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Good Riddance To Booth Babes
Colin Campbell has an editorial at Next Generation in which he applauds the decision to fine risque outfits worn by the traditional 'booth babes'. From the article: "Exhibitors at E3 employ a whole range of human beings to attract attention to their booths and excitement to their live events. The ones who attract the largest crowds are either celebrities (fair enough), well-loved industry-creatives (quite right) or so-called 'booth-babes', often behaving in ways that at least mimic the lowest sort of strip joint. People do not dress this way in normal life, not even in Los Angeles. There are some companies that seem more susceptible to this kind of technique than others. It's difficult to imagine, say, EA or Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo bothering with this nonsense."
Those vile practices reinforced the social trend to objectify females. I solemnly applaud the decision to ban them. Now take me to the pictures! What? No pics?!?!?!?
Games are entertainment. Cute girls are nice to look at. Is that so wrong?
If you want things more family-friendly, why not just apply the old anime-con cosplay standard of "30% coverage minimum, inlcuding all the obvious places", instead of applying an ambiguous rule that outfits can not be "too risque"?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The rules have always been in place, they only recently decided to start "enforcing" them.
yeah, Sony would just have guys to rape you.
What? Too far?
It's not like I was getting into the event anyways.
This just means more booth babes for other events.
I see this as a good thing.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Considering that in reality E3 is supposed to be an industry event (I have attended the seminars wearing my game programming hat) and yet recently it has become a giant circus similar to Comdex right before the collapse, I think this is a good move. The press day in particular will be helpful (more so that the clothing requirements): the poor people in the booths are besieged by loser fan boys while the real interviewers can be recognized by the desperate looks of someone under time pressure they wait for a bunch of store clerks to stop hassling their interview target. Or they just get pushy, which I don't blame them for.
Reducing the booth babe exposure (literally) won't prevent people from hiring pretty young women and placing them in the booths. I don't think that practice will ever end (check any other convention and see who is most prominently displayed in each booth: the best looking women of the company or some "spokeswoman" who they hired because the women at the company refused to be so exploited). It will hopefully reduce the circus like atmosphere and restore the event to something that industry actually interacts at.
(On the flip side of the coin, the private parties are even more outlandish than the show floor. Make of that what you will.)
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I've nothing against it, as long as it's geekily appropriate :)
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Well, dada21,
This will come as a shock to you, but I agree with Colin Campbell's take on the booth babes. I do think that they are silly.
My problem with booth babes is that while hiding behind 'free expression', these companies are trying to push their moral standards upon me trying to tell me what I should be looking at while going to a game show. I don't associate games with scantily clad women at all and resent these companies trying to merge the two. I say, get rid of the booth babes and make a product that can stand on its own feet. If people want to see scantily clad women, they can go to places that specialize in that.
Did you just say GOOD riddance to booth babes?
That ain't right.
I noticed that weird wording also.... I can only imagine that this is because this is slashdot. I mean, only slashdot could be UPSET about a mostly naked woman getting between them and a game...
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
3840 entries... That's what I call comprehensive media coverage.
Is there no social position you don't color through the lens of your pet theory on "anacro-capitalism"? That organizers and many participants find explicit sexual behavior at a public trade convention distracting and unrelated to business should be enough. The issue of a woman's right to strip and prostitute herself is actually "OFFTOPIC" and not "INSIGHTFUL". Please go away.
Wait... get laid? I've not been to E3, but if the normal crowd who discusses it is any measure of the people there.... shudder. Also, it's not like there are hot men there to attract geek girls (assuming that that WOULD do such a thing), so enlighten me on exactly why you think E3 is the same nirvanna of pleasure persuits that say a real estate convention is?
On second thought, I'd rather you didn't. shudder again
I'm sure the more creative types will find a way around the booth babe restrictions. There are plenty of ways to be sexy without showing a lot of skin or behaving in obviously lewd manners. But if E3 is hoping to somehow clean up the image of the games industry by "cleaning" up the trade show, forget it! As long as violent games like the GTA series and others grab the spotlight, what happens at the trade show really doesn't matter. And it certainly doesn't matter how people are dressed. I mean really, if the adult film industry held high class swanky industry events where everyone was impeccably dressed and behaved with the highest manners, would that gain adult films any more respect than they get now? I doubt it. Window dressing is nice, but ultimately it's the product that matters the most.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Come back booth bunny....
Come back booth bunny's sister!
I'm sure that wearing the outfits that the companies tell them/pay them to wear is "free expression".
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
"There are some companies that seem more susceptible to this kind of technique than others. It's difficult to imagine, say, EA or Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo bothering with this nonsense."
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It would appear at least Microsoft is no stranger to booth babes. A quick glance at e3girls.com easily reveals one of many pages of Microsoft using so-called "booth babes" to promote products.
http://www.e3girls.com/display.cfm?startrow=1909&
What? I was only visiting that site for uh... proof to refute the summary's claim... yeah...
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I've had about 20 people link me about the new booth babe regulations, but no one seems to be talking about the other changes that have happened to E3 this year. To me, it doesn't seem like this is some arbitrary regulation that they just happened to start, but rather just a part of an overall restructuring of the event. For example, one of the other rules that I know which has changed is that retail folks can no longer get in just by being your regular Joe working at a game store. They are only distributing a certain number of passes for those involved in retail companies, and the upper management in said companies gets to choose whom they would like to attend. This will hopefully limit the number of gawkers and people who have a very loose connection to the industry, and keep the place less crowded. There are probably other changed rules, how come we never hear about them? Oh, because... sex sells. ;-) Or the lack of it, in this case.
