I’m not sure where you are in life, but I think at least some of the “games suck now” (or in this case “trailers suck now”) vibe comes from our lives changing as we get older, and not just the games themselves.

When I play Ocarina of Time, it takes me back to that time in my life when I first played it, when I was in middle school and the heaviest thing on my mind was what I was going to eat for breakfast the next morning. Except for maybe Tunic^[1] modern games, even good ones, don’t evoke those emotions, and as a much older person dealing with the struggles of adulthood I can’t imagine coming back to these newer games in ten years to relive my current situation. For example, Minecraft was released after I was done with college. I was part of the early older player base that existed in Alpha and Beta, I don’t have the nostalgia for the game that a lot of zoomers probably do.

As for game announcements and the hype train, for me at least that’s also a victim of aging. When I was a kid games were a scarce luxury in the sense that I couldn’t just thoughtlessly click a button and play the game aftera ten minute download. I had to save up my allowance and and ask my parents to take me to Funco Land or Toys Я Us, and that’s assuming my mom didn’t decide I had enough games already.

I vividly remember hearing that Nintendo was releasing a Mario fighting game (which turned out to be Smash Bros). I looked forward to the release because there was a real chance I wouldn’t be able to get the game because I didn’t have the money or my parents said no, so that made it feel like something special and helped feed the hype train.

I do think games are measurably worse in some ways now though. You don’t own your games anymore, AAA budgets are skyrocketing while quality is cratering. They’re riddled with microtransactions, and purely single player experiences are rare in the AAA space. A lot of that can be mitigated by focusing on indie games though.

Me: People still watch game reveals from big events?

For over twenty years, I stopped paying attention to big gaming announcements from big events like E3. I just learned the hard truth that it’s all marketing jazz and when the game is finally released, it is nothing like what was hyped up to be. I don’t even remember what was the game that disappointed me so hard to make me give up looking up game reveals.

I just let the finished product and reviews speak for themselves to influence me on whether or not I will play the game.

Compared to what though? Game reveals have always been big CGI trailer and maybe some tease of gameplay. If anything this year was way better than the last few because they showed back-to-back trailers and not have someone talk on stage for 5 minutes after each one.

Unlike E3 this SGF is a Geoff cash grab

You have a very rose tinted view of E3.

My bias is showing but Ace Combat 8 really bucked the trend this year.

• Announcement trailer with gameplay and story premise during TGA 2025, releasing 2026.
• Release date trailer during Sony’s state of play with more gameplay, more story beats, now with solidified release date for 4 months out.
• Topping it off with a PC Port announcement of one of the beloved PS2 classics as a pre-order bonus.

That’s a pretty strong, confident marketing campaign, especially when AC7’s first announcement was everything you’d hate: cinematic teaser, no gameplay, no story, no release date, game still 4 years away.

That’s not to say it’s been perfect, they’re doing a pretty gross multiplayer season pass and pre-order bundle. Real hat store shit. But otherwise it’s been quite refreshing compared to all the other games I saw in the last 6 to 10 months.

Can’t disagree more. Never been a better time to be a gamer. We’re so spoiled for choice and every genre has so many games, there’s bound to be something for everyone.

30 Seconds of ambient sounds while some guy speaks the most generic words

5 seconds of some random gameplay footage that’s not telling me much

The crowd goes wild(?)

No point in watching the ad parade when 80% of the games are hat stores or GAAS slop and 90% of the remainder are remakes and remasters. The games worth your time and money are ones you’ll hear about when they’re released.

Do you remember what E3 presentations used to be? Go back to 2006 and watch one straight through. Or even 2016. Lots of slides about how great the presenter’s company was, live demos that didn’t work; for about 2 hours that felt like 4, with far fewer games shown in the same amount of time as today. That’s not to say this is objectively better, or that it’s always good, but it’s how we arrived here. Compared to 20 years ago, I also have so many different ways to cut advertisements out of my life entirely that this and the Game Awards are basically the only times I seek them out. And it’s not just Geoff’s show; take a look at the Steam “showcase of showcases” page, and you’ll see all of the other little events tied around this time of year, too, often with demos available for us to play.

I just can’t stand marketers, and that’s all these shows are now. I hate the artificial dialogue in the trailers, the fake views of the games, everything is “curated”, and it feels so fake. Then also what’s the point of getting hyped because a heavy double digit percentage will be minimum delayed, or even full-out cancelled (because hype is a metric now). I wait for game dev streams, at least sometimes you’ll get a real dev who isn’t “PR trained” talking about their game, and then you can get a realistic idea of how complete it actually is.

Satisfactory did it best in my opinion. True early access, they had minimum monthly videos showing the progress, they had a regular EA release cadence every 6 months, they actually engaged on Discord/Reddit/etc (You could literally @ them on the platforms and they’d respond, not just “join our discord” with a bunch of unanswered question with no actual company presence). Then when 1.0 actually released it was (I believe) CoffeeStains biggest and most anticipated release. It felt real, authentic, actual people making a game. Not a marketing team shilling.

My pet hate was always trailers not showing gameplay

I recently showed a 60-something year old relative the two GTA6 trailers, while explaining my looking forward to trailer 3 and the game’s launch.

They remembered me playing Vice City back in the early 00s, so we watched its first two trailers also and let me tell you - for all of modern gaming’s faults - marketing has gotten a lot better in the intervening years.

I really miss the E3 days but it’s not hard to see why we’ve arrived here.

Also back in the day many if not most presentations were garbage. Half the fun was making fun of them with friends.

For us it’s still an excuse to get everyone together and sometimes it even feels like the old days. Sometimes.

Back in the day, you were lucky to get box art and screenshots! 😉

But, yeah, I get it. So much of it is just plainly manufactured bullshit. You can’t trust anything. Not at least since the Halo 2 debacle.

And even if it is real, there’s no guarantee it won’t change before release (cough - Watch Dogs - cough), get delayed forever, or just get outright cancelled and shelved.

You and me same, but i think for me i’m just jaded by the abundance amount of game and dev that i can’t really keep up who is what anymore. Nothing is fresh if you ate too much of it over the year, and once your mind tell you “ehh, why bother” you will move on from these hype train. I used to sit through all these livestreamed event but nowadays i just scroll through them and watch what piqued my interest, or play the demo on steam. I think steam indie fest or whatever fest they have yearly stay true to the e3/pax spirit, with no time constraint, no lining up, and on your couch/pc desk. The lack of conversation with dev is not a deal breaker to me.

Might I suggest game shows for indie games? Usually those don’t have the budget to hide contents behind cinematic trailers, and usually they seem of a better quality than AAA games.