With Gamescom going on right now, I've been pretty heavily reminiscing about my trip to L.A. for E3 not two months ago. With this reminiscence, I just realized that I haven't really put together a tell-all about that trip. Something to do with working on news stuff, gaming, and processing the next chapter of my life really distracted me. So here's my month-later, possibly inaccurate (I'll be sure to ask Nick if he remembers these things the same way), play-by-play of E3 2011 in Los Angeles, CA.
Let me start by saying: I've never been to California before this. I've seen movies, I've heard stories, but I had never set foot in the great Golden Coast state of CA. That being said: L.A. is probably not the best representation of a beautiful beach-filled state. In fact, the only things beach related I ever saw were palm trees. Some part of my brain didn't believe in palm trees, like they were something made up for the movies (Like when I went to Boston for the first time and realized Subways weren't just a plot device). I think I stared at a palm tree for several minutes in the car, while stuck in famous L.A. traffic from LAX to our hotel.
We stayed on Figaroa street and...something. I forget the cross street, but we were only about a mile or so from the convention center. When we arrived at the hotel, getting down to the convention center was our next mission objective. It was just outside of the lobby where I noticed something else I didn't believe in until I felt it first hand. Smog. Smog that saturated my clothing, insta-greased my hair, and made me feel like I needed a shower every time I stepped outside.So we walked. And walked, and I was fairly certain the convention center had vanished while we were dropping off our luggage, since it felt like we had walked way past where it was when we passed it in the carpool. A "City Block" in Los Angeles is something like 90 times longer than a city block here. Okay, that's an exaggeration, and walking wasn't actually that bad. The temperature was moderate, at about 80 degrees (for July, that's not bad), though it was more humid than I'm accustomed to. On the trip some 20 blocks or so, we also scoped out dinner. I had suggested breakfast food, like I always do, while the boys wanted pizza, or burgers, or whatever.
The tie-breaker for food, to my delight, was a breakfast place that happened to be "on the way" called The Original Pantry. I have to say, what a fantastic little restaurant. After we picked up our convention badges and scoped out the premises, we went to The Original Pantry for breakfast-dinner. No one was disappointed. I had - Okay, I don't remember what I had. I know there was sour dough bread at the table, and I probably had French Toast, because I always do. Oh, and fresh squeezed orange juice. Mmm.
While standing outside of this place waiting for Scott to pay, some woman walked up to me, took off her sunglasses and said "You remind me of somebody." I stared at her, pointed at myself, and in an incredibly shocked voice asked "ME?!" At this point I was feeling pretty awesome, though I know I'm not someone famous. Nick egged her on by saying "Yea, she's that girl from that thing," but I told her it wasn't true. I think people go to L.A. expecting to see famous people, so they do even if they really don't.
I think Scott told me he ate at that restaurant every other day that week. That's how great it was. Anyone going to E3, or Los Angeles in general: Go eat at the Original Pantry on Figaroa.
The rest of the afternoon was a bit of tiredness that ended in a nap before hitting up the first party of the week as a group: Nick, Scott and I. It was an Xbox party of sorts at a bowling alley, so we walked the billion miles back to the convention center bowling alley to meet up with some of the Xbox peeps we know. We didn't get in. The tiny room they had booked was filled to capacity (and probably moreso, since I saw people sneaking in), so we just bowled instead.
It was there that I met the incredibly tall bald man by the online screen name CheapyD (Dave), and Carlos - a writer from a site called AngryBananas. There were other CheapAssGamer.com people there, so we had a grand time socializing. Nick and another guy who's name I forget (Online handle "Shipwreck") were trying to get their 3DS's to do something called Street Pass. It's where you can collect friends by walking within range of someone else that has a 3DS.
After moderate drinking, socializing, and making a fool of ourselves while bowling (I have no idea what the scores were, but I feel like we all did fairly poorly. I did, at the very least), we finally retired for our first day of L.A. The first day of the actual convention, a Monday, was great for me. I didn't get in to the first few conferences (Microsoft was the big one, and maybe one more), so I slept in! That was the last time I slept past 9am for the entire week.
Monday, I feel like I saw a few press conferences, but I can't recall which. Here are the press conferences I did see, just not necessarily in the order I saw them.
