly before starting the demo, nothing could possibly interfere with them. When it comes to trailers, show off stuff that people have already seen and have known about for a while instead of revealing something new. Don’t check if the sound is working on your trailer either, it’s not that important for a live demonstration. Even better, don’t show a trailer at all, instead just talk about how great the game is and show the logo, with nothing to confirm that the game is even in development.
However, the best thing to do is to not show anything to do with games at all. Talk about how your company stock is doing and how sales figures are exceeding expectation. Make a big deal about how your console can stream, use Netflix and utilise a second screen really well, rather than discussing what is really important to people watching the conference, which is the games. Talk about random accessories which may never even be released and keep saying the word ‘experience’. Everyone loves that word. Who cares if you’ve got a highly anticipated sequel coming or are bringing out a new IP, what people really care about is Facebook integration.
4. Picking your show-stopper/big finish
Here is your ace in the hole, your big surprise which will knock everybody’s socks off and get people talking for the rest of the show. If you are showing something new, make the footage seem so mind blowingly amazing, that the final product cannot hope to match up to what you initially teased. Make sure you really build up to whatever you are showing off, make the wait for it absolutely agonising and then, don’t match the hype! Reveal some random new franchise which looks lacklustre or a game that not a single person has asked for! Don’t even think about finishing with a well anticipated sequel that literally everyone in the audience is waiting for. Again, you don’t want to overexcite your audience and end the show with something amazing. That might seem like overkill.
Forget ending on a new IP or anticipated sequel. You should end on a mini game collection!
There you have it, the easy guide to put on the best conference ever! Now you just have to deal with the rest of the show, show demos, the eventual backlash from fans and the press, constant questioning of your business decisions for the next three days and unrelenting criticism for every decision from all corners of the internet. Don’t forget, you have all this to look forward to again next year! See you at E3!
Warning: Under any circumstance, do NOT create your E3 press conference based off this guide. You will be attacked with the fury of a thousand fanboys and have gifs of your failure plastered over every gaming site for the next month. You’ll look quite silly.
