Zork Grand Inquisitor

June 17, 1997

Sorry for the delay since the last diary entry. I've been directing our video shoot and surviving our corporate move, both of which have put me behind schedule.

Instead of focusing on those two issues in a recap fashion, this entry will look at the upcoming E3 show in Atlanta and the impact it (and other marketing needs) has on making a game.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), it is an annual event where game publishers, hardware manufacturers, sales staffs, and the media meet to view the upcoming crop of games. This is the third show, and it is being held somewhere other than Los Angeles for the first time. You can check out the home page at http://www.mha.com/e3/.

Obviously, this is an important event for Activision, since we can show many of our titles that will be available in the near future including Heavy Gear, Dark Reign, Apocalypse, Hexen II, and, of course, Zork Grand Inquisitor.

Preparation is Key

Although it's open to the public, the focus of the show is sales. Buyers from the biggest chains (Egghead, Sams, BestBuy, etc.) are scouring the floor, looking for the titles that will be big winners in the upcoming months. A title can be seriously hampered if it has a poor showing in front of these key people.

This indirectly affects you the buyer, because if your local software store decides not to stock a title, you will not be able to buy it without doing some legwork or going through mail order. Chances are you will buy something else, which is, of course, not what any software company wants to happen.

Read about getting ready for the show...