I’ve been in Los Angeles for the E3 videogame convention, which means I’ve had one of the best weeks of my life. In order to record exactly what I did for posterity, and in order to tell all my great stories to friends (and anyone who reads this site), here’s a quick rundown of all the crazy stuff I was able to do this week, and how I feel about it.
Saturday
I flew out of Chicago Saturday morning last week — the plane ran a little late because of a system problem, but we got there fine. David Carradine was on my flight into LAX — I didn’t talk with him, but I did cut him off while entering the plane, accidentally of course. There were lots of Air Force folks on the plane, all headed home, and the pilot gave them a salute over the announcement system a few times. The movie was Be Kind Rewind, which a) I didn’t realize they were actually showing the movie until halfway through, and b) I didn’t like very much. I guess it’s not a good idea to watch a Michel Gondry movie on a small screen through headphones.
When I arrived in LA, I ran off to get my car, and was given three choices: an SUV, a white Kia, and a black PT Cruiser. I passed on the SUV, and figured for some reason that the Cruiser would have the best gas mileage, so I took it. I rolled up to Santa Monica first — I wanted to stop by the Apple Store at the Third Street Promenade, and buy a case for my iPhone before the week started.
When I got there, the line was nuts — there was an iPhone line down the street, and there was another line just to get into the store. I waited for about thirty minutes, which is a disgusting amount of time to wait to buy something, but after about ten minutes of waiting, I decided that I didn’t want to waste all my time, so I stayed. Once inside, I bought an iSkin Revo — I wasn’t so sure about the skin when I put it on Sunday evening, but since then it’s looked pretty good.
I also grabbed some dinner — I ate a pretzeldog, which is a hot dog wrapped in a pretzel. Pretty gross (and pretty tasty), but I wanted to hurry for what I’d decided was the main event: driving up the California coast as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.
Just to make sure I was in the right place, I walked out to the edge of Santa Monica, and looked out over the Pier. I’d been there once before back when I lived in LA for a summer during college, and it was beautiful — palm trees swaying above, the pier reaching out into the blue, and the sun turning orange overhead. I hurried back to the car and started rolling up the coast — just as the sun reached the horizon, I turned on to California 101 and started driving up the coast.
It was awesome. The houses are great up there, and the road was an easy drive. I wanted to stop and look out over the ocean, but I was racing the sun, and I wanted to see as much as I could with what little light I had. Right around Ventura, darkness fell completely, and while my plan was to head up to Bakersfield that night (to drive back through the desert on Sunday), I had to revise it. I stayed at a Motel 6 in Ventura, and planned to drive north in the morning.
Sunday
I woke on Sunday to a hazy bit of sunshine — after dressing and packing, I double checked my map and then drove north out of Ventura on highway 33, the California Safety Corridor. This is where the drive really got good — I had seen on the map that it was natural forests, but now I could see that it was mostly mountains with all kinds of brush and stone, and just amazing. Views were everywhere, and I was super glad that I had waited to drive during the day — I stopped on the side of the road and took a few good pictures.
And as if that wasn’t enough, in the middle of my drive, I was surfing the radio, and came upon a familiar tune:
Oh, hear that old piano coming down the avenue
I hear the roses, I look around for you
That sweet old someone, coming through that door.
It’s Saturday, ‘n’ the band is playin’
Honey, could we ask for more?
I couldn’t — I was having a ton of fun driving down windy roads through beautiful mountain vistas while listening to A Prairie Home Companion. It was, like much of the rest of this week, perfect.
I did get stopped once during the trip — there was a fire further up on the road, and the fire department had stopped us. We waited out there for about forty-five minutes — I sat down and wrote some text about how LA seems to make me want to just write and write as much as I can. Suddenly, I heard a rush of sound, and a helicopter flew very close to the mountain we were waiting on. As I watched it whoosh overhead, a cloud of mist rose from behind the mountain where the chopper had come from — it had dropped water on the highway ahead of us. A little while after that, the fire department decided we could go on, and as I went past, I couldn’t see any water. Either the water had been dropped someplace I couldn’t recognize, or it had already evaporated in the dry, hot sun.
