Chapter 73 - #73: E3 Gaming Expo

Chapter 73: Chapter #73: E3 Gaming Expo

"Ethan, are you planning to attend the E3 conference this year?" Ivan asked, looking at the exhibition docket in his hand.

Every year around mid-June, the E3 gaming expo was held in Los Angeles. E3—the Electronic Entertainment Expo—was the largest annual commercial exhibition in the global video game industry, serving as one of the top three gaming conferences in the world.

The expo featured all the most important software and hardware releases of the year.

Since its inaugural opening in 1995, E3 had been an absolute constant, long establishing itself as the premier grand event of the global electronic entertainment industry.

Every single year, it attracted the undivided attention of major exhibitors, publishers, and millions of players worldwide.

E3 provided the ultimate interactive opportunity for developers and consumers. Industry giants gathered to outline the future rhythm and development direction of gaming as a whole. Dubbed the "Oscars of the video game industry," it was the single most heavily scrutinized week in gaming.

"E3?" Ethan Vale paused, slightly stunned.

Even though he was firmly entrenched in the industry now, over the past year, he hadn’t spared a single thought for gaming conventions or trade shows.

"If you want to go, I’ll put your name down right now," Ivan laughed over the phone. "Xbox will only take up a tiny fraction of the presentation time to discuss some minor specs for the next-generation console. The rest of our dedicated stage time will be entirely yours. You can run it however you want."

In previous years, Xbox had always allocated their stage time to various first-party studios to tease minor updates or generic news.

There was rarely any powerful atmospheric rendering, no massive gameplay demonstrations, and no truly eye-catching surprises.

But after receiving the official stage allocation from the E3 organizers this year, Ivan immediately thought of Sprout Studio. He was fully prepared to hand Ethan the entire Xbox presentation slot.

Ethan’s mind raced, a sudden wave of realization washing over him. Before he knew it, an entire year had passed in this parallel world.

He had gone from a broke college graduate making a game in his dorm room to a globally recognized lead designer.

"Ethan?" Ivan prompted.

"Alright. I’ll go," Ethan replied. "I’ll start preparing the material."

For the rest of the call, Ethan and Ivan ironed out the details of the Sprout Studio E3 showcase.

In addition to a live gameplay demonstration and the official release date announcement for Bloodborne, the presentation needed to include the formal reveal of Sprout’s next massive project—the flagship exclusive designed specifically to launch the next-generation Xbox console.

Ivan desperately wanted Ethan to drop some tangible details for the players.

"If it’s at all possible, I’d love to have a few screenshots, or maybe some concept art..." Ivan said, his voice dropping an octave.

He knew he was pushing his luck. He had also completely forgotten about E3 until today, and it was already early June.

The expo officially kicked off in less than two weeks.

The timeline was brutally tight.

"If you really don’t have anything ready, it’s fine. We can skip the next-gen reveal for now."

"It’s fine. I can probably put together a promotional video to show on stage," Ethan smiled.

Ever since he had agreed to develop the flagship console exclusive, he had already quietly begun the preliminary production for Dark Souls.

He actually had enough substantive content to cut a proper trailer.

"Wait, what? You have enough for a promotional video?!" Ivan gasped, genuinely taken aback. Ethan’s development speed always felt terrifyingly unreal.

In the past, whenever Ivan had checked in on Xbox’s internal first-party studios, the developers always brushed him off with a perfunctory, "We’re working on it, we’re working on it..."

Getting even a single piece of finalized concept art or a basic character model out of those teams required endless, agonizing pressure.

He had just been praying Ethan could slap together a decent poster for the presentation, and Ethan had casually offered him a fully rendered cinematic trailer.

"..." Ivan took a deep, shuddering breath. In that moment, he literally could not find the English words to express his sheer, overwhelming awe.

Instead, he reached for a phrase he had frequently seen trending on Terra’s domestic social media forums. "F*ck! That’s absolute gigachad behavior!"

Ethan just sighed over the phone. ’You’ve been conducting business in the gaming industry half of your life, and the only thing you’ve learned how to say perfectly is that? That’s boomer behaviour right there...’

