E3 2019 killed CG reveal videos

The 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles has come and gone. Despite talk of its demise, this show is still an inflection point. The biggest gaming companies work toward it each year. And I think it helps them establish a narrative that consumers are desperate to latch onto. But E3 2019 had a problem in that publishers repeatedly undermined their own messaging. They did that by over-relying on prerendered CG trailers or videos that didn’t have any real gameplay.

To be clear, I’m going to use “CG trailer” here as shorthand for any video at an E3 media event that didn’t include gameplay. Halo: Infinite, for example, used its in-game visual engine for its story-based clip that was devoid of gameplay. So I’m calling it a “CG trailler” in this story because it doesn’t have gameplay.