The Sandbox

Record heat out west? Hmm. Must be E3!

Next week, the annual vidgame convention - officially known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo - will be taking over Santa Monica. This is when the companies compete to show their upcoming wares and see whose is the hottest.

As you may have heard, this will be the first year of what might be called E3 Lite - since it has been cut back from the Caligulan orgy of 50+K gamers, to a cozier, invite-only crowd. Game press geeks have been grumbling for weeks about how poorly E3 seems to be planned - with stuff to see in hotels all across Santa Monica. Of course, the same people complained about the Staples Center locale of years before, which felt like being swallowed into the belly of a neon whale. But that's history.

Palm trees and pollution. Botox and BMWs. Gamers and geeks. It can only be Los Angeles and the start of this year's E3 convention: the annual vidgame soirée. This is the place to check out all the newest stuff, and get a handle on not only where the major developers/publishers are heading, but what The Big Story will be for the coming year.

The real X factor of an E3 press conference is the unofficial applause meter - you can literally hear what's going to be a hit (at least a critical hit, that is) in the coming year. In no particular order, here are the top 5 games paw-slapping titles at last night's Microsoft press conference at the outdoor amphitheater of the Santa Monica High School:

Halo 3 (duh)
The Orange Box (from Valve, makers of Half-Life)
Bioshock
Rock Band
Call of Duty 4

What a remarkably different E3 experience this year. The good news: smaller crowds, quieter meeting rooms, and waaaaaay more access to hands-on gameplay. The bad news: lots of trekking between hotels and venues in Santa Monica and, after last year's big bang of new consoles, no blockbuster show-stealing hits. But plenty of intrigue and innovation on the horizon. The highlights so far:

The big news from E3:

Microsoft is coming out with a keyboard input solution for the XBox360 -- which all can agree, especially at its price, will be a revolution.

People are discovering maybe games aren't so bad for kids. The APA maintains suspicion, however.

Huge game companies are pouring millions into huge presentations, then getting people drunk.

The iPhone is really cool but we can't put games on it yet (though a flash plug-in might be on the way) to take advantage of its imaginative interface.

Dave Kushner is having a blast out west, though it might be a little warm for his tastes.

Rob Garfield had a good yuk when he read Harry T.'s first paragraph.

I'd say the Sandbox is bigger than a gas-station in Santa Monica. ;)

As I wandered Santa Monica in my E3 daze, a little sick and smog-caked birdie landed on my shoulder and whispered, "Dave, the age of the Mega-hit is over," and fluttered away.

Well, okay, no - there was no bird. And although I am feeling dazed and I do believe that, based on what I'm seeing here, we're slipping into the post Mega-zoic Epoch of this vidgame industry. A game doesn't have to be a monster (huge budget, giant dev teams) to be truly killer.

This morning I had a (long!) hands-on demo of Little Big Planet, an upcoming game for the Playstation 3. And, oh my, it is truly astonishing - the underdog, show-stealing, freshest, funkiest, most ridiculously innovative game of E3 and, maybe, the year. It quietly slaughters many of the overblown over-budgeted Hollywood-wannabe AAA titles here this week. And, most importantly, it manages to push the medium forward while being unassumingly fun. Whether it sells is anyone's guess.

Halo had me from Hello. And the third installment of the game, shown in a 30 minute preview here at E3, doesn't disappoint. Though it may not be the "Star Wars of games," as Microsoft would like to have us believe (that title might be better suited for the BioWare title, Mass Effect), it has done a remarkable job of casting the player inside a viable and gripping sci-fi universe. Halo 3 wisely sticks to the franchise's guns by keeping the changes minimal - new weapons, vehicles, improved AI and physics, etc.- as advances the mythology of the saga.

That said, there is one remarkable innovation that can easily go unnoticed: Save Film.

E3 may be over, but this year's vidgame convention will play out for months to come in the industry, on shelves, and in this blog. The big news: innovation is back. Yeah, there are still the imitators and sequels, but last year's blast of Wii-mania is having a ripple effect. That means a rethinking what a vidgame can be.

Herewith, my top 10 highlights:

Well, finally back down to earth after last year's E3 convention. The highlights:

LittleBigPlanet: once again, this quirky do-it-yourself side-scrolling game for the Sony Playstation 3 is the underdog to beat. Coming in October, the game lets you build, play, and share an infinitely varied crop of platform-jumping experiences. It could do for Generation Net what Donkey Kong did for the arcade crowd.

Spore: Still awesome, still unreleased, Will Wright's upcoming simulation is finally landing in paws this September.

Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero: Music games were everywhere (see Microsoft's karaoke title Lips) but the two champs are going head to head with new versions this fall. Even better, the Rock Band party featured a performance by the Who - and it was hilarious to hear Pete Townshend gripe about not liking the candy-colored buttons on the neck of the Rock Band guitars (though I think he was thinking of Guitar Hero, actually).

It ain't what it used to be. There's a lot of buzz online and off about the sorry state of the annual videogame convention. And I have to say I agree. Going to E3 used to feel like stepping into a giant videogame, like your cameo role in Tron. Yeah, it was too loud, too crowd, too manic - but it worked. Dave Perry of Acclaim talks about how he used to take outsiders to E3 to wow them - and that wow factor is gone.

The Penny Arcade guys in Seattle have picked up a bunch of slack with their annual expo, but I'd still like to think that E3 - ostensibly, the industry's show - can still make one last stab at coming back. My two cents: bring back the bombast. Games are set to make more money than ever - $22 billion - and need a show that reflects that white hot power.

The Game Critics Awards for this year's E3 have been announced, and two of the big winners are games that flex user-created content: Will Wright's hotly anticipated simulation, Spore, and Media Molecule's DIY side-scrolling PS3 title, LittleBigPlanet.

I've played both games, and I heartily agree. This fits right in line with my notion of the YouTubing of games, which I've blogged about for many months now. Not only do they show how fresh and future-forward games can be, they're a lot of fun. My only question (concern?) is to what degree do gamers *want* to create their own content? Both games have enough options in there so that true couch potatoes can just sit back and play. But they're both designed to come to life in equal proportion to how much time/energy you invest. After the initial "I made that!" rush, will the giddiness subside?