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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."
...for a couple hours. She's a marketing manager for a large game company and volunteered to hand out t-shirts or some crap for a shift.
Sweaty, nasty geeks indeed. She said it was worse than you can imagine.
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.
Boothbabes faking a sleepover party? WTF! Now I'm embarrased of being a gamer...
At least there was a pillow fight, right? Everybody knows no babe sleepover is complete without a pillow fight.
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Seems pretty damn tame to me. I've seen more "out of control" dress on Britney-wannabe teenagers down at the local mall. Don't tell me Ashcroft's new job is webmaster for gamegal.com!
Oh god, if some of those men could only see how fucking stupid they look when they come across booth babe they might get a sense of WHY it is that they can never get a girlfriend.
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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.
Can anyone else think of a better idea to get lonely gamers (the kind that would go to E3 to begin with) to check out their booth? These are just good looking girls is tight outfits. Depending on where you live, you can see that in any bar/club anyway. Just check out the girls that come around on promos or sell shots.
Most likely, they are girls that are looking for modeling/acting jobs. I guess that is a modeling job, but I guarantee they could make more money on the pole. At least strippers don't have to pose next to a fat bald guy so he can show the pictures to his friends as proof of his story that he made out with a hot chick.
/. ++
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.
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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?
This...this is how nerds would dress up their women...if only they had women.
And names? If nerds could name their women?
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Toatlly agree!! It get's even more insane when they dress up as the girl they want. When I leaving the theater after seeing Star Wars there was a uber nerd dressed as Princess Leia, buns and all. But the Leia had a beard, so I ponderd, umm must be French..
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As someone who is dating a "boothbabe" who was working at e3, I can share a few things that can tell you how they relate to the show and guys.
:P (though I did meet her before e3 started).
1) Majority of the girls that they hire hate or don't care about video games. Surprisingly enough, some of the girls take to video games after the show, but that is usually only if they are stationed around a fun for everybody game. Which means not the blood and guts shooting games that tend to make up the majority of the show.
2) These girls know exactly what to expect from guys there. Afterall, these guys are not *just* at e3, they are at movie theaters, malls, streets, etc. They know how guys respond to them and how to fake smile well. An extra bonus they even have a section in their training manual about dealing with "problem" guys.
3) They get paid well. Most girls can work two days and make enough to pay their bills for a month. Plus, we are talking LA where the cost of living is quite high so that is real good money. These girls are usually all "models" and are usually contracted through an agency or agent.
4) A lot of these girls are quite smart and just do this to make some extra money on the side. A lot are "wannabe actresses" of course, but if you have the goods, why not use it right?
5) I'm a gamer, I work in the biz, I did e3 and I'm dating a "booth babe." So use that for whatever hope you want
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!
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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?
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What I am confused about is, although those booth babes are being horribly mistreated and exploited, I haven't heard one of them complain.....
I wonder why that is.....
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1. "but three days of snapping Poloroids with sweaty game geeks leads these girls to swear off Guild Wars forever." -- How many were considering Guild Wars before?
2. How much of the motivation for these women's presence came from the marketing dept trying to convince their own developers to come to the show?
3. Usually frills like these are a good indicator of an oversaturated, undergrowing market. And again, the indicator is proven true.
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Well, let's see.
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The gals faking the sleepover - well, at least they are getting to sit down. Anybody who has worked a trade show will tell you standing up in the booth all day WILL make your feet sore - especially if you are wearing dress shoes when you usually weare sneakers (I speak from experience!)
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From the article:
We know it's tough being an actress/model in LA, but there's got got to be better gigs than pretending to have a sleepover party in the middle of a trade show.
Quoth Lord Dimboress:
"We couldn't even wear thongs! Like OMFG! Not having something in my butt was the most difficult thing ever! I sooo hope I get paid for this."
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Have you ever been to an Auto Show? Or a football game?
Oh, wait, those are only for low-life shmucks who aren't ashamed of being attracted to women and aren't smart enough to spend all their time toying with computers.
