A High-Tech Summit Hits the Southland : Technology: Thousands of digital junkies are converging for electronic expo. Hollywood will be there to greet them.
You’ve heard the hype. Hollywood and Silicon Valley are converging, new companies are being created, new forms of high-tech entertainment are being born, etc., etc., etc.
Well today, it’s happening--literally. Hordes of digital junkies from Silicon Valley and thousands of techie types from across the country will converge on Los Angeles for the Electronic Entertainment Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
There to receive them will be representatives from every major Hollywood studio, talent agents and even some actual talent. A total of 30,000 exhibitors, retailers, analysts and journalists are expected to attend the event, which runs through Saturday.
The seeds of the gathering were planted in Las Vegas two years ago, when the video game makers--riding high on zooming revenue that exceeded the movie industry’s domestic box office receipts--were relegated to a row of tents across the street from the convention center, where the winter Consumer Electronics Show was taking place.
A lot of people in the game business had long been sick of being lumped together with Water Piks, car stereos and large-screen TVs, and this was the last straw. Several members of the fast-growing interactive industry decided it was time they strike out on their own.
Patrick Ferrell, president and chief executive of Infotainment World, saw an opportunity to launch a new show. After intensive lobbying--and a nonstop flurry of press releases--he and partner Knowledge Industry Publications swung enough firms over to the idea of a Los Angeles-based event that the Electronic Industries Assn. was forced to cancel the summer Consumer Electronics Show altogether.
Thus was born “E3,” the first show dedicated exclusively to interactive entertainment.
The turning point, Ferrell recalls, was the press release headlined “Hollywood Goes E3,” in which Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom Inc., Walt Disney Co. and Virgin Interactive signed up.
“Our fees were exactly the same as their fees and our dates were exactly the same as their dates, so you really had to pick one,” Ferrell said. “It was pretty dramatic.”
“It really represents a maturing of this industry,” said Tom Kalinkse, chief executive of Sega of America, one of the founding members of the new Interactive Digital Software Assn. trade group.
This year, American consumers are expected to spend more than $4 billion on electronic entertainment products and another $6 billion on machines to play them on. By January, 15 million U.S. households will own computers with CD-ROMs, and the major video game manufacturers will have spent close to $200 million promoting a new generation of consoles that hook up to televisions.
But that does not mean the industry necessarily acts mature.
Already, there is the predictable squabbling over whose next-generation machine can process polygons faster. And several of the Silicon Valley types have been heard grumbling over the perils of sunny Los Angeles.
“The problem with L.A. is you have to drive everywhere,” says veteran analyst Lee Isgur of Jefferies & Co., a San Francisco-based investment firm. “And there’s no central location to have a party.”
The show will also provide a stage for the traditional Hollywood-Silicon Valley rivalry.
A flurry of new alliances between entertainment and technology firms are expected over the next few days. Hollywood producer Ed Pressman plans to announce a venture with Acclaim Entertainment, publisher of the best-selling game “Mortal Kombat.” And musician Quincy Jones’ entertainment firm is to announce plans to develop a title on the history of music with 7th Level, a Richardson, Texas, multimedia start-up.
But even as joint ventures have been struck, the entertainment and technology industries have sparred over who knows best how to do this ill-defined genre called interactive entertainment.
Hollywood has tried to convince electronic software firms that they need its finely honed sense of pop culture to reach a mass audience. And the technology experts have criticized Hollywood’s tendency to try to squeeze its traditional media properties into an interactive form, rather than creating something new.
This week, no small amount of posturing will be going on from both sides.
“Everyone in our industry is at a fevered pitch,” said Bing Gordon, executive vice president of San Mateo, Calif.-based Electronic Arts, which will be showcasing its new flight simulation game starring actor Mark Hamill. “We’re having a bigger booth. I got calf implants for the occasion.”
