As I scanned the aptly-appointed bar located in Toronto's trendy Distillery District, I noticed everyone had a martini and something purloined from passing trays to nibble. The only thing missing from the party was the actual game. Out of a couple of hundred people, not one of us was actually playing the damned thing.

It was a launch party for Assassin Creed, the new Xbox 360 game from Ubisoft Montreal, a schmooze fest and Canadian counterpart to the Hollywood launch party held a couple of weeks back at the Opera, a hip & happenin' night club in L.A., both conveniently coinciding with the game's official release the next day, November 14.

And schmooze was the order of the day. While cruising around the event, I can't even recall hearing anyone actually discussing the game. It was like being at a Toronto Maple Leaf's game where people in the pricey seats (who am I kidding; that's all they have at the Air Canada Centre) only watch the game in passing (I mean, unless they are getting play by play on their cell phones, they are seemingly not there to actually watch the game).

In fairness, Assassin's Creed is a single-player title and certainly not of the instant action variety, so it's very possible that folks just didn't have the inclination to try to get into such a methodical, thought-intensive role-playing game at a noisy cocktail party. And I only spent an early-evening hour or so doing the token mingle; the actual hands-on stuff traditionally doesn't get its game on until those that need to be impressed are good and cocktailed. Still, within that +/- hour, I never saw one of the few gaming terminals they had setup even so much as switched on, to at least offer the opportunity to ignore it, if not kick Assassin's tires and chat about the weather in medieval France.

Then again, considering the Hollywoodishness of it all, it's not surprising. Next launch party, I might very well see Joan Rivers shoving a microphone in people's faces as they walk down a red carpet. The gaming industry seems to be coming to a realization that the future of gaming is not some kind of parallel brain candy industry providing an alternate revenue stream, but maybe the future of visual entertainment itself. A decade or so from now, every Oscar nominee will arrive at the show as an email attachment.

Hollywood, your days are numbered. I give it less than 10-years before the tinsel starts to rust, perhaps 20 years, max, before the only thing shaking in Hollywood is the ground. Interactive gaming with storylines starring You is the future of entertainment! Andy Warhol's prediction of everyone being famous for 15 minutes is only off on the duration of the celebrity.

Offerings such as the new digitally animated Beowulf film, plus game titles such as Assassin's Creed and the cinematic opus that is the Call of Duty franchise, demonstrate just how blurred the line has become between the traditionally passive movie format and the interactive one. In the former, you are fed a rigid storyline starring someone else (and probably Samuel L. Jackson), while with games, you are the star and you dictate the pace and some if not all of the storyline (co-starring a digital likeness of Samuel L. Jackson, no doubt).

The bread and butter of these sorts of titles (as opposed to the happy, happy, cartoony joy of, say, Wii games) is in the cinema-caliber graphical experience, which make it all the easier to draw you into the story, thus making for a more addictive game. As trends go, games are steadily becoming more and more immersive with high definition, photorealistic imagery and more intuitive gameplay enabled by it. They've come along way with the acting bits, too, with voice talent provided by, well, talented people -- in the better games, anyway. Yes, the early days where the Black Knight sported an Alabama drawl and the elocutionary proficiency of Ozzy Osborne on 'ludes, those days are fading.

But even the most awkward or underdeveloped modern game (or aspiring to be modern, for that matter), be it in-game action/drama/horror or transitional cut scenes in between, still speaks loudly of the overall fundamental change afoot. Like some kind of spontaneous combustion of consciousness, entertainment is now evolving at an exponential rate towards a future where the "star vehicle" will be parked in your den.

And, if the Assassin's Creed event was any indication, people will drink and schmooze and nibble on little snack thingies, and maybe even have a look at your vehicle if someone bothers to turn it on at little earlier in the evening.