On the other side of the mountains, things get even hotter and there’s desert. I never did see a cactus, but I saw plenty of ranches, the kind that celebrities buy and run. I found a gas station out there in the middle of nowhere (complete with silent old guy sitting out front), and decided to turn back towards the city — I had to return the car by 4.
On the way back, I stopped by In and Out Burger, the absolute best fast food in the world. Recently I’ve been trying to wean myself off the fast food, but fans of In and Out know it doesn’t really count — the fries are cut and made fresh, and the burgers are the tastiest around. It was a terrific meal, another great part of a great day.
Afterwards, I headed into Beverly Hills (we stayed at the Avalon), and the week really started. I met up with the Joystiq crew — I knew most of them by name, but only a few by face, so there were a lot of introductions to be made. I drove the car back to the airport, grabbed a ride back to the hotel, and settled in for the week.
We had a conference room reserved for the whole week (which is where I write this right now, actually) inside the hotel, complete with WiFi, comfy chairs, and a big conference table. This is where I spent a good part of my week, writing posts, responding to emails, coordinating schedules, and just generally working hard in a way that was so much fun it felt like goofing around. I would say that the rooms were nice (and they were — the beds were very comfy), but I spent most of my time not sleeping out of them anyway.
Monday
The E3 conference didn’t actually start until Tuesday, but companies often plan big press conferences and events earlier in the week. Microsoft was first up — their press conference was scheduled for Monday morning, and instead of going along with the crew (and taking up an invite slot), I stayed behind, helping hold things down at the conference room in the hotel. I posted a few good news stories out of the press conference, including maybe the biggest news of the show: that Final Fantasy XIII was coming to the Xbox 360 (formerly unthinkable, considering that the game’s makers are so close to Microsoft’s competitor Sony).
For the afternoon, Electronic Arts was having their press conference, and for that one I was able to go out to the Orpheum Theater, where they were holding it. I was supposed to watch for news of MMOs, and while I did see lots of promos about The Sims, a really nice but short talk from Wil Wright about Spore, and both Bill Walton and Natalie Gulbis pimping EA Sports titles, the only MMO news that came out of the conference was a partnership with Rupter. I IM’d it back to the homebase, and the story got posted on Massively.
After the EA event, we headed back to the hotel, and I met a few more of my fellow bloggers who I’d spoken to many times over the Internet, but never in person. A group of us from Massively went out and grabbed dinner together at Cafe Brazil, a Brazilian place one of us knew in LA. I had a steak sandwich which was very tasty, and we chatted about blogging, each other, and how great the food was.
Tuesday
Tuesday was the start of the convention, but first we had two press conferences to liveblog. Nintendo lead off, and their showing was pretty poor — I wrote about the new mic for their Wii, and the new Animal Crossing game they announced (I had hoped it would be massively online, but no such luck). Sony had a press conference in the afternoon — they announced the release of movies on their online service, and they broke the official news of God of War III, even though we didn’t get much more than a still.
Tuesday evening I headed to the convention center for the first time. There were two levels there: the top level was full of a bunch of meeting rooms, full of PR people and games displays, with all the little companies that were showing off games at the convention. The lower floor held the show floor, which was an open area, with lots of booths also showing off new and unreleased games.
E3 used to be a gigantic spectacle — it used to be open to the public, and companies would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and grab as much attention as they can, including handing out swag like candy and putting signs everywhere. But nowadays, it’s been scaled back a lot — a few years ago, it went to press-only, and this year companies have decided that they should take it easy — most devs just stayed in the meeting rooms and met only by appointment with a limited number of press outlets. There were lots of games to play, and I played plenty, but you had to hunt a little bit and know the right people to get into some places.
