E3 2014 Trends: What We Saw At This Year's Electronic Entertainment Expo

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, kicked off at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Tuesday, and thousands of game developers, tech journalists and hardcore fans flocked to the City of Angels to check out the latest in video games and wearable tech.

Major gaming brands like Microsoft, Sony, Square Enix, Razer, 2K Games and Electronic Arts were in attendance to show off their latest games, developments and gadgets, and we got to experience firsthand the trends at E3 this year. A few things to look out for in the near future include:

More MMOs!

This year’s E3 showcased several new massively multiplayer online, or MMO, games, including Snail Games’ “Black Gold,” Sony’s “H1Z1,” Behaviour Interactive’s “Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade” and Sony Online’s “Planetside 2.”

Many of the games set themselves apart by allowing high numbers of players to engage in the same activity at once. “Planetside 2,” which is already available for the PC, will launch for the PlayStation 4 this year and will allow thousands of players to engage at the same time. “H1Z1,” a zombie survival horror game, will allow a large number of players to engage in an open-world survival mission that includes building strongholds, driving over zombies and hunting food.

“We’re going to make sure our alpha is super polished. We could go Early Access on Steam tomorrow, but we wouldn’t be proud of it, and it wouldn’t be something we’d want to showcase to the players,” “H1Z1” developer Adam Clegg said. “There’s things we still need in this game. When we are ready to launch the game, it’s going to be a nice, polished version. We want to make sure it’s a solid product, even though it’s alpha. Especially for a survival game. We don’t want things you have to hurdle over in order to play the game.”

“Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade” is expected to launch sometime next year.

Virtual Reality Games

It’s crazy that virtual reality, a technology that was once considered futuristic and somewhat far-reaching, is now finding a very real foothold in the gaming realm.

We saw several virtual reality games earlier this year at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and with the Oculus VR reportedly selling more than 85,000 units of its development kits, game designers are really beginning to pay attention to this new concept of VR games.

Sega’s upcoming survival horror “Alien: Isolation” announced virtual-reality support during E3, and both Oculus VR and Project Morpheus discussed upcoming projects with third-party game developers.

Community

Another growing trend at E3 this year is the focus on gaming communities. While several developers announced upcoming MMOS that can handle thousands of users playing at one time, companies like Curse, an online gaming portal and network of community websites, focus on bringing players together by engaging users and strengthening online relationships between gamers.

Games are undoubtedly becoming more social, and while we didn’t see a major focus on mobile games at E3, we did see the community aspect of gaming impacting players in a major way.

Tomorrow's the last day of E3! What do you want to see this year? Leave a comment below.