Topic: E3 Coverage Feedback Thread

[Jonnyboy117]

Hi everyone,

I would really appreciate your comments on our E3 coverage this year, on everything from press conference reporting to impressions coverage and media accessibility.  Did we cover all the games you wanted to learn about?  How did the Bit Torrent work for you?  What would you like to see next year?  (Don't say DVD, that's always under consideration anyway.)

Thanks in advance!

[RABicle]

The coverage was completely fistworthy in every department. Bittorrent worked a charm. But maybe you guys coulda joined in the mad fun of speculation over Reggieton or Thursdayton or whatever.

[Hybrid Hunter]

The bittorent thing was nice, and worked well.
More of that would be nice and quick for everyone.
You covered the important stuff, and even some of the stuff we didn't know about (who knew there was a Pocket Dogs amidst all the Nintendog craziness).

[Mario]

I liked the impressions a lot, it's not enough to  just look at screenshots and videos, and you guys write the best impressions i've read on the internet, gives me a much better idea of what i'll get when I play the game.

Honestly, PGC was the only site I needed to visit to keep up to date with E3, with the exception of IGN who i just leeched videos from (bit torrent makes my computer explode), so I think you guys did a great job all round.

Hmmm.. next year, I don't know if this is possible but it would be REALLY good if PGC put up their own live stream of the Nintendo Conference.

(DVD! DVD!)

[Shift Key]

The Bittorrent was excellent - plenty of seeds, and the high-res Zelda clip was the best thing of the show. Some more videos would have been the only recommendation I'd make - I saw four up there, not sure if more went up at the end of E3.

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Hmmm.. next year, I don't know if this is possible but it would be REALLY good if PGC put up their own live stream of the Nintendo Conference.

I'll jump aboard that bandwagon. Both Gamespy and IGN Insider streams decided to fail for me(by fail I mean one had no picture but perfect sound, the other was the opposite) once the show started (staying up until all hours just to see the show made me quite annoyed on top of that) so I was left to curse while trying to understand what all the other pietriots were rambling on about in the massive MSN chat we had going while the conference was on.

And I'm rambling ... apart from that it was great coverage. I think you guys got to every game I was interested in, and then some. Keep it up.

[vudu]

This suggestion isn't necessarily for the E3 coverage, but for all news in general.

In the future, when someone in the forums beats you to a news story by a significant amount, rather than create a separate talkback thread can you just link to the existing thread?  It becomes confusing when you have to follow two threads regarding topics such as the Game Boy Micro.  This is especially import for products/games (as opposed to news stories) because discussion on those can last for several weeks/months.  It just annoys me when we have a good discussion going and the thread is locked 40 posts into it because a brand new thread was added in the Talk Back forum.  (I don't believe anything like that happened this particular E3, but I can remember times in the past when it did occur.)

Other than that, everything here at PGC is peachy-keen.  Cheers.

[For the record, "significant amount" is dictated by number of posts in the existing thread, not a length of time.]

[BigJim]

I was actually thinking exactly what vudu was saying. If the forum beats PGC to the news, if you can't link to the existing thread, then at least keep the existing thread alive. Especially if there are already many posts in it. I know it's redundant but the tradeoff is a more active forum.

The primary recent example I can think of was the first Revoultion news (about DVD playback and being 3 DVD cases in size). There was a good 20-post thread going before it was locked and we had to move our comments over to Talkback. And then the Talkback thread was gone due to the disappearing thread bug. Then we had to start over for a THIRD time for some reason rather than re-open the pre-existing thread.

The thread locking can hurt the Revolution forum since everything is news right now. Let us burn her in. PGC isn't quite as fast as it used to be with some of the news, so I would ask to loosen the noose on news posts.

Additionally, my personal preference would be to remove Talkback altogether and make the bot post the news item in the correct forum, but that's neither here or there.

As for E3 coverage, it was pretty good and thorough. PGC wasn't quite "real-time" on the updates, but once the info was posted, it was solid.

[Pale]

The coverage was great.  My only suggestion would be to personalize it a bit more.  What makes PGC so great is that it is 'different' than the corporate sites.  Your personalities are what makes things fun to read.  The impressions often touch on this well, and Rick's one editorial was great (albeit a bit too formal for my liking).  Overall, I would just like to see maybe even a new type of post on the site called, for lack of a better idea at the moment, blogged, or something, where one of you just wants to make a main page post about what you feel about a certain thing.

