Jimquisition: Booth Babes

[minimacker]

Have them cosplay as characters. Both men and women. I wouldn't complain if I saw a Gordon Freeman promoting HL3. I would feel uncomfortable if it was a female Gordon in an HEV bikini.

The beard would just creep me out.

 

[Teshi]

I don't care about booth babes one way or the other. But their presence is a blatant admission that the companies are primarily seeking an audience of heterosexual men and boys*, which makes me a lot less interested in their products. Which is, of course, their prerogative, but it's dumb from both a marketing and artistic standpoint, considering that gaming as a medium has the potential to attract just about any demographic other than "Amish."

*and also that they think said men and boys are kind of dumb

 

[surg3n]

Yeah, that's just what the world of gaming needs, less attractive women, more overweight losers with BO problems and no shame.

Seriously, gaming conventions will not be the same without booth babes, because without them we have yet another sausage fest. So fricken what if some people get nervous, so what if some gamer girls are threatened.

Frankly, I don't see how Jessica Nigri's lolly-pop jumpsuit can be taken as anything other than a good thing, an awesome thing - she looks amazing in it and has the perfect personality for these things. She started out doing cosplay, not being paid to dress like that, but actually choosing to dress like that for conventions etc - just like hundreds of other women who attend conventions. Why are anime, and comic books, and all types of transport conventions allowed to have booth babes, yet gaming conventions are so full of socially awkward neckbeards that the mere sight of flesh makes them uncomfortable?

Shouldn't gamers get the fuck over their own problems instead of levelling the playing field, like some sort of inverted master race. Don't show the pretty people, because the people who buy our products get a bit awkward around them.

Does anyone really think that getting rid of booth babes will improve the image of gamers?

Attractive women don't embarass me, the image of gamers does. All that will happen if they banned booth babes, is that they'd have to ban similar outfits for attendee's, no more cosplay hotties making the convention worthwhile, ohh no - but at least we'll still have hardcore-gamer chicks right? pffft!
If I wanted to see MeatLoaf with tits, I'd watch Fight Club.

 

[mdqp]

It's immature and demeans gaming as a hobby.

Just about as much as cheerleaders do for the dignity of their respective sports.

Wise wolf!

Since we don't have cheerleaders in my country, am I allowed to think we are very mature or not?

 

[jmarquiso]

It won't eliminate jobs. Models will model elsewhere. Booth Babes come from model agencies. It isn' tlike they're full time with specific companies.

The same is true for car shows, gun shows, and the like.

On the other hand, the same arguments against booth babes in game conventions would apply to them in car shows, gun shows and almost anything else. While eliminating them in this one industry shouldn't have any noticeable impact taking the arguments against them to their logical conclusion certainly would.

It's the same argument that says my vote doesn't matter when clearly voting in general does.

Of course. And those industries have also been dealing with this very problem. Guess what? They're a lot more responsive to it.

Modelling as a profession will not go away. Perhaps the convention "booth babe" portion of the industry will. Industries move on.

A bad analogy is CGI in films. CGI means that puppeteers and practical effects people were needed less and less, as it tends to be more time consuming and therefore expensive. However - the effects houses that looked at their portfolio, learned the trade of CGI, were able to apply their knowledge of effects to a new and growing industry. Those that didn't lost out. Now the best effects houses uses a mix of both, and continuously innovate.

If Booth Babes are going away as a profession, it would serve modelling agencies to find out how best to serve their clients in other ways.

 

[Mr F.]

Booth Babes really what people decide to complain about is getting ridiculous, is there really any different than a Booth Babe at E3 and the girls at a Car Show or the UFC girl's that hold up the ROUND signs?

No there isn't in fact those girls are actually less dressed and it's not like they're giving lap dances. If you're going to shut down E3 Booth Babes, than to be fair you have to shut down Boxing and UFC girls, Car show girls really anything with a girl standing next to it.

In fact lets follow this to its logical conclusion and just do what they do in the middle east and make all women cover from head to toe even in the dead of heat because they might cause impure thoughts.......

