I wonder how many more days until they cancel as well.
We have booked a stand and are planning to show a demo. Flights and hotels are booked. It feels slightly weird working on the demo, with the very high chance of it not happening after all.
> NAB has been monitoring the evolving situation on coronavirus both in the U.S. and around the globe. Due to the public health emergency we are currently facing, we believe that it is not possible to move forward with NAB Show as planned. Please see below for a message from NAB’s president and CEO Gordon H. Smith, along with some FAQs about the decision.
The logic behind this is that if the organizer cancels the event unilaterally, it's on the hook for the whole cost and might go bankrupt. If they are ordered to cancel by a local authority, they can invoke the force majeure clause in their business insurance and mitigate the loss.
If they don't keep up a happy face until they are ordered to cancel, they could in turn be sued by contractors who end up holding the economic bag and argue that the event organizers chose to upset the applecart when they didn't have to. .
I will point out that the city or town officials (mayor or health inspectors) are in the same boat. Do they wait and see how things progress, or do they issue that declaration and forego lots of event revenue and business. Except their decision is the official one on which all these insurance claims will be based. Not easy either, and yeah, they’re supposed to be the authority, but they’re also just people struggling with these momentous decisions as well.
Other option is given that less time to cancel could mean higher losses is to come to an agreement with the insurer to agree to cover prior to government authorities cancelling based on likely possibility of that happening.
I'm in the industry. Many of our most important customers have already announced they are not going. The company I work for has pulled out of the show, along with many others.
The company I work for believes the show will be cancelled, so better to cancel flights and hotels now than later.
My bet is that like a lot of shows, they have a ton of money on the line. Their insurance/cancellation policies only kick in if the government steps in a says "you may not do this," so they are waiting for that to happen. Nevada is tourist-driven, so they don't want to do it. We need some leadership from the Executive Branch.
We were crunching to get some core features done for a demo at what for us would have been a huge deal conference, and then last week they cancelled it.
It was both a feeling of relief and disappointment
I honestly see no reason for events that far out to cancel today. It does seem likely that they will have to do so eventually but they don't have to commit to that until the end of the month.
It's very difficult for these events to refund people. Unless they have some big industry sponsors, a lot is based on ticket sales. Deposits on venues are usually made with the profit left over from last year.
E3 is different because the big companies can choose to eat or write off the loss, or give money more starting capital to organizers for next year. For smaller events like say, a dance weekend or puppet festival, a lot of those are labour of love type events that have been built up slowly over the years. Those will be the groups hardest hit.
Most US domestic airlines are just providing travel credit with no cancellation or change fees. I had to cancel a month of business travel just now on several airlines and incurred no cost—I just have to use the credit in the next year which in my case is absolutely not an issue.
Honestly at this point the socially responsible thing to do is not to attend, regardless of whether they cancel or not. You are not just putting yourself at risk by attending. We all must take steps to combat the spread.
But I don't envy your position, I know these are tough calls to make.
As an organizer of a very small event coming up in mid April, I'm terrified of the flu ransacking our group and killing some of our members many of whom are straight up sick and elderly. We're giving guidance to stay home if they're at risk, but I know if we have the show they'll be there.
If we cancel the show it'll be devastating in other ways, and our group is overall conservative and fiercely advocates personal responsibility. Needless to say, if we cancel it will possibly implode the group or cause similar clubs to take over a 30 year tradition.
Take a look at the Biogen conference. 70 of 92 coronavirus cases in MA are linked to the employees of that company, and the conference is thought to have been a major vector [1].
Ask yourself if that's a risk you're welling to take having been associated with that conference.
I think event organizers are in a particularly brutal position. I know that the credibility and finances of a lot of events are on a thread, and that cancellation can crush the event (even in the future). It's a tough decision.
Were it me, I would cancel, because I think it's the responsible thing to do.
> Ask yourself if that's a risk you're welling to take having been associated with that conference.
