Black and White: Attending the Games Convention 2007

The essay "Black and White: Attending the Games Convention 2007" is a first-person critical account of the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, which the author presents as the international gaming industry's leading fair following the demise of E3. The piece argues that the 2007 event was disappointing in terms of innovation and evolution, describing it as a year of waiting for major titles rather than a showcase of genuine progress. Its central thesis is that the convention's offerings were largely repetitive, with the industry's most anticipated games either absent or unconvincing in their presentation.

The author highlights several specific shortfalls. Crysis, the successor to Far Cry, was shown in a demo that the author found impressive but which had not advanced noticeably since the previous year, while Spore had no playable demo at all and its release timeline reportedly slipped to summer 2008. Take-Two presented no trailer for Mafia 2, and Grand Theft Auto IV's video showed little beyond material already available online, though the reworked New York setting was viewed as a promising move toward more authentic environments. The author also observes that console dominance was evident even in a PC-friendly country, and judges current next-generation console titles to be unsurprising, particularly in familiar genres like racing and arcade action.

The most favorable assessment concerns Nintendo, whose Wii controllers are credited with reviving a "back to basics" approach and expanding how players physically interact with games. The author finds the motion-based controls accessible and enjoyable, with Rockstar's Wii table tennis cited as an example. A broader trend identified is the blurring of boundaries between digital play and physical activity, through camera integration and motion sensing, which the author sees as a possible route to new gameplay beyond incremental improvements in graphics. The account is based on the author's personal observations and interactions at the event rather than systematic survey data, and it draws on publicly available web sources for several cited titles and announcements.