This year, we launched multiple collections celebrating the history of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. We want to highlight one exciting item in these collections that we think slipped under the radar: a collection of over 1600 promotional photos from E3 2009.
This DVD-R was donated by Carolyn Rauch, the former senior vice president of the Entertainment Software Association. These photos appear to have been taken for promotional purposes and come from every corner of the event. Not just the show floor and major conferences, but behind-the-scenes areas like the the press rooms, the registration booths, and even the coffee shops at the LA Convention Center.
E3 2009 is an interesting year to have documented like this, because it marked the beginning of a new era for the event. After two years as a scaled-down media summit, E3 returned in 2009 as a full-blown convention… just less outrageous than it was before. On our podcast, the Video Game History Hour, Rauch and IDSA co-founder Doug Lowenstein described E3 2009 as a sort of compromise to appeal to the games business, returning to a large-scale showcase event but deliberately keeping down the costs—and the chaos.
This photo gallery is a surprisingly complete portrait of that newly refreshed E3, inside and out. Game publishers still have a big footprint on the show floor, but their booths are simpler than before. More space throughout the convention center is dedicated to areas like a VIP break room, or a cozy lounge where Sony Computer Entertainment Europe entertained guests in a controlled environment away from the crowded show floor.
And there is so much Gamer Grub, a short-lived gamer-themed snack mix that seems to have subsidized E3 2009.
These photos were taken 17 years ago to promote the return of E3. Two decades on, they’ve become a time capsule of video game promotion at the peak of the Xbox 360 era.
To editorialize this a little bit: I was in college in 2009, and I remember following this specific year of E3. The combination of televised press conferences and round-the-clock internet coverage made E3 2009 feel mythical. Going through these photos stirred up some memories, but it also demystified an event that I had only ever seen through a tightly curated, PR-friendly lens.
As someone who wants to understand these events better, these photos allowed me to see first-hand just how much more there was to E3 2009. That, and all the Gamer Grub.
