If you tuned into Bethesda’s E3 2019 press conference, you’ll have heard some rather enthusiastic cheering bellowing from your speakers. E3 briefings are no strangers to over-the-top screaming, but the whoops and hollers at Bethesda’s show stood out. They followed what felt like every on-stage spoken sentence, to the amusement and, it felt, sometimes annoyance of those charged with presenting games to the world.
The front row hype became something of a meme after Twitter user @theSirToasty released a video compilation showing the likes of Tango Gameworks boss Shinji Mikami and ZeniMax Online Studios studio head Matt Firor getting shouted at – repeatedly.
Bethesda Front Row Hypeman Squad freaking out over every other sentence is honestly the funniest thing I’ve seen all day. pic.twitter.com/XnxntXzNPB
— Tylor (@theSirToasty) June 10, 2019
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
Clearly, the people at the front of Bethesda’s press conference were having a whale of a time. But were they marketing plants, Bethesda employees simply thrilled to see their work presented during the show, or just mega-fans?
Speaking to Eurogamer on his way home from the Bethesda conference via a combination of Discord private messages and Twitter direct messages, amid Uber rides and arrival at an airport, one of the people accused of “ruining” Bethesda’s press conference, a man who runs a Twitter account called The Elder Memes, told Eurogamer he was just an enthusiastic Bethesda fan who got caught up in all the excitement of the show – and he wasn’t the only one.
The Elder Memes, who asked to keep his identity anonymous, told Eurogamer Bethesda games have played an important role in his life for some time.
“Morrowind got me through a very rough patch of self hate,” he said. “I’ve been obsessed with the world of Tamriel ever since.”
He’s been making Elder Scrolls memes on Twitter for years, he said, and has established a relationship with ZeniMax Online Studios, so when Bethesda’s E3 press conference was announced, he asked if there was any chance he could attend, and Bethesda sorted his registration.
“I had no idea I was going to be front row until I was at my seat!” he said.
Bethesda, like other publishers holding press conferences at E3, will have wanted the crowd to have had a contingent of super-fans who could be relied upon to generate a sense of excitement and buzz not just inside the venue but on-stream. The company got that – and more.
Watch on YouTube
The Elder Memes insisted he – along with others in the front rows, were not ordered to cheer enthusiastically by Bethesda staff. “I was never ordered to do anything,” he said. “The developers really only seemed to want us to enjoy ourselves. Clearly we did.”
So, what happened? Why the relentless, super loud cheering?
“It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced,” The Elder Memes explained. “From start to finish I was excited. ESO killed with their trailer. Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop were unexpected and amazing, and Doom Eternal was absolutely insane. Blades and Fallout 76 had good announcements. And Commander Keen! I was five again, playing the old Apogee games I grew up on. The excitement of an event like that is infectious. I couldn’t have been more blown away.”
At various points during the show, we saw people near the front cheer, the camera panning and focusing at points on The Elder Memes himself.
“I noticed the camera on me a lot, which made me a little uncomfortable (I run a meme page, the spotlight isn’t my thing),” he said. “Afterwards, the cameraman told me, as a compliment, that he looks for ‘animated people’. Apparently they panned to me more than usual as a result.”