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Thousands of people are packed into a large, multitiered hall. The group on the ground floor begins throwing around a blue exercise ball, as crowds do, and an impromptu game is created: get the ball to the roof, passing it from one balcony to the next. There are cheers for each successful toss and when the ball reaches the top floor, the reaction is like a goal celebration at a soccer game.

These people, captured for posterity in more than a few YouTube videos, obviously love to play games, and they were gathered in one place this weekend because of a website devoted to just that, Penny Arcade. The on-line comic-strip and game review site held the third annual Penny Arcade Expo in Bellevue, Wash., and almost 20,000 people showed up for three days of playing, panel discussions and general geekery. That is double last year's total, and you can be sure that millions more gamers at least read about it -- Penny Arcade, love it or hate it, is a hugely influential entity in the world of games.

The site's founders are among the Internet's prime salespeople as Malcolm Gladwell termed tastemakers in his book about the viral spread of information, The Tipping Point. Gladwell didn't write much about the increased range tastemakers are afforded by the Web, but there is no question that a small group of people can start or sustain much larger movements if they build up an on-line following that trusts their opinions. And getting tens of thousands of people to attend your three-day slumber party is a pretty good sign that they trust you.

Dave Itzkoff wrote an article on Wired.com this week about a similar site, Pitchfork, and its influence in the indie music scene. He notes that many consumers "still find their music with the assistance of a filter: a reliable source that sifts through thousands of tracks to help them choose what they do (and don't) want to hear." As sources of information such as print magazines and even music-store clerks see their influence diminished, Itzkoff writes, "Pitchfork has found its own way to thrive in an industry that is slowly being niched to death: It influences those who influence others."

Niched to death -- that sounds like it hurts, but video-game people know that pain well. In gaming's heydays in the 1980s, magazines were the source most gamers trusted to guide their play decisions. But the Internet changed that in the 1990s and the transition happened much more quickly than it did with other pastimes: Early Web users often used their computers to play games as well. Today, magazines have been relegated, with very few exceptions, to running previews of games that rarely live up to the glossy billing when they are finally released, and almost all gamers find information about their chosen niches on specialized websites.

Penny Arcade earned its trusted role among those sites because it has unashamedly celebrated gaming culture since its inception in 1998. It is the work of two men, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, who are more widely known by their noms de guerre, Gabe and Tycho. Gabe does the drawing and Tycho the writing, and what began as a regular comic about playing video games has grown into a publishing and merchandising juggernaut. They sell T-shirts, best-selling books and ads on the site, which draws millions of eyes each month. To keep karma on their side, Krahulik and Holkins also run a charity called Child's Play that raises money for hospitals -- over $600,000 (U.S.) last year.

The duo currently produces roughly three strips per week and they are like epithet-laced news stories: If there is an issue capturing the attention of gamers, it will probably appear in a Penny Arcade strip. Holkins also writes a daily splash-page item that may constitute the most ornate collection of prose on-line. It sometimes slips into senselessness -- he favours alliteration -- but he often manages to convey what every review of an interactive experience should: what it feels like.

He ended his recap of this year's convention by rebutting a rumour that he smashed a controller for the game Guitar Hero II onstage, and the sign-off gives you a sense of Penny Arcade's appeal: "Let me assure you that this crass accusation is utterly devoid of merit. When I finished my song, I rested the guitar gently into its velvet-lined case, with the care of a doting father for his sleeping son."

Build a site like Penny Arcade -- good writing, good art and good taste -- and they will come.

A new Vancouver game studio may be the next outfit to benefit from the Penny Arcade effect. Executives from Hothead Games, which was formed earlier this year by veterans of the Canadian game industry, announced their first project on Friday in front of a packed house in Bellevue: a game called Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. It will be episodic and will run on Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

Hothead's joint-chief executive officer Steve Bocska and chief operating officer Joel DeYoung said in an interview Monday that the Penny Arcade creators will provide original art and writing for the cartoon-style game. Bocska called his new partners a "megaphone -- once you get their support, it tends to ripple through the whole video-game industry."

DeYoung noted that there were some concerns raised by the faithful about the game critics moving into game creation -- who can trust Roger Ebert after watching the films he wrote, especially Beyond the Valley of the Dolls? -- and said the pair will respond in today's strip. You can find it by visiting penny-arcade.com and clicking on an underlined word near the top -- and it's usually a short word so it stands out in the polysyllabic prose.

pluggedin@globeandmail.com