Tuesday
I arrived late in the evening on Tuesday in Beverly Hills, California in the County of Los Angeles to meet with Tim ‘Cajunlanding’ Weaver from Mplayer.com. I had time to settle in at the hotel and prepare for media coverage of the Electronic Entertainment Exhibition (E3) Event opening on Thursday.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning started off with a nice breakfast with some of the Staff of Mplayer.com. CajunLanding, Josh Morris (Jinxx), Marcus, Matt, Jeremy (GameGod) and Cheryl were also going to participate at E3. It was nice to meet some of the Mplayer.com staff I have played multiplayer games with and communicated with for the past few years. 🙂
After breakfast, I went downtown Los Angeles to drop off my brother Jacob Robinson (DarkViper) Producer of ActionXtreme, Rainbowsix.net, Unreal Kingdom to setup for E3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The streets were full of traffic. In fact, some of the people driving were honking their horns at each other like maniacs as we roamed around the big city.
In the evening, I had a chance to meet with Nathan (Prime) and Edmond (Perfect Tommy) of Mplayer at the lobby of the hotel they were staying at in downtown Los Angeles. After we talked about things we were to do the following day, I was to meet them again, along with CajunLanding, Jinxx and some others at the House of Blues for the Eidos Party.
About the Eidos party… When standing in line outside the House of Blues, I noticed the line was just to long. You think Disney rides are long? This line felt like it was going to take about 2-4 hours until I would finally just get to the door. Hrmph!
The guys of the House of Blues were telling everyone that Eidos sent out 5,000 tickets but the place only could hold 1500. I don’t know whether or not that is true. After a while everyone was told there was no way they we’re going to let anyone in.
Actually, it was sort of good that I didn’t attend the Eidos party I went out to eat and got some much needed rest. I needed to get up early to catch the shuttle for the morning scheduled interviews and for the long day tomorrow.
Thursday
I arrived at the Los Angeles Convention Center for E3 at around 8:30am. The shuttle took about an hour. Driving in a car takes about 15-25 minutes, so it seemed like a very long ride on the shuttle.
We were told by a lot of people if you drive a car to the Los Angeles Convention Center it is hard to get a parking place to attend E3. E3 usually expects to attract 80,000 people, and there are 6,000 available parking spaces. One of the signs across the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center said, “$30 to $40 A Day Parking”. Later that day we were told, if we get down to the Los Angeles Convention Center early enough at least before 9:00am there was no problem on getting a nice parking spot in the Convention Center’s parking lot for $2.50 a day.
After arriving at the L.A. Convention Center and walking through a constant flowing line with no waiting, I received my pass but I knew I had about an hour waste until the doors opened for the first day of the event. Before 10:00am we noticed on the top of the stairs by the E3 doors were some people with Ape outfits from the movie “Planet of The Apes”.
The Apes were acting out the characters of the movie by treating some of the humans (E3 visitors) like they acted in the movie. One of the Planet of the Apes guys had a pole like the one in the movie made out of wood with a leather lastle on it. I saw him put it around one of the human’s (E3 visitor’s) neck when the visitor wasn’t looking. Another one dressed in silver metal would start yelling like in the “Planet of The Apes” movie at the humans to the humans (visitors waiting at E3) from the top of the stairs in the E3 building.
Right at 10am, everyone started rushing past the yellow tape guarding the entrances up the stairs to the doors.
When entering the convention, the first thing I noticed was how loud it really was. The games mixed with the loud music at different booths. It sort of reminded me of a huge arcade except louder and much more roomy.
This was the first year for me to attend the E3 so I really didn’t know what to expect. I have been to many Comic Conventions over the years so hearing so much noise at once in such a huge place was sort of exciting.
My first destination was to get to an appointment at GT Interactive with Brandon Smith of Cavedog. After arriving, I waited in the GT Interactive’s lounge for my appointment. I met with Cliff Bleszinski (CliffyB) of Epic MegaGames. CliffyB and I have known each other since 1998 and have talked to each other on the phone as well as on the net but until then I had never saw him in person.
