For the last few years during midsummer, Electronic Arts has hosted its own little gaming media event, Camp EA (or as it was renamed this year for whatever reason, Hot Summer Nights). Basically, every game that EA is developing or publishing during the coming fall and winter gets trotted out to show media people how things have been going since E3. A handy side effect of this is that people who actually work at EA also get a chance to try out all the other games we're making, which also gives the assorted marketing groups a few chances to dry run their schpiels before they go live.

Many people might not realize just how isolated EA's dev teams are from each other's products. Walking onto the floor of our gymnasium, all decked out with gaming kiosks for the show, there was a certain kind of giddy enthusiasm that electrified the air. A couple hundred of my game-loving coworkers were crowded inside with all the energy you might expect from a gym of gamers eager to try out demos of unreleased games, but this was further injected with the energy of people feeling gratified watching others enjoy the games they were working so hard on. I can honestly say that there's some stuff coming out of here that I'm really looking forward to playing after it ships.

Now this really wouldn't qualify as gaming website coverage of a gaming expo without an exclusive scoop of some sort, and, even though this really isn't the sort of thing you normally see on GGA, I would hate to disappoint. Your official insiders-only scoop: the development studio at EA's corporate headquarters goes through approximately 25 pounds of coffee each workday. You heard it here first.