E3 2012: The Year of Disappointment

Every year E3 kicks off the gaming convention madness with giant announcements, jaw dropping conferences and a plethora of new titles to be released in the coming year. For several years E3 was the benchmark to which many conventions aspired to be, set in sunny LA with hundreds of thousands of guests flooded E3 in anticipation of what was to come but a few years back E3 closed its doors to the public, shattering the dreams of many and alienating those who have supported gaming for years in favour of journalists and other developers.

Since then E3 has been a mixed bag of announcements ranging from the extremely out of date Mr Caffeine, the booing of AT&T and the excitement that followed after the Vita was announced. Much like your taste in games the conference has always been a hit and miss based on your preference although there was always something there that had your blood racing.

Unfortunately I struggled to find anything that left me breathless. Many of the games announced were sequels, prequels or just plain ass. Yes there were the odd one or two diamonds in the rough but it is hard to keep such high spirits after spending hours rolling around in filth.

It seems that even the greatest of franchises did not believe in this year’s E3 to the point that Halo 4, the Gears prequel and many others made announcements in the week or so before the show. If Microsoft cannot be backed by their own poster boy then why bother with such an illustrious event. On the PS3 front it was very disheartening with no news from the team working on The Last Guardian (even though Sony assure the fans that it will appear I find it harder to believe by the day) and what looks like a Super Smash Bros rip off on the horizon for Sony there was very little to look forward to. Hell even Netherrealm’s new fighting game surfaced the week prior to E3.

As for the nintendo conference we were promised 23 games and well we did see these games but they were either already on the market of were passed over so quickly in montages it was very hard to judge if they had actually met this quota. There was of course a new Mario game and the announcement of some cool new online features on the Nintendo side of things but it was largely underwhelming and the big announcements that were made were almost expected with a new consoles.

In a perfect world all these developers, excluding Nintendo are hiding their best for the new consoles they have stashed away in their evil headquarters awaiting to unleash the behemoths of gaming on the unsuspecting public at the next major conference. Although I can’t quite help thinking this is nothing but a pipe dream.

Hopefully there will be an upturn in next year’s conference with the announcements of some new and impressive IPs from both sides, it could be time for Kratos to hang up the gauntlet, Baird to drop the Lancer and the covenant to get a rest.

After all is said and done there are some awesome titles out this year and in spite of the delays of Bioshock Infinite we still have Borderlands 2, Persona 4 Arena, Assassins Creed 3, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and Halo 4 all to look forward too. And after E3 all the speculation on Watchdogs, The Last of Us and a few others to keep us all going until next year. Failing that we can always hope for more big announcements at Eurogamer, Tokyo Games Show and all the others.

Advertising Gone Tits Up

I n the light of the new Hitman Trailer it seems that the industry might of breached in to a new and unwelcome area of fetishism . For those of you avoiding the PR nightmare that is the jaw droppingly outrageous Hitman trailer here is a short synopsis; Agent 47 brutally beats the Bejesus out of some sexy nuns in a very unstealthy manner. Yeah I know, sexy nuns does sounds appealing but the out right barbaric nature and break from the norm on 47’s behalf has been met with a lukewarm response.

Did you hear games objectify woman?

This only one example of the backlash, gaming and misogyny almost walk hand in hand in many advertisements.  Cast your mind back to very origins of the Xbox (the big black box). Do you remember the phrase “she kicks high” because I certainly do. Sex has always been used as a selling point to anyone and everyone in the budding world of games. A more recent campaign for SoulCalibur 5 had more than our chests swelling with excitement due to a raunchy poster that rose up on the web. This kind of advertisement caters to a specific crowd and most of the time fades into the background when the “real” trailers and advertisements surface and apologise for the bodacious barrage of boobs and bodices that were thrust towards us in a more than suggestive manner, leaving the customer rather confused and sometimes enraged by such a display.

In short advertising something that might be taboo is a great way to get the masses talking, remember “No Russian”. No it wasn’t exactly an advertisement but the political maelstrom that followed was. CoD had reached the masses and continued to gain infamy as more and more people chucked in there tuppence worth on the topic and in turn generated great publicity for this decade’s biggest franchise. 


The question here is, where the fuck do you do your market research? Yes I have frequented porn and love boobs but when I want to see my favourite bald assassin makes his return to form I don’t want him bludgeoning the nearest scantily clad woman to show me a cool new move he learned while on hiatus. 


As of late gaming has come under fire for being almost devoid of woman and those that do choose to join in the fun are ogled and perved over by many. This type of advert canonises the issues that arose on Capcom’s Cross Assault  stream in which a female competitor was harassed to the point of quitting after another member of the show made sexual remarks live about her bra size and continued to objectify her.

The abused and accused

It seems that every time a female is presented in game there is a large amount of controversy attached to how she was designed, nobody wants to see a frumpy specky and spotty female protagonist but if her boobs are too big and her waist isn’t accurate to a “true female figure” there is an outcry that the character is not realistic enough.

Gaming seems to shoot itself in the foot at almost every corner when it comes to representing females and it can be hard to point the finger at the man responsible (yes a man). Although it would seem that this time Hitman is not another splash in the gaming pond. The tsunami of criticism that has followed suit after the trailer was released has been an ugly one. The level of criticism has also amassed much attention generating more opinions and even more publicity for the game. Although some may say that there is no such thing as bad publicity the sexism and games debate is surely the counter to the argument, this fiasco may have cost Hitman more than a few bruised knuckles and shameful looks.

That's right beat that sexy nun...

With many trailer misrepresenting the quality and gameplay of their gaming counterparts I hope that Hitman will find his feet and break a few necks in the process. This trailer has served a great injustice to such a wonderful series and has highlighted a lot of issues that needed addressed in the industry but will we learn from our mistakes this time?