This seems to be as if making a choice between what actually might be good and how something might impact you personally (psychologically or otherwise).
It's the difference between thinking 'I could never live with myself if that carnival amusement ride killed a child' vs. 'I'd hate to have a child killed on that carnival ride'.
Not criticism of what you are saying - just pointing this out.
Totally fair, I went back and forth on the wording a few times, and never felt like I got it quite right.
I didn't want to come across as saying "You will have blood on your wants if you do this", but I think there is a risk that there will be blood on the hands of event organizers.
I guess I didn't know how to frame it other than "are you willing to risk this outcome?"
Since they are a group of people who are heavily into "personal responsibility," as you put it, then why not leverage that to make your point.
"I feel it is my personal responsibility to maintain the sanctity of our group and ensure the safety of everyone involved, especially those who are most vulnerable among us. It is important that we all understand the risks involved: should we decide to proceed, there is the possibility that our group will be directly responsible for knowingly facilitating the spread of a virus with a mortality rate estimated to be around 3%. Should this virus surface at our event, the likelihood of someone we all know succumbing to the infection is quite high.
Given the gravity of the situation and potential implications to our personal lives, are we certain that we wish to proceed?"
I'll back you on your wording. Made perfect sense to me and I'm right at Ground Zero (Redmond, WA) of the US outbreak and in the high risk cohort (old, fat, diabetic). These decisions have to be made as you've phrased it.
It's good wording that by chance I already realized last night when I was talking to our 70 year old organizer who's going through chemo and he was telling me he's coming...
I really don't want his blood on my hands. If it's decided to push forward, I'll do what I can to stop people from taking unnecessary risks.
Love the quotes on this. Those individuals you're asking are guaranteed to be risk averse from a game theory perspective, rightly or wrongly (probably rightly here).
I work on a virtual conference platform, we've had significant increase in interest in the last couple months... you might want to look into hosting a virtual conference to uphold your tradition and be responsible at the same time.
Surely a group of conservative old, wise people who advocate personal responsibility would all choose not to attend an event while a novel virus is spreading around the world?
Ask for updated RSVPs, and when you see 0 plan to attend your event nor any alternative, cancel this year's live event.
In an effort to try not to be too political, not all conservatives are always capable of making the best personally responsible choices...
But where I stand on that is that's their problem, not mine. At the same time as the lead organizer I don't want their blood on my hands. It's a conundrum for sure. I liked one of these other posters that said to wait for things to get worse and then cancel haha.
Not viable imo. There's likely no cure coming this year. In a couple months the virus will be more disbursed and pose an even greater threat of transmission to our attendees that are old or sick and refuse to stay home.
The risk model is different based on a lot of varieties. If you're working in an office in an unaffected area, nobody is traveling and there's no high risk, it's not necessarily a big deal.
If you're in a major corporation and your coworkers fly all over creation - then yeah, time to start feigning a cough and taking a few sickdays to work at home.
Fun anecdote: I flew from FL to CA in 2000 for E3 when it was a press-only event. That was the first and last time I've had to have a doctor come to my hotel room (on Day 2 of the show) to give me a shot in the ass for some sort of strep/flu. I forget what it was, or what the shot was, but 18-year-old me sprung back into action the next day... and probably passed whatever I had to every hand I shook.
Well it is pretty much Zombie Apocalypse replete with all the reasons why movies, shows, games, and novels, always have the world become overrun. Yet people ridicule them for it and here we are, containment does not work in societies with such freedom of travel and no recollection of past events.
Throw in now in many countries the level of self entitlement is so high that it truly is hard to quarantine people voluntarily. Yes you still have those who respect the law and others but we have far too many who either put themselves above both or just act maliciously.
With rumors of Sony and Microsoft's consoles coming out at the end of this year, does anyone know if this event would have any impact on that? I'd imagine being able to leverage this sort of event for generating buzz and interest helps with their sales to some extent so I'd be very curious to see if they decide to delay their release.
