AX Post-Mortem, Pt. 1

Atlus ran a Shin Megami Tensei panel at AX 2008. Cool, right? So I went, and so did some friends--the room was packed to capacity, unsurprisingly--and here's the thing: that panel was deadly. I'm not sure if marketing ever gave its seal of approval to the entire affair, but the main speaker was not really a polished public speaker (not his fault, but a moderator figure would've been a good idea) and the accompanying slideshow presentation was specifically designed to hide any or all aspects of interest. If you want a technical recap of the panel, you can find it easily enough online, but the whole affair pretty much went like this:

1. Static slide of game cover art appears on screen.
2. Yu Namba (senior project manager at Atlus) haltingly describes the game and its gameplay features, all of which you have to imagine for yourself because the AV presentation consists solely of a static slide of the game cover art.
3. Static slide of the next game's cover art appears on the screen.
4. Yu Namba haltingly describes the game and its gameplay features, all of which you have to imagine for yourself because the AV presentation consists solely of a static slide of the game cover art.
5. Ad nauseam.

One particular wince-point: as Digital Devil Saga VA Yuri Lowenthal talked about his experiences voicing the game, he mentioned seeing some of the cutscenes and being amazed that the game was actually being released in the U.S. Somewhere... somewhere in all of this would have been a swell opportunity to play a cutscene from the game, or at least a clip showing the man doing his damn job. Instead, Atlus provided... a static slide of the game cover art. The only way anyone could have put any less effort into this panel would be if they just shut off the projector entirely and let Namba mutter for an hour.

Now, I love Atlus, I love Persona and the Shin Megami Tensei series, but I'd been working all day and this was a flagrant waste of time. The panel didn't even attempt to excite any newcomers in the crowd: hey! Play this game! It comes with a cover and there is a picture on that cover! Wait, where are you going?

Swag or no swag, I pulled the ripcord and bailed. Didn't regret a thing. Wasn't even the first to leave.

My companions did stay for the duration--because one of them had a game device to ease the tedium until the Persona 4 announcement. Later on they came by to show me the swag: somewhat unexciting bright yellow shirts, which only came in gamer size (L) and were thus pretty much useless for small females anyway. Plus, bright yellow. (Who is that color supposed to flatter?)

"Ebay," they said.

"Ebay," I nodded.