I don't think you can see how ugly this is until you've been to the show a few times, maybe 10 times. It takes a while to see your part in the machine and wonder why you've been doing it. It's like waking up after 20 years in a dead-end job or a lifeless marriage and wondering whether its more noble to just stick it out or to face the embarrassment of admitting you should have moved on sooner.
Or maybe it's a deep down, dark and sticky love.
Look, not every day in every relationship is a beautiful thing. You can't make your choices about the rest of your life based on an argument about who left dirty socks on the bathroom floor. Or, as a guy who I used to work with who always managed to avoid conflict said, "You got to choose your battles. You can't win them all." It's practical advice. It's also shorthand for the deeper truth, that some things are just worth sticking with, no matter how you feel about them in the moment.
That's the other side of E3. Somewhere behind the four-story promotional banners and eardrum-crushing multimedia, smiling temptresses waving you toward games they can't play and the seemingly endless river of booze, you'll find the games. And if you concentrate on the games, the crazy retail patter with men wielding guns like cocks and women promising sex and death with every play, well, you'll find a little bit of redemption. People hate me for pulling out Matrix metaphors because they see the film as a cheap looting of science fiction in an effort to sell a lightweight S&M fantasy. But you can't look at E3, I mean really look at E3, and not see that dribbling green Matrix type.
We get used to looking at images on our screens and seeing Dodge Vipers and orcs, breathtaking landscapes and wookies. They don't look real, but we like to think of them as if they were. In the same way, we have happily digested the idea that games are just a business, so all the soapbox puffery and marketing confetti-throwing is to be expected. In our world, lightsaber battles to the death are meaningful and good games exist to make money. What we keep missing is the idea behind it all. We keep forgetting that, well, here it goes again with The Matrix, "There is no spoon." Except, there is a spoon. And E3 is spoon-fest.
Sitting in the musty lobby of my hotel, waiting for lights of the big show to start their blinding strobing, I can see LA is dying. But the idea of LA continues to go on in spite of this. I like LA because I grew up watching television and movies, and to my mind, the world is LA. Every cop looks like one of the guys from CHiPs, every doctor is either Barnaby Jones or Quincy and my editor is Lou Grant (if Lou Grant grew a mustache and wasn't morbidly obese). When the sun sets in my town, I can only reflect that it looks like the sun setting over Hollywood.
LA the city will die; maybe it already has. We can't tell because the idea of LA lingers - or echoes - or maybe it's just painted so thickly on the urban fa
