The ESA’s first event since the late, largely lamented E3 has been built with a very different objective. Rather than a brash, sprawling conference centre with consumers as the explicit audience and implicit attendees, iicon took place on one stage and a handful of meeting rooms in a new, sparsely-populated casino towards the bottom end of the Las Vegas strip. The audience could be counted – just about – in hundreds, rather than tens of thousands; the stage presentations were about strategy, government policy and brand partnerships. The attendee list was ruthlessly policed, the news value was negligible, the coffee was good: the only similarity to E3 was the timezone and the logo on the invite.
It was intentionally small but felt, in truth, smaller than it should have. The central “theatre” area, which held the catering and networking space, felt cavernous and empty, with a handful of branded stands in the centre and a NASCAR simulator and virtual golf game at the margins. It nevertheless contrived to capture the archetypal E3 experience of taking too long to get anywhere, spacing things out such as to require a brisk walk simply to get from theatre to main stage or meeting room.
What the audience lacked in size, it made up for in quality: while the total attendee count was in the low hundreds, it contained many senior people from significant companies. The opening sessions included the rarely-seen Andrew Wilson and the rarely-outfoxed Strauss Zelnick; Yves Guillemot spoke on the second day, alongside Riot’s Dylan Jadeja, and was conspicuously present throughout. Other speakers included executives from Roblox, Amazon, Netflix and the NBA. The event’s clear and significant value was in the conversations at the margins; veterans I spoke to likened it to the early days of DICE.
This was achieved by some deliberate absences. The purveyors of web shops, live ops and AI tools ubiquitous at other B2B events were not allowed across the threshold; the marginal attendees were business analysts rather than outsourcing firms, in keeping with a clear desire to focus on serious discussions at a C-suite level. Other no-shows, however, felt less intentional and to the event’s detriment.
Xbox and Nintendo had branded spaces but did not appear on stage (Nintendo US COO Devon Pritchard was present, but kept a low profile) and Sony was only represented by its San Diego studio talking about how it worked with Major League Baseball. For all its newfound focus, iicon has the same problem as E3 did: it can only really shine when the entire industry shows up and takes part, and there was a sense that its debut was being doggedly manifested by some ESA members – Take-Two was a notable over-performer, with Zelnick followed by sessions on WWE and NBA – while others paid lip service.
For the industry to truly benefit, more needs to be said out loud
Those who did show up were too cautious. The panels and breakout discussions (two of which I participated in) were commendably curated but only partially effective. The headline topics were highly relevant – government regulation, cultural impact, successful transmedia strategy – but the main stage sessions were smoothly delivered and short on new information or actionable insight. Many speakers took no questions from the audience and vanished the moment they left the stage. Presentations tended towards interesting rather than actively insightful; broad discussions of the status quo that too many of those in attendance knew already. This is not surprising for a new event, and nor is the fact that off-stage conversations were more valuable, but for the industry to truly benefit more needs to be said out loud.
The venue felt more appropriate than the hosts may have wished. The Fontainbleau is new but famously underpopulated: the gaming floor was quiet, many card tables stood empty, the handful of high-end shops barely had any customers. It has forsaken the showy glitz of its rivals, which remain packed and raucous at the other end of the Strip, but has yet to find an audience. The ESA is in a similar situation with iicon. It has built a professional structure far from the sprawling crowds of Gamescom or even GDC; now it needs the high rollers to show up.
There is a clear need for industry leaders to have serious conversations about shared challenges: the rise of UGC platforms and the fall of traditional AAA, the potential of TV and the risks of regulation, what it means for the medium to sit at the heart of culture, and where it goes from here. Iicon has been built to host those conversations, and the agenda laid out exactly the topics that need to be addressed – but it needs all its members to commit, and for all of them to be prepared to say things we haven’t heard before.
