State of Play More Interesting Than Impressive

Sony’s State of Play has come and gone, and that’s about as exciting as it gets. There were games. What more is there to say?

I’m not going to be overly negative about it. There were a few things that piqued my interest. Warriors Abyss looks like a great time. Darwin’s Paradox – Metal Gear Octopus – is the stealth game I didn’t know I wanted. I loved the vibe of the next Onimusha game, and it’s leapt up my list. And obviously the Metal Gear Solid Delta trailer was superb, or would have been had it not already been put on the PlayStation store a week ago.

I was uninterested in a solid chunk of it, and mileage will vary. Some individuals, Neanderthals that they are, won’t want to play a stealth game where you use your octopus powers to avoid capture. Trump got in power a second time too. There’s no accounting for the things people do.

As a reel of upcoming games, it was just fine. I felt about the same when I used to pick up an Argos catalogue. It’s a rather dispassionate vehicle for other products, but it does the job.

That is fine. Maybe Sony is happy listing games that I’ll rush to buy on other platforms. Because in this day and age, just the engagement alone is as important as anything, right?

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The State of the State of Play

I’m not singling out Sony here. Most gaming shows feel the same way now. You come away with the vague sense that these could have been released on YouTube, and that the developers behind the games have benefitted more than you have.

We can continue to fool ourselves, and pretend that these shows are anything other than poorly organised collections of advertisements edited together without any real thought on theme, pace or feel. We get excited for a Sony State of Play in the way football fans don’t get excited for Superbowl advertisements starring The Muppets. Imagine millions of people tuning in for 19 seconds of Bill Murray looking in a mirror, and then realise that’s pretty much what E3 was.

There’s no getting away from this. We want adverts. We want to be sold to. The only reason the State of Play exists is because it guarantees X amount of people tuning in at once. That’s its entire purpose, and it’s clear that there’s little need for it to rise above that. Because no matter how many gamers rate it as middling or worse, they’ll still tune in. Probably, and this is just a guess, because Bloodborne will be there. Next time. Definitely.

The State of Play or the Direct or whatever you want to call it, only has to be so inoffensive as to not put people off watching again. It needs to be an Argos catalogue.

We know from some of the shows of the past that these shows can be exciting. And while the bandwidth for making games is very different now than it was 10 years ago, the tastes of core games remain unchanged. Announce blockbusters, give us surprises, put us on the edge of our seat.

Some of that is impossible. Sony don’t have a show’s worth of first party blockbuster single player games to show us. They might not release that many in the next five years. But the point remains. These videos don’t have to just be a catalogue. They don’t just have to be a glorified compilation video.