Hello, and welcome to the flagship entry of <em>Explain Like I'm Cool</em>. This series aims to explain nerdy hobbies and interests to uninformed students, in the hopes that they can better understand their nerdy acquaintances (and possibly even get hooked on one or two things themselves). We'll jump in with one of the major nerdy events of the summer: E3.</p>
If you have any friends, acquaintances, people sitting so close to you in class that you can't help but overhear their conversations, etc. who are into gaming, you may have heard them talking a lot about E3 lately, and for good reason. The Electronic Entertainment Expo (which is exclusively about video games, vague title aside) is without a doubt the biggest annual gaming event, and is running from June 16-18 this year. All the major game publishers and developers show up to the LA event, usually to preach to the audience about the plans the companies have for the coming year, make announcements about the next big games that are being released, and sometimes flaunt their celebrity guests (because for some reason publishers think people are going to E3 to see Usher dance, and not, say, for the games). Provided that the companies can keep information leaks under wraps, E3 is usually the first place where you'll hear about upcoming consoles, get info about the hottest games of the next year, or be able to play demos of games currently in development.
Basically, it's a gamer's wet dream. If you're into video games yourself, you might be thinking, “Sounds good, I wanna go!”
Hahahaha you can't.
The one hang-up with E3, at least to the unwashed masses, is that's it isn't open to the public — unless you're in the gaming industry, you're not getting in. The main reason why all of the big gaming news tends to drop at E3 is because it's sort of a trumped-up press conference, so the gaming industry probably doesn't want peasants to be getting their grubby little hands all over it.
But don't let that bum you out too much, there are still tons of ways to keep up with all of the news coming out of E3, if you're so inclined. Naturally, E3 has its own website where gaming news is posted, https://www.e3insider.com. In terms of third-party coverage, I'd recommend IGN, which usually has a livestream going on throughout the day of press conferences and interviews, in addition to all of the articles that are being put out during the event. Though really, because this is such a big event in nerd culture, you'd probably have a harder time trying to avoid it. If you follow any nerdy sites, it'll be there, you'll find mentions of it on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter… LinkedIn is probably safe, though.
So there's E3 in a nutshell. If it tickles your fancy, check it out! If not? Well, at least you can probably fake your way through a conversation about it the next time it comes up.
