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Booth babes at pax?
spec
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There is an interesting discussion going on in the irc channel about this. Let's get some discussion going here, too:
How does the community in general feel about Booth Babes? Personally I think they are demeaning and take away from the focus of community, comraderie and gaming. How do others feel?
What counts as a "Booth Babe"? My personal feeling is that a booth babe is someone who is dressed up in a skimpy outfit and has no knowledge of the game they are there to promote, and also no knowledge of gaming in general. If all they are there for is to attract young male gamers to the booth, and serve no other useful function, I think that they are a distraction to what PAX is about.
Did you feel like any of the women in the expo hall were booth babes? I don't know, what do you guys think? I didnt have the time or inclination to try to talk to any of the scantily clad ladies I saw there this year, so I can't say for certain if they fit with my definition of the term. I really hope that they were there to talk about the product and to help promote it by giving others knowledge of it, but I wasn't able to talk to any of them to find out. What do you guys think?
How does the community in general feel about Booth Babes? Personally I think they are demeaning and take away from the focus of community, comraderie and gaming. How do others feel?
What counts as a "Booth Babe"? My personal feeling is that a booth babe is someone who is dressed up in a skimpy outfit and has no knowledge of the game they are there to promote, and also no knowledge of gaming in general. If all they are there for is to attract young male gamers to the booth, and serve no other useful function, I think that they are a distraction to what PAX is about.
Did you feel like any of the women in the expo hall were booth babes? I don't know, what do you guys think? I didnt have the time or inclination to try to talk to any of the scantily clad ladies I saw there this year, so I can't say for certain if they fit with my definition of the term. I really hope that they were there to talk about the product and to help promote it by giving others knowledge of it, but I wasn't able to talk to any of them to find out. What do you guys think?
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http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showpost.php?p=6880012&postcount=17
I think booth babes in general are in poor taste.
Good Taste is having an attractive person who is a part of the team who knows all about the game and gamer culture.
Poor Taste is having a hired model who has been recently briefed on the game and knows next to nothing about the culture.
Of course, I sometimes like things that are in poor taste (South Park and Robot Chicken both come to mind).
But the kind of winking "no booth babes" nudge nudge seems like it's been getting more and more blatant every year, and at some point I think PA ought to drop the "no booth babes" pretense and be honest about not caring about booth babes, or enforce the rule and kick out the vendors who have a high model:developer ratio.
I don't care if there are half-naked booth babes or fully clothed booth babes or booth babes encased in weighted companion cubes or no booth babes at all, but shouldn't the pretense that there's something different here be dropped?
The girls at the Midnight Club booth were really cool. I didnt talk to them about the game, but she seemed genuinely excited about getting people to play. She was cheering me on telling me to try and hit a jump near the end of the track.
But yeah, most of the booths are usually run by marketing types who dont really know much about the games they are promoting to begin with. Using girls to do the same plus attract attention doesnt seem that bad to me. And I dont find it demeaning, considering thats what these girls do for a living.
In the end though, I think most guys were too timid or shy to approach the booth girls. And most of the time I saw people passing the girls and heading straight for the games, minus the few guys trying to get a photo taken.
This is getting into a broader subject than this thread intended, but the concept of a "booth babe" is somewhat contrary to what most core gamers expect. Female gamers are becoming more common, but historically they've been so rare that whenever a woman is brought in to represent a game, we assume she doesn't actually want to be there, and our only response is to pity her-- not exactly what the publisher was hoping to achieve.
This year there was like...10-20 at least. It just seemed...I dunno...scuzzy. I will say though, that I didn't try to talk to any of them, besides a couple minutes with the "high elf" from the CMV (?) booth while she got back into her armour, but we weren't talking about the booth or anything besides how heavy armour is when you have to wear it all day.
The problem with Booth Babes is they bring nothing to the convention. They're there only to attract men to the booths with sex appeal. They don't know anything about the games, and give the whole enterprise a sleazier feel for those of us who are actually here for the content.
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Thing is, it all depends on where the focus lies: the game itself, or the "jiggle factor".
Honestly, PAX really is just about the only game convention that actually deserves respect as far as not going too far with the booth babe thing.
If the folks who run the booth happen to be attractive, and attempt to play that up, then that's ok.
But hiring some "babe" (subjective...) to just stand there in a skimpy costume and take (often suggestively posed) photos with people is just pathetic.
There's nothing wrong with attempting to make the game more appealing to gamers, but there seems to be a depressingly prevailing stereotype that the "target" gamer is an overly-hormonal teenage male.
Honestly, game devs/reps/whatever that continually seem to just not "get it" make me lose interest in their products entirely.
And I know I'm not the only one out there who is repulsed by the idea of sex selling a video game.
Hopefully those ones catch on and try to widen their appeal to a larger target audience.
PAX still seems to have a good family friendly atmosphere going on.
I strongly encourage its organizers to try and keep it that way.
I hope to god PAX never turns into the trash that is Leipzig (and formerly E3)....
That's not a game con. It's a porn con.
I'm not a fan. It's manipulative and reinforces the stereotype that gaming is only for sex starved 15 year old boys. Obviously I enjoy seeing the women. It's kind of in my genes. But I don't like being manipulated, so I make it a point not to visit these booths. Most of them look so bored that they're not all that hot, anyway.
On the one hand, you had girls there who didn't know anything about the games, the characters, etc.
