Games conferences and shows like E3 have been receiving criticism for years. The latest person to voice their issues with old formats is Raw Fury head Johan Toresson who urged developers and publishers to stop spending money on big events.
Toresson shared his rant on Twitter on June 8, writing about all the things that he thinks are wrong with E3 and similar events.
“Just drop a cool pre-recorded stream on Twitch with the creators in chat (if they want) and allocate this money to underserved regions to help them build sustainable industries and compensate for the disadvantages they’ve suffered from the centralization of cash, networking and eyes to arenas for the already successful,” he wrote.
Toresson went on to say that if people in the industry want “new things,” they should stop sitting in the same bars in the same cities with the same people. Instead, they should find talent in new regions where the games industry isn’t so developed and oversaturated.
He also wrote a few points for investors and publishers. Here are Toresson’s thoughts:
- “One decent hit will cover all your travel and salary expenses for hitting the other spots instead.”
- “Do you want to run after the same thing as everyone?”
- “The goodwill you can earn from helping out in places that’s not used to early-stage funding ain’t something you can put a number on.”
- “It’ll suck less because you actually have to work to get something done and not just sit in eternal meetings all day.”
Finally, Toresson addressed developers who think that brief meetings at shows like E3 will guarantee them a publishing deal. He said that publishers will rather sign studios because they have a good project with an interesting concept, and not because they met a developer in some hotel room.
Of these points say “by spending 1000s of usd on going to L.A or SF”. There’s value in that (networking), but the good pubs and investors will have some sort of email you can contact for free. Or open DMs on twitter.
Likely about the same ratio on pitch to signed, but ->
— Johan Toresson // Scouting @ Raw Fury (@jtoresson) June 7, 2021
E3 2021 will be an online event, which will be broadcasted from June 12-15. The list of participants includes Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Take-Two, Devolver Digital, and many other companies.