Wil Wheaton, the 35-year-old actor and writer, addressed a packed and raucous crowd Friday afternoon at the Penny Arcade Expo video-game conference in downtown Seattle.

Best known for his roles in "Stand by Me" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Wheaton referred to his acting career only briefly. Instead, he spent much of the time talking about the importance of video games in his life, particularly while growing up in Southern California in the 1980s. But that was just the framework for his broader defense of video games and their significance in society -- stirring up the crowd and using language that you never would have heard from Wesley Crusher. A few excerpts:

On the parallels between arcades and today's online games:

Arcades were to my generation what Xbox Live and World of Warcraft are to this generation. They were social gathering places as much as anything else, and I really miss them. I miss the flickering neon on the walls, the weird-smelling smoke, the stained casino carpet, the Van Halen and Joan Jett on the jukebox. ...

They were a vital part of my generation's social development. If I beat another kid in a two-player game and taunted him mercilessly with explicit references to his mother's sex life and my role in it, the way some online gamers do, he would have justifiably kicked the ever-living s*** out of me.

So I learned, in arcades, the importance of good sportsmanship, because arcades were physical places, staffed by real people. We had to worry about a lot more than getting kicked off a server if we were complete idiots in a game. And I feel like a cranky old man by bringing this up at all, but there's a lot of you here, so would you do me a favor? When you're playing online, have fun, but don't be a d***, OK?

PENNY ARCADE EXPO 07 WHERE: Washington State Convention and Trade Center WHEN: 10 a.m.-3 a.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday ADMISSION: At the door, $30 daily; $50 three-day pass. Related story: Regina Hackett, the P-I's art critic, went to PAX yesterday and offers the non-gamer's perspective.

On Nintendo's Wii, and the social nature of gaming:

From the moment I plugged it in and started playing Wii Sports with my kids, I felt the magical excitement and the pure joy of playing a video game that I haven't felt since my brother and I spent every waking hour playing NES 20 years ago... The Wii is about playing games together. The reason I play Wii games more than anything other than Guitar Hero, is that it is a social gaming experience. It's just like playing Combat on the Atari 2600, or all of those games we used to play on Nintendo. Or getting our friends together for an MK3 (Mortal Kombat 3) session or an NHL Hockey contest on Genesis.

This is the the thing that drives me crazy when I hear Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton and L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, or any other opportunistic, pandering, condescending politician lecture us about the alleged dangers of video games! (Loud applause.) Gaming is a social activity. ("Testify!" yelled a man in the crowd.)

Whether we're playing an analog tabletop game like Munchkin in somebody's dorm room, a console game in our living rooms, or meeting up in an online massively multiplayer game with our good friend Leeroy Jenkins, we are engaging in an inherently social activity. The only think anti-social about gaming are those few people who are so perfectly described by John Gabriel's Greater Internet F***wad Theory. While those trolls are annoying, at least they aren't trying to tell us what we can and can't play.

The conclusion, to a standing ovation:

I'm not ashamed to be a gamer, and though a handful of opportunistic politicians and moralist activists would have you believe otherwise, we are no more antisocial than the rest of society. Get any group of like-minded people together, whether they're sports fans, religious fundamentalists, corporate executives or lawyers, and there will be a few of them that make the rest look like gaping a******s. The vast majority of sports fans, fundamentalists, executives, lawyers and gamers are decent people, trying to live good lives and have a little fun along the way.

Look around you. We are parents, we are grandparents. We are sons, we are daughters. We are professionals. We are students. We are geeks, we are nerds. We are liberals. We are conservatives. We are Christians, we are Jews, we are Muslims, we are atheists. We are Trekkies, we are Browncoats. (Loud applause.) Apparently a lot of us are Browncoats. We are Nintendo fanboys, we are Xbox fanboys, we are Sony fanboys, we are wannabe rock stars, we are wannabe race car drivers.

All that matters is that we are gamers, and there are 30,000 of us here, which makes it hard to believe that we are an antisocial group of maladjusted misfits. So if you happen to come across someone who thinks we are, invite them to play a game with you. Just try not to be a d*** when you pwn me. Thank you very much.