On the other hand, I saw one girl there who was so involved in the game that you could hardly pry her away from it.
I think that the Judy nails concept was that you challenge Judy in gameplay. So that was good.
I spoke briefly to the Flying Frog people, and from the sounds of it, the models are actually incorporated into the game itself. I think they posed for the game cards within the game or something (I don't play board games, so I'm not sure). So that would be equivalent to talking to the voice actors of a game.
I will say, if they don't look happy to be there, they shouldn't be.
I do agree that it would be better, if companies decide to implement booth babes, that they should know more than the basics about the games they are promoting. It enhances the promotion and gives them more purpose than just being eye candy for passer-bys.
That said, I rather enjoy seeing them there if only for the fact their costumes tend to kick a lot of ass. They are professionally made, and are not always two pieces of fabric stretched together.
For example, the girl at the Sins of a Solar Empire booth blew my mind. Her outfit was simple, but coupled with the creepy contacts she really pulled off the look great - AND she was playing the part. That was awesome.
Also, I do think it should be taken into account that a lot of these girls are cosplaying characters that are designed to be skimpy. The characters themselves are wearing barely nothing or ridiculously placed armor. It's not as though the girls themselves chose what to wear. They were paid to put on this costume and pose at this booth for pictures. So, if there is a problem with how scanty their clothing is it might be that the complaints could be just as easily directed at the game creators themselves. But that's a whoooole other subject.
And on a female-gamer note.....I wouldn't mind some more guys promoting games in costume. I only saw a couple...but some of the casual cosplayers ... like the Umbrella Corp Soldier.... were equally as awesome as the girls at the booths if not better!
Demeaning, I agree. But demeaning to us, the attendees, not the girls.
Know the Product.
LFT
Tip to companies designing their booths: just get gamer girls, they know whats going on, are much more fun to talk to, and many out there are very cute
Anyway, I was playing the new Metroid, and I was completely stuck.
On the tutorial.
Yeah, I suck at games.
Anyway, I asked the two girls for help, and you know what? Neither of them knew what to do.
In the tutorial.
(Bangs head on wall)
Needless to say, I didn't buy one.
BTW, I didn't have time to talk to the Blades girl, but what did everyone think of her? Considering how much time they put into their minigame, it would be a shame if their model didn't know the product.
Why not have some hot chick to take a picture of?
That's about all they're good for. And they totally pose so it's kinda nice.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
...I don't really have anything to say to that...it's just too asinine.
How about all of the countless video games, covers and ads with big tittied amazons in their skin tighties ready to save the world with a camel toe? Was bikini-mail really as popular in the dark ages as I have been led to believe? Are we also protesting the never ending progress to improve realtime bouncing breast physics? has anyone never wasted some time messing with game camera angles to get a better peek at Peaches pink or Crofts crack? Installed "the patch" to see "a patch?"
Maybe we should collectively burn all of our Boris Vallejo shirts in protest next year when Morgan Webb arrives.
Vile.
Believe it or not, some of us grow out of that.
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We're not talking about print ads and games in general. PAX has had a policy against having booth-babes solely for the purpose of being hot, at least that was my understanding. This year it didn't seem to be the case.
That's what we're talking about.
Booth babe = knowledgeable employee/model dressed in character of said game who can tell you what you need to know.
I got no problem with Booth Babes, the other, meh. The PAX community sees through that shit, this ain't E3.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
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OMG...they were so hawt
*rimshot*
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The girls at the N-gage (across from Brothers in Arms) completely distracted the guy in my group every time we walked by. He thought one of them was so hot. On Sunday he finally talked to one to get a picture, turns out she wasn't very knowledgeable about the game, didn't sound like she had much going on in the head at all, and barely spoke English. Had their costumes had more effort put into them so I could recognize that they were supposed to be from the game they were representing and they had knowledge of what they showed, I probably wouldn't have cared.
The Fragdolls at Ubisoft were cool. I didn't know who they were until one of my friends explained them to me (my first pax I'm a little naive still). I was glad to see respectable girls who kick ass at pretty much everything out there running a booth. I was also glad that when they handed me a raffle ticket and I asked what they were giving out and they replied a 250gb external drive that I got excited and they shared in my excitement. Who doesn't need one of those?!
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I don't know where I was going with that. Um, no booth babes please? Or at least no booth babes who deface your stuff with stickers? Yeah, I'm gonna shut up now.
Well, I did pass out 120 or so buttons, and they were fairly recognizable
Here's a pic of me (from Facebook profile..but it's all I have at work). Your name seems familiar, but I dunno. When were you hanging with the Canadians?
With that said, guys need to be more respectful around them, and do a better job of presenting themselves. Shower, dress appropriate, and actually talk to them like a real person. Ask for her name, rather than "Can, I, uh... have my picture with you? 'k, thnx, bye." Assume that you're going to want to have your picture taken with people before you arrive, and prepare appropriately. Show that you're a better class of fan, who deserves a better class of booth babe.
The N-Gage girls tell me that they were hired the day of the expo. I'm sure they weren't the only ones. If the booths are going to use the booth babe as their main draw, then at the very least, they need to plan things a bit earlier than that, so that they can at least sit the booth babe down to play the game before they start.
I do remember seeing a flurry of CL ads for booth babes right before PAX, so yeah, that's generally how they're found. On the fly online.
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