The event that brings cringe, new games, embarrassing moments, and world premiers looks to be changing its gears. According to a new report, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is considering shifting the face of E3 next year to something more “appealing” and “captivating.” And to do this, celebrities and influencers are a prime target.

If the ESA isn’t leaking personal information regarding attendees and other crucial data, then you can find it battling different countries and their gambling law to save loot-boxes and microtransactions.

And if the ESA isn’t attempting to save live-service mechanics as if they were a dame in danger, then you can find the software association company trying to give E3 (which is going through an identity crisis) a facelift.

According to publication site gamesindustry.biz, we learn that this focus is to garner more people, likely the young according to the lingo, and bolster numbers given that E3 is lagging behind other games events:

“In the ESA’s proposal, marketing activations involving celebrities and influencers would become a key feature of the E3 showfloor. The pitch deck included an example of the Los Angeles Lakers playing a basketball video game in front of fans, and mentioned official relationships with talent agencies like CAA and UTA.”

The publication site also reveals that “queuetainment” is going to be a thing in that it acts as “direct marketing opportunities” aimed at “attendees as they stand in line.” Additionally, this is due to the ESA’s membership pool approving 10,000 badges for consumer attendees in 2020, coupled with a system that lets attendees book time slots for specific games through a mobile app:

“While waiting times would be shorter as a result, the pitch deck also described plans for “queuetainment” — essentially direct marketing opportunities aimed at attendees as they stand in line. With this greater focus on consumers, E3 may be reorganised so it has an “industry-only” day on Tuesday, before opening its doors to the public from Wednesday.”

Given that the ESA wants to promote stuff to people while waiting or standing around by using famous entities such as the Los Angeles Lakers playing basketball games in front of fans or having the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) or the United Talent Agency (UTA) doing stuff near attendees only means to “attract” more people.

According to social justice activist and analyst Daniel Ahmad, E3 has been lagging behind its counterparts:

Biggest gaming exhibitions / trade shows of by number of entries: Gamescom 2019: 373k

ChinaJoy 2019: 365k

Brazil Games Show 2018: 325k

Taipei Game Show 2019: 320k

Paris Games Week 2018: 316k

Tokyo Game Show 2019: 262k

G-Star Korea 2018: 235k

…..

E3 2019: 66k — Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) September 16, 2019

To clarify the above numbers, they do not represent the actual number of visitors, but the number of entries over a time frame. This means Gamescom 2019 had 373,000 entries split over the course of four days.

One of the many notes that the ESA wants to do for E3 2020 is to engage in new paid media partnerships:

Finally, we’ll see if more celebrities, influencers, and consumers will play a role in increasing the number of attendees and the like when E3 2020 rolls around.

(Header image courtesy of gamedaily.biz)