With the surprise announcement of E3 being cut back to a smaller and more compact event, many game industry professionals have wondered who would take over as the industry’s biggest showcase. Epic’s Mark Rein has speculated that the Leipzig Game Convention will be the leading contender for the title in remarks given to GamesIndustry.
Rein, no slouch in freely dispensing his opinions, said of the Leipzig convention, “Leipzig illustrates exactly what was wrong with E3… This is a great show, it’s open to the public–I could never understand why they didn’t open E3 to the public.”
The Leipzig event drew an astounding attendance of 183,000 individuals. In comparison, this year,s E3 convention reported attendance topped 70,000 people.
Rein theorized by stating, “I bet you if they had done that the way Leipzig does there would still be an E3 and it would be just as important and people would be happy about spending that money because more than 100,000 consumers will come through and touch and feel games they’re actually gonna buy – you have a chance to sell millions of games here and also these people will tell their friends and news will get out and it won’t just be reporters’ opinions.”
However, Rein made note of LGC’s strict policy on mature games. “The only negative about it that I can think of, and this is more a Germany thing than it is of the show, is it’s very hard to show mature games here because of the rules that they have. I did an interview and showed a trailer of UT (Unreal Tournament) and they had to kick everyone out who was under 18 and close a curtain around, just in case some child saw it – that’s a little crazy.”
Considering the current prevalence of viral marketing, and the perennial potency of word-of-mouth advertising, Rein’s predictions may hold some water. Gamers will have to wait and see if the internationally-minded LGC can replace E3, and whether the convention can attract masses of gamers overseas.