I didn’t play much on Tuesday, though — we went in the evening to the Activision press conference, held in an old church in downtown LA turned into a neon-lit club. It was the one thing I was supposed to attend for WoW Insider, since Blizzard and Activision just merged. But unfortunately, there was only one mention of Blizzard and nothing about WoW, so it turned out to be the most boring press conference I saw — they showed off Spiderman: Web of Shadows, the new James Bond game, and they really pressed hard on Guitar Hero 4, to no avail: I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Rock Band and Harmonix fan. But the best part of the press conference was afterwards — they held a reception, and Activision spared no expense with the bar and food. Open bar, and they were serving a make-your-own chili bar, dumplings of a few different kinds, sushi, gourmet pizza, mini-burgers, and more. I never ate as good all week as at the Activision reception.
From there we went over to the Bethesda party at a western saloon-themed place on Sunset Boulevard (I had been there before, in my previous LA life). I was hoping to play Fallout 3, but there was no sign of any videogames. There was, however, some food (not as good as the Activision party, but still tasty), more free beer, and later on in the evening, some smores. And karaoke. And a mechanical bull. No one I knew did either, but I had a good time visiting the old club (I once ran a tab up there, and then realized I didn’t have any money — had to borrow from an acquaintance, which was a bit awkward).
After that we headed back and did more blogging. I should say that at this point I was pretty tired — every waking minute not spent watching game demos or traveling between parties was spent at a computer, writing down my thoughts about said game demos or parties. It was a lot of work, but I loved every minute of it — covering this kind of game and tech stuff on the fly feels like what I was born to do. And the terrific team I was with buoyed me even when sleep beckoned mercilessly — every minute we had together was filled with “Did you see this? Did you hear about this? I just saw Cliffy B! Who’s writing that preview?” It was great the whole time.
Wednesday
Wednesday, I determined, was the day I would finally traverse the show floor and play as much as I could, although things didn’t exactly work out as planned. I woke early and spent the morning blogging everything I’d seen the previous day, and then headed into the convention center for meetings with the Xbox Live Arcade folks (probably the best games I played at the show), THQ Wireless (makers of a couple of games for the iPhone), and later in the afternoon, BioWare. At the BioWare meeting, I dropped a question about the Knights of the Old Republic MMO, and of course they pretended to have no idea what I was talking about — until the next day, when they confirmed the game.
After the BioWare meeting, we headed back to the Orpheum for one of the best parts of the week — Harmonix held a party there for Rock Band 2. When we arrived, we found multiple Rock Band 2 setups, including a full stage with monitors everywhere so people could play facing the audience. I jumped up on stage immediately with a few others from Joystiq, and made a sad mistake singing the first song. Later on, I was able to play some drums, and did a little better, but with a setup like that, no matter what happened, it was a good time. And at the end of the night, they flooded us into the actual theatre, not to show us a game, but to have The Who (the actual Who) on stage to perform a full live set, complete with a four song encore. Unbelievable. Baba O’Riley and Won’t Get Fooled Again were two of the best songs I’ve ever seen performed live, period. Never, ever thought I’d see The Who live, and I was lucky enough to see them play for free at a videogame company’s party.
Thursday
Thursday was another great day (see the theme?) — the morning started back at the convention center, where I tried to complete my run of the show floor. I played Infinite Undiscovery for a bit, the new Animal Crossing game, a bit of Banjo Kazooie 3, some more Rock Band (how could we not, after seeing The Who the night before), a little Chrono Trigger DS, and a bunch of other games, good and bad. I tried out the Falcon controller (it’s pricy, but offers tactile feedback like no other controller I’ve ever seen), and Spore for the iPhone (as well as seeing Mercenaries 2, Mirror’s Edge, and Warhammer) and sat and worked a lot in the press room, trying to clear up everything I had and get it all published on the blogs.