Brilliant!

You take the argument out of context, add a bit of hyperbole and then add a tiny bit of Islamophobia just to make sure you sound like a calm rational human being!

That said...

Why exactly would removing eye candy from all of the above be bad? What does scantily clad woman have to do with UFC? What does it have to do with cars? Seriously?

Absolutely fucking nothing. The entire point is to pander to the majority male audience that watches UFC, attends car shows and turns up at Conventions. Whilst the argument saying "What would these poor women do without these jobs" is logical, I still think that the loss of the entire industry (As in, exploitative modelling industry) would not be a particularly bad thing.

I mean, when slavery was being abolished did anybody say "Oh, think of the poor slave traders and slave takers, what will they do to stay employed now!". Nope. We accepted that the entire industry was rather bad so we killed it.

I think this makes my point very clear: Booth babes serve no purpose other then eye candy. Jim is right, you get rid of the eye candy chicks and companies will have to be more inventive to attract views.

And as for your final argument? The abolishment of booth babes will not lead to the "Logical conclusion" of Abiya's being common in the west. You are being hyperbolic and you know it. There is a difference between someone being paid to stand around wearing next to nothing to attract nerds and someone wearing whatever the fuck they like. Like, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an unpaid cosplayer turning up as a Dead or Alive girl if she wanted to (Or he wanted to, lets be inclusive here) because there is NO coercive factor there.

Is this getting through?

There is a difference between society saying "I do not like the idea of people being paid to stand around wearing little to nothing in an attempt to advertise a product" and "I do not like women wearing skimpy clothes". You might not be able to see it, but then again, you do not know how to stop an ellipsis so your view is sorta invalid.

As Pratchett said, multiple punctuation is the sign of a diseased mind.

tldr;

Loose the booth babes. Cause, well, all those who agree with me know the reasons, all those who don't do not give a shit about the reasons. Heh.

 

[jmarquiso]

Booth Babes really what people decide to complain about is getting ridiculous, is there really any different than a Booth Babe at E3 and the girls at a Car Show or the UFC girl's that hold up the ROUND signs?

Same girls. Same agencies.

Difference is that game conventions are attracting more and more women then those others'. It's a marketing decision - alienate one audience to please another that could give or take them?

 

[Dr. Doomsduck]

The answer? Hire fans. Hold applications or something when you want to start a booth so that gamers themselves can apply for one day of promotion. In return, give them a days' wages and free tickets to the whole thing, as well as costumes of the character they'll be promoting (whether male or female).

I definitely like your idea, but I reckon that those costumes, if they're good quality, can be very expensive, like, worth more than a weekend's work at E3.

Other than that, there are so many alternatives to booth babes that are just falling by the wayside now. The aforementioned cosplayers/actors, recreated objects from the game (like the elder scrolls, the portal gun and turrets, the turret from Team Fortress), hell, if you really want smexy women involved, why not just have model get bodypainted into a dark elf or something like that? Have an artist spraypaint some of the game art during the convention. There are so many ways to endorse your game that booth babes are really kinda uncreative.

 

[undeadexistentialist]

The answer? Hire fans. Hold applications or something when you want to start a booth so that gamers themselves can apply for one day of promotion. In return, give them a days' wages and free tickets to the whole thing, as well as costumes of the character they'll be promoting (whether male or female).

I definitely like your idea, but I reckon that those costumes, if they're good quality, can be very expensive, like, worth more than a weekend's work at E3.

Ah, my apologies, I meant to also mention the costumes should be provided by the people hiring the publicity. So the people don't have to pay a substantial amount for the privilege of publicising their event, but they can get set up in a proper character outfit for the day

 

[Aikayai]

If booth babes are hired to attract people towards a booth then why not give them a little more responsibility? Get them to share their gaming experience with people who visit them and then explain why they think people should be exited about a product. You don't have to wear anything revealing or professional, hell moderate casual wear would do it. Maybe even a nerdy t-shirt with something game related would make people laugh inside. Anything to break down this aspect of "I want to put things in her" and becoming "I want to get to know her".
When people are on the same level they tend to let their guard down and are more susceptible to peer pressure, thus any promotional information will leave an impression.
There will still be some creeps but booths should have as much security as they do promoters really.

