Devolver's Upcoming Games Got Lost in its Explosive E3 Parody

Devolver Digital did the unexpected this year and hosted its own E3 show. It's long been a fixture at the LA expo, out there in the car park, over the road, opposite the Conference Center. But the Austin-based indie games publisher's announcement back in May that it would play the same game as Microsoft, Sony, EA and Bethesda—and present a presser all of its own—had people wondering just what was in store.

As it transpired: nothing much like what Microsoft delivered, a few hours earlier. That was big, bold, bombastic, and just a little creepy. It threw new games at its audience like they were going out of style, like they had a four-for-one special on. Devolver fit two proper trailers for forthcoming games, Ruiner (which we've played) and Serious Sam's Bogus Detour, into it 15-minute spot, neither of which were previously unannounced. The rest, though? Oh, the rest though.

(Click here to check a look at the Devolver Digital "Big Fancy Press Conference 2017," which contains both very strong language and scenes of bloody violence. It's most likely not safe for work.)

The rest was pure, blood-splattered parody, taking the piss out of the way that events like E3 operate. A big stage and needless props. Promises mixed with lies mixed with hopes mixed with hostility. Pandering punters. "Unethical business practices." It cut to the heart of what conferences like E3 are today: less about networking, business deals, buying and selling IP and meeting up with peers across the world, more about shilling new shit to open-wallet fanboys and girls, marketing that doesn't really need the pomp and circumstance of an E3.

We have hyperspeed Wi-Fi, now. Where we're going, we don't need game t-shirts under suit jackets and shit-eating grins. Just show us the games, already. Which Bethesda kind of did, actually. Microsoft, less so, and EA's conference this year was somewhere between those two points of pompousness and conciseness, but with Stormtroopers so, y'know, excellent.

Devolver's appropriate-enough 15 minutes underlined what I heard said a few times at last year's E3, from individuals at some pretty big publishers: that this kind of staging, everyone in one place near enough, with so much money on physical show, isn't a sustainable or suitable model in the long term. It ripped into etiquette and convention with savage glee, taking gory shots at pre-order announcements, brand acolyte rhetoric, on-message sound bites and so much more.

Was it funny? I'll call the fifth on that, even as a Brit. But it definitely made a statement, and stood out when Devolver could have easily been lost in the noise of bigger, brighter, more blockbuster conferences "proper."

What Devolver didn't do, however, was give enough time over to actually promoting what it has coming up. We got pixel-art Sam, and we got violent cyberpunk—but where was anything more, or a refresher of, The Swords of Ditto, or Absolver, or Block'hood, or Spaceplan, or SCUM? Doesn't matter if a game is (just) out already—Bethesda began their conference with VR updates-cum-expansions for two games that have been available for ages. Amid the maniacal mockery, pleasing though it could be perceived to be, Devolver didn't do what it could to give the indie devs it works so closely with a platform they'd genuinely benefit from. Yes, it both lampooned and torpedoed the ritual that E3 has become, but also: yeah, guys, what about those other guys?

Or: perhaps I've got this wrong. Perhaps anyone who'd never really heard of Devolver (as it's easy to forget, when you're in the middle of this industry, how it translates to the far wider word) has now clicked to their YouTube and watched the trailers for all of their recent projects. That'd be awesome. That'd be a success. And perhaps I've become too blinkered with cynicism to properly see that. So, you tell me, I guess: did Devolver's approach to an E3 conference work for you? I'm genuinely interested to know what its impact was, beyond the media it's a part of.