This was originally posted on Mortal Kombat Online’s Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe forum. I’m reposting it here for those who don’t go to MK Online and might be interested. For the record, “E3” refers to the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, which is one of the video game industry’s most important media events.
Hey everyone…
While E3 is currently more than a month and a half away, as you might imagine we’ve already been looking towards making plans for attending. However, in the interest of being open with you all, I feel you should be made aware in advance of a decision that I ended up needing to make. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was one I had to make.
Mortal Kombat Online will not be attending E3 this year.
For the record, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe will be at the show and will be playable. Moreover, our lack of attendance has nothing to do with our not having an invitation; I was in fact invited and did in fact register to attend. The problem is purely cost-related.
This isn’t exactly common knowledge outside of the chatroom, but about a month ago I suffered from an atrial fibrillation, that caused me to be taken to the emergency room from my office in an ambulance. After that I had to do a followup with a cardiologist, who had me undergo an ultrasound of my heart, and afterwards an MRI. For the record, I’m fine. The cardiologist thinks it was possibly a one-off brought on by my use of caffeine. (My body is extremely sensitive to caffeine and I thought I had built up an immunity. My mistake.) The only treatments he had me go to were to give up caffeine entirely and to start taking an aspirin a day so that if this should ever happen again (and I hope to God not), it will prevent my blood from clotting and causing a stroke.
The upshot of this is that I’m looking at some pretty hefty medical bills. Even with insurance I’ve already had to pay over a thousand dollars, and I’m not sure the bills have stopped coming yet. Unfortunately, the money I would have used to pay for my trip to E3 are now being used to cover medical costs. As you might imagine, even with the Google ads and Flawless accounts the site doesn’t make a profit, so I can’t exactly depend on that to pay for an E3 trip.
Before anyone asks… I would LOVE for someone like ]{0MBAT or Mobster4Christ (two other E3 mainstays) to go in my place. Unfortunately, as you all might have noticed, things changed a year or so ago where only one staff member gets to go to these events. It’s not by our choice, as we would prefer to have some backup. That’s why you all have been seeing only me at these events. :-) The big problem in this instance is that E3 does not allow invitations to be transferred, so no one else from the site CAN go. So, in essence, we’re pretty much screwed.
So, here we are. I’m as disappointed as you all are that we will not be able to report on the show live. We will of course report from what other sites will be reporting, and we will try to make this up to you all. As for me… I am very, very sorry I could not be able to do this for you guys. I feel like I’m letting you all down (and really, I am), and I hope to do better for you all in the future.