And in the evening, we had another terrific night. The Joystiq meetup was held at Mahalo’s offices, and I got to explore a swank little tech company, and meet some more colleagues I knew by name, but not face. Readers also came by to get some of the tons of stuff we gave away, and I was able to play Rock Band, Halo, SSB, and Call of Duty 4 with readers, as well as the star of the show, Rock Band 2. A Naughty Dog dev also came by (I geeked out a little bit about his games), and it was really fun chatting with fans and rocking out on the Rock Band drums. At the end of the night, the leads of Massively sat down to play a Weezer song in Rock Band 1, and we five starred it (naturally), even though I was playing with sharpies (the drum sticks for the set were nowhere to be found).
Great night — we finished it up with a delivery from Rosco’s Chicken and Waffles while still blogging.
Friday
And today is Friday. This morning, the Joystiq team woke up to go see The Dark Knight — a terrific movie, the best comic book movie I’ve ever seen, one of the best Batman movies I’ve ever seen, and the best Joker I think I’ve ever seen portrayed. It was at the Grove near the Farmer’s Market in LA (we ate lunch there afterwards — I had some BBQ pork and teriyaki chicken over rice), and that place was strangely magical.
Right after we left the movie, I wasn’t quite sure where my group was, but I wasn’t really concerned. I slowly walked through the street, golden California sunlight floating past the shiny retail stores, retro lamplights, and palm trees that grew inside the modern outdoor mall. Families were shopping, some traveling, but most driven out by the summer Friday afternoon, and the place was bustling but comfortably sparse. I stood in the street, the faint sea breeze on my face, while jazz music piped in crystal-clear clarity floated around the air.
This, I thought, was perfect. I felt like everything, including me, was exactly in the right place, and that everything this week had gone perfectly to plan. I’d explored the California coast and the beautiful mountains, I’d had In and Out Burgers, I’d tried some of the best games of the next few years, I’d seen a terrific Batman movie, we’d had perfect weather, I saw one of the best rock and roll bands ever perform live until their guitars broke, I’d met some terrific co-workers who I’d gotten along great with, as well as some PR people that had sincerely helped me (and some who lied to me — you can’t always trust PR people), and the whole time I’d been writing, always writing, always expressing what I thought about everything around me and respected for the opinion I’d given.
I hope this wasn’t the happiest week of my life — I hope that I go on to even bigger and better things, that I get to cover more conventions like this, and that I keep finding my true path in life and that I eventually do move out to Southern California and enjoy the culture and weird creativity that seems to flow through the air there. I hope that I keep meeting great people, and that I keep the terrific friends I have, and that life goes swimmingly for me, through good and bad.
But if not, if this really was the best time I’ll ever have on this earth, if this is really the only time that everything seems to go perfectly, and that I get to live and do things exactly the way I want to, that’s fine. I’ll handle it. It would have been worth it to be this happy, to have done the things I’ve enjoyed doing this week. If this is it, it’s enough.
But of course it won’t be. I’ve done what I could to get here, and it’s paid off. Why not go farther? Tomorrow’s Saturday, ‘n’ the band is playing. Honey, could we ask for more?
That there’s my new avatar on Xbox Live, which doesn’t really look like me, unless you count it as a much more cute and attractive version of me (and that’s not just me being humble — looking around my friends list, they’ve basically designed the avatar system with so few options that it’s kind of tough to make an un-cute and un-attractive avatar, so everyone ends up looking much better than they actually do in real life). In the NXE, which is the brand new firmware on the Xbox 360 — the little system that runs on the console when you’re not actually playing the games — that little avatar of mine runs around playing Uno, checking out the games my friends are in, and picking games for me to play next. It’s interesting — an obvious ripoff of Nintendo’s Mii system, although Microsoft has even upped it a notch by extending the metaphor not just in games, but in the system itself. Nintendo’s Miis never left their little Mii parade to join the rest of the UI, but Microsoft’s avatars are everywhere on the Xbox 360.