CliffyB was picking at the food displayed on a nice elegant table. We talked for a bit but I had to get to my appointment. I did however see CliffyB several times throughout the whole 3 days at the event. He is such a fun guy to talk to and to be around.
On my interview appointment with Brandon Smith of Cavedog at the GT Interactive Booth. I was eager to receive some coverage to write my first impressions on Total Annihilation: Kingdoms.
After roaming around a bit at the convention, I received a phone call on my cell phone from my brother DarkViper notifying me that Brian Kemp (BrianK) of Psygnosis wanting to see if I could meet them at the Psygnosis Booth. I have known BrianK since 1997 on Mplayer and talk to him on ICQ, so I was really glad to have the chance to finally meet him in person.
Briank asked me which game I was looking forward to getting coverage on at Psygnosis and I told him Metal Fatigue. Drakan: Order of the Flame is another action game I am looking forward to but I knew DarkViper (my brother) would get coverage on that game much quicker than I could from him knowing a lot of the guys from Psygnosis from the “Drakan Party” he had attended in San Francisco, California in October 1998. I had heard a lot of rumors about the development of a real time strategy game called Metal Fatigue, which was said to be also coming along really good so my real attention at the time was on the Metal Fatigue game.
BrianK introduced me to one of the Game Developers which was Jason Hough of Zono, Inc. As soon as I shook Jason’s hand, I automatically felt that I knew him for years. We just clicked that well. I did an interview with Jason Hough which has been posted at GamingEvents.com. We talked a lot about a lot of features in the Metal Fatigue game. His eyes lit up many times when he talked about the game, you can see he really enjoys developing the upcoming real time strategy game.
At around 1:30pm I went to the Microsoft Booth to meet up with Steve Cherrier of Arbuthnot Communications, a PR firm for Microsoft’s games division. I sort of had his name wrong so the girl at the Microsoft Booth was very kind to walk with me up stairs to the Microsoft conference room. She needed to see if there was a guy by the name of Steve Churner whom worked for Microsoft or Ensemble… They didn’t know who he was so it was sort a big mess. Until finally, I walked back down to the Microsoft booth and was greeted by Steve.
Steve and I have previously talked on the phone and ICQ. He is always such a sweet guy so I felt I sort of knew him pretty well already. We walked to a more quiet area to record his interview. After Steve Cherrier’s interview, he took me to view and play the game. Age of Kings looks like it is definitely going to get many awards. I have had a lot of fun playing Age of Empires in the past. But, the art and details on the Ages of Kings game has really improved so much compared to the Age of Empires series, let alone many gameplay enhancements.
By the time I was done with all of that excitement and longing so bad to just stay there and play the Age of Kings demo for the rest of the day, I had to get to another appointment.
This time my appointment was scheduled at 2:30pm in the Kentia Hall with Melissa Whatley of Simutronics. Melissa introduced me to Derek Sanderson the lead developer of the upcoming online role playing game called Hero’s Journey which Simutronics has been working hard on. I wrote a brief sneak peek about Hero’s Journey.
I went outside of the convention center after the appointment with Simutronics and I saw my buddy Joel Downs (Wemmick). The last time I saw Wemmick was at the PGL in San Francisco, California.
The rest of the time was pretty much meeting up with the Mplayer.com staff at the booth and waiting for my next appointment at 5:00pm with Jason MacIsaac (Jester) of Gamesmania from Canada.
I met with Jester at the Mplayer.com booth at around 5:00pm. It was nice to finally see Jason after this whole time we have talked to each other on the net. Gamesmania hosted my CGN Cali Girl Gaming News site from January of 1997 – March 18th of 1999. We talked about Gamesmania and Canada. I wasn’t able to stay and stay with
Jester for long, my brother wanted me to meet Joost of Planetquake.
We headed across the street to the big Gamespy / G.O.D Games outside street corner parking lot party and I had the chance to meet also up with Lonnie of Babbages. We talked a very long time with Lonnie and Joost. Both of them seemed to be really nice guys.
