V da Mighty Taco said:
As the title says, apparently the porn site YouPorn is looking into sponsoring professional eSports teams for at least League of Legends, DotA 2, and Hearthstone. What are your thoughts on porn sites trying to get involved in eSports, and how do you think the likes of Blizzard and Riot would react given their barring of such sponsors in the LCS and WCS tournaments?
Source: Esports Haven [http://www.esportsheaven.com/news/64438], Twitter [https://twitter.com/YouPorn/status/487359454506397697], Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/2aduct/youporn_looking_to_sponsor_hearthstone_team/]
I don't see it as being that big a thing, given that they currently sell sexual enhancement products and such on TV, radio, billboards, and everything else, not to mention the general proliferation of sex appeal in marketing. As long as they aren't actually showing sexual penetration and/or going beyond what other companies do in selling their products,
I doubt it matters much.
Of course there is the greater question of how advertising has developed in a general sense, but the bottom line is we already opened the door, free speech and civil liberties regulations prevent things from changing any time in the near future, so we might as well stop playing coy about what we've unleashed.
I'll also say that a number of porn stars/starlets have commented on being heavily involved in gaming a few times, I believe Asia Carrera ran her how Counterstrike servers for a while, and did it before it was "hip" and you had all the "gamer girl" softcore all over the internet (not to mention that she never used it for her appearances to my knowledge). I suppose in theory the adult industry might be able to put some promotional teams together and see how well they do, and in actual gameplay it might actually prove some points along the way.
For all intents and purposes a porn sponsored team as I understand the idea is probably going to be no worse than "The Frag Dolls" which is Ubisoft's sponsored teams who are selected for their looks as well as their gaming ability, so they can be used for promotional purposes. Either way your pretty much using sex to sell gaming, and of course whatever products the sponsors also sell.
While this could wind up providing some points, and could be interesting, one thing I've heard commented on for a long time though is that a lot of the "all girl" teams don't actually do all that well for one reason or another. The infamous "Team Siren" is actually not all that highly ranked, and the various "Frag Dolls" teams have had very mixed results over the years.
If it's just a matter of porn companies sponsoring as opposed to producing their own teams, I don't think someone having "Dildobarn.com" under a picture of a massively well endowed model dressed as a farm girl in daisy dukes and a halter top is going to cause many problems, given that you can find similar advertisements all over the place, and frankly those under 18 who really want to find porn aren't going to have much trouble. Not to mention that porn sales sites want to sell products, not just give their stuff away for free, while there are plenty of "free samples" and amateur sites out there, chances are a company promoting this way is going to lead you to a site full of plastic
phallic devices or whatever, not hot action with them being used. Sort of like the infamous "Bad Dragon" site, where it became sort of famous not because of porn clips but because a lot of people of both genders were going "OMG" (in both good and bad directions) at the thought of some of them being used.
Of course there is common sense here, obviously some kind of tournament involving a kiddy game (like a "Hello Kitty" or "Wizard 101" PVP tourney or whatever... if you can even envision such a thing) it shouldn't happen. Of course then again most kiddie games (Pixie Hollow, Pirates Of The Carribean, Lego Universe Online etc...) are dead and gone so it's not likely they will ever enter into E-sports. Although I must admit if it still existed how wrong it would be to have Ron Jeremy playing a game like "Pixie Hollow" professionally would be amusing... Tinker Bell and friends would never be the same again, even if he was a complete gentleman the entire time.
