Many Bloggers Attended E3 Expo

Posted on May 15, 2006

The Washington Post reports on the masses of bloggers attending this year's E3 Expo, gaming's biggest annual convention.

"You can't just have a blog on Friendster or MySpace and say you're blogging about games," says John Fowler, an E3 spokesman. E3, which ended Friday, is this city's biggest annual convention, drawing 60,000 participants from around the world, including game publishers and developers, retailers and media folk -- many of whom are bloggers. To be credentialed as a blogger, one needs a business card, a business license for the blog and proof that you've been blogging for more than a month. That means everyone here has a business card, no matter how flimsy it is. Many of the bloggers have outside jobs -- a security guard at a New Jersey casino, an 18-year veteran in the Canadian Army, an event organizer for a Buddhist foundation. They don't claim to be journalists, because they think being a blogger, quite frankly, is better. ("It's journalism without the rules. It's more opinionated," says Kyle Orland, who runs the Video Game Media Watch on VGMWatch.com.) Many do it for free, and the battle to break a story about a game or score an exclusive interview with a game designer is fierce, though entirely virtual. "It's hyper-competitive, but it's not nasty," Bulaong says of her blog's competition with Joystiq.com. Kotaku.com, owned by Gawker Media, has 10 bloggers here. Joystiq.com, an AOL subsidiary, has nine. E3 provides a year's worth of material. Last Tuesday, on the eve of E3, Joystiq.com had more than 1 million page views, says James Ransom-Wiley, a 24-year-old contributing editor. So far this month, Kotaku.com has had 2.8 million page views, says Brian D. Crecente, its 35-year-old editor, compared with 5 million in all of April.

It isn't a big surprise bloggers are at E3. Bloggers have been attending more and more conferences over the past couple years. CES and Sundance are just a couple examples. There are also many new blogs that debuted this year's E3 including VH1's Game Break blog, NY Time's E3 Blog, MMORPG.com's E3 blog and the Ventura County Star -- to name just a few. E3 also has an official blog of their own.

There are more celebrities as this year's E3 which just makes it an even bigger lure for bloggers and the media. Or, maybe the bloggers just went to see Bill Gates. Or, even more likely the bloggers went to see the booth babes. The Destructoid robot took time to focus on the Booth Babes. Blogs and sites mentioned in the article include TenTonHammer.com, Joystiq.com, Kotaku.com and RPGamer.com.