IE.  

The Zelda booth was unbelievable.  I personally couldn't believe how immersive it is.

or...

The gameboy micro is cool and all but it really doesn't bring enough to the table.  I can't figure out why Nintendo wouldn't add things like the play-yan to the package.  

[Jonnyboy117]

Thanks for the comments so far!  I'll spread the word to the forum mod guys about thread locking; you seem to have a valid point there.

Blogs would be fun, at least for E3, but we have fairly limited online time while in L.A., so we try to focus on the hard coverage whenever we do have access.  If we had our own "War Room", we could do a lot of cool things like that.  

[NotSoStu]

-Did we cover all the games you wanted to learn about?
And how!

-How did the Bit Torrent work for you?
Worked perfectly. I've been using BitTorrent (Well, BitTornado) for a while and I think it's possibly the best idea for a program in years. In fact, here's an idea... Perhaps PGC and other sites that have peoplegoing to E3 could collaberate with eachother and, perhaps, put together torrents of screenshots and videos and things so as to conserve bandwidth. But as I said, just an idea. No, not an idea, a pipe dream, since I know it's physically impossible for sites to collaberate with each other.

-What would you like to see next year?
A) Perhaps some more media. I'm no graphics whore, but screenshots and videos can make a major difference in the way you view a game. For example, when I read your Sonic Rush impressions, I just thought "meh." When I saw the video, it felt like I was having... a.... a little secret "Yay Sega!" party.... in my head.... Don't ask.
B) Possibly, just possibly, the BitTorrent idea I posted above.
C) You said no DVD.... But how about an HD-DVD?

[Shecky]

Hmmm, how about consolidating all the media - pictures, audio, movies - to torrents (since torrents can be a collection of files).  That may help the site as well in terms of load.

[miedo]

God I'm blind.  Thanks for pointing that out.

[StrikerObi]

Quote
Originally posted by: miedo
I didn't see Bittorrent.  I just used IGN's handy "Search" feature.  I probably should see how it looks, but you can't get any worse than Gamespot.  Small videos and bad quality, unfortunately.

Anyway, I did like your coverage, as it pretty much covered every game there.  I did wish there was a completely seperate page where all E3 articles were on a divided list (alphabetically...please?).  It doesn't need to be as complex as some bigger sites(Gamespot, IGN), but at least something so that I don't have to go scrolling through history.

There is

http://planetgamecube.com/event.cfm?action=profile&id=76

[Robageejammin]

I really think you guys did a great job this year. Things could have been improved here and there but overall it was great. Like others, this is the only time of the year that I pop in at IGN. I solely use it for free videos and thats all. I dont really have a problem with that either. I'm not expecting PGC to be this super media giant with tons of video and stuff (even though bittorent is really cool, but i just got a new computer so i dont wanna risk anything ).

One thing that I would have liked was maybe an interview or two. They are just as important as the conference itself really. Every interview I've read or seen gave out new information that wasn't told until asked. I would really love to see some interviews, maybe even caught on tape for the bittorent.

It seems that next year there is going to be a huge focus on games just like in 2002...*coughDVD*. This year, you did a really great job of getting screenshots for almost every game announced so kudos for that. I really hope that continues for next year. Plus, if Smash Bros is playable, I'd love to see some hands on footage of how it really plays. There are some things that trailers just can't capture. Gameplay footage for games could really make PGC even more unique than everyone else.

Also, I think its about time now for a new Blah Blah Blah. The last "roundtable style" one was just amazing. I would love to see more of that in the future.

But really great job guys, keep it up. I think alot of us are as faithful to you as we are to Nintendo, which says something

[TheYoungerPlumber]

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One thing that I would have liked was maybe an interview or two. They are just as important as the conference itself really. Every interview I've read or seen gave out new information that wasn't told until asked. I would really love to see some interviews, maybe even caught on tape for the bittorent.

Actually, you probably have already read information from an E3 interview already found in one of our previews, such as our New Super Mario Bros. and Animal Crossing DS preview updates, both based on an interview with Mr. Tezuka.  I love reading/hearing interviews as much as you, but often the audio is too unclean to post or accurately transcribe.  I did my best to help promote quality audio recordings this year, but often things are simply out of our control.  Sometimes the information found in an interview is best conveyed in a summary or with extra tidbits not found in the actual interview, anyway.  