...

"E3? What the hell is E3?" Silver muttered.

The second Xbox officially announced that Sprout Studio would be taking over their E3 presentation, Silver had immediately pulled up a search engine in sheer confusion.

"Bro, how did I not know a massive gaming convention like this even existed?" he asked, scanning the Wikipedia summary of the event.

His stream chat was thoroughly amused.

[

DraGon_SlayErr: To be fair, the last few years of E3 have been incredibly boring. It’s totally normal to not care about it.

Luc4August: If the sadist wasn’t going, I wouldn’t care about this expo either.

jsHall: Before Nova, I literally didn’t know this existed LMAO

NicoGab: Seriously, before the sadist showed up, the gaming industry was just a long, dark age of cash-grabs. I used to play other games, but now I literally only wait for Sprout Studio releases.

thedriddler_67: +1

[+1]

[+1]

[+1M]

]

Reading the chat, Silver and his viewers suddenly realized something profound. Ever since they first encountered a Nova game, they really hadn’t touched anything else.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to play other games; they simply didn’t have the time.

Beating one of Ethan’s games required hundreds of hours of agonizing dedication, not to mention the players who stubbornly stayed behind to conquer the brutal post-game challenges.

Just when a player finally beat a Sprout Studio game and breathed a sigh of relief, Ethan immediately dropped the next one.

Historically, players were the ones constantly begging developers to release new games. This was the very first time in history where a developer was actively churning out masterpieces faster than the players could physically beat them.

Through his relentless release schedule, the sadist was invisibly mocking the entire gaming community: Is that all you’ve got? Do you still think my games are ’Very Easy’?

"Well, whatever. Let’s see... oh nice, you can buy digital tickets to watch the high-quality livestreams. We aren’t exactly short on cash, let’s just buy one!" Silver said cheerfully, clicking on the official E3 digital ticketing page.

"Since we’ve never been to an expo before, we might as well get the full experience and see what the hype is about," he smiled at the monitor.

He navigated to the checkout page, only to realize he had to create an account and fill out a massive registration form first.

By the time he finished typing in all his details and returned to the main purchase page, the bright green [Buy Ticket] button had turned entirely gray.

Right next to it, two bright red words flashed on the screen: SOLD OUT!

Silver just stared blankly at his monitor.

"..."

He didn’t move a single muscle.

For several long seconds, the webcam feed in the corner of the stream looked like a frozen jpeg.

[

kov9413tam: I’m dying, bro is so mad he actually stopped rendering.

kingramzi: Thank god I already made an account last year. I bought mine the second the announcement dropped.

jSchmidt: Friendly reminder to the chat: the stream is not actually frozen.

ExquisitePieceOfBacon Wait, your hands are that fast? How did you buy one so quickly?

kindred: My friend, I’ve been playing the sadist’s games for a year. My APM is godly now!

]

"It’s fine. It’s totally fine. If we can’t go, we can’t go," Silver said, taking a deep, ragged breath and waving his hands dismissively. "It’s just a stupid game convention, right?"

"Let’s just play a game. Let’s go back to doing the Pantheons with the Bindings," he forced a stiff, unnatural smile onto his face.

He blankly booted up Hollow Knight and locked his Nail and Soul meter in Godhome.

He was currently throwing himself at the two-Binding challenges.

Half an hour later, when his Knight was brutally crushed by a boss for the dozenth time, Silver completely snapped.

He violently slammed his fists into his mechanical keyboard over and over again.

The live broadcast was instantly filled with the agonizing, rapid-fire clack-clack-clack of keys buckling under his pure, concentrated rage.

Silver was just venting his pain. And the chat, knowing exactly how petty he was, ruthlessly poured salt in the wound.

[

Руслан Мэнов: Bruh couldn’t get the ticket AND can’t ace the game. Skill issue.

]

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Fuck, I’m sick. My head is killing me. I need some stones or some shit to heal me. Please, give me some of it!

You can support me at patreon.com/Chaos_King and read 25! Yes, 25 advanced Chapters.