"Wouldn't with yours, mate" Another day, another Twitter outrage, this time as Future news site CVG posts a gallery of E3 booth babes and invites readers to "get their scorecards out. " Bored of reading actual facts about the biggest games event of the year? Why not stop by and post a mean comment about a girl you've never met? I've worked in games for seven years, and there have only been a handful of times I've ever felt like I've been looked down on because I'm female. And even then, like when a big name developer thought perhaps a girl might not be qualified to see their action adventure game, my employers at the time (Future, coincidentally) came out in my defence. It's an industry with amazing people, male and female, and one that, for all its nuns in fetish gear, is pretty equal opportunities behind the scenes. "If your readers want to look at nicely distributed flesh they've got Nuts, Zoo or every possible inch of skin in glorious HD video just a click away" And yes, it gets hits.
Confessions of a Sometimes-Booth Babe. When I was working as a booth bunny/babe I was constantly asked to pose with products (ones that weren't at my booth I was promoting) and was given free things for the pictures I took. It was strange experience. There was a Pepsi NEXT booth at C2E2 this year that I walked by who were giving out free samples to people, and the guy running the booth very straight faced asked me to pose with a can of the stuff for a photograph in front of the booth. It was pretty eye opening to see first hand how sex really does sell. This was a pepsi product, something you wouldn't htink would need to have boobs attached to it to sell, but here I was posing in a bunny outfit with a can of pepsi NEXT.
When we walked around the artist alley/dealer's hall during my break, I was asked to come behind some people's booths and pose with them, and was given free merchandise for it. It was a job for me. And double yes to the fact that standing around in high heels all day makes for a shitty shitty day. Nfessions of a former booth babe.
Another tech show, another fracas over sexism. The offending company this time was Asus, which caused a minor hoo-ha when it tweeted a picture of a booth babe from the Computex show in Taipei last week with the caption: "The rear looks pretty nice. So does the new Transformer AIO. " Doesn't it make you want to do a great big sigh? You know how this could have been avoided? By not having booth babes at all, that's how. But hold the phone -- this was hardly the fault of the attractive woman pictured, it was all down to the social-media monkey who sent the tweet. No one, it seems, warned the poor, potentially now unemployed fool that sexism is the metaphorical elephant in the gadget-filled convention centre.
Before I go on, there's something I must confess, a little secret I must share with you: I used to be a booth babe myself. The industry also needs to adapt its marketing to a changing audience -- and I don't just mean in the context of trade shows. A Day in the Life of a Booth Babe. 'Booth babes' stir controversy at 2012 CES. Gaming expo in China bans booth babes | Technically Incorrect. A tech conference without booth babes is like Wimbledon without strawberries and snobbery. Or Chicago without bad baseball and corrupt politics. Please imagine, then, how stunned at least some attendees at the ChinaJoy 2012 gaming expo in Shanghai this past week must have been to discover that they were assuredly in China, but had been deprived of their greatest joy. Yes, the booths were not adorned by naked female flesh. As the Register undresses it, organizers decided that they just couldn't go home at night knowing that they had corrupted even one more young mind with displays of female temptation.
Not only did they ban bikinis, but also backless clothing and other items of couture that cause some attendees to salivate. Failure to observe this strict dress code apparently would result in birching by a leather-clad woman in long, black boots. You might imagine, given the content of some video games, that this was a stunt masquerading as a joke. Banning E3 booth babes isn’t good manners, it’s good business. The first thing I saw at E3 this year was a group of scantily clad ladies giving out energy drinks in front of the Los Angeles convention center.
There was another group of female models posing for pictures upon entering the building, and to the right was another pod of “booth babes” giving away T-shirts. Going up the escalators I was greeted by yet another leather-clad group of women pitching a war game. The amount of female flesh on display before you even enter the show floor was impressive, and impossible to miss. The message it sends is clear: This is a show for men, with advertising, promotions, and booth design aimed at grabbing male eyes. In a time when console makers and major publishers are struggling to connect products with gamers, this is a dangerously short sighted marketing strategy. The issue of booth babes isn't about being sensitive, it's about selling to the actual video game market, and not the perceived reality of an all male audience. Why this is a problem. Booth babes need not apply. Editor's note: When he's not teaching the Internet how to fist-fight, why being weird is awesome or how to self-publish your own books, Joe Peacock tours the world, showing his extensive "Akira" art collection.
He also cosplays as a six-foot-two-inch, 310lb Powerpuff Girl to fill the hollow pit that is his need for the wrong kinds of attention. There is a growing chorus of frustration in the geek community with - and there's no other way to put this - pretty girls pretending to be geeks for attention. San Diego Comic-Con is the largest vehicle, but it's hardly the only convention populated with "hot chicks" wearing skimpy outfits simply to get a bunch of gawking geeks’ heads to turn, just to satisfy their hollow egos.
Now, before every single woman reading this explodes, let me disambiguate a bit. I absolutely do not believe that every girl who attends conventions and likes "Doctor Who" is pretending to be a geek. There are lots of geeks who are female. I call these girls "6 of 9". Guest Post: Joe Peacock's Misguided Fake Female Geek Crusade. By Alyssa Rosenberg on July 26, 2012 at 5:07 pm "Guest Post: Joe Peacock’s Misguided Fake Female Geek Crusade" By Alli Thresher When I first came across Joe Peacock’s “Booth Babes Need Not Apply” post on CNN’s Geek Out blog, I was intrigued. Here, I thought, based on the title alone, is a self-professed geeky guy delving into the problematic nature of a culture that promotes and uses models as marketing bait.
“Excellent,” I thought to myself, “rad even – it will be cool to hear the perspective of a male consumer on this issue.” There are so many things problematic with Peacock’s piece–the fact that he rates women on a 1 to 10 scale, that he conflates professional booth staff with models and promoters and regular old cosplayers. Let’s just get one thing out of the way here. There are some decent points buried in Peacock’s post, but they’re barely touched on and mostly obscured by his complaints about all the nefarious fake women who are apparently ruining conventions for him.