 This is the best E3 in years and you should trust me because I've been to some terrible E3s. I'm going to explain why this one in particular matters with four helpful reasons. One is super obvious but people actually brought video games. Over the past couple years we've been so focused on the actual hardware that plays the games that the games themselves kind of played second fiddle. This year there is a bounty of video games for all types of people whether you want to shoot people in the face or shoot people in the arms or not shoot people at all which I hear is a new trend there is something for you. Which brings me to number two. Did you like old games that came out a long time ago but you'd like them to look a little bit better? Well don't worry everyone has you covered. This is officially the year of the remaster. We have a new version of Gears of War 1 that looks nicer than the last version. We have Rare Replay which is 30 video games across I don't know like the Atari or something what did people play back in the day? I'm too young still even though I'm old I'm turning 30 this year. I'm going to die in a shallow grave. And we can't talk about remakes without talking about the king of all remakes Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Announced by Square Enix at Sony's press conference I'm sure we'll see it by the year 2032. Number three VR and AR. Virtual reality or augmented reality or mixed reality if you're a publicist at Microsoft. It turns out people actually care about these things. In years past the relationship with virtual reality and video games has kind of been thin. You can get the general vibe that hey this might work but I don't really want to put too much money into it in case it utterly fails. Sony is really enthused about the potential of Morpheus and Microsoft is overwhelmingly ecstatic about HoloLens. This augmented reality system that is also going to be the world's most popular way to play Minecraft when if it ever comes out. Number four and most important of all diversity. It turns out video games are finally realizing that you can invite half the population in to enjoy this medium. Women appeared at press events on stage not nearly as many as men it's still a small percentage but it's a start. And you can actually play as female characters in video games. There was time clearly made to show that this would be an option and Fallout and Assassin's Creed and easily the most interesting new game shown at the show Horizon Zero Dawn stars a strong woman who looks like she could kill pretty much anything including robotic dinosaurs. So yeah it's a nice time to be at E3. It feels like an E3 that actually wants people to be here. It feels like a show that I don't have to cringe through because it spends a large chunk of its time making people who don't look like me feel like they're not welcome. And it's kind of thrilling. Now let's hope that what's happening here at E3 can kind of rally forward through the rest of the year so that people who want to talk about games in interesting and different and critical ways can feel like they can hop on to social media without being attacked by crazy people.