If you're anywhere near the Los Angeles Convention Center next week, when videogame tradeshow E3 takes place, you won't have far to go for a snack: Doritos is erecting a 60-foot-tall "arcade game" in the middle of the street between the Staples Center and the L.A. Live complex. Besides being a working arcade game—one controlled by a six-foot joystick—the venue will host live concerts throughout next week.

The interactive colossus that is the "Doritos Mix Arcade" joins other fan-focused, E3-adjacent events. EA Play, from publisher Electronic Arts, invites gaming fans and industry members alike to get their hands on new games like Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2. And even the E3 Expo itself is getting in on the act by opening up "E3 Live" this year, a separate event at which E3 games from other publishers will be playable.

Not bad for a show that isn't even open to the public.

Since its establishment in 1995 as a games-only alternative to the Consumer Electronics Show, E3 has long been a Mecca for game fans, a holy ground where you can play demos of titles that are months or years away from release (and sometimes never ship at all, making your pilgrimage even more special in retrospect). Only game fans aren't actually allowed in—it's an industry-only affair. That doesn't stop the industrious, however; over the years, people have thwarted E3's industry-only requirement by using everything from fake pay stubs to nonexistent websites. But now, with heavy hitters like Electronic Arts and Activision pulling out of E3, those fans may be the show's best hope of staying relevant.

Frito-Lay

"There's a tension that I've never seen before amongst all the publishers about where E3 goes after this year," says Geoff Keighley, the host of YouTube's live-streamed E3 coverage. "I've been to every E3 since 1995, and the world has changed. I think it's a bit antiquated that it's a show that is walled off to the public."

E3's management sort of opened the show to the public last year, giving exhibitors a total of 5,000 passes that they could distribute to what it earnestly and unironically referred to as "prosumers," and noting that this move was due to exhibitors expressing more desire to "connect with people directly."

But even this was not enough of a sop to Electronic Arts, which pulled its E3 booth and funneled the money instead into its own event near the convention center, one at which it had the power to admit anyone it liked. The company gave up one of the choicest E3 booth spaces—a massive block right in front of the exhibit hall entrance—in exchange for the ability to put its games directly in front of fans.

In giving up big chunks of E3 space, the big publishers are making way for the likes of Doritos. The snack food brand has exhibited at E3 in the past, says Frito-Lay marketing vice president Jeannie Cho, but the massive stage event dovetails with the consumer-focused events that are more prevalent this year. "For us to be there allows us to provide even more access, more entertainment and more control to fans than ever before," she says.

The massive arcade cabinet-shaped venue isn't the first time Doritos has gone big; its giant vending machine-shaped stage was an unmissable (though risible) landmark at South By Southwest for years. If the performances Doritos lined up for that stage in years past—Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, and others—are any indication, some top talent might be playing underneath that six-foot joystick next week. The performances, Cho says, will feature "gameplay integrated with music."

There's nothing wrong with E3 transforming into an event that better reflects how the show's exhibitors want to get attention for their products, or into a weeklong party for gaming fans. What's strange about this year is the half-measures, the straddling of the line, opening up massive offsite events for the public but stopping them at the gates to the actual show.

"Based on all my conversations with game publishers this year, there's definitely a big movement towards trying to have the show reinvent itself if it's going to continue on after this year," Keighley says. He envisions a longer E3, with a few extra days of the show that allow fans in once all the business is done: "With the amount of money that's spent on these booths, why not keep them open a few more days for fans?"

E3 "feels more and more like the hole in the middle of a doughnut," writes Rob Fahey of GamesIndustry.biz. "It wants to be a spectacle, and a place to do business, and ends up being dissatisfying at both; it wants to excite and intrigue consumers, but it doesn't want to let them in."

How long can that last?