Given the turn in many of the games I've seen lately to produce "larger" more realistic (visually if not dimenensionally) boobies, I'd say that booth babes are rather representative in ways of the games being advertised.
For that very reason, FFX-2 sits uncompleted on my shelves to this day...
There's nothing inherently unethical about booth babes. It's their chosen profession and they're being paid for their looks and their "marketting skills", ie. bringing the customers to the stand. It takes a lot of effort to stay looking that way, and courage to do it.
... I'm sure it won't be just the girls who check out their assets.
Where is might be said to be on shakey ground is if both sexes aren't fairly represented, because then the do-gooders start talking about "objectifying women". Bring on the booth hunks, too
Post up directional signs for "Booth Babes here" and "Booth Hunks there" and increase the merriment and general fun by clearly laughing at ourselves for doing it.
Vive la diference!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I looked at several different news sources and I didn't see anywhere where it said that the convention center was making the rules, but rather the organizers of the convention, the Enterntainment Software Association, made the new rules. Look like the free market spoke afterall.
...put a stick up that guy's ass? I've locked at the article, I've locked a a few pages of booth babes pictures - and I wonder if "risque outfit" has the same definition in american dictionaries as in mine.
All of these girls are fully and appropriately dressed. Aside from the fact that they have logos all over and some of them are wearing obvious custumes, the only reason any of them would be looked at even twice if they were to, say, go shopping in the center of my city tomorrow was because it doesn't fit to the damn cold.
I've seen much more revealing outfits at pretty much every party and not few during normal summer shopping.
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"Government loves to try to control morality."
No government intervention involved or called for. RTFA.
You have your own blog in which you can bemoan government as much and as often as you want. This isn't it. Fight the power somewhere else please.
It's difficult to imagine, say, EA or Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo bothering with this nonsense."
You mean like when Microsoft brought in the Laker Girls? Or when Sony got Denise Harris to dress up as that half-nekkid elf chick? Please.
"Realistic physics in games will never catch on. Lara Croft would keep falling over forwards." - Stephen Turner
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Booth babes had the wonderful effect of attracting lines of single guys wanting a photo or autograph. That means shorter lines for the game and hardware demos the rest of us want to see. Without booth babes, everyone will look at the games, which ruins it for the rest of us.
Then again it is hard to imagine an area of public sales where a pretty girl won't do the trick. Wether it is the stewardes or the receptionist a pretty face works better.
As for it being sexist. Advertising aimed at women either uses the most perfect male or a mental retard. "Normal" men need not apply to sell products to women.
Hell a lot of ads aimed at females use pretty females themselves so what is wrong with ads aimed at men using sexy females.
This guy probably got a serious case of the right wing nutter disease and starts enforcing his own impotentency on the rest of us. Just because he can not longer enjoy looking at a pretty girl he must ruin it for the rest of us as well.
Booth babes are a way to dress up your booth, to get eyeballs on your stand and then once you got them there you can make your sale. It is very old, it happens in every industry and it won't go away. I seen these kinds of restrictions being proposed before and they are always worked around. When you are selling the next DOA game you can hardly have it being advertised by a couple of guys in suits.
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Wait a minute -- you clicked on a link promising relevant pictures for an article about inappropriately-attired women acting in sexually provocative ways, and were surprised to find results that were Not Safe for Work? What on earth did you expect to see when you clicked that link?
I mean, I agree as a rule with the concept of labelling NSFW links, but this seems like a fairly slender thread on which to hang your response.
Are these shows in Las Vegas (aka the USA for those that forgot it) or somewhere in the Middle East? Last time I checked we had Freedom of Expression and Speech in this country and we do not dictate what our women can or cannot wear!
If somebody is willing to pay a beautiful woman to wear a skimpy outfit, and she is willing, then hey so be it! As for those that do not like it, do not look at them or go to these shows! Remember freedom of choice applies to you as well!
It's difficult to imagine, say, EA or Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo bothering with this nonsense.
Has this fool played any games from the last 15 years? How many of those games have women in skimpy outfits? How many of those game women are horny developers' wet dreams?
Please! These booth babes are just a reflection of what's in the bloody games!
Pretentious fool.
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I guess this is Colin Campbell's coming out article as any warm blooded hetero male (i.e. the audience many of these companies often target) are drawn to the booth babes like flies on crap.
This guy also knows nothing about trade show exhibits. Its about getting the audience to your booth so they can see your wares. Offer some gimmick (free something), contests, flashing lights and babes in tight clothing and your going to attract the crowds. Attract enough of a crowd and the audience is perpetual, more are drawn to the congregation to find out what is going on which draws more people. Eventually, some of them are going to look at your product as opposed to your competitor's who are sitting alone in the corner with their bow ties and morals intact.
It may be garish or immoral, but its marketing at its finest!
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Yet strangely, valve nipples will give you fourteen pages of mostly-relevant images, with no spurious mammalian protuberances to be found.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Where do you work? The Vatican? In Utah, I hear those pictures are considered violence. Wait I got that backwards. Maybe.
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