5 Steps to Not Having Your E3 Press Conference Suck

It’s been less than half an hour since the Microsoft Press Conference and I’ve gotta say, I barely watched any of it.

Instead, I cleaned up the place, as the previous weekend had amalgamated a pile of video game cases, papers, books, all kinds of stuff strewn around. All the while listening to the press conference as guy after guy after guy after guy got up on stage to introduce a new game trailer…woo-ee. Some of the guys looked terrible, some of them were awful speakers, but mostly it was just confusing and unnecessary, trying to build hype for games that don’t do anything totally groundbreaking and jaw-dropping.

Then it was time for project Kinect, which was all fine and dandy but there was no spectacle and the delivery was very anti-climactic, such that I could walk around the living room cleaning while listening to the conference and understand what was going on.

For the other conferences to come, and maybe your own in the future, here are Nightmare Mode’s guideline rules on conference no-no’s.

#1. Don’t play hot potato with the mic.

I think there were 20 different speakers over the 90 minute conference. It was introduce this guy, who introduces this guy, who introduces a trailer. It was nice to see Hideo Kojima, but to pass the mic to him so he can speak for 20 seconds just to pass it over to his buddy, who then introduces the game trailer, is silly.

Where’s J Allard when you need him? This is why Nintendo’s Reggie is awesome to watch, he commands the whole conference, and introduce people when they are actually going to say something…not just say “hi” and dutifully exit the stage.

Oh…lastly, don’t let some dude wearing a hoodie, jeans and skate shoes wearing Kanye glasses onto the stage to speak. Ever.

#2. If your game trailer doesn’t really show anything, don’t introduce it.

Yeah game trailers are nice. The Metal Gear one especially, looked really slick. But nothing jaw-droppingly amazing to warrant a tiny introduction. If it’s a big unveiling, just dim the lights and play the damn trailer. Forget about that stuff…just pull a Nintendo, compile all the trailers into one big 3 minute trailer and be done with it.

#3. Don’t invite little girls to show off your new toys.

Especially fluffy, pet-simulators and things involving feeling around with your hands. The jokes are just…far too inappropriate and obvious. It detracts from the conference, just a little. You kind of lobbed that one over the plate, Microsoft.

#4. Stop trying to make your press conference cool. It’s just a press conference.

It’s nice that you teamed up with Spike and such to promote the conference and get the message out, but next time spend less time on hype and more time on content. The reason why I was able to clean half of my living space within the confines of one press conference, was because two-thirds of it was hype, and perhaps less than a third of it was actual content.

At the end of the day, the conference is or should be about telling the gaming community about the direction of the company and marketing ideals and such, showing a few game trailers and hyping up the actual E3 show and floor demos, not the conference itself. The conference won’t change the world and well, allows us to do menial tasks while listening to the fluff of your presentation. Which was almost the entire thing.

#5 If all else fails, pull an Opera Oprah and give away free shit.

Who WOULDN’T want a new, smaller Xbox? Well for some reason, Microsoft decided the press conference maaaaaay have been a little lax so, just give everyone in attendance a new, black Xbox.

Wait…why is it that Nintendo and Microsoft waited so long to put out black consoles anyhow? Who knows.

Follow these basic rules and you might have a press conference that is actually worthy of some hype. Or at least, grab my attention. I didn’t really book work off for this, did I?