The body count is horrific
Whilst the sea and pools are empty, the Stream gaming arcade is full.
Whether from Seattle or Japan, many of those present will remember autumn 2007 as the time when their key leisure time objective was to finish Halo 3 before Grand Theft Auto 4 came out.
And finish Halo 3 some have – even though it was released only ten days before Stream.
Those who have finished the game mutter that the alien race they have spent the last few years of their lives so savagely killing turns out not to be as evil as they had thought. A sense of uncertainty and guilt is entering the homicidal mind of the gamer.
For others though, the gaming arcade is about less gory forms of competition.
Becoming a star at Wii Tennis.
Or at racing.
Or becoming a great guitar hero - knowing full well that if they don’t rock in time to the music, the motion detector in their plastic guitar will report their lack of enthusiasm to the controller, and they will lose points.
Around the gaming arcade the conversation turns to gaming as a medium.
Is dropping static ads into games ever going to work? Don’t brands have to be more integral to the action? Or is the model Burger King used, of giving out free, good, playable Xbox games with their meals the best way of using games to build brands at the moment?
The gaming debate becomes urgent. Because if the issue isn’t solved, then game consoles will just become a new nail in the coffin of interruption advertising, as young Americans start to buy and download movies directly to their Xbox 360, and watch them on their console, completely free of advertising.
The one thing everyone can agree on is that gaming is massively compelling and immersive.
And as gamers are now becoming the mainstream of society, as sixtysomethings adopt the Wii as their exercise machine, and as SingStar parties become the teen girl sleepover party meme across the planet, gaming has to be regarded as just as mainstream a habit as watching television, and exploited as such.