The Entertainment Software Association has officially announced E3 2022 will not be held in-person citing the rise in COVID-19 cases in the United States and abroad. This obviously presents a safety concern for exhibitors and attendees alike considering how rapidly and abundantly the current Omicron variant of the virus has spread already. The bigger concern for The ESA is that this would now be the third consecutive year that E3 is not occurring as an in-person event. Is E3 2022 canceled then? The waters are sort of murky on that question at the moment.
E3 2022 Canceled In-Person: Is it Really About COVID-19? Or is it Something Else Entirely?
According to Rebekah Valentine of IGN, there are no dates announced for E3 2022 at the moment and The ESA have not confirmed if there will be a digital event similar to the one held in 2021.
In fact, the only thing the ESA has said on the matter is the following.
“We remain incredibly excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”
Many other outlets are taking that to mean that a digital event for E3 2022 is all but certain, it’s just about getting digital presenters lined up before announcing actual dates.
Although this very well could be true, canceling an in-person event that is still presumably six months away is a major cause for concern. It is understandable for the Grammy’s to cancel their in-person festivities since they were to be held on January 31. But for something usually held in June each year it makes you wonder if there are major monetary reasons as to why The ESA was fine with taking this measure.
Where Did It All Go Wrong For The ESA
Between Sony ditching the annual event after E3 2018 and the plethora of game companies both big and small that have largely adapted to the digital event format, asking for these exorbitant fees to host booths on the show floor seems extremely antiquated and unnecessarily costly. Especially when for most gamers, E3 has always been an event they enjoyed digitally anyway.
As someone that has been to E3 in the past, (E3 2009), it can certainly be an enthralling and landmark experience. I still have memories of being in person at the major press conferences and getting to try out games on the show floor. Not to mention, the networking opportunities and just getting to hang out with our writing staff together for the first time ever too. In that way, I’ll lament watching so many newcomers enter gaming journalism and not get to experience the spectacle and grandeur of E3 the way it used to be.
What’s Next For the Big Summer Gaming Event
However, it may just mean that someone else needs to take on the mantle of what E3 used to be and convert that into a more modern format. Perhaps that person is Geoff Keighley who stopped doing the E3 kickoff show to start his own thing called Summer Game Fest. Keighley, who almost concurrently to The ESA’s announcement, then delivered the news that Summer Game Fest 2022 will still be happening.
So, for now, the future of E3 is unknown, in time it could become another grand digital event, but it needs to improve upon the mess that was last year in more ways than one. There’s certainly room for E3 to still exist or at least an event that takes the best of E3 and modernizes that. But if The ESA doesn’t get it together and figure something out, we could sadly be looking at E3 as a thing of the past.
