Getting an education in video games at E3

Dora the Explorer could not find a friend. Lizzie McGuire could not find a fan. The Rugrats, Kim Possible, even Yu-Gi-Oh stood alone and unloved, while the Polar Express idled in all its Chris Van Allsburg loveliness and even King Arthur, digitally perfect down to the scabbard of his sword, was subtly snubbed.

The 65,000 gaming industry professionals in town for the E3 convention were too busy blowing things away.

Fans of interactive electronic entertainment, the art form formerly known as video games, inevitably defend their genre of choice by pointing to its educational possibilities. Oh, the things children will learn with a technology that can guide them through the Louvre, the entire works of Shakespeare, the human body and make it all seem just like a game.

But if the next-generation wares on display this week at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo were any indication, gamer kids are mostly going to learn, or rather keep learning, how to kick butt -- mutant alien butt, special forces butt, snake-eating commando butt, ravening vampire and orc butt.

Filling the Los Angeles Convention Center with sets as elaborate as a new ride at Universal and a rib-cage-thumping decibel level of perpetual explosions with techno soundtracks, the 10th anniversary of E3 was an orgy of sights and sounds, most of them violent. From the blood spattering from the mouths of fistfight victims in Def Jam Fight for NY to the realistic blitz in Officers: World War 1939-1945, if people and things weren’t getting punched, stabbed, kicked and shot, then they were being blown up. In exquisite digital detail.

Huge lines of gaming types (the convention was not open to the public) snaked through the crowd for a chance to play Doom3 and Nintendo DS, X-Men Legends and Half Life II. Meanwhile, Sponge Bob: The Movie and the Incredibles couldn’t give it away. Even Power Rangers: Dinotopia was having a hard time. Pity the poor Swedish Trade Council, which offered games called Daydreamer and Backpacker as well as lovely learning games from Gammafon. No lines there.

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Absence of hoopla

The convention was organized by exhibitor, not genre, and those companies that happened to specialize in educational product -- Phoenix Games from Holland, Zoo Digital from Great Britain -- were consigned to small booths in what is essentially the basement, with none of the hoopla and elaborate demonstrations of the main South and West halls. Kentia Hall, with its cubicle “meeting rooms,” offered more a respite from the noise and bother than a destination for the PC-toting, waistband-hitching gamers, many of whom wore black T-shirts with company logos or sayings like “Do I Look Like a Freakin’ People Person?”

Upstairs, Buena Vista Games had to compete with nightmarish next-door neighbor Electronic Arts. One of the largest game developers in the country, EA occupied prime space in the South Hall with an enormous curved screen playing an endless loop of some of its hottest new games -- Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth, Catwoman; Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and Burnout 3, to name a few. (Some random thoughts on experiencing these game clips: What do we do with the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien, anti-industrialist, has spawned a video game? Is it necessary to have a game in which tiny cars race over a woman’s body? And it must be noted that Dame Judi Dench, super talent though she is, just doesn’t digitalize well. Which is probably why she lost the role of Lara Croft to Angelina Jolie.)

Even with its enormous screen providing traffic-stopping trailers from the coming film and game “King Arthur” and its mod-perky mini-arcade showcasing Hilary Duff, Totally Raven and Kim Possible, the Buena Vista exhibit was pretty much dead space, although there were a few gamers playing Nightmare Before Christmas (complete with props probably on loan from the “Christmas Ornaments -- Haunted Mansion” box at Disneyland).

“It comes in waves,” said one young and handsome Buena Vista attendant. “Sometimes it’s really chaotic here.”

Ka-booom went the missiles from EA’s Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. Shtroo-shtroo-shtroo went the machine-gun fire.

And it wasn’t just the kids’ games that got lost on the battlefield. The kiosk for the brand-new Playboy Mansion: The Game was fairly deserted, despite the real live Bunny girls, who looked strange and retro in the high-tech venue. The game allows players to frolic with Hef and participate in a photo shoot, which involves posing a CG model who clearly has breast implants (leaving one to wonder how many levels of virtual unreality the human brain can register at one time).

Those who drifted over to the Mansion were invariably on the elderly side of the crowd -- that is to say, over 35. Clearly the game is aimed at the higher end of the gamer demographic. Do 22-year-olds even know who Hugh Hefner is?

Amid the blood and noise and digital women with figures more unrealistic than Barbie’s (industry experts say half of gamers are women, but we’re betting they don’t look like this), there was a ray or two of hope for low-tech entertainment.

Fear Factor: The Game had perhaps the best promotion at the convention -- a fish tank full of giant cockroaches also contained poker chips, a few of which entitled the bearer to a free laptop. All you had to do was stick your hand in and pull one out. The line was way longer than you might imagine.

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To get a T-shirt

But the award for the best the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same moment goes to Natsume, a company promoting two children’s games: Chulip, in which the player must cope with odd characters in a Japanese town to kiss a girl and fulfill a legend, and Harvest Moon, which involves acquiring different farm skills (seriously).

To acquire the Natsume T-shirt, with its very charming cow logo, convention-goers had to play one of the games. Then they received a ticket that allowed them to compete with a lovely young woman dressed as one of the characters in a rousing round of Rock Paper Scissors -- with their hands, not joysticks. If they won three shirts, they could challenge her for the grand prize of a small stuffed cow.

The line, though not as long as that for Doom 3, was quite impressive, with people laughing and chanting “rock ... paper ... scissors ... all right, duuude!”

And when one young man beat her scissors with his rock to win a stuffed cow, the cheers almost drowned out the sound of nearby gunfire.

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On the Web

To see a video report on the E3 Convention, visit www.calendarlive.com/e3.