[- NintendoFan -]

I have to say your coverage was one of the best out there. I am also glad you guys decided to go with Bit Torrent for your video downloads. It kept everything on your website up and running and very quick.  

[vudu]

It seems I'm the only person out there who doesn't like Bit Torrent.  Oh well.  I still have gamesarefun.com for my media.

[NWR_Lindy]

Thanks for the great feedback guys.  It's nice to know that people out there appreciate what we do - I know that for me personally, I sometimes feel like I'm writing in a vacuum.  It's good to hear that that's not the case, especially considering all the hard work (and money) that we put into our E3 coverage.

So from what I'm seeing...

- people love teh BitTorrent
- more video would be nice
- interviews posted as news stories would be appreciated

Keep'em coming...

[vudu]

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So from what I'm seeing...

- people love teh BitTorrent

No, you got that wrong.  Everyone loves it but me.  That's important to mention.

[KnowsNothing]

Shut up kingvudu, bittorrent is awesome.  I would like to see more videos up there, though, that was the only department that seemed lacking.  I visited IGN for my video needs.  I also used IGN for the live conference stream, so I would definitley dig a PGC stream.  

I agree with Mario that you guys do the best impressions in town.  I don't want a preview like the other sites give- I want information, but most of all I want how the writer really felt about the game.  The opinions of the staff, at least game-wise, are very similar to my own, so I find the personal impressions here especially helpful.

So yeah, I give it a thumbsup.

[Jonnyboy117]

To supplement TYP's comments, we did several interviews at E3, some of which have not been put into coverage yet, but it's coming.  I don't know whether we'll post the interviews themselves or not.  Getting audio at E3 is especially difficult due to the noise.  Even in private meeting rooms, you're at least dealing with sounds from the adjacent rooms, and usually the floor noise seeps in too.  Transcriptions are the obvious solution, but actually doing them is incredibly time consuming (and tedious), and it's even harder when the audio is muffled or full of outside noise for the reasons stated above.  So we'd rather wait on transcriptions until after the show and see if they're feasible then.

I too would like to see a lot more BitTorrent videos next year.  ;-)

[Robageejammin]

Yea I totally missed the two interviews TYP mentioned. They are really informitive, especially the Animal Crossing one. Maybe posting them in an actual interviews section kinda like Jon said would make them more accessible. Also I completely understand not being able to hear anything over there so don't sweat it. Whether it ends up posted or not, I'm really glad to hear that there are some other interviews in the works. If there was anything of extreme importance, I'm sure you'd end up posting it.

I really think the bittorrent is a great idea even though I didnt really use it. People are saying they want more videos but I dont really think PGC is meant to be a huge media source. It might be too much effort to get everything in sight online and for no reason since I can just check IGN for that stuff anyway. What I would love to see though would be either video of the staff's impressions as a group or maybe video from Nintendo's booth (no sound necessary) just overlooking the surroundings maybe with peeks at Shiggy or Charles Martinet passing by. Come to think of it, last year I managed to get some footage of Mr. Martinet with me at an empty space near a wall clearly saying "hey! you-a number one!" on tape. Anyway, something more unique for the bittorent would be really interesting.

[- NintendoFan -]

"I too would like to see a lot more BitTorrent videos next year. ;-) "

I am glad to hear that you liked the idea. Because really, I think it made the site much smoother then it had been in past E3's. And I am looking foward to it next year.

[Bloodworth]

I'm sure it helped, but that in itself does not explain the site's stability.  The new server simply knows how to rock.

[BigJim]

I would be curious to know if any of the PGC folks feel the same way about E3 as the author of this editorial does?

E3 is no longer useful as a trade show.

While it obviously smells of bitterness because he wasn't blown the instant he entered a booth (and I never heard of this site until recently either), I think he got it right for the wrong reasons. Every last Best Buy/Walmart/EB/GameStop/TRU/etc schlub shouldn't be able to get through. If nothing else, media should be able to have their own day or two, and then let "the rest" in for another day or two once the relevant business is done.

It sounds like it's degraded into a complete freaking zoo. Someone in their forum thread said Zelda had a 3 hour wait. That just shouldn't be happening. It wouldn't be surprising if at some point companies give up altogether on E3 in favor of GDC or some other new event.