E3 2005 Booth Babe Hall of Shame

DanAckerman writes "GameGal.com offers some of the out-of-control examples of Booth Babe excess seen every year (five years running) at E3 in their annual Hall of Shame gallery." From the article: "They're smiling on the outside, but three days of snapping Poloroids with sweaty game geeks leads these girls to swear off Guild Wars forever."

Comments

So what?

[etymxris]

I imagine very few attendees are under the illusion that these women are doing this for anything but money. Yes, there are better jobs, but with so many people having dreams of being an actor/actress, and relatively few positions to fill, this certainly isn't the worst gig available. Better than strip clubs and Valtrex commercials anyway.

America the Puritanical

[witchman]

Once again, we Americans are showing our puritanical roots, with the old credo, "Violence is ok, but anything to do with sex or sexuality is very shameful and bad!" So the companies use good looking women to attract attention to their products, wow, such crimes against humanity should not be allowed to persist in our "enlightened" society. Oh, by the way, pass me another beer while I watch a bunch of foreigners get blown up by our precision guided 500 pound bombs on CNN.

Sorry, but I think there are a lot of things to be upset about in this country of ours and booth babes are waaaaaaaaaaay down at the bottom of the list.

Re:America the Puritanical

[Elwood P Dowd]

You'ld find it less than comfortable. The girls are just pointing out the same thing.

No, they're just trying to drive up traffic to their website by posting pictures of half-naked women. Just like the booth babe employers.

If there was... iduno... content to the hall of shame aside from said photos, I might feel differently. But there isn't and I don't. The booth babe interviews from previous years are much more interesting and better at humanizing the issue (however much or little an issue it is).

Re:America the Puritanical

[Guppy06]

"Violence is ok, but anything to do with sex or sexuality is very shameful and bad!"

Look, I like tits and ass as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place for everything, and I get sick of T&A being over-used to hit that lowest common denominator in advertising.

"So the companies use good looking women to attract attention to their products,"

Whatever happened to using the products themselves? Or are they simply not good enough to stand on their own two feet? Another issue I have with the concept of booth babes is the way publishers rely on them and their digital counterparts in the games to move product instead of, say, making a good game.

Your argument about how the US is pro-violence and anti-sex is ultmately a straw man argument here, anyway. I didn't see anything in TFA about blowing stuff up, and at least I personally think the concept of over-relying on cleavage to sell a game is just lame in and of its own right. How about countering my argument instead of the usual collection of anti-American soundbites?

Not what I see...

[Reorax]

From what I can tell, they're not even smiling on the outside. And I doubt their Guild Wars plans were very intense before swearing it off forever.

Where else can you find boothbabes?

[MMaestro]

The issue isn't about making women into sex objects this way, the issue is WHY here in video gaming? This isn't the movie industry where the females are always the 'damsel in distress', no this is the video game industry where the women can sometimes kick ass better than the males (Samus from Metroid? MMO games? Garnet/Dagger from FFIX who runs away from home/gets 'kidnapped'?)

If this was a car show I could see booth babes being around, but video games? Wtf? If this is the kind of perception gaming developers and producers have of gamers its no wonder Nintendo is constantly cranking out award winning games and capturing a loyal audience. Kids don't care about booth babes. Casual gamers don't care about booth babes. Hardcore gamers may stare for a little bit but even they know that it all comes down to gameplay. What kind of jobless losers are these developers try to attract with booth babes?

Re:Where else can you find boothbabes?

[DAldredge]

Because Men and Women like looking at attractive females. Just pick up a womans magazine and see how many barely dressed women advertize products that women buy.

Re:Where else can you find boothbabes?

[Lisandro]

Because they're women, man, and they have tits :)

Seriously, is the same reason they put beautiful women in every single commercial oriented to males. We just love to see them. It's simple.

Re:Where else can you find boothbabes?

[witchman]

I understand your question; "why here?" but I think you're missing the point. Booth babes are just a small part of the larger phenomenon in American advertising, which is, "sex sells". You can see that in everything and everywhere, ads, TV shows, clothing, food, etc. I also happen to agree that it's a waste of advertising dollars, or maybe even development dollars, to spend money on the sex sells advertising campaign, but as long as Americans are "sex starved", I mean you can't even see any nudity on TV here, but you can see people getting killed (how wrong is that?), then you'll continue to see a glut of sex-based advertising.

What I dislike about the article, if you can actually call it that, is that it (too me at least) implies that there is something wrong with enjoying the sight of scantily clad women, which I don't happen to think that there is, whatever the reason.

Shame?

[TopShelf]

Attractive women getting paid to stand around and draw attention to thier clients' booths? Appalling!

Next thing you know, they'll start paying strong, athletic people just to play sports, or they'll pay introverted, academic types to research new technologies! Oh, the humanity!

Ok, so it's sexist

[Sylver Dragon]

Ya, the presence of and gawking over booth babes is sexist and objectifies women. Now, why am I supposed to care? I'm sorry ladies, but guys are very simple creatures, we like looking at semi-naked, good looking, women. If they happen to be in a costume that reflects a particular interest of ours, then all the better.
There is sort of a catch-22 going on at shows like this one. Gaming has usually been the domain of males. Because gaming has been primarilly the domian of males, the advertising is aimed at males. Since the advertising and games are aimed primarilly at males, the industry attracts a mostly male audience, goto 10.
Booth babes are going to be a part of gaming for a long time to come, and I doubt they will ever disappear entirely. Once the industry matures (no pun intended) we should see that sort of advertising toned down a bit, but it will still be there. At the end of the day, it's still easy to sell a guy on sex, so advertisers will still be doing it for years to come. Look at the music industry, do you really think Britney Spears would have done so well if she had dressed respectfully?

Never could understand it

[thesandtiger]

Give me a normal looking person in jeans and a t-shirt who clearly feels comfortable and enjoys where they are and has something honest and interesting to say ANYDAY over a stupidly-clad smile-bot who's only interest is in getting a paycheck.

Really, why don't they just get someone who adds real value to staff the booth as opposed to just stand around and be animate furniture? Or, hell - just admit that they're playing on the sex urges and hire escorts, giving away a free romp every hour?

Welcome to the United States of the Offended

[DesScorp]

Thes people can frankly piss off, for all I care. Nothing bad was going on here. I've seen far skimpier outfits at the beach. FAR skimpier. And these women were basically playing characters from the games. The vast majority of them probably don't give a rats ass either, especially if the money is good.

Men are attracted to women. And people have been using this fact to sell things for years. Why is it a crime now? These critics need to get over themselves, stat.