The Bad
The Worst Press Conference Segment Theme Award: “Letters,” Sony Press Conference
Asking an audience to believe one of the biggest electronics corporations in the world sits their executives down in front of fan mail is an already ridiculous notion. But to then cherry-pick the most banal letters — or just down right fake them for effect — is cheap and reeks of a complete lack of inspiration. You were going to announce a Grim Fandango remaster, and your instinct was to bury a 10-second reveal in an overlong Tim Schafer joke?
It’s highly doubtful that Sony receives one-thousandth of the adorably misspelled letters it burped onto the screen this past Tuesday and to ask us to go along with this self-congratulatory fluff was asinine. — Gavin Greene
The James Cameron Award for Most Boring Guest Speaker: Brian Michael Bendis
The multimedia segment of any press conference is already dead water. But throw a comic book artist — even a pioneering one like Brian Michael Bendis — onstage with only a few concept art pieces to show for his five-minute droning about an animated show based on his Powers comic, and the Sony press conference suddenly needed life support. Even the teleprompter was urging this guy offstage, scrolling up and down the “EXIT STAGE” directions continuously during the last minute.
It’s a thankless job to go out there and break up the flow of game trailers, so you better do yourself and everyone a favor and just make it quick. Bendis apparently didn’t get the point. Or the teleprompter. — Gavin Greene
Above: Stop … talking. …
The Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Memorial Award for Dumbest Name at the Square Enix booth: Final Fantasy VII: G-Bike
This annual award went to the Square Enix classic Bloodmasque last year. In 2014, the Japanese publisher returned with a strong lineup of software featuring nonsensical names. It also focused its “creativity” on the biggest products in its lineup, which saw the Square Enix booth hosting projects like Final Fantasy Agito and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call. But this year’s winner is Final Fantasy VII: G-Bike. That name encompasses all of the hallmarks for a truly dumb title: It sullies a classic franchise, it highlights a silly minigame, and it has a consonant with a hyphen. — Jeffrey Grubb
The Foot-in-Mouth Award for Dumbest Statement Made by a Developer: “Designing Women is Hard,” Ubisoft
When speaking with Polygon on the utter lack of female assassins in the co-op-centric Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Ubisoft creative director Alex Amancio said that to add in a feminine design would be “a lot of extra production work.” Given the team’s admitted strategy of just copying the game’s main character Arno and then modifying him three times for the other assassins, the statement is technically accurate.
That didn’t stop what was perhaps the swiftest and loudest backlash of the show. The statement seemed to validate the point of view that the industry perceives women as “other.” And when many designers have proven that female characters and protagonists aren’t any more work-heavy an undertaking than their male counterparts, the statement reflects poorly on the Unity team’s top-down production style.
Amancio did more damage to himself than an entire brotherhood of assassins, let alone four dudes. — Gavin Greene
The ‘Don’t Worry — You Can Still Kill People’ Award: Splatoon
Nintendo has an online-multiplayer shooter where the objective is to turn into a squid and cover the map with your team’s colored ink. It’s cute and friendly looking, and it isn’t all about killing people like every other shooter … but don’t worry, you can still kill people.
While the easiest way to win a match in Splatoon is to shoot your ink on the ground to cover more of it than the opposition, you can also use your ink to kill them, too. This will cause your enemy to respawn just like in Call of Duty, Gears of War, and the rest of the genre.
Sure, Nintendo is different — but it’s not that different. — Jeffrey Grubb
Above: Well, at least these kids aren’t shooting toxic waste at each other.
The Most Inappropriate Way to Feed Journalists Award: EA’s press briefing
At Electronic Arts’ E3 press conference — which took place from noon to 1 p.m. (aka lunchtime) — the publisher laid out boxes and boxes of donuts for the attending press to consume. Not only are these sugar bombs a most insubstantial way to feed journalists on a day with back-to-back-to-back events (who have no time for a true lunch break), but EA chief operating officer Peter Moore even joked to the crowd that it’s a perfect fit: gamers and donuts. Like we need more stereotyping in our industry.
I was so insulted, I couldn’t even finish my third donut. — Dan “Shoe” Hsu