Dude #1: Yeah, the gameplay is really cool, and in the endgame there’s this crazy big monster. And if you get the expansion pack, there are these awesome extra units …

Dude #2: Um … I’ve got an assignment to do …!

I am sitting in one of the laptop areas in the Reid, and someone behind me appears to have stolen (ahem, “borrowed”) his friend’s clearly gruntier laptop to perform a demo of a game.

Speaking of gamers, there’s an amusing kerfuffle over the planned closure (ahem, “scaling back”) of E3, the big and expensive trade show in Los Angeles that generated mindlessly gushing reviews of new games in the tech media every year.

At first I was mildly shocked to hear the news, but then I learnt the perfectly reasonable commercial reasons for calling it a day. And on second thought, perhaps this will help the gaming industry grow some much-needed maturity — blowing your marketing budget by pandering to fanboys is hardly a good way to convince customers that you have strong gameplay or kick-ass technology. Worse, it creates the impression that all the industry does is pander to fanboys, which IMHO is a big part of why the gaming biz is having trouble entering the ‘mainstream’.