E3 2012: David Jaffe's diary - day one

Throughout E3 2012, God Of War and Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe is writing a daily diary for us. Now he's left Eat, Sleep, Play, he's working on an unannounced project which, by his own admission, means he'll be spending much of the show in meetings he can't tell us about. He won't be on the show floor, feeding back endless reports on the games he's been playing, or writing 1200-word screeds about the platform holder conferences. We're fine with that; in fact, that's the entire point. Jaffe will bring us a different perspective on the biggest show on the videogame calendar, giving a personal view of the chaos on the ground - though as we find out, his first day at E3 2012 was fairly straightforward.

Day One - Monday, June 4

I didn't make it to E3 until the afternoon. I had some stuff to do with some of the team that I'm working with to get my new game ready, then I had to pack, and run to the doctor for my yearly physical. I was constantly checking my iPhone, my iPad and my computer at home, getting bits and pieces of the Microsoft conference, but I've yet to sit and watch the whole thing.

I made sure to check out the Halo 4 trailer, and the Gears Of War: Judgment teaser. I saw Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and Tomb Raider - all were great, I was really excited and impressed. Then I went on Twitter and was like, "Oh my god, Tomb Raider and Halo 4 and Splinter Cell were great!" People were like, "What are you talking about? This sucks!" Dude, maybe I need to get the fuck out of the industry, because if that's what the masses are saying sucks these days... I don't fucking get it.

Then I set off for the show. I had a 5.30 meeting and the journey was super-easy; I was racing down the 5 and the 405 listening to music that people make fun of me for, but nobody was in the car but me, so I was cranking that up. I got to the Marriott, sat and just caught up on news: I read about SmartGlass, which I'd heard about but didn't really know what it was - I thought it looked cool.

Unfortunately I didn't get to the Sony conference because I had my 5.30 and they started at 6, so I'm sitting up there and right as my meeting starts all the Sony news starts pouring in. I was hearing about my God Of War compatriot Todd Pappy demoing Ascension. The meeting overran, which is good, because that always means the people you're talking to wanna keep talking to you. Before we started, we talked about the show: the show is the story. We're fans of games, we love the medium so yeah, you throw a bunch of fans at a giant warehouse filled with the newest games and it's kind of hard not to talk about them. Everybody seemed to be impressed with Tomb Raider, and rightly so, and there was a lot of talk about Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, which I saw the trailer for.

Then I went to United Talent Agency's party downtown. I was only going to stay for a few minutes: I really like those guys, but I had a 9.30 meeting the next morning, and I don't want to be that guy again this year, who's up until 2 in the morning and I don't hit my meetings fresh and all that shit. So I thought I was going to stay for all of five minutes.

I ended up running into Jenova Chen from Thatgamecompany - we sat down in the back of the bar and started talking. Then Tim Schafer walks up, and he's got Ron Gilbert with him, and I'm sitting there like, "I'm not fucking getting up from this, dude! This is the best fucking seat in the house!" So I'm sitting there for an hour and a half listening to Tim sharing his experiences, and getting to know Ron, and Jenova. So before I know it it's late, so I head back to the Marriott, and I end up running into a producer from Sony Santa Monica.

I get really passionate about the stuff I'm working on. This guy made it clear to me - and I wasn't even aware of this - that I had passionately steamrolled over him once, and it was clear he had not really forgotten it. It was really nice to be able to apologise. I really appreciated him giving me that opportunity to hear this very real slight I had inflicted on him because of my idiocy, my poor leadership skills. I was like, "Oh, fuck man, I apologise."

So we were up until 1.30am talking about it, and now I'm fucking tired as shit, honestly. But if nothing else comes out of this E3, I'm really glad that I got to apologise and make amends with the guy; I hurt this real nice person and didn't even mean to. It was a really good, eventful first day, and now I'm going over to a meeting and then I'm going to hit the show floor, check out some games. So far, so good.