The Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, is the ultimate video game conference. Journalists, critics, celebrities, and industry heavyweights from around the globe flock to Southern California in early summer to be on hand as developers unveil their new game titles and hardware products for the upcoming year. But E3 is an industry-only conference. So Expo owner ESA engaged GamePro Content Works to build a new Web experience (E3insider.com) that would give every member of the gaming public a virtual ticket to attend.

The homepage that GamePro let users pinpoint the virtual crowds using a real-time heat map driven by the activity of the online visitors themselves. “Heat”, a measure of traffic to each virtual booth, was visually represented by a circle overlaid on the show floor map. The larger the crowd, the larger the circle. Online visitors could even pull up a bird’s-eye view heat map of the entire Expo.

E3Insider.com also let users catch the buzz around specific game titles by giving them a live picture of the feedback flowing from the entire online audience. Virtual booth visitors could click on a game title to view detailed information about it, and they could also rank each game (“good, better, best”). By tracking these page visits and votes, GamePro’s system is able to populate leaderboards on the E3Insider homepage showing which games had the highest ranking, most current viewers, most total viewers – all live and real time.

To learn more, you can read the E3′s Virtual Ticket to Ride: KAAZING Powers E3Insider.com white paper.