A guide to giving yourself the authentic E3 experience (without actually going to E3)

14. Stay up all night with your friends, watch a two-hour film at 9 the next morning, then immediately have a competition to see who can accurately write up the entire plot and all the dialogue first. Anyone who takes longer than half an hour loses.

15. Get a friend to walk around in front of you for a day. Make sure he jumps directly in your path brandishing a camera roughlyevery five minutes. Alternatively, go to a camera shop and complain that there are too many cameras.

16. Be late for every thing, event, meeting or appointment you attend for a whole week. Be late by an hour. Blow off every third appointment completely.

17. Try to get into an exclusive night club without your wallet or any ID. Instead, wave a dog-eared e-mail print-out at the bouncer and say it might be your colleague’s name on the list because he took the call.

18. Go into a crowded Starbucks on a Saturday afternoon with your laptop. Fight a man over a plug socket.

19. Go to the cinema but turn up two hours early. Go into the auditorium and just wait for something to happen.


Above: "We apologise for the slight delay. The presentation will start shortly" Yeah right

20. Try to navigate a hedge-maze using only the directional advice of a dead-eyed glamour model who hasn’t even seen the map.

21. Never go anywhere without a laptop, camera and audio-recording equipment. Fill your rucksack with rocks. Use crowded public transport a lot.

22. Use that crowded public transport to travel between as many far-flung destinations as possible each day. Make sure that each is as far from the next as it can possibly be. Spend only ten minutes in each location and move on.

23. Go around a department store acquiring every free tester and food sample you can, whether you want them or not. Take no extra bags with which to carry them.

24. No matter howwell your day may or may not be going, complain about everything, and make sure that everyone around you does the same.

May 31, 2011

David Houghton
Long-time GR+ writer Dave has been gaming with immense dedication ever since he failed dismally at some '80s arcade racer on a childhood day at the seaside (due to being too small to reach the controls without help). These days he's an enigmatic blend of beard-stroking narrative discussion and hard-hitting Psycho Crushers.