 

[Piorn]

In an industry so fond of explosions, barely dressed women and soldiers doing flashy QTEs, booth babes are really just another nail in the coffin. If they're already shoving "nice" things down our throats, they might as well add booth babes.

I don't really care either way.

 

[The Funslinger]

These videos are starting to go on too long. Last week's and this week's seem to have Jim spend an extra 3 minutes to sum up a point he made in the first 4 minutes. That's not really a summation as much as it is watching the same video twice in a row.

I made one side of the argument in the first four. Hadn't even addressed the conflicting flipside yet. If you feel they're too long, that is fair enough criticism (I always try and keep them shorter than they turn out), but you must have been watching a different video. Not to mention, most videos have always been between seven and eight minutes and this one was. Previous two were closer to ten, so you really did pick the wrong vid, considering this one brought the viewing time back to average.

Let's have some standards back in our criticism.

Vote Sterling.

I think it would have been fair enough if this video had been lengthened, too as you had to play Devil's Advocate to a greater degree than you did in previous episodes.

That said, I only really pay attention to length[footnote]Childish tittering[/footnote] when a video's starting to drag and I'm wondering how much longer I need to slog on for and if it's even worth it.

So the fact I've no idea what your average runtime is is actually a good thing!

 

[Azuaron]

Fire all booth babes. Fire them. The argument that we shouldn't get rid of something because people are getting paid for it is a stupid argument.

Do you know what one of my favorite inventions of the past ten years is? Fastpass/Easypass for tolls. Tolls went from the hell of sitting in a car for hours to a simple slow down to 15 MPH and keep on going. Best. Thing. Ever. "But," you may say, "think of the poor toll-booth operators who are now out of the job!" They can find another job!

When a job becomes irrelevant, I'm sorry, but we have to fire everyone doing that job. Hell, pay me like George Clooney in that one movie and I'll do it for you.

Instead, hire cosplaying actors. Like Deadpool? He was awesome. Do more of that. And let's be clear about this: he was not just some dude dressed up as Deadpool. He was, obviously, a dude dressed up as Deadpool, but he was also talking and acting like Deadpool, and everyone was having a great time because of it.

Blizzard? This means I expect a hydralisk to be spitting acid on people at the next Starcraft booth.

 

[m19]

In an industry so fond of explosions, barely dressed women and soldiers doing flashy QTEs, booth babes are really just another nail in the coffin. If they're already shoving "nice" things down our throats, they might as well add booth babes.

That is different from the rest of the world how?

 

[Zen Bard]

The problem with Booth Babes is that they demonstrate a severe disconnect between the Gaming Industry and the Gaming Community.

Sure, at one time, the core gaming audience consisted primarily of socially awkward teenage boys whose only chance at female interaction might just be talking to a Booth Babe (and I say that as someone who proudly belonged to that community).

But I, like the community, grew up and matured (well, for the most part, anyway). Unfortunately, the gaming industry still doesn't seem to get that.

Looks, you're bound to find Booth Babes in just about any convention or trade show that caters to a predominately heterosexual male demographic (car shows, boat shows, tool shows, etc...).

But, the demographic of the Gaming Community has expanded beyond that to include various ages, social groups and yes, even genders.

And as Mr. Sterling said (and I shall thank God for him, even if he did not), it's just plain lazy. Hell, I'd say using "Sex sells" as a core marketing strategy is about as lazy as one can get. It might be nice to see vendors and booth operators try something more creative to get our attention.

So I don't think Booth Babes really hurt...but they don't really help. But the practice does shed a pretty harsh spotlight on just how out of touch the Industry is with its customers.

 

[TheSteeleStrap]

Honestly Jim, for me, you have brought up an issue that I didn't realize was an issue, I must be in the minority there.

I love the booth baby ending, but it somehow feels empty without a "Thank God for Me" in there somewhere.