First up was probably Nintendo. Or maybe it was last? This would mark my first-ever video game conference, and it was not quite what I expected it to be. Nick, Scott and I filed in to this crowded theater right next to the convention center (It wasn't the Staples theater, I don't think, but one in that area). We sat in a chair behind a very angry fat little man, who was complaining that the free wireless had some gadgetty thing wrong with it. We then proceeded to listen to Nintendo discuss their new system (which they forgot to mention was a new hardware console, not just a new controller), and their re-vamp of every one of their already-established heroes ever.
Very professionally, because that's what the gaming "journalists" are like, people clapped for stuff they liked. Aren't they supposed to be, like, writing down details, specs, and withholding judgement on something until they try it and then still be objective? Oh, whatever - it was pretty neat to see a press conference anyway.
I feel like next on the list was EA games, then Ubisoft - much of the same stuff, just different companies. EA was especially hilarious when they had the Superbowl trophy on stage with 3 pro Football players pushing the next Madden game. Theatrics, little goodie bags, and an interesting look at upcoming games was had.
Then, finally, the big cohones: Sony. They started off by offering everyone tons of food. Subway sandwiches, loads of free stuff like hotdogs, ice cream, donuts, beer, etc. I had a coke, and a subway sandwich - and maybe some dumplings of some kind. The precession outside before the conference was somewhat ridiculous. There were DJ's, people dressed up like Nathan Drake from Uncharted, and not nearly enough seating. It was loud, and very showy - and we weren't even inside yet.
Inside was another story. The theater was huge, but the seats were tiny. They packed hundreds of us nerds together for the largest group apology I've ever seen. What did they have to apologize for? Security issues from Playstation were still in full bloom, so they had to start off by being sorry for losing our credit card information and compromising other private details.
Then they revealed their new handheld system, the Playstation Vita - which is pretty neat, I will admit. Ironically, more partying happened after the glad-handing via microphone. This was my first celebrity encounter in LA. Now, you may not know him, but his name is Nolan North - and he's probably the biggest name in video game voice acting to date. I was really surprised, and impressed. He was one of the nicer people I met at the show, period. Really polite, but casual - and made sure to repeat Nick and my name back to us as we ducked out before the live music started.
Press conferences are a weird breed of gaming journalist stuff. If you saw them on G4 TV or any other gaming website that had a live feed, you didn't really have to be there to have any different experiences. All I know is: I tweeted a lot. One of my tweets was about Ubi-boobies. Only Scott really knows what that means.
The following days were all gaming, walking, etc. My second celebrity sighting came from the gaming show-floor, though. Hulk Hogan was pushing his new Kinect game, so he was being interviewed while making Hulk Hogan noises and poses. I was really happy about that - and have a photo of it somewhere. I'd have cut in and geeked all over him if he weren't on camera being actually interviewed.
The big night I want to discuss was Wednesday night. I kept bugging Nick to go out to this party that we had passes for - so we wouldn't have to wait in line, plus a party in L.A! So what we did, was go to In and Out Burger (which was decent food, but I don't see what the huge deal is with it) for dinner. This burger joint happened to be a few blocks away from Hollywood, so we walked around the theaters, and saw the Nickelodian lot from the outside. We hitched a ride this direction with co-worker and his wife, Andrew and Kim. They're champs for driving us to Hollywood, and they were a lot of fun to talk to.
Hollywood...is a hole. There were multiple dilapidated buildings that should have been condemned, the streets were trashed and falling apart, and the whole area was a mess. Seeing the stars on the sidewalk and all of the lights was totally worth it, though. We went around for a bit, checked out the Hollywood sign, and hopped a Taxi back to the hotel.
I was excited about that part of the trip and pumped for more. I mean, I did the tourist thing. What comes next? The partying like you're from L.A. thing, duh.
Nick and I ended up walking to the Primeworld party, which I had a VIP pass to. We didn't stand in line, the P.R. person from the company just let us in right away. The little gallery or whatever, where the party took place was really small - and really crowded. It took us a little while to get drinks, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with lots of really warm bodies.
