With more than two decades of shows under its belt, this isn't E3's first identity crisis. Hell, it isn't even the second. The show has rebranded a few times and bounced among a few locations, including a few years spent in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2007 and 2008, E3 was held in Santa Monica as the "E3 Media and Business Summit"; it was closed to bloggers and anyone outside of the core industry and involved a lot of PowerPoint presentations. Attendance dropped to just 5,000 people in 2008.

E3 returned to its original, ostentatious format at the LACC the following year, and attendance shot back up to 41,000. In 2018, E3's second year as a public event, the show drew 69,000 attendees.

"It's always been a bit perplexing trying to imagine how the show is 'worth it'"

"Several of us have been in the industry since E3 began, and honestly it's always been a bit perplexing trying to imagine how the show is 'worth it' to huge brands like Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, EA, Steam, Apple, etc., who spend millions each year to, I don't know, remind industry people and press that they exist and are huge?" said Mike Wilson, co-founder of Devolver Digital. "Last year the energy did seem down a bit, at least for our industry friends who wandered over. They seemed largely beaten down by the fan factor."

Devolver has a rocky history with the ESA and E3, in particular. It's a high-profile indie publishing label responsible for games including Hotline Miami, The Talos Principle, Reigns, The Red Strings Club and dozens of other successful titles. Devolver has never purchased E3 floor space, but for the past few years it's hosted a multi-day party during the big show in a parking lot directly across the street from the LACC. They bring in Airstream trailers packed with indie developers and their games, set up a bar, bring in a food truck and settle in for a good time.

Devolver claims the ESA has attempted to thwart its party by blocking the parking lot with big trucks and generally making the planning stages as difficult as possible. The ESA doesn't make any money off of Devolver's E3-adjacent Airstreams, after all, a fact that Wilson has pointed to as motivation for the group's alleged ire. In response, Devolver has upped the ante: For the past two years, it's also hosted spoof press conferences mocking the E3 presentations of major companies like Microsoft and Sony (while providing a platform to advertise its own games, of course).

"It's a family reunion slash company picnic for us and our developers every year, many of whom travel there just to hang out with the posse even if they don't have a game to show," Wilson said. "As for our press conferences, it's just a convenient date to televise the magic with a lot of people watching, and if the big companies weren't there to set up our comedy with their super exciting conferences, there would be no need for ours, and no context for the humor."

Devolver represents the modern era of digital distribution and independent development, and its antagonistic relationship with E3 serves as a perfect metaphor. As a trade show, E3 is stuck in a behemoth, slow-moving, retail-focused rut, while the marketing and distribution worlds have evolved rapidly around it. Indie developers, Twitch streamers, Instagram influencers and digital distributors have more power than ever, and they're proving they can rival major companies like Sony and EA on the public stage.

"It's a celebration of the unsustainable nature of that whole scene."

So much so, that Sony is taking a page out of Devolver's book and skipping E3 next year. However, there's still plenty of hope for the ESA: Other major publishers (including Nintendo and Microsoft) are scheduled to come back with big booths on the show floor in 2019. The year after should be a big one for the video game industry overall, with speculation that the next Xbox and PlayStation hardware will land then, and E3 could once again bounce back from the brink of irrelevance.

One thing is certain, though. If E3 doesn't evolve in a major way, indie developers will remain on the outside, looking in. And eventually, there may be no one left inside.

"It's always kind of been a celebration of the big end of town; it's a place for the AAA people to go and party and hang out," Dead Cells' marketing man Steve Filby said. "Last year when I was there, outside of the events that I was invited to that were indie focused, I realized that I knew pretty much no one. It dawned on me then that it's really a place for the biggest of the big to duke it out, so in some ways it's a celebration of the unsustainable nature of that whole scene."