While talking with them, I noticed Brent McLeod (Veldrin), Ray Gresko (Moongod), Steve Tietze (Gateway) and Maarten Kraaijvanger (Scythe) from Nihilistic, talking away over in a little crowd. Having Don Crew (Aristotle) Publisher of Jediknight.net & Lucas Games in mind… I wanted to get a picture of the Nihilistic guys. Aristotle always talks so highly of them and is very good friend with them.
I ended up talking to the Nihilistic guys a bit about their upcoming Role Playing/Action game, Vampire: The Masquerade. Moongod reminded me to come by the Activision booth to see the game the following day. We also talked a bit about Aristotle. I was really hoping he would be able to fly out and make it to the E3 on Saturday.
After walking back to talk with Darkviper and Joost and Lonnie (left to right pic – DarkViper & Lonnie), I saw Steve Gibson (Scary) of the ShugaShack. I talked to Scary for a bit about some interviews and previous emails then headed back on over to the PQ guys.
That evening was pretty bad because we missed the shuttle we originally took early in morning…While at the Gamespy/G.O.D Games party I completely forgot about taking the shuttle to E3 and the last shuttle had already departed.
We ended up having to take a cab back to the hotel where we were staying at in Beverly Hills. The driver of the cab was really nice but his driving wasn’t to good.. Well.. Lets just say he was practically driving on the wrong side of the road at times. On the freeway, umm.. well.. he would almost run into other big trucks. I guess it was because he wouldn’t look over his shoulder or put his blinkers on. He would just go into the other lane as if no one was in it. So we were constantly being honked at. By the time I was at the hotel, I was thankful we all got to there in one piece.
Friday
Early Friday morning we drove down to E3 and it was well worth the drive. We had – easy access on getting a nice parking spot at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
At around 9am, I talked to Aristotle on the phone. I originally knew he previously was making reservations and arrangements to flight out from Connecticut to Los Angeles, California. In fact, he said he was even able to make reservations for his flight to leave Friday night after work.
Due to an urgent situation he said he was unable make it on time for E3. I was a bit upset but I understood, he asked me if I could check out the Lucasarts booth to see if I could get some type of coverage on the new first person shooter for Jediknight.net from Steven Shaw. Then asked me to just enjoy myself there and to make sure I did have a great time.
After getting off the phone, I headed straight to the Lucasarts booth. A man stood in front of the door. He told me right off “Appointments Only” in a stern voice. I shared my media credentials and the site Jediknight.net as I was there to meet Steven Shaw. He said ok.. go ahead inside. The doors were closed and they had a big sign saying: “APPOINTMENTS ONLY” right there. I walked in the room and talked to the lady at the desk for a bit. She asked around for Steven Shaw but he left the day before. That is about all I received from the Lucasarts gaming scene.
However, I previously talked to Jason of Gamesmania concerning Lucasarts Thursday night. He said he had an appointment and told me a bit about the game. Nothing too extreme, but enough to know a little about an upcoming first person shooter by Lucasarts.
Today was also picture coverage day. I knew I wanted to take as many pictures of booths as I could. DarkViper mentioned for me to take many pictures including the West Hall.
By the way, if you haven’t been to the Los Angeles Convention Center their convention center is huge. It has a passage over a street called Pico and when you are inside the building you are sometimes across the street and over on the next block with out really knowing it which means E3 is actually in two separate buildings.
As I was walking toward the West Hall, something caught my eye… I totally focused on a huge Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Display which was very well done. When I saw a tall Klingon, he gave me a dirty look (playing his acting part). No way will I let a big mean dirty look scare me (it’s Cali Girl remember? Hehe).
I calmly approached the Kingon and I asked in a polite voice…
[Cali Girl]: Are there any more Klingons around so I could take a nice Star Trek Group picture?
(With a mean dirty look and in a harsh strong voice he replies)
[Klingon]: Why are you being so greedy? Wanting more than one Klingon like that?
(Ignoring the question of me being greedy when I knew I wasn’t being greedy. Hrmph! I ended up bugging him by asking him in a nice calm voice…)
[Cali Girl]: Around what time will more Klingons show up here?
(With a dirtier look and even a deeper harsh strong voice he replies…)
[Klingon]: There is going to be only 1 earthling that would arrive at 11am.
The earthling he mentioned ended up being Nicole Deboer, an actress for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I knew I had over an hour to see such an earthling so I thought why linger around.
While taking pictures in the West Hall, another display caught my eye. I saw a huge Nintendo sign with the Episode 1 Racer stretched across it. Short sections of a few Star Wars movie, Pokemon and etc was playing on a huge screen in back of the giant display. Automatically I thought whoa! This would be a perfect picture to get for my buddy Aristotle for his Podracers.com gaming news site. Even though I was still a little disappointed in not being able to meet him at E3 this year. I took about 3 pictures of different aspects of the Nintendo Episode 1 Racer display.
I also saw this adorable Pokemon Booth. I am still a newbie on playing Pokemon on my color Gameboy so I thought it was great to see such a booth dedicated to it. I don’t even think I have even seen a Pokemon cartoon yet. The little Pokemon Volkswagen was to cute! I didn’t have time to visit the booth so I just took pictures of it.
I then roamed around the Playstation booth and went up in to see the Final Fantasy VII display and the preview movie inside the booth for a bit as well.
As I was leaving West Hall I noticed that the Star Trek: Deep Space nine had a long line. The people were longing to meet the actress, Nicole Deboer. No way was I going to spend an hour and a half in a line for a Star Trek show. If it was Star Wars, I think I would of waited.
On the way back to South Hall, I heard some type of Egyptian/India music with a really nice beat to it. All of these guys were crowded around… so of course there were girls dancing. It was a Prince of Persia 3d Display, these identical bellydancer twins with some authentic costumes on were dancing. Prince of Persia 3d is an action/adventure which is now returning in 1999, the Prince will be in landmark 3D and animation technology.
At around noon, I was extremely already tired. I was really glad I had my tennies on though. I had boots on all day Thursday so this was pretty nice to have a change… Although, I didn’t have my tennies totally broken into so the boots were actually more comfortable at times.
On my way back to South Hall, I saw John Ehde (Kiljoy) and David Haupt (Cromwell) and others. I haven’t seen them in for almost a year now so it was great to see a few of my old XP buddies again. As XP-Kiljoy and XP-Cromwell and I were still talking, Victor (Makaveli) and Brian Lee (D3-LittleDragon of clan DeathRow) walked up. I was surprised to see them. I haven’t met Brian in person so it was a nice change to meet him after talking online all of these years.
The XP Clan was going to have an XP Party that night but I decided driving all the way out for 1 hour or so to get to it wasn’t a good use of my time.
I met up with Ray Gresko (Moongod). He is a really sweet guy. He has the most piercing gentle blue eyes, you can’t help but notice them. Other than that, he has a great personality, it truly was an honor to meet him. You can really see his excitement in developing this awesome game, Vampire: The Masquerade. Nihilistic was honored with awards such as AGN3D’s “Best RPG Award”, IGN’s “Best RPG Award”, Gameprix.Com’s “Game of the Show Award” and Best Game Concept Award” at the E3 event. You can see why they received lots of attention which was greatly deserved by those hard working guys.
After Ray showed me the highlights and the game’s storyline, I told him that Aristotle wasn’t able to make it. He looked a bit upset too, but he seemed fine. I know that the Nihilistic guys wanted to meet Don just as much as I did. Here is an interview of some of the Nihilistic Team.
I then needed to meet up with the Westwood Studio guys for my appointment at 2pm. Aaron Cohen was a really great guy to meet in person. He was so helpful and very sincere. He first introduced me to John Hight, the executive producer of the Role Playing Game, Nox. At E3 she really knew how to act out her role. 🙂
While listening to John Hight, I noticed a girl that was standing there talking to someone, it was XP-Cromwell’s girlfriend, Elana. I was surprised to see her and hugged her. I then looked around and saw XP-Kiljoy, XP-Cromwell and some of the other XP crew.
Trying not to interfere with John Hight’s game tour, I heard this guy talking behind me with a very familiar voice. I looked over my shoulder and I saw Mike Milbrett (XP-Nomad). I hadn’t seen him since last year at the XP-CON in Los Angeles, California, so it was so great to see him again too.
I heard this cute female voice yell out Cali!!! I turn around and I saw my buddy Christina Chan (XP-Pookie). I haven’t seen her since the PGL in November of 1998 in San Francisco, California, USA. I hugged her and told her that this really felt like an XP reunion. Then Eymard (XP-Delusion) and XP-Chael came around the corner and it definitely felt like one.
I kept thinking I was sort of interrupting John Hight while he was showing me the Nox game so I told him I was sorry and then just totally focused on the game. I also had a chance to play the game while he showed me where to go and what I could do.
Aaron of Westwood introduced me to Theodore Morris. Theodore was showcasing C&C2: Tiberian Sun. A lot of people who know my C&C addiction on Mplayer.com years ago, would most likely know how excited I was to see this game. Just thinking about it now makes my hands itch… Theodore asked me if I would like to try it out after he gave me a C&C tour and I told him I really shouldn’t at this time. All I could think of at the time was the fact that if I started playing the game, I wouldn’t get off. I mean, I probably would… but I would most likely just be sad if I did. I wrote a little about my first impressions of C&C 2: Tiberian Sun.
I received a phone call on my cell phone from my brother DarkViper asking me to meet him at the Eidos booth to meet Stevie Casie (Kilcreek). I told him I needed to check out the Braveheart, Deus Ex and Anachronox game and would meet him there.
I have talked to Kilcreek through emails in IRC and on Mplayer. But never have we had a chance to shake hands or see each other in person. She is very pretty in person. I have always heard many guys talk highly about how cool and beautiful she was and I can totally understand why. Not only is she very pretty on the outside, she also has a great heart as well. I took a picture of her and my brother DarkViper at the Eidos’ Ion Storm’s Daikatana game area. 🙂 I also talked to Kilcreek and John Romero of ION Storm briefly on Saturday in the Cafe at E3.
After checking out ION Storm’s Daikatana game again, I felt I was just about done for the day. I wanted to check out Metal Fatigue again and talked to Jason Hough again.
I decided to go see if I could go play some Age of Kings. I checked over at the Microsoft Booth and while I was passing by, I saw XP-Kiljoy and XP-Cromwell with Elana again.
While I was talking to them, a young guy with a hat walked up to me and just stood there and stared at me. I looked over and just looked back and talked to XP-Kiljoy, XP-Cromwell and Elana about the E3 event… The guy just looked again.. and just stayed there staring with his eyes squinting as if he knew me. I think he was staring at my badge, trying to read it.
I thought maybe I knew this guy, I looked at his E3 pass badge and saw his name. It was Brian Loizer of Massassi Temple. I have dealt with Brian for over a year or so. He also used to help run Jediknight.net. I was so excited to see a Jediknight related person there, then 3 other guys came up and started talking with me. I didn’t know who they were until Brian introduced them.
It was Alexei Novikov of Code Alliance, Captain Ramen of Outpost-34 and Brian’s friend. They asked if Aristotle was still coming to E3 on Saturday. I told them he couldn’t make it…
While all of us Jedi fans talked, the guys noticed that Yves Borkmans from Nihilistic was wondering alone. He seemed to be looking for something at one of the booths so we all started talking to him for quite a long time. He told us he was longing to see the Messiah game. Yves Borkmans was a lot of fun to talk to, a really nice guy with such an adorable accent. 🙂
I was still amazed on how the JK guys recognized me. I haven’t met them in person but maybe they have seen my California Girl Photo Album.
One great thing about today was the fact that we drove there… So, there was no taxi cab nightmares this evening. Just a very, very long day…
Saturday
The last day for the E3… I didn’t arrive at the convention until just a little after 10am. There seemed to not be as many visitors at E3 on Saturday. I didn’t have to many appointments to get to so I was able to really check out the games at E3 that day. I met up with Olga of Buka Entertainment to get some coverage on their upcoming strategy game, Aztec.
Since it was more of a smooth day, I wanted to check out some of the action games such as Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena, Daikatana and Tribes. On my way down the escalator, I saw the XP Crew again.. Yes, those guys were everywhere. I think over 20 of them went to the event. I wanted to take advantage of the time I had Jeremy’s Camera (Mplayer.com) so I took a picture of a few of them. The others sort of ran off when I asked to take a picture of the group.
I did get a chance to meet up with Joel (Wemmick) again. I gave him a wake up call that morning and told him I was sorry for not being able to meet him at lunch the day before. We met up at noon and talked for a while. He is such a great guy to talk to. Always so cheerful.
While I was walking through Kentia Hall, I passed the Wrebbit Interactive Booth. The booth was displaying a Bavarian Castle 3d Puzzle game. I talked to the guy for a bit and he asked me if I could check out the demo. I wrote my first impressions about the 3d Puzzle game.
I bumped into my buddy Dennis Fong (D11-Thresh) of Gamers Extreme and Thresh’s FiringSquad while I was roaming around the Eidos booth. We talked talked about some of thjhe games, including Soldiers of Fortune.
Stephanie Bergman (Bobbi) of All Games in New York and Vangie Beal (Aurora) of Gamegirlz from Nova Scotia, Canada were interviewing a developer at the GT Booth. I haven’t really talked to them since April 30, 1999 on the Lilth & Eve show:
Today on Lilith & Eve, Stef and Vangie are joined by Lockup aka Sandy Goseland from BetaBites, Killcreek Stevie Case from Ion Storm, RazorCut aka Ray Graham, Jr Stearns, oops aka James Stearns from the Online Gaming League (OGL), and CaliGirl aka Jody Robinson from CaliGirl.net (among others). Wanna just download the show and watch later? Click here to download the 19k version, or here to download the 85 kbps version.
It was great to finally meet Aurora in person. I was watching Stephanie interview a developer and looked over and saw Vangie observing the show. I tapped her on the shoulder and told her who I was. We both gave each other a bear hug.
I have seen Bobbi at the PGL event last November of 1998 so it was nice to see her again as well. I noticed this guy standing next to Vangie and kept wondering if it was either Hab or Goliath. I don’t know if it was Hab or not or I would of gave him a big hug. He is such a sweet guy.
I wanted to say bye to the Nihilistic guys before I left so I visited the Activision booth one more time. Steve (Gateway) was at one of the Vampire: The Masquerade Display screens so I talked to him about the game for a while. I think I would of bothered Ray (Moongod) but everyone always seemed to be crowded around him. After talking to Gateway about the multiplayer mode in the game. I told Yves, Gateway and Moongod bye and headed on over to meet my brother DarkViper at the Dynamix booth.
DarkViper was interviewing one of the guys who are developing Tribes2. While I was at the Dynamix Booth, Nathan (Prime) and Edmond (Perfect Tommy) were also there waiting for DarkViper so I talked to them for quite a while. Edmond was talking to us about the Planet of the Apes and CGI stuff.
We left the convention center by 4:15pm. By then, I felt so worn out. Ever since Monday night, I only slept every night about 3-4 hours. I noticed at certain times I was getting tongue tied from my brain just going blank from not sleeping right. Friday night was the most I slept, which was 5 hours.
My only disappointments about the whole E3 Event was not being able to see some of my other buddies such as; Aristotle of the LucasGames Network, Sean Martin (Redwood) of Stomped.com, Billy Wilson (Wicked) of Voodoo Extreme, James Fudge (Prophet) of CDMag, Kenn Hwang (Spear) of Thresh’s FiringSquad, Markus (Majesty) of ShugaShack, Michelle MacLellan (LadyICE) of Unreal Kingdom and John MacLellan (Jeh) of ActionXtreme and Unreal Kingdom. Some of the ones I missed did attend the E3 on some of the days. Oh well, hopefully next time. 🙂
I also wish I took more pictures of the Nihilistic guys, Mplayer.com Staff, the XP crew, and others. In fact, I recall taking a picture of the Westwood guys at their booth and some other developers at certain booths. For some reason I can’t find them. Other than that, I really didn’t expect a lot of things that ended up happening while I was there. It was so great to finally meet with a lot of people I have talked to online over the past years.
I hope you enjoyed reading my E3 Journey. Take care, – Cali Girl 🙂