E3 Attendees Extending Show; Extended Show Involves Mostly Partying.

HOTELS SURROUNDING THE STAPLES CENTER, CALIFORNIA - E3, the gaming convention where output of pictures of people posing with people they meet increases by approximately a thousand percent, ended yesterday -- at least, the part that the ESA officially endorses did. A group of "gaming journalists" have decided to continue the show until they're no longer able to pay for their invariably desecrated hotel rooms.

"E3 is really the only time of the year where we can party and call it work without anyone checking up on us, because they're either partying somewhere else, or writing snippets about how this game is doing this thing or how it's totally not," said Bob Newhope, a writer for some site not owned by a media conglomerate. "All the procrastinators unite at the Figueroa, telling each other to stay for the next round. We usually talk about the games we saw, all the great people we met who validate our lives, and usually make videos of all our undeniably entertaining conversations on why shooters are everywhere this year."

Yours truly attended one of these parties, and can attest the veracity of these statements. The most popular game at these parties is called "Who's the most cynical?" a game where writers and developers compete to espouse the most dismissive remarks about games they've only just heard about. The winner receives the title of "Jaded," and has to call themselves an "enthusiast" for the rest of the night to compensate.

"Instead of going back to our respective day jobs, we decided to just keep on partying." yelled Mark Hovanski, across a table at a bar whose name I don't remember. But how do a group of partiers keep a charade to drain expense accounts going? Newhope elucidates this idiotic affair. "We decided to set up a bunch of fake game kiosks in our hotel rooms that played trailers of various games and write each of them up for the site. As long as we place 'E3 2011:' in front of whatever we write, I doubt that anyone will take notice until after Father's Day."

Of course, E3 is more about writing about the ten minutes you spent with a game. "We can also just keep going to parties, and writing up our nights there under the guise of covering 'the experience' of E3." Though extending a convention may seem like a selfish idea for people who are too lonely to let the biggest week of their year end, developers believe they'll also get a benefit out of it. Daniel Martin, producer on a number of platformers with minimalist aesthetics, is supportive of continuing E3 for as long as possible. "We can send these guys version after version of our games, usually with a 'post-E3 build' note attached, and they'll cover it. Because what else are they supposed to do? Work?"

All of us at the party shared in the laughter Martin created and downed our Pabst Blue Ribbons.