"If you were starting an industry right now, and one of the things you needed to do was to find a way that you can get your stuff in front of the press in a way that's really effective, you wouldn't create E3."

Back in August 2006, this was former ESA president Doug Lowenstein's assessment of the game industry's premier annual showcase. After over a decade of glitzy press conferences, flashy booths and a deafening, sensory overload show floor, the ESA realized their show was failing at one of its main purposes: getting information out to the press and the public.

So a change was planned. The Electronic Entertainment Expo would henceforth be the "E3 Media Festival." The 70,000 attendees that had crowded into the LA Convention Center in past years would be whittled down to about 5,000 invited journalists and tastemakers. The sprawling show floor would be replaced with an airplane hangar and a quartet of Santa Monica hotels with sit-down meeting space. If the old E3 was like a rock concert set inside a battlefield, the new E3 would be more like a folk festival set inside a pillow fight.

Not everyone has been thrilled with the changes, especially those who didn't get invited to the new show. Gamer 2.0 Managing Editor Anthony Perez went to his first E3 last year but wasn't able to secure an invite for the Media Festival. What's more, management decided it wasn't worth the expense to send the one staff member who actually did get invited. "I understand everything behind the ESA's decision ... [but] the invitation process is much too stringent," Perez said.

While many outlets will still be offering blanket coverage of the new E3, fewer journalists at the show means fewer viewpoints will be represented. "The Killzone 2 behind-closed-doors showing is going to have an even smaller group of people attending from the smaller group that is attending E3," said GearLive Editor Chris Pereira "That means you have less people who know what they're talking about, and a good chance that you might end up with a high percentage of people spreading the word on a game or genre they know little about. And since many of the smaller, enthusiast sites out there have no other option but to report on what they see on other sites, they might begin spreading this misinformed word."

In the power vacuum left in the wake of the old E3, many publishers have stepped up the prominence of their own "Gamers Days" to showcase their new games. Traveling around the country to attend these disparate events can be a problem for journalists on a shoestring budget. "I couldn't justify the time or expense ... of doing the pre-E3 shows in addition to E3, so I skipped it," said Wired Associate Editor Chris Baker. "I'm now wondering if maybe I'd have been better off going to the pre-E3 events and skipping the show proper."

Some see these sorts of single-publisher events as the future of press relations. "The decentralization is hardly a new thing," Eurogamer Deputy Editor Tom Bramwell said. "While the density of new 'Gamers Day' events may be greater, the potential for E3 to host new surprises isn't necessarily diminished, and the expanding audience for games obviously invites a proportional response from publishers... without any individual occasion losing its depth."

Scheduling trips to multiple Gamers Days might be nothing compared to scheduling sit-downs with multiple publishers at the new E3. "No one seems to know what is where or how to get from here to there," said Denver Post columnist Dave Thomas. "Booking hotels has been miserable since everything in Santa Monica is priced for Paris Hilton rather than grubby reporters and without the established E3-creep of press conferences on Tuesday, everything is overbooked before you even schedule your first meeting."

Eurogamer's Bramwell has had similar problems lining up appointments. "As it stands, I've only got three or four [appointments] confirmed, and many of the rest have either failed to respond to repeated requests for information or have told me that they don't know what's going on yet. Three separate publishers even told me that they won't know what's going on until the show starts, while several - including one platform holder - are only sending one person from the whole of their U.K. operation."

And scheduling appointments is more important than ever this year. While the E3 show floor of old will be emulated by a free-for-all showcase in an airplane hangar, most publishers this year are concentrating their press outreach efforts on one-on-one sit-downs at posh hotel meeting spaces. The new focus is already getting a mixed response from journalists.

"In the past, E3 was very much a 'see it for a minute, play it for even less show," said Game Informer Executive Editor Andy Reiner. "Now, it looks like most of our staff will be able to see and play just about everything. ... Rather than fighting through crowds and waiting in line, we can now just sit down and play game after game." Bramwell agrees that the secluded appointment setting will make things easier. "We'll get a much better appreciation of [a game's] strengths, we'll be able to ask questions and get informed answers and we'll not be so exhausted by day two that our work suffers."

That's fine for major outlets that can divide up to meet with all the major publishers, but the focus on sit-down appointments can make it harder for a single person to see everything. "The tax on time of moving between all these hotel rooms and an airport hangar will be too much," Thomas said. "I figure I'll see half as much as I have seen in years past. So, really, we are trading quantity for quality."

Many journalists are worried that the new format will make it harder for a previously unknown game to break through the noise and become the sensation of the show. "I can no longer easily graze the floor for a couple of hours and pick up on something off the beaten track," Bramwell said. "I can't necessarily find a Katamari Damacy or a Cameltry or an Ouendan or an Armadillo Run in an appointment-only environment where I have to bias my schedule toward things that we know our readers want covered. For all its faults, the old-format E3 was sometimes able to thrust interesting games into our peripheral vision."

Indeed, the old E3 had at least one area that was a regular smorgasbord for these kinds of diamonds in the rough. "E3 used to have Kentia Hall," Thomas said, "a veritable William Gibson scene of near-future bazaar, where anyone could get a moment of attention from international media, if they actually had something worth showing. This year ... most of the journalists I know plan on visiting the show floor briefly, in between other meetings. E3 has been demoted and the 'real' E3 is happening at swanky hotel rooms in Santa Monica."

It's enough to make a journalist want to pack up and skip the whole thing – which may not be such a bad idea, actually. "I think we should be looking to things like Xbox Live to replace E3," Baker said. "If you can download demo levels and hi-res trailers at home, who needs an E3 to learn about new games? For that matter, who needs web sites and magazines? Yikes!"

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Special bonus invitation! Again!
If you've read this far and are going to be in the Santa Monica area for E3, you're invited to the IGJA's third annual not an E3 party. It will be taking place from 4:30 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 10 (just before the Microsoft conference) at the Ye Olde Kings Head bar and restaurant. More detailed information is available at the IGJA site. Hope to see you there.
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Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.