Game Reveals kind of suck now ..

Back in the day, you were lucky to get box art and screenshots! 😉

But, yeah, I get it. So much of it is just plainly manufactured bullshit. You can't trust anything. Not at least since the Halo 2 debacle.

And even if it is real, there's no guarantee it won't change before release (cough - Watch Dogs - cough), get delayed forever, or just get outright cancelled and shelved.

Back in those days you had limits on physical pages / dial up on the web.

So you’d only see the biggest / most fleshed out (most of the time )

My pet hate was always trailers not showing gameplay

Might I suggest game shows for indie games? Usually those don't have the budget to hide contents behind cinematic trailers, and usually they seem of a better quality than AAA games.

A little later but before broadband was ubiquitous to the internet there were cable shows that covered games and E3 like XPlay on TechTV.

i felt like xbox's showcase did a gretavjob of showing storybdriven gameplay

Do you remember what E3 presentations used to be? Go back to 2006 and watch one straight through. Or even 2016. Lots of slides about how great the presenter's company was, live demos that didn't work; for about 2 hours that felt like 4, with far fewer games shown in the same amount of time as today. That's not to say this is objectively better, or that it's always good, but it's how we arrived here. Compared to 20 years ago, I also have so many different ways to cut advertisements out of my life entirely that this and the Game Awards are basically the only times I seek them out. And it's not just Geoff's show; take a look at the Steam "showcase of showcases" page, and you'll see all of the other little events tied around this time of year, too, often with demos available for us to play.

I do remember and I’m also definitely not going to say those were better days. I just think given what we can do now I believe most of the current formats could do with some change. I like Steam NextFest I think some alterations there even for just more trailers could be a truly special experience.

Just can’t over do it with crap like NextFest can do at times …

I just can't stand marketers, and that's all these shows are now. I hate the artificial dialogue in the trailers, the fake views of the games, everything is "curated", and it feels so fake. Then also what's the point of getting hyped because a heavy double digit percentage will be minimum delayed, or even full-out cancelled (because hype is a metric now). I wait for game dev streams, at least sometimes you'll get a real dev who isn't "PR trained" talking about their game, and then you can get a realistic idea of how complete it actually is.

Satisfactory did it best in my opinion. True early access, they had minimum monthly videos showing the progress, they had a regular EA release cadence every 6 months, they actually engaged on Discord/Reddit/etc (You could literally @ them on the platforms and they'd respond, not just "join our discord" with a bunch of unanswered question with no actual company presence). Then when 1.0 actually released it was (I believe) CoffeeStains biggest and most anticipated release. It felt real, authentic, actual people making a game. Not a marketing team shilling.

Oh staying up late to watch the latest X-play episode. Such fond memories.

The Devolver "E3" presentation was always great. I think they stopped making them though.

I really miss the E3 days but it's not hard to see why we've arrived here.

Also back in the day many if not most presentations were garbage. Half the fun was making fun of them with friends.

For us it's still an excuse to get everyone together and sometimes it even feels like the old days. Sometimes.

You and me same, but i think for me i'm just jaded by the abundance amount of game and dev that i can't really keep up who is what anymore. Nothing is fresh if you ate too much of it over the year, and once your mind tell you "ehh, why bother" you will move on from these hype train. I used to sit through all these livestreamed event but nowadays i just scroll through them and watch what piqued my interest, or play the demo on steam. I think steam indie fest or whatever fest they have yearly stay true to the e3/pax spirit, with no time constraint, no lining up, and on your couch/pc desk. The lack of conversation with dev is not a deal breaker to me.

30 Seconds of ambient sounds while some guy speaks the most generic words

5 seconds of some random gameplay footage that's not telling me much

The crowd goes wild(?)