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ECTS Rises from the Ashes

© Dan Caines

I have attended the annual ECTS (European Computer Trade Show) event for a few years now and have, as many others have also commented on, noticed a steady decline in the number of high-profile exhibitors plying their wares at the event. I must admit that looking at the list of exhibitors this year I was a little bit dispirited (as my friend Mike muttered “where are all the big people?”) – many of the big companies had chosen not to show and as a result the line-up looked a bit thin. No Nintendo or Activision (who had both held their own shows), no EA or X-Box and Sony and Sega were only represented indirectly. Thus I made my way to the superb new Excel venue in the London Docklands with some trepidation. However, when I got there and had looked around the show floor for a while I actually came away heartened rather than dismayed. When I tried to explain this to my universally gloomy fellow journalists they just did not want to hear, calling the experience “the most depressing of my life” and words to that effect. However, I had my reasons for saying that and I will outline them now.

While I will concede that that there were some real causes for concern at ECTS 2001 – and I shall come to this in a future article – I thought that it was a sign of an industry in some considerable health that even when you took away many of the big-hitters there were still a large number of lively, innovative and interesting companies vying for our attention. In some ways the absences actually gave the show a renewed vigour in a sort of “while the cats are away the mice will play” way – the smaller companies had a greater chance of exposure and therefore tried a lot harder to show off their products and this introduced a lot of new blood into the system. There were some innovative games on show from every different genre (although as every year there was a disturbing level of repetition – the number of derivative platform and strategy games was shocking) – with particularly strong representation from simulation and combat games. There was a blend of the expected (a new Rainbow Six licence, Who Wants to be a Millionaire 2), the surprisingly good (Commanche 4) and the surprisingly poor (WWTBAM 2, Championship Manager Quiz) and the plain surprising (Imperium Galactica 3).

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