Bringing the world together to celebrate video games from the comfort of home. Summer Game Fest is a season of digital video game events from publishers, select playable content, in-game events, and more to be announced.
The world of 2020 is vastly different than the world of 2019. In the wake of COVID-19 a lot of things that were normal before are being viewed under the lens of "Is this really necessary?" One of the victims is large social gatherings, and E3 is no exception. The one, big, true annual event for gamers officially got the axe on March 10, 2020.
Google really ain't playing these days.
Since news of the cancellation broke, most of the industry has been wondering what will fill the gap of E3's absence. Enter Summer Game Fest, the hot new "expo" on the block. Geoff Keighley, organizer of the Game Awards and the undisputed Lord of Video Game Events, announced the spiritual successor to E3 yesterday. In an interview with GamesBeat Keighley said
E3 was a singular week, but now that things are digital, we can pull everything together into a season from May through August for video game events,” Keighley said. “I found every game company scattered away from E3, but everyone wanted some unifying principle to pull the industry together. I felt the need for it and came up with this idea and talked to everyone. It’s a great way to let fans know what is going to be out there.
Keighley is self-funding the whole affair where he hopes to carry on E3's spirit of announcements, reveals, and community rally but in an entirely online space. Keighley's expertise can hopefully convince one or two big names to get on board with this new-
Oh. Oh, dang. Okay. The event will run from May to August and plans to cover a much broader spectrum than the traditional trade show. Summer Game Fest will cover a wide range of mediums including in-game events, playable demos to accommodate reveals, and my personal favorite: "more." Geoff even hopes to address the elephant in the room: publishers in the industry who have forsaken E3 in the past for their own proprietary events. “We’re not trying to compete with publisher events, but we’re trying to amplify them,” Keighley said. “They create their own event, but we’ll amplify it with our website, which is like a hub for the events. The finale will be the Gamescom show that I do.”
This overall seems like a pretty great idea. Lasting longer than a week in a single building allows for so much more of.. everything. More games can be announced and more attention can be given to them, and developers have more room to go all out to deliver the best experience they can. All we can do now is wait for things to get rolling, which shouldn't be too long. SGF has promised that the new games announcements start rolling out next week. In the meantime, Summer Game Fest has an email newsletter signup on their website and you can follow the Twitter account. Weather or not this is the shape of all things to come or the shape of things right now, it's certain to be a great time for the industry and for us as fans.
