Is Summer Game Fest the New E3?
For years, E3 has been the primary gaming conference of the summer. But E3 was canceled this year. Does a new event like Summer Game Fest have what it takes to replace it?
After being forced to go digital during the pandemic, 2023 was supposed to be the year that gaming’s largest conference returned. But instead, E3 was canceled. For a long time, E3 has been the pinnacle of gaming events every summer, practically a household name in the gaming world. But after the pandemic's chaos, plus huge names like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo pulling out of the conference, it was only a matter of time before E3 buckled under the pressure. Currently, it’s not clear if E3 will make a return at some point in the future.
So, the question then becomes: with such a huge vacuum in the gaming event space, who or what will fill it? Having just come back from Summer Game Fest, it begs the comparison. Geoff Keighley is perhaps best known now for hosting events like The Game Awards, but he began Summer Game Fest during the pandemic when many other popular gaming conventions were put on hiatus or forced to go digital. This year, the fest included a showcase on Thursday, followed by Play Days on Friday and Saturday where media and creators can get closer looks at various upcoming titles. Other studios, like Xbox and Ubisoft, also hosted their own showcases in the days following.
Summer Game Fest was a great time, but it’s not hard to tell that it doesn’t have the same scale that E3 did. The venue for the Play Days only takes up about a square block of downtown Los Angeles, compared to the large convention center that once hosted E3. Summer Game Fest also is not open to the public, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. Of course, Summer Game Fest is only a few years old, and last year was the first time that even a portion of the event was in-person. So there is a lot of growing left to do.
Now, Summer Game Fest may not be the event to completely replace E3, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. From what I heard talking to other industry veterans, the huge and overly crowded E3 could become stressful quickly, and I never felt that here. In fact, whenever there was time between demos and sneak previews, it was easy to wander around and take a look at the incredibly interesting games that I didn’t get a chance to try out (like Sad Owl Studios’ Viewfinder, which blew my mind with its unique puzzle solving concepts and Wishes Ultd.’s Beastieball that brings a whole new style to the creature collecting genre, among plenty of others). I get the feeling that this wouldn’t have been as easy a task at a huge event like E3.
Summer Game Fest was also a great event to meet people: from other journalists, developers, publishers, content creators, and even meeting some of my Gamepressure colleagues in person for the first time. Such a huge event like E3 might not have left me with enough free time to have the same opportunities.
Generally, Summer Game Fest was an incredibly enjoyable experience for a first-timer. With a smaller group of attendants, it left space to sit and write between appointments, short lines for food, as well as a low-stress environment to make sure I wasn’t late to various appointments. Personally, I look forward to another opportunity to go to an event like this in the future. Summer Game Fest may not have the same recognition or scale that an event like E3 had, but it was only a couple of years ago that it was nothing but a livestream. Who knows what will happen in the next few years.
