I Mean, Matt Groening Would Know, Right?

**Jeff Gerstmann** (0:22)
Hey, what's going on, everybody? Hi, welcome to the program. It's The Jeff Gerstmann Show. Before, what, April? No, August, August 18th, 2026 I'm your host for this week's edition of the program. My name is Jeff Gerstmann. Hi. We're continuing on the road of video games. We are now about, we are, been by about, I mean, we're, we are a week away from the Gamescom live stream, Gamescom opening night live. That'll be taking place sometime on Tuesday. I don't, it's one of those things where it's like, it's eight o'clock in Germany. And what does that mean here? Is it after, what is it? So that's at noon here? Eight-ish, eight, somewhere around eight hour. I forget what it is. Time, man. This is why, this is why we should have all switched to swatch internet time. We had it. We had it. Sega was right when they rolled it out for Phantasy Star Online. They knew what the hell was going on. We could have had it all. Instead, now something's happening in Germany, and I don't know when it's going on. Right now, it's 751 beats here. I was going to say here in Southern California, but it's all around the world. That's how many beats it is. So this is the magic. This is how it's supposed to work. But we lost it all. I don't know. I need to find, if I could find my, my Apple Watch tells the swatch time just fine, but I had my actual swatch watch then that I picked up. So I could get my PSO games together, get my crew together, even though I think three of us were in the same time zone anyway, and then one guy was in Texas sometimes. Where, what time is it in Texas? I don't know. Do they still have time in Texas or do they regulate that out of existence? I don't know. Like no more weed, also time is banned. This is Texas. They said they were going to mess with us and we've got to prove it. Anyway, I don't know what's going to go on with Gamescom. It is kind of the last big preview and announcement focused thing before the Game Awards, right? And so in a way, in a world where there's no E3, like a lot of stuff has kind of split apart when it comes to those sorts of announcements. And I've never been to Gamescom because there was rarely a reason to go. We would send everyone to E3 because it was close. It was a drive, literally. And it made sense to send everybody down there. Gamescom would happen a few, you know, a couple months later here. You'd have your E3 in June and then August would be Gamescom. And it was just like leftovers, you know? It was like Gamescom was not as big of a deal. It was not as big of a show. For games that had like multiple hits, like a fighting game with multiple characters, you'd be like, okay, well, here's another announcement for that game. And here's another character for this. Or, hey, we've got a lightly updated trailer or whatever. But it was a lot of the same preview builds, like demo builds, hands-on opportunities that you already had at E3. And so you would go for like a handful of games. It was bigger for PC back in the day, because there was a lot of European PC stuff. You're farming simulators and all of that sort of stuff. And so we would send a handful of people, but really the stuff that was happening over there, back in the GameSpot days, there was a GameSpot UK for a good chunk of time. And so they would take the lead on a lot of that stuff, and we would send some people out as well.
But it was just never something that mattered all that much. Obviously, in a world where now E3 is completely gone, those opportunities are really up for grabs. And you combine that with, there's developers, you talk to developers, especially around, it's mostly centered around GDC, but the sentiment is still true. There are a lot of developers and a lot of people around the world that don't want to come to the US right now. It's very expensive. The situation here is very weird with, are you going to get pulled off the streets? And are they going to demand to dig through your phone at the border? Like just a bunch of working shit that a lot of developers don't want to come in for GDC. And then that holds true for some of the other events. There were developers that I heard from, that were pretty on the fence about coming in for even Summer Game Fest, where we're just like, ah, maybe we'll just do another event somewhere else or do this. There was some concern about like, should we send our people there or not? It doesn't seem like a lot of people really want to go. And in the end, they ended up making the trip. And it's mostly fine, but you kind of never know. And that's sort of the, you know, it's a disappointing situation for, you know, tourism as well. But like, you know, just the ability to get things done business-wise is a hassle. So I know a lot of developers are bummed out that GDC continues to be in San Francisco because, A, it's in the US and B, San Francisco is a really expensive city. If you're a smaller developer that isn't backed by a massive company, which in case you haven't noticed, there are not that many massive companies left anymore to back developers coming into the States, it's a harder trip to justify. And so I think some folks are hoping that they move the show somewhere else or whatever, but GDC doesn't seem interested in that so far anyway. And maybe things will change and they won't have to, but that's kind of the lay of the land right now. And so all of these things, I think, will help Gamescom become a much more relevant show because Summer Game Fest is growing every year. It's a big deal. There are plenty of big games shown there, announced there, whatever. But it's not E3 sized. And so if you've also got video games and maybe you're not ready for the timeframe of Summer Game Fest or you're just not going to compete on that stage or whatever, you can show your game at Gamescom. There's a lot of press come from around the world to Germany to see that sort of stuff. And then there's also Opening Night Live, which is another Keely fronted show where they are showing trailers and announcing games. And so the vacuum that E3 created, obviously it led to a situation where Keely could create the Summer Game Fest and also created this opportunity for the long time organizers of Gamescom to kind of seize upon that and make it be a bigger show. Like a lot of people go because it was a public show, E3 had always had numbers that dwarfed E3, but it was also open to the public. And so the numbers weren't really the same. It was more comparable to compare Gamescom to something like Tokyo Game Show because TGS would have public days as well. And I don't know, the stories I always heard from people who went to Gamescom were that if you were there on the public days, that it was a good reminder that just like there's, like I don't know what's going on and I don't want to generalize, but it just seemed like, you know, yeah, I don't know, man, people in Europe, they just don't really use deodorant. And then they get in these sweltering holes and it's just like this massive stink. It's like a Smash Brothers tournament in there, you know? And so that was always the report coming back was like, dude, what the stinks there? It's a fucking nightmare. Like the show floor just stinks of bodies. Like that was every year, that was the report out of Gamescom. What happened to Gamescom? It fucking stank is what happened, man. And so I never, I don't know, I never went. But I don't know, I want to go now because there's no E3, because there's, yeah, a lot of people smoking indoors too. So yeah, there was, it was like a ridiculous combination in some parts of the building, I guess.