The press area on the second floor of the Los Angeles E3 Convention Center was a cacophony of clacking keyboards. The air was a thick stew of coffee, cheap newsprint, and sweat.
Paul shoved half a cold hot dog into his mouth, a smear of grease staining his chin.
"The piece on Carmack's general-purpose engine is out," he mumbled, his speech muffled by food. He tossed a mustard-smeared napkin into the trash can. "The Editor-in-Chief was screaming over the phone. He said if there isn't a story about id and Sega teaming up on the front page tomorrow, I can go back to writing appliance manuals."
David hit the Enter key, sending the final section of his document back to the editorial office via modem.
He glanced at the wall clock: 1:30 PM.
"Newspapers with actual staff would have interns running to the corner for hot pizza by now," David said, closing his laptop. "For a two-man frontline team like us, scoring a hot dog is a win."
The morning had been a whirlwind of information. From Capcom's arcade boards to Sega's million-polygon graphics, and Enix's simmering undercurrents, the crescendo arrived when Carmack unveiled the UE general-purpose engine, sending the entire convention into a frenzy.
Every media outlet was now scrambling to break the news first.
The first to publish would carve out the biggest slice of this traffic-driven feast.
Many reporters had even skipped lunch. The vending machines in the corner of the press center had been stripped bare of sandwiches.
"Let's go, the second half is starting." David grabbed his voice recorder.
Paul groaned as he stood up from his chair, rubbing his aching lower back. "Which giant is it this afternoon? Nintendo or Sony?"
"Neither," David said, flipping open the schedule. "The afternoon is dedicated to small and mid-sized developers."
This year's E3 had made a very clever business expansion in its scheduling. The IDSA had carved out several of the most remote areas of the South Wing Pavilion, renting them specifically to small and mid-sized studios with tight budgets.
There were no spotlights, no giant screens. The rent per square meter was nearly half that of the Central Hall. To accommodate these small teams, the organizers allowed several studios to share a single booth, rotating their use by the hour.
David and Paul walked through the connecting corridor and arrived at the edge of the South Wing Pavilion.
The scene here was a world apart from the main stage that morning. Instead of executives in suits and ties, there were mostly programmers in plaid shirts and disheveled hair.
The booth was stripped to the barest essentials.
A single folding table, a bulky CRT monitor, and a whiteboard covered in game concepts.
"This place doesn't even have an AC vent," Paul said, tugging at his tie, sweat pouring down his face.
"People aren't coming here for the air conditioning," David said, pointing to a few men in suits wearing VIP badges. "See them? That's Ubisoft's head of M&A, and people from EA. They're here to strike gold."
The North American video game industry was in the fast lane of rapid growth.
The major players were flush with cash and desperate to expand their software portfolios.
Over the last two years, Ubisoft had ballooned in size by aggressively acquiring small and mid-sized studios. This business model had spurred other publishers to follow suit.
Instead of spending years building a team from scratch, it was far more efficient to simply write a check for a promising half-finished project.
The two men stopped in front of a booth cobbled together by three different studios.
On the whiteboard, a few rough level sketches were drawn in marker.
A young man in black-rimmed glasses was passionately pitching to a group of investors who had stopped to listen.
"We're using a non-linear narrative structure," the young man said, tapping the whiteboard. "Every choice the player makes will affect the final ending. We've only completed the demo for the first chapter so far. If we can secure a $200,000 investment, we guarantee a full release by next Christmas."
The investors exchanged glances. One of them handed over a business card.
"The idea is good, but the technical risks are high," the investor said politely. "Send your business plan to this address, and we'll evaluate it."
The young man took the card with both hands, bowing repeatedly.
David recorded the scene in his notes.
"Two hundred thousand dollars," Paul remarked from the side. "At Sega or Sony, that wouldn't even cover a promotional video. Here, it can determine a studio's survival."
"Carmack wrote the base code for Doom in a basement back in the day," David said, pausing his pen. "You never know if the next industry-changing monster is hiding in one of these crude booths."
The two continued walking.
The exhibition hall was packed, a constant roar of noise filling the air.
A crowd had gathered around one particular booth. David pushed his way closer.
On the screen, a top-down real-time strategy game was running.
The graphics weren't impressive, but the number of units on screen was staggering.
Hundreds of pixelated soldiers clashed across the map, yet the frame rate remained rock-steady.
"We rewrote the pathfinding algorithm," the developer behind the booth said, his eyes ringed with dark circles as he worked the mouse. "Memory usage is extremely low. It runs smoothly even on a low-end 486 PC."
David recognized the heavy-set man standing in the front row.
That was Mike Morhaime, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment.
Morhaime stared at the screen for a moment, then turned to whisper something to his assistant.
The assistant stepped forward and began speaking quietly with the developer.
"Sharp nose," Paul remarked, pursing his lips. "Blizzard is making their own RTS. The moment they see a small team with good tech, they move in to poach them."
"That's the industry ecosystem," David said, raising his camera to take a photo. "The logic of capital is laid bare in these cheap booths."
The afternoon's reporting was far more demanding than the morning's.
In the morning, they had only to sit in the audience and listen to executives paint rosy pictures of the future.
Now, they had to sift through the sand themselves to find valuable news leads.
Some projects didn't even have a demo, relying solely on a few concept sketches and a silver tongue to secure sponsorship.
Teams like these—mere shell companies—were far from uncommon.
David and Paul divided the work. Paul focused on gathering playable material from projects with complete demos, while David schmoozed with promising developers to dig out the stories behind their games.
One developer, after pitching his game for four straight hours, had completely lost his voice. He was forced to rely on hand gestures and flyers to keep selling.
An investor, impressed by a puzzle game prototype, signed a letter of intent right there on a folding table.
Joy, disappointment, calculation, and dreams—all these emotions intertwined within the cramped, crowded South Wing Pavilion.
"The team making that racing game has a physics engine that's a complete mess," Paul complained to David, clutching a stack of collected business cards. "The car just flies off the map the moment it hits a wall. And there was a fighting game where the move hitboxes were all based on luck. What kind of garbage is this?"
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