PAX Booth Babe Survey
 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/870101/boothbabeban.png

So, for those of you not in the loop... Penny Arcade has placed a survey concerning PAX and how to alter the current Booth Babe status into something more "family friendly" (?). These are the results.

So, it seems that most of the people that took part on this surey are Ok with banning scadly clad cosplaying women from game booths at game events, and that from now own they must be True to the source or not partially nude and be educated about the product they are helping to sell.

That's... interesting?

So, overall, what you guys take from all of this?

People would rather lie on a survey to make themselves feel better than stick to their beliefs?

while booth babes seem nice, its ultimately just window dressing. The company that hires the nicest set of tits should not be the one to get the most attention. Plus with gaming becoming more mainstream having scantly clad women as attractions seems to alienate alot of the modern day gamer base

Ultimately I think having half naked women advertising your game says more bad about your company than good.

The booth babe thing does get a bit tasteless at times. I'm pretty much okay with the limitations being discussed, or I would be if I went to PAX. Not big on the "think of the children" angle though.

I dunno, it's kind of an odd thing and maybe regulating it is overdoing things, but it is their con, and it's not like they're saying you can't have them at all.

Actually, I think in this day and age, booth babes are rather insulting. The average age of a gamer is what, 35? People who always played games as kids grow up into adult gamers with kids. It's not like you can even say it's to draw in teenagers with holes in their pockets. Gamers are more intelligent than game companies give them credit for and trying to lure them in with sex appeal really insults that.

I mean, sex sells, yes, but you need to balance that with, you know, selling the actual games.

That said, I'm not against appropriate cosplay or anything or tastefully-dressed models. Just the kind of tanned, blonde, "Oops! I just spilled my water alllllll over my napkin of a white tee shirt, tee hee!"* bimbos that I'm sure prompted this. There's a difference between being lured in by a model and being lured in by a model put there to insult your intelligence because companies figure you'll be too busy ogling to notice the difference.



*hyperbole

I'm pretty certain if that was a requirement, booth babes would be gone forever.

and lets also remember a good chunk of current gamers are women anyways. heck last con I was at there were without a doubt more women there then men.

Man, you know why as well as I do.

A lot of gamers are still really fucking stupid.

It's cheaper and easier to advertise to more gullible gamers than anything else, and more likely to work.

Older and/or more educated gamers are way past being easy or cheap to advertise for, so they don't even bother.

this is true, this is why companies would rather focus on catering to the shallow minded teenage male then people that seek depth.

which is exactly why booth babes are counter productive. Without them they'll have to do things like, make a good game, then just appealing to the lowest common demoninator

Reading that article, I have to say something for Bayonetta: I haven't actually played it, but I've seen a pretty big chunk of it and I kind of was like "guys... damn it" at the start, but I started to realise that it's because she's offensively feminine the way over-the-top male heroes are hyper-masculine. It's interesting because action girls are always weak because of their feminine qualities and strong because of their masculine qualities, but Bayonetta is what Dante or Kratos would be if you held a girl-mirror up to them - no masculine qualities at all. I know of no other character that has actually gone that far with this concept, like right down to the awful one-liners. The difference is that people are terrified of femininity/don't have decades of movies indoctrinating them into this view of it, and the designers clearly tried to be as offensively feminine with her as humanly possible.

I'm sure this has come up elsewhere before, but I've never actually read any reviews or discussions except for a couple posts I made back when we just had her character model(which I still think looks terrible). Based on reactions I'm relatively sure Bayonetta is pretty much what quite a few girls see when they look at Kratos. Okay, maybe girls who haven't been playing action games for so long that they're already used to it, but still.

Bayonetta's actually a decent game. It plays well, I mean. The plot jumps off a cliff, and nobody knows how to SHUT THE GODDAMN HELL UP JESUS CHRIST, but the gameplay is solid, and it isn't just a DMC copy-paste. Also, I agree with you on the over-feminized the way male heroes are over-manly'd. Doesn't make it less horrible, but it's worth noting that the only reason we aren't as critical of its male equivalent is just because we're so used to it.

Bayonetta is actually rock-solid play-wise. The story suffers from the fact that you actually have to unlock more of it in subsequent playthroughