It many seems people aren't thinking very deeply about the ramifications of what they're asking, or even the appropriateness as to what they're trying to achieve.
- The ESA is a games industry lobbying group who runs E3.
- E3 makes money two ways that I know of - Selling tickets to consumers (industry people and journalists don't pay to get into E3), and selling booth space to developers and some other people.
- Booth space is secured well in advance. Non refundable money and contracts for booth staff, and plane tickets, and display materials and more are all paid by the companies displaying at E3.
- Coverage of E3 doesn't effect any of the above for the current year. At best you can black it out enough so they don't run it again next year. This almost happened a few years ago when the big companies all pulled out over people spending too much on crazy booth extravaganza side shows and E3 moved to a bunch of hotels in Santa Monica.
- Industry coverage only helps the developers who are still stuck manning a booth at the convention, it does nothing for the ESA itself. The only people who can hurt the ESA wallet are those who can cancel booths and cancel general admission tickets.
- You can conceivably call any studio that still mans an E3 booth an ESA shill, if it makes you feel better about them not eating the lost deposits to be part of a cause that has enough of a following to get a good lynchin' going. Like many business/life things (say.. the game publisher <-> anyone relationship), sometimes you have to work with unfortunate partners to get crap done.
It also doesn't help that the more benign work of a group like the ECA is likely easily confused with the business interests of a lobbying group like the ESA. Which helps people forget that like most lobbying groups, the ESA was never something with public interest in mind.
