For the last few years, E3 for me has been a slow steady decline of fun. Each year, there's more and more meetings I have to go to, coupled with what I feel is a stagnation of the kinds of games that are being made. Basically it's three days of non-stop meetings, rushing from hall to hall, and yelling over blaring audio systems to be heard.
But this year - this year is different. This year, I have Ouya.
The Ouya parking lot extravaganza happens to be the same parking lot for the downtown LA Hooters (which explains why they took that picture). I had some time early today to swing by before the main show started. The parking lot had the bright orange shipping container setup on one end, and a bunch of white pop up tents at the other. In the morning, there was a bunch of people putting those together, while a random assortment of onlooks milled about in the main area.
They had two TV's with Ouyas on the side of the container, and three inside the shade. Unfortunately, they didn't take into account the effect that glaring sun has on LCD screens - I stood by while one lady bemoaned the fact that the game she was trying was basically "unplayable" right now (it sounded like it might have been her game)
"It's the fact that we're basically outside," she said to her companion, "and the screen doesn't have any anti-glare on it. But the demo should be playable today. It's just that... you won't be able to see it."
As I was leaving I heard a snippet from the greeter as he called after someone else, somewhat indignantly that "a lot of work went into this!"
Later in the day, I was walking back towards the convention center when I was approached by a gaggle of Ouya t-shirt donning street team postcard hander-outers. The girl in the middle offered me a postcard, and asking if I "wanted free beer." I politely declined, but I feel like you could get a big crowd just about anywhere if your street team is going around offering free alcohol.
Finally, I'm really confused by this whole parked semi-truck thing. This is an image someone posted of where the truck is:
Based on where this is parked.... there's no line of sight being blocked from the corner where the convention center is. Like, at all.
The fact that 8 pages of discussion on the Ouya forums and the tweet by the Ouya account seem to attribute this to malice by the evil ESA is
sheer insanity, especially when odds are it's just a truck driver just trying to do his job and park a damned truck somewhere. The fact that Ouya themselves and their supporters seriously believe the people who run E3 give two shits about what they do across the street speaks to a deeply ingrained persecution complex rooted in the need to justify their purchase to themselves.