This is a pretty special week for the geek community. Why, you ask? It’s E3 week, dummy! A massive computer games exhibition and trade show where all the biggest games developers congregate to show off their latest games. It’s a week-long games orgy, basically. Except instead of sex there’s cybernetic Norse gods, African zombies and rifles with chainsaws attached to them. In fact, I’m lobbying to have the official definition of “orgy” to include all of those things, because an orgy just doesn’t feel right without them, you know?

So, each year, a horde of developers, big games publishers, console makers and journalists descend upon a huge building in California (this year it’s the L.A Convention Centre), and the result for us average schmoes? Well, we get a ludicrous glut of news, previews and video footage of all the exciting games that are coming out over the next 12 months. E3’s been kicking around since 1995, and although the show’s been significantly downsized recently, for the compu-minded geek, it’s still an extra Christmas, slap bang in the middle of July.

It’s also a pretty good advertisement for becoming a games journalist. I mean, on top of the fact that it’s a job that pays you to play video games and write about them, you also get to go to a massive games show and soak in the atmosphere. Pretty cool, right? Wrongo.

I mean, I’m sure it is great, but you wouldn’t know it. Because as it turns out, games journalists (with plenty of notable exceptions, I’m sure) are a whiny, self-absorbed bunch of sweaty ingrates. I know it sounds harsh, but these people are lucky enough to be in that 0.001 per cent of the world’s population who have landed a job that they’d probably be doing even if they weren’t getting paid, and they can’t stop fucking complaining. It’s like listening to an emperor protest that his concubines are too sexy. And every year, E3 brings it out.

Take last year, for example. After journalists practically broke the internet complaining about how E3 2006 was too big and bloated, last year’s E3 was scaled back and relocated. And yet E3 ’07 provoked a similar scathing response from journalists. Gamesradar posted a particularly petulant video listing “seven reasons E3 sucks”. Wow, you guys are some blazing wits. If only Oscar Wilde had met you, he could have learnt so much. By the way, I was being sarcastic.

Seriously, complaining about the venue isn’t journalism. Do foreign correspondents write articles focussing on the lacklustre refreshments at the Israeli-Palestinian peace summit? No. They do their fucking job and report on the shit that people actually care about. They realise that no one gives a toss if they have trouble finding a parking space, or if the free bus service wasn’t regular enough.

These people need to take a lengthy swig from the goblet of perspective. Come on guys, spare a thought for the people who work in mind-numbing office jobs or back breaking labour every day. If the worst thing about your job is going to an awesome games show where you have to endure slightly less-than-adequate air con, you’re doing pretty well. So shut up and get on with it, you lucky bastards.