Sony’s one wall is divided by windows, giving spectators a view into the futuristic living rooms which have about as much relation to an actual living space as do Ikea displays or museum dioramas (though to be fair, Ikea usually has functioning coffee tables).

That green glow from Microsoft illuminates several glass-walled rooms radiating from a central (appointment-only!) hub. Sony and Microsoft use their architecture to frame your attention on the people playing the game by placing them in the equivalent of giant fishbowls.

It’s more than just about watching someone else play (all the floor demos involve that to some degree). These turn a demo into a live version of the advertisements involving people jumping around their coffee-table-free living rooms. They’re selling the spectacle of watching someone else play just as much as they are the play itself.  You are the controller? You are the advertisement.

Microsoft pushed this advertising-immersion further by plastering bathroom mirrors in the convention center with stickers that frame your face as you’re washing your hands with Kinect slogans. Word is, these decals appeared on the bathroom mirrors in some journalists’ hotel rooms.

Bethesda’s booth is divided into several sections with décor related to the games being demoed in that area. Generally speaking, when looking at a screen of a game, behind it and in your peripheral vision, everything is unified visually. Transitioning from one area to another, though, can involve looking at a giant mural for Brink as a model of a dinosaur statue gripping a motel sign looms in the background (that this is a scale model of something that doesn’t exist physically is something you may not want to think too much about).

And it’s through this chaos we move, trying to form impressions of games and imagine how they will play in less chaotic settings – in living rooms with one TV. And a coffee table.