The wait at the bar was worth it. They had this weird blue mint drink called Stander (with umlauts over the a), and mixed it with Vodka. In the spirit of the game, they called this drink "Prime," which is the unit of currency and natural resource of the game "Primeworld." That drink was unfortunately very tasty, so I may have had a few of those. Three, or maybe four? One of them was absurdly strong, so I don't remember.
Nick and I ran into an ad partner that he had met with earlier in the day. Only by 10pm, that guy was trashed. He talked too close, and swayed a lot. His buddies were pretty fun to chat with, though. We BS'ed for a while, watched some of the celebrity journalists go through the area interviewing people and the likes. It was a lot of fun, but the party needed to move as our buzz started to wear off and we weren't willing to stand in line again.
We looked up more parties in the area via twitter. From just outside of this party, you could see some outrageous party on the roof of a building that had the websites logo splashed on the side of the building via spotlights, which we weren't so willing to crash. So we went with familiar, and hit up Dave's party. The "Cheapassgamer" party, to be more specific. It was only about 5 blocks away, so we hoofed it again. It's amazing how much more stamina you have after one or four vodka drinks. The walk took no time at all.
And yet another open bar with free booze greeted us, as well as some of the people we had met earlier in the week. More booze, other substances, and loads more socializing occurred before Nick got this strange urge to go back to the hotel room to write. Yea, right. That wasn't going to happen, but we headed that way anyway.
Where, to end a perfectly wonderful evening, we saw a hold-up of sorts at a 7-11. Well, the aftershock of the hold-up, as a cop rushed out of his vehicle, cocked his shotgun (which is shockingly loud at 1am on an empty street, even on the opposite street corner), and rushed the store. We had even considered going in there to get water on our way back, too. It should have been unnerving, but I think I was more concerned with appearing sober so I wouldn't get arrested for "drunk in public" or whatever the charge is called now. It wasn't until back at the hotel that we had actually discussed what happened, and the fact that we were actually in a dangerous situation. We probably giggled a lot during this discussion, too.
So, the end of our trip was a final day in the convention center, moderately hung over and checking out the last of the games. Day 3 of E3 was the biggest load of crap ever. I walked to the convention center with my luggage, so I could go straight to the airport after my appointments. Every 5 feet or less, people on the street of LA were asking for my convention badge so they could sneak into the show. Even once I got past that harassment and in the show, people were asking for extra badges to sneak their friends in.
No.
I'm not going to let you into a show that I worked for years to get in to, just like that. Plus, my name and website are on my badge, and if you get busted - the entire site might not be invited back. That's not worth it, and you're a jerk. Way to make the last day after a fun night out, a drag.
On that last day I did make another celebrity sighting, and it was kind of a funny one. I saw Gene Simmons and his wife in the VIP area for Sony. I was standing there, staring at the screen while waiting for my P.R. rep to come let me into the private theater, when he walks by, arm-in-arm with his wife, eating Quiznos. So all of those "Gene Simmons Family Jewels" things where they claim they're having marital trouble? Staged. They're totally fine, or they were in July. They weren't putting on a show for publicity either, since it was behind the scenes of E3 away from the majority of prying eyes.
I was sad to miss my last opportunity to hang out with my favorite voice actor, Carlos Ferro (Dom from Gears of War, Leonardo DaVinci from Assassin's Creed, etc). He's a chill dude that I still don't have a photo with. That was probably my biggest let-down of L.A./E3.
After all of the years I'd sneak over to my friends houses to watch E3 stuff on G4 TV (we never had the station, even when I had cable), I was finally able to experience it all first hand. For the most part, it was awesome. My 10-year-old-self was ecstatic at all of what was going on. On the other hand, it was bitter sweet, since in the cafeteria (that charged me four freaking dollars for a tiny cup of french fries) I had decided it was time to leave Co-Optimus to pursue other writing interests.
As many writers know, writing is time consuming. So writing about games, and playing games all the time really took away from other projects. I love those guys (well, most of them), and the community that was active, and the whole scene. I miss that site, and maybe if things change in the future I can rejoin the ranks of the co-opticrew. For now, I'm glad I left on a high-note, and was able to experience the insanity of E3 with my friends.
Also, L.A. is crazy. That is all.