Unlikely-- E3 (like the other big trade shows in general) has been getting progressively less relevant industry-wide each year, in favor of more direct-to-consumer messaging (like Nintendo's Nintendo Direct presentations). Sony even announced they weren't participating back in January, before all this COVID-19 mess.
This is true. Big companies were the first to pull out of GDC as well. I think the big players feel they have to spend a lot to keep up and they don't get a lot out of it.
I believe the smaller companies are the ones that tend to benefit from the big conferences, because it gives them a chance to talk to people all over the world who might not otherwise be available. Speaking for myself, these cancellations are understandable, but a big problem for my work.
I've heard it was more important, at GDC at least, for indies because you have legendary devs walking around who can help small teams get deals or contacts with bigger networks. Make a demo that catches the eye of the right person and it can be really helpful.
Exactly-- you meet new teams you may want to do business with. Devs meet people who want to invest. Not exactly helpful for EA or Activision, but big help to others.
Sony skipped last E3 and also this one. They did not like the new direction the event was supposedly taking. Geoff Keighley also decided to not do his E3 Coliseum show that he used to host for multiple years.
Personal opinion, I don't think the potential consumer purchasers of the next-generation xbox or PS5 are going to be swayed one way or the other by anything that comes out of E3. Or even whether E3 exists or not.
Assuming both intend to ship for sales Christmas 2020, towards september/october of this year we're going to see a heavy marketing push with video trailers for the games they will launch with. Very similar to how Halo 3 was promoted with the launch of the Xbox 360.
Many publishers were already doing their own thing around E3, both in time and location. Sony was not even participating in E3 2020. It is far far less important than it used to be for the industry
I think supply chain disruptions for manufacturing the new hardware and disruption to development of the launch games are probably more likely to affect the release plans.
Yeah I'm with you. Not only that but if there's any sort of self-isolation, people aren't going to be going to the shops to queue for a new console even if there are no disruptions to the supply chain.
Sony had already cancelled, so there's no difference to them. I don't see either company delaying the release due to E3 being cancelled. Other supply line constraints from the same root cause, maybe.
E3 was for the longest time just an industry show and it did that pretty well there's a lot of interesting stuff that happens just because you have so much of the games industry in the same place. One of my favorites are the couch interviews put on by Giantbomb. They get all sorts of names big and small to come and chat every night. That's the kind of thing a purely digital media strategy can't really replicate.
There's been a shift to siloed announcements anyways. Nintendo Direct have been recurring chunks of announcements, I don't see why Sony and MS wouldn't start doing the same.
> We look forward to bringing you E3 2021 as a reimagined event that brings fans, media, and the industry together in a showcase that celebrates the global video game industry.
Looks like the entire tech and game industries have put the future on hold for a year and a half.
Meanwhile, I suspect that Hollywood directors are scripting a COVID-19 film for box office success...
Have you seen the Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing memes? They crack me up. Same release day, so the Doom community started saying they just wanted Animal Crossing as a half-joke, and it escalated from there.
I honestly think that this will be the death blow for E3 as a whole. It's been on the decline for many years, with multiple publishers having already pulled out in recent years. Simple truth is that it's outgrown what it used to be: a convention for tradespeople.
Aw. The best part of E3 was always the decor all the studios do to their booth. Hard to replicate that experience since it's very similar to visiting an art museum.
I wonder if the studios will just release the playable demos to the press now. The worst part of E3 was always waiting hours in line for a 5-minute demo experience. If they can digitally release the games, it'd be so much better.
You will either hate it or you will think whichever SoulsBourne game you play first is the pinnacle of gaming and you will play all of them and they will consume you and other games will cease to be fun. It is the curse.
I wonder how many more days until they cancel as well.
We have booked a stand and are planning to show a demo. Flights and hotels are booked. It feels slightly weird working on the demo, with the very high chance of it not happening after all.