For almost two years, most major gaming events took place mostly online. The rationale was that their primary purpose of promoting games could largely be carried out online and that in-person events weren’t needed anymore anyway. It turns out, however, that just setting up a stream and creating a Discord channel doesn’t make for a fun or even interesting event.
There’s something important missing from it, something that TGS 2022 reminded us of last weekend. That missing something was, of course, the human element. It’s people that make these events work and it’s people that make them necessary. Without in-person events like TGS, E3,PAXor Gamescom, it can be all too easy for fans and makers alike to forget that everyone involved in gaming is real.
Of course, it’s not as though anyone is actually unaware that games are made and played by real people. It is possible, however, to know and accept such a reality on a purely intellectual level. Everyone “knows” that, say, Japan exists. We can see pictures of it, point it out on a map and even watch videos of people going about their daily lives in the heart of Tokyo. Yet it’s not until one physically goes there and experiences it firsthand that the place becomes a full part of their world.
Better yet, consider something like professional baseball. A baseball fan can watch all the baseball they could ever want from the comfort of their home. They can watch interviews, crunch the stats and even play video games simulating it. One absolutely can “know” baseball through all these things. Yet, it’s being at a real game, being in the midst of the crowd, shouting and watching the actual players do their thing before one’s very eyes that brings the sport into reality. Being at a baseball game hits different because of this and the same goes for attending an event likeTokyo Game Show.
It’s easy to be a fan or detractor of a developer or publisher in the abstract; to boil down a whole business to just its games, its CEO or the famous creative director one sees in all of the videos online. It’s another thing entirely to meet one of those people or even just the lower-level staff sent to work an event like TGS. Such encounters likely won’t change one’s opinions on a game, series or company, but it will humanize them.
Real people really do pour themselves into these creations, and being confronted with that helps one to understand how games end up they way they do. One doesn’t have to like it, of course, but there’s still value in being able to connect real faces to the games we play, fawn over and complain about.
The same holds true for developers as well. It’s good to meet fans (and even critics) and understand on an emotional level that they too are all real people with real reasons for thinking the way they do. Perhaps that realization will even help mitigate some questionable business practices. At least, hopefully it would.
Heck, even plain ol’ gamers benefit from seeing and actually interacting with their fellow enjoyers. It’s so easy to be online and feel bitter towards, say, theFIFAfandom for what their game (and their support of it) has done to the industry. Sure they’re “people,” but only in the abstract. The group and its members just get reduced to a faceless collective.
Seeing them at a show like this though, seeing them genuinely enjoy their game just as much as one does their own, changes a person’s perspective. It takes that group and transforms it from the faceless, online mob into real people again. One isn’t going to be interested in everything there is to see at a TGS orGamescom, but everything there is going to be enjoyed by many people nonetheless. Seeing all those other people have fun with games and devices one doesn’t have any interest really does help make the games industry more understandable.
Physical gaming events may have outlived their usefulness as vehicles for news and demoing, but they still serve a vital purpose. They remind attendees, both gamers and makers alike, that video games are a human business. It’s more than money, more than software and more than the sum of those two. It’s passionate developers, the businesses that make those games happen and those of us who love what they make.
It’s something we all share; something that we can all connect over no matter how old we are or where we’re from in the world. There’s a sense of this online and among friends, but the full effect and impact is only felt in-person at an event likeTGS. With any luck, it’s something we’ll all get to continue experiencing for many more years to come.
