E3 2021 Things I Want to Talk About Part 2: The Indies

There's plenty of reason to be disappointed in this E3. It was a weird show from a weird year. Physical reality fucked up a lot of big AAA plans. But one reason to be disappointed is not a lack of games. There's too many great games this year. E3 2021 might be one of the best shows in recent memory if all these games hit their potential.

Big studios move like glaciers in this industry. The pandemic could end tomorrow and we'll still be feel its impact for years. But, smaller games from smaller studios don't need to move glaciers. A lot of those companies were already working from home and could easily adapt to a closed offices. Some might have had no pause in development at all. Video games were also indisputably the safest bet for entertainment investments last year. This was the only entertainment industry to do better under plague conditions than worse. There's a lot of money out there all of sudden, especially when Microsoft needs their Netflix model to be flushed with content. Indie games are looking great.

This reflected in the shows themselves. The really big events like Summer Games Fest or Microsoft would show the bare minimum of their games. I know about as much about Starfield today as I did before that trailer played on Sunday. MS and Bethesda would rather you know nothing about Starfield for another year and please stop asking. Meanwhile indie devs got on camera and told their story. They were here to sell you, not fit some huge billion dollar company's grand strategy. That made the big games seem boring and their events dull. Meanwhile, I was thrilled constantly watching streams like Days of the Devs or The Tribeca Games Showcase or The PC Gaming Show. AAA games at E3 2021 were a cruel starvation diet. Indie games were a feast.

Plus, no AAA game was playable this year except that Final Fantasy CHAOS thing. Tons of indie games are out now on Xbox or PC. You still have a few days to try all this out.

Let's start. I have a lot of games that look great to go over:

E3 2021 Things I Want to Talk About Part 1: The Non-Indies

Gamer Christmas has come and passed. Let's talk about it.

Last year there was no official E3 thanks to a pandemic you might have heard about in the news. With E3 2020 cancelled, the usual downpour of gaming news instead trickled out slowly over the summer. It wasn't an E3 by name, but it was an extra-long E3 in spirit. Honestly, E3 2021 needs as much of an asterisk as last year. There was no physical event. The LA Convention Center remained closed and empty. Everybody, from industry insiders to professional media to fans, all shared the experience the same way - on their computers at home. It's egalitarian.

Personally, I love the accessibility of E3 this year. About forty indie demos dropped on Xbox and PC. So instead of needing to wander the floor, hunting for something cool, you can play that something cool at home right now. You didn't need a GameSpot badge to see Square Enix's over-long look at Guardians of the Galaxy. Instead, SE made you watch it during a very dull stream. Yeah, the actual E3 insider experience isn't all glamorous, sometimes its watching uninteresting stuff like that in backroom presentations. Speaking of the duller side of E3, you got to see it on Monday. Lots of random exhibitors like Verizon, "VoltEdge LLC", and "The Sensorium Corporation" fill up space on those floors. Monday's streams of Verizon and Razer were just like wandering the outer edge of the South Floor, all of it filler.

Covid-19 has definitely put a big pause on the industry's grand plans, and that's reflected in this E3. Most of the big AAA games are still a mess. The pandemic only just ended for some people in lucky areas, and still is raging at full force for most of the world. So let's not pretend that's over by any means. It was a disappointing E3 if you wanted a lot of big games this year or many answers. But it was a great E3 if you wanted smaller indie games. I'll have more to say about them tomorrow. There's still a ton to discuss in the non-indie space. Too much to say, in fact.

Let's go: