The reopening of the economy can’t come soon enough for E3

The E3 video game conference, also known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo, returned from a one-year absence this week with a virtual conference. Organizers canceled last year’s in-person E3 in Los Angeles because of the Covid-19 pandemic and took this year’s show online because of the continuing health crisis.
Judging from reactions to this year’s digital E3, the conference sorely needs a physical show to build excitement for the video game industry. Attendees said this year’s show was a boring, nonevent.
This year’s E3 was missing some major companies, including Activision Blizzard. Electronic Arts and Sony. And Take-Two Interactive Software only hosted a panel discussion on diversity and inclusion, instead of discussing new games. Other companies holding events during the show didn’t make any major announcements.
“The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has become less relevant in recent years, and the irrelevancy has accelerated with the pandemic,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson said in a June 15 report.
Johnson said E3 2021 didn’t reflect the vibrancy of the industry today.
“While there were fewer new game introductions owing to lower E3 participation rates, the industry still looks to be publishing a bumper crop of next-gen AAA titles in 2021 and 2022,” he said.
Some of the most anticipated new games were teased with new trailers at E3 2021. They included Microsoft’s “Halo Infinite,” set for release later this year, and Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2,” due out in 2022.
Meanwhile, the show’s organizer, the Entertainment Software Association, plans to return to Los Angeles for an in-person event for E3 2022. But ESA doesn’t have the dates confirmed yet.

Related reading:

For years, E3 has been gaming’s biggest event. Is that still true? (Washington Post; June 18, 2021)

E3 2021’s lack of AAA reveals let indie games take the spotlight (TechRadar; June 17, 2021)

The games industry has changed; E3 needs to do the same if it is to remain relevant (Midia Research; June 21, 2021)


Photo: E3 2021 art (Entertainment Software Association)

E3 2021: Will there be a video game conference this year?

Last year, the E3 video game conference was struggling even before the Covid-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the annual show. Major exhibitors including Sony and Electronic Arts had pulled out of E3 in favor of doing their own events.
The Entertainment Software Association canceled E3 2020 on March 11, 2020, citing the health crisis. The show had been scheduled for June 9-11, 2020, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The trade group initially looked to do an online conference but abandoned those plans in April.
The ESA had scheduled June 15-17, 2021, for E3 2021 as a “reimagined” event. But the trade group has been oddly silent about their plans.
A spokesperson for ESA declined to comment on the state of E3 on Monday in response to an email query.
The E3 website makes no mention of any planned events, virtual or in person.
With the pandemic still raging, it’s hard to imagine there being an in-person E3 event this June. And two straight years of no E3 convention might spell the end of the industry event, also known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Photo: E3 signage (E3)

E3 2016 booth babes, or lack thereof; How Microsoft killed a tradition

This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, the annual video game convention better known as E3, was lacking several things: the participation of some key companies (Electronic Arts, Activision and Walt Disney), some rumored big games, and the once ubiquitous “booth babes.”
I didn’t attend E3 this year, but after reviewing media coverage from the show, I noticed a lack of promotional models, those typically attractive young women also called booth babes.
Feminists would applaud the lack of booth babes, because the use of such models has been criticized as sexist. Booth babes as eye candy for male conference attendees has been on the decline for several years.
What likely killed booth babes at E3 this year was the controversy Microsoft stirred up at the Game Developers Conference in March.
At the GDC in San Francisco, Microsoft held an event that featured women dancers dressed as “erotic schoolgirls.” Many attendees were offended and took to social media to register their complaints, Crave reported.
Microsoft’s Xbox chief Phil Spencer issued a public apology after the event, the Hollywood Reporter and others reported.
Usually after E3, some gaming websites run pictorials of beautiful women working as booth babes at the show. This year I could find none.
The closest I could find was a video by Hobby Consolas of Madrid, Spain, titled “Las Chicas del E3 2016.” The website obviously couldn’t find that many booth babes at E3 this year because its video repeats the same few.
The hottest women at E3 were celebrities.
Actress and model Emily Ratajkowski tried out EA’s “Battlefield 1” at a special event with other celebrities including Zac Efron and Jamie Foxx.
And actress Aisha Tyler presided over the Ubisoft press event.

Photo credits: Photos of Emily Ratajkowski by the Entertainment Software Association. Photo of Aisha Tyler by Ubisoft.

E3 2012 impressions: Celebrities, trends, weird games and ‘Adventure Time’

The 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo had video game companies big and small screaming for attention in and around the giant Los Angeles Convention Center this week.
The annual conference, better known as E3, kicked off with pre-show press events on Monday and the exhibit floor opened Tuesday. The trade show ended Thursday.
I covered the big news stories from the show for Investor’s Business Daily and Investors.com.
What follows are some miscellaneous thoughts from this year’s show.

Best celebrity appearances

Ubisoft chose beautiful and charming actress Aisha Tyler to host its media event at the historic Los Angeles Theater. Tyler gets bonus points for being a gamer herself. (See photo above.)
Microsoft’s press event at the Galen Center featured R&B singer Usher performing his new single “Scream” with a troupe of dancers. The song and an avatar of Usher appear on the upcoming game “Dance Central 3” from Harmonix.
Usher Raymond must dig trade shows because I’ve seen him perform at Activision and Sony events in the past.
“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone also turned up at the Microsoft event to promote their upcoming video game from THQ called “South Park: The Stick of Truth.”
Hall of fame football greats Joe Montana and Michael Irvin showed up to tout Electronic Arts’ “Madden NFL 13.” Montana appeared at the Microsoft event and Irvin the EA event.
I also spotted actress Felicia Day and rapper Snoop Dogg on the show floor at the convention center.

Most interesting trend

Games using voice commands through the Kinect sensor array for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was a cool trend at the show.
Microsoft’s “Halo 4,” EA’s “Madden NFL 13” and “FIFA 13,” and Ubisoft’s “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist” are among the big games using the technology.
It was fun to see Montana call plays and hike the ball while controlling his on-screen avatar in “Madden NFL 13.”

Oddest new video game genre

Majesco Entertainment’s “NBA Baller Beats” was the oddest new video game I saw at the show. The game combines sports and music genres. Players have to bounce a basketball in time with the beats of a song and prompts on screen.
I’d hate to be living in an apartment downstairs from someone playing this game.

Best company reception

At an outdoor reception before its media event at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, Sony provided guests with a very L.A.-style treat: Food trucks featuring gourmet eats and comfort food meals.
I loved the shrimp and chicken tacos from Komodo. Other trucks offered Asian food, wraps, macaroni and cheese, barbecue chicken, pizza and desserts.

Fun sights on the exhibit floor

As a fan of Cartoon Network’s “Adventure Time,” I loved seeing the giant inflatable characters of Finn and Jake on the show floor. They were at the booth of D3 Publisher, which is releasing an “Adventure Time” game for the Nintendo DS and 3DS handheld systems in the fall.
Usually the E3 exhibit area is reserved for giant video screens showing game trailers and rows of televisions connected to game consoles for trying out upcoming titles. But there’s lots of other eye candy including booth babes, photo opportunities, and big props like a combat vehicle from “Halo 4” and a full size creature from “Alien.”
I took photos with Master Chief from Microsoft’s “Halo” series and sat in the captain’s chair for a “Star Trek” vessel promoting a new game from Bandai Namco.

The clash of politics and video games

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard arguments on the constitutionality of a California law that would ban the sale of violent video games to minors.
The timing is perfect, seeing how it’s also Election Day.
Politicians love to pick on video games, especially those with violent or sexual content. They say these games are corrupting our youth. It’s one of those family values-type issues that they think sells well to voters.
You’d think with high unemployment, a crushing federal debt and other major problems, they’d have more pressing issues to deal with.
Video games already have an industry ratings system in place, just like the movies, and retailers like GameStop and Toys R Us do an excellent job preventing minors from buying Mature video games. Plus, parents have to take responsibility for what their kids are playing on their game consoles and PCs.
During oral arguments today, Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical of the California video game law, according to Bloomberg and the New York Times.
So, in honor of Election Day, here are some video games that feature politicians as playable characters.
Up top are President Barack Obama and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as killers in “Mercenaries 2: World In Flames.” (See Vanity Fair article.) The Electronic Arts game is rated T for teen by the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
Below is a screenshot of Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as basketball players in EA’s “NBA Jam.” The game also features Palin, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, George W. Bush, John McCain and Dick Cheney, among others. (See Huffington Post article.) The game is rated E for everyone.
And finally Obama and other world leaders appear in the PC game “Rulers of Nations: Geopolitical Simulator 2” from Eversim. It’s rated T for teen.

Big productions highlight E3 2010

The 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, is in the books. This year’s show will be remembered for its theatricality.
Cirque du Soleil produced a lavish show for Microsoft’s Kinect controller-free video game system for the Xbox 360 console.
Eminem, Usher, Rihanna and other stars performed for Activision at an over-the-top concert at L.A.’s Staples Center.
Nintendo, Electronic Arts and Sony also staged dramatic events for the media at the annual E3 show, which ran June 15-17, with pre-show events starting Sunday night June 13.
Nintendo trotted out a hundred attractive women, in the style of “Deal or No Deal,” each holding one of the company’s new Nintendo 3DS handhelds. They walked off the stage and into the crowd of media and analysts to show off the device.
EA showed off its new “Medal of Honor” game by having 24 players on stage demonstrating the game’s online multiplayer mode.

Best crowd-pleasing event

Activision’s amazing concert spectacle included not only A-list music acts, but high-profile DJs, dancers and fireworks. Huffington Post and USA Today had good coverage of the epic three-hour concert. The Gamer’s Temple posted the official press release.

Weirdest event

Microsoft’s Cirque du Soleil show was just bizarre. French acrobats pranced around as tropical primitives in awe of the magic of technology. At least, that's what I think was going on.

Best celebrity cameo

Not Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana at the EA press conference or Olympic gold medal snowboarder and skateboarder Shaun White at the Ubisoft media briefing. The best celebrity cameo at E3 was Kevin Butler, a fictional Sony executive played by actor Jerry Lambert. He brought the house down with his hilarious put-downs of Microsoft and Nintendo.

Best video game

“Dance Central” by Harmonix, a unit of Viacom’s MTV Networks, was the best new game introduced at E3 in my opinion. First off, it takes full advantage of Microsoft’s Kinect full-body motion control system and can’t be replicated with Sony’s Move or Nintendo’s Wii, which use handheld controllers. It has the potential to be a breakthrough game and cultural phenomenon.
CNBC, TheStreet.com and Silicon Alley Insider posted their views on the hit games of the show as well.

HBO, Electronic Arts upstage the movie studios

The best theatrical trailers shown during Super Bowl XLIV weren’t for movies.
Commercials for HBO’s World War II miniseries “The Pacific” and Electronic Arts’ video game “Dante’s Inferno” were better than the traditional movie ads.
I counted seven movie trailers during the Super Bowl telecast Sunday. Too many of them relied on computer-generated imagery rather than storytelling and human drama to sell audiences. I was unimpressed.
The CGI-heavy potential blockbusters included “The Last Airbender,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.”
Other trailers such as “Robin Hood,” “The Wolfman” and “The Backup Plan” left me cold.
The trailers didn’t sell me. I’ll have to wait for the reviews to decide which to see.
The notable exception is Martin Scorcese’s “Shutter Island.” I’m hooked. It was the best trailer shown during this year's Super Bowl.

My scene with porn star Raven Alexis

I went one-on-one with porn star Raven Alexis the other day.
I had the chance to interview her at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. What? You thought I meant something else?
Taking a break from the Consumer Electronics Show, I stopped by the AVN show to ask some executives for their thoughts on 3-D TV, living room video conferencing and other hot topics from CES.
At the Digital Playground booth I met Alexis, 22, who signed on with the adult movie studio last August. She’s a tech geek and a gamer so I thought I'd gauge her opinion of new technologies and other topics.

3-D TV

Alexis says she’s been told that Digital Playground is looking into making 3-D adult movies.
“I would hope that it would come soon. I really think that it could be amazing,” she said. “To bring a viewer into a porn that intimately and make them feel involved in it like that would be incredible.”
Producing a movie in 3-D also could help combat online piracy, she says. But production budgets would surely increase as well.
“What I’d really like to see is a holodeck from ‘Star Trek,’” she jokes.

The porn piracy problem

Alexis owns her own production company separate from Digital Playground and manages two Web sites with erotic content.
“Where I run into a problem as a business owner has been when people take my website content and they put it wherever and then I don’t see any proceeds,” she said. “Piracy is a huge problem.”

Video games

She has played “World of Warcraft,” the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, for six years and she’s quite good at it.
“People don’t even know who I am in the game. I remain anonymous,” Alexis said. “It’s more of just a way to relieve stress. There’s something very cathartic about going into the game and you have your big sword and you can beat people up and they don’t know you’re a girl, they don’t know you’re a porn star.”
She’s looking forward to the next expansion pack, “Cataclysm,” expected this summer from Blizzard Entertainment, a unit of Activision Blizzard.

Xbox games

Alexis also likes to play games on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.
“With the recent scandal, it’s kind of funny, but I play “Tiger Woods Golf” a lot. I’m waiting now for the next version to have hookers come out and service you between rounds and then your wife beats you up,” she says with a laugh.
In addition to Electronic Arts’ “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10,” she plays EA’s driving game “Need for Speed: Shift.”
She bought the special bundle of Activision’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” with the night vision goggles, but was disappointed with the game. She completed the game in just three hours.

Her crossover dreams

“I really want to rise to the top of the industry. I want to do some work to break down stereotypes that exist between mainstream and the adult industry,” she said.
What are her goals?
“I want to do magazine covers. I want to do clothing lines. I want to do anything that allows mostly women, but in general, American audiences, to see that we’re normal people. We’re not scary. Sex isn’t scary. We don’t really do anything different than you or anybody else walking around here does. We just do it on camera, you know. It is very exciting and it is very empowering. I think if people realize that then that can make a big difference in how our society views sex.”
Much as I’d like to agree with her point about her not doing anything different than the rest of America, most of us aren’t having crazy hot three-way sex all the time.
Alexis sees fellow porn actresses Jesse Jane and Jenna Jameson as role models for their crossover success.
I mention Sasha Grey (star of Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 movie “The Girlfriend Experience”) and Alexis responds that she filmed a steamy scene with Grey in the upcoming Digital Playground movie “Fly Girls.”
“I play a security guard. And I’m supposed to be holding Sasha and Manuel Ferrara, a male performer … I’m supposed to be holding them in a cell, but unfortunately my lust takes over. I do other things other than holding them.”

Photos:
Top: Photo of Raven Alexis from Digital Playground
Bottom: Raven Alexis with a reporter at AEE 2010

Public domain works of literature given new life in different media

When Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote his “Divine Comedy” in the early 1300s, he never could have imagined that one day it would be transformed into a multimillion-dollar video game.
Electronic Arts plans to release “Dante’s Inferno” on Feb. 9, 2010. It is loosely based on part one of the “Divine Comedy.” EA’s “Dante’s Inferno” is a third-person action-adventure game. The game takes players on an adventure through Dante’s nine circles of hell – limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery.
Because Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is in the public domain, anyone can freely make a creative work based on it. You could write your own version of the story or make a movie, TV series or a comic book based on it, things Dante could never have dreamed of in the Middle Ages.
EA is actually working with DC Comics on a comic book mini-series based on “Dante’s Inferno” the game.
Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers” (1844) is another work in the public domain that has been turned into many creative works. Most recently, it was used as the basis for a video game in October by Legendo Entertainment for Nintendo’s Wii console.
In September, Mattel released “Barbie and the Three Musketeers,” where the women are the protagonists. Video games by Activision based on the animated movie followed.
One of the benefits of works going into the public domain is that creative types can give older works new life through different media and expose them to new audiences.
A great example of public domain works adapted into a different medium is “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill.
It features characters from novels in the public domain. They include Mina Harker from “Dracula” (1897), Captain Nemo from “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870), Allan Quatermain from “King Solomon’s Mines” (1885), Dr. Jekyll from “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1886) and Hawley Griffin from “The Invisible Man” (1897).
Another excellent example of revamping a public domain work is “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (2009) by Seth Grahame-Smith. His literary mash-up combines Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (1813) with a comedy horror story featuring flesh-eating zombies.

This article is part of a series on copyrights and the public domain. To read more, click here.

Art:
Cover art for EA’s “Dante’s Inferno”
Cover of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”

Girl games take video game industry by storm

During the E3 video game conference this month in Los Angeles, I noted how games for girls were gaining prominence and that the male-dominated game press didn’t want such games to share the stage with traditional macho games.
I wrote about the growth of girl games for the Tuesday issue of Investor’s Business Daily.
The industry officials I spoke with gave me their impressions of how the male reporters and bloggers responded to girl games during the media events at E3.
“To those people who were snickering in the press, shame on them, because they missed a big story,” said Chip Lange, vice president and general manager of Electronic Arts’ EA Hasbro division. EA detailed its “Littlest Pet Shop” and “Charm Girls Club” games at the show.
Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Ubisoft Entertainment, also had a message for the juvenile boys who hooted and hollered during the girl game presentations: “Grow up. Are you in this industry or not?”
Ubisoft presented its "Petz," "Imagine" and "Style Lab" games for girls at the show.
NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier said, “A lot of the media covering the games market are core gamers themselves and come at it from that angle. A lot of them are primarily interested in the games they themselves would want to play.”
But by ignoring girl games, they’re ignoring the business side of the industry and an important new market, she says.

Photo from Electronic Arts showing a presentation at E3 of EA’s new “Charm Girls Club” game for Nintendo’s Wii.

George Lucas should have outsourced the last three ‘Star Wars’ movies

The preview trailer for a new “Star Wars” video game impressed a lot of jaded industry reporters at the E3 video game show this week.
I heard several people mention that the trailer was better than any of the last three “Star Wars” movies by franchise creator George Lucas.
“Why couldn’t Lucas have made a movie like that?” one attendee asked me.
Well, for starters, Lucas apparently didn’t have anyone close to him who could give him the straight dope. He’s probably surrounded by yes men and sycophants.
He’s also too interested in building his fortune by selling toys, games and party supplies to young kids.
People forget that Lucas didn’t direct the second and third movies of the original trilogy. Irvin Kershner (“Never Say Never Again”) directed “The Empire Strikes Back” and Richard Marquand (“Jagged Edge”) directed “Return of the Jedi.” And Lucas, who wrote and directed the first “Star Wars” by himself, had help with the screenplays of the next two movies.
The lousy, more recent, prequel trilogy was all Lucas’ handiwork.
Meanwhile, Lucas has outsourced the “Star Wars” video games to other people. Unlike Lucas himself, these creative professionals have a fan’s perspective of the franchise and can tell the stories that they’d like to see.
The trailer video for “Star Wars: The Old Republic” has the dark themes and action that adults want to see. (Watch it full screen.)
The massively multiplayer online role-playing game is produced by BioWare, a unit of Electronic Arts.
“It’s amazing what you can do with this universe once you pry it from George Lucas’ hands,” Marc Bernardin wrote on EW.com’s PopWatch blog.

Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 ends

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, finished its three-day run today in Los Angeles.
The 2009 show was a return to the spectacle of previous years, with oversized exhibits filling the Los Angeles Convention Center, complete with a sensory overload of video and music.

Best of Show: Microsoft

Microsoft held its big media briefing on Monday, the day before E3 officially opened. It wowed reporters, bloggers and analysts with an impressive lineup of video game software and hardware announcements.
The event was a star-studded affair with appearances by the surviving members of the Beatles – Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr – to promote the music video game “The Beatles: Rock Band.”
“The game is good. The graphics are very good. And we look great,” Starr said. “The Beatles: Rock Band,” from Harmonix, MTV Games and Electronic Arts, is due out Sept. 9.
The widows of John Lennon and George Harrison – Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison – also appeared on stage to support the game’s debut.
Microsoft’s E3 press conference featured 10 exclusive new video games for its Xbox 360 console, including “Forza Motorsport 3,” “Alan Wake,” “Halo 3: ODST,” “Halo: Reach,” “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction” and “Left 4 Dead 2.”
But it was Microsoft’s introduction of “Project Natal” for controller-free gaming that generated the most buzz at the show. However, Microsoft did not announce a launch date for the system, which allows players to operate games with gestures, body movements and voice commands. It will work with existing Xbox 360 consoles.
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg came on stage to praise the innovative new gaming interface.

Second thoughts on Project Natal

As impressive as Microsoft’s demo of Project Natal was, I couldn’t help but wonder if gamers would find it lacking.
The live demos of players kicking virtual balls and painting a digital canvas were fine. But the canned videos showing players driving by pretending to hold a steering wheel or changing a tire by pretending to hold an impact wrench to remove and tighten lug nuts, looked weird.
If I’m playing a driving game, I’m going to want to grip a steering wheel. If I’m playing a shooting game, I’m going to want to hold a gun.
PCWorld writer Matt Peckham took a similar stance in a blog post. He talked about the need for a tactile response when playing video games, from rumble feedback to “button mashing.”

Big trends at the show

Some big trends at the show were motion-sensing controllers, sequels to hit franchises and games for girls (see earlier blog post).
In addition to Microsoft’s Project Natal, other new game controller schemes included Nintendo’s Wii Motion Plus for more precise control of on-screen action.
Sony introduced the PlayStation Motion Controller, a wand-like controller that can be used as a sword, flashlight, tennis racket, or shooter.
Pro skateboarder Tony Hawk demonstrated the skateboard controller for Activision’s “Tony Hawk: Ride” at the Microsoft press event. The board has full motion-sensing technology, so players can physically control the action by performing various movements and gestures on the board that directly translate into tricks in the game.
Sequels to popular game franchises were everywhere at the show. They included Sony’s “God of War III,” Activision’s “Modern Warfare 2,” and Microsoft’s “Halo: Reach.”

Photos:
Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney at Microsoft press conference to launch “The Beatles: Rock Band.”

Screen grab of Microsoft "Project Natal" video

Girl games make their mark at E3

Testosterone-fueled video games were muscled aside at times at this week’s E3 show by gentle estrogen-powered games.
Games about cute pets, pajama parties, dresses and makeup were given their moment in the spotlight at media events held by major game publishers. The young male-dominated games press acted stereotypically immature when these games were introduced.
They cheered derisively and hooted and hollered when Electronic Arts, Sony and Ubisoft Entertainment projected art and video for their tween girls’ games during their presentations. Other attendees chuckled at the mischief makers’ over-the-top, feigned enthusiasm for the girly games.
I felt like I was back in junior high with all the boys-vs.-girls antics.
The comic belittling of girls’ games seemed to grow with each successive press conference.
When Sony, which held the last pre-show press conference, introduced its pink PlayStation Portable bundled with a Disney “Hannah Montana” game, the wolf pack shouted “Whoo-hoo!,” “Yes!” and “All right!”
It was the kind of enthusiasm reserved for some blood-drenched survival horror game or violent military combat game, the types of games popular with young men.
My message to the young men with gamer blogs and publications: Grow up. The video game market is big enough to support your “red meat” games, as analyst Billy Pidgeon called them in IBD, and games for other players.
I heard one young woman at E3 complain that the show was a “sausage fest,” meaning too many guys. (See the Urban Dictionary definition.)
The Entertainment Software Association’s 2009 Essential Facts guide to the industry says 60% of gamers are male.
At E3, Electronic Arts showed off its “Littlest Pet Shop” and “Charm Girls Club” games. Ubisoft touted its “Petz,” “Imagine” and “Style Lab” franchises for tween girls.
Ubisoft says its Imagine line for young girls is its fastest growing game franchise.
Perhaps change is in the air.

Photos:
Screenshot for Electronic Arts’ “Charm Girls Club: Pajama Party” for Nintendo Wii
Box cover art for Ubisoft Entertainment’s “Imagine Fashion Designer” for Nintendo DS