A modern, refined individual, such as one whose declared hobby is 'video games' surely cannot indulge in such vulgar interests.
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?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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.
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And in my mind, going to a strip club isn't about getting your rocks off. It's about finding just how much you can embarass a girl with a dollar.
Perhaps you just have a very warped mind. I've been to several strip clubs in my town. The customers aren't allowed to touch the girls and don't get any closer than the girls want to let them. While I'm sure there's the occaisional smelly customer, most of the guys I see in the places are dressed pretty well and the worst smell you get is from the guys that wear too much cologne. My brother worked at a strip club for a couple years and dated a few of the strippers as well. They made good money, had a relatively easy job, and could afford to go to college. All in all, they're doing better than a lot of people I know. No idea why people don't seem to have much problem with women in bikinis at the beach, but feel that you're a slut or whore with no dignity if you show your nipples. What a fucked up country this is.
What, with like, a "sky" and stuff?
The mass media mocks and laughs at the video game industry. Booth babes in a 'media only' show? What kind of -professional- reporter fall for that kind of trick? (Bribes? Future blackmail?) Its this kind of attitude that created this news report in the first place. We have video game reporters posing for pictures with no-name, "I don't a damned clue what the hell this company is trying to sell but I'm all dressed up/down" women and the public is supposed to take us seriously?
IF E3 was an open to the public show, fine I could see this happening. Say its a bunch of overzealous fanboys cosplaying. But companies hiring these obviously uninterested women to stand around looking pretty doesn't do very much towards video game development.
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How would these women lure nerds over to their booths? Aren't most nerds intimidated by beautiful women?
Oh let's see how about the one I know that is doing it as a way of supporting herself through college. She's the one that was in foster care most of her life and did not have a mom's basement to crawl-out of and daddy to foot the bills. And guess what I have never seen her without her clothes on so it is not like it was a story she told me to hustle me for cash. Nope she is my wife's friend.
Or how about this one, another stripper working with the previous one. She is a single mom and her toddler has a dead beat dad. Dancing two nights a week for a basically guaranteed $4K (mostly tax free) a month is a great gig. Just drop the kid off at grandma's to work and tan.
It's about finding just how much you can embarass a girl with a dollar.
You are VERY screwed-up, completely warped :( You think you are embarrassing them? I have news for you crap for brains, they are hustling you for your money, you are the mark, they are in complete control of you.
BTW the smelly guys are a real problem. That and the bruises and scratches from bumping into stuff while dancing are the biggest complaints according to my wife's friend :)
All they need to do is host an E3 show in a building directly next to a strip club.
They already pretty much do. The LA Convention Center is not really in the "heart" of downtown, it's down near the basketball arena (what is it called these days, the Staples Center?) in an area of town that's sort of borderline - it's not bad but it's not great either, and it kind of feels like the middle of nowhere. I walked around outside the convention center a while both times I went to E3 and I did see some strip clubs.
Most of the E3 "booth babes" are hired right out of these strip clubs. Most of them are regulars at E3 too, so it's not as if they don't (for the most part) know what they're getting into. You see the same ones every year.
At Japanese game shows, the booth babes are usually college girls hired for the day from around the whole area. Some of them get to be regulars too, though, because it's good money. But they're not models or strippers like the E3 women are (which may be better or worse depending on your tastes and your personal chauvinism level).
Having sexy women around to attract people is not sexist and does not objectify women. Plain and simple. If anything I imagine it's empowering and I'm sure they do well financially.
There's nothing sexist about looking at an attractive woman for any reason.
I've seen a lot of people (maybe just a few, but they were highly rated) complaining about how the booth babes shouldn't be at a video game conference. Let me tell you something. My last company, which manufactures controls and calibrators for automated diagnostic machines (Biotech) had booth babes at the American Association of Clinical Chemists. They sold stuff to hospitals and research labs. There are plenty of women in biotech. Biotech is not a male dominated field. My first company out of college had more female chemists than male. The manager of my department told me that he interviews every male that applied for a position, just so he can try and keep a better balance. I would expect that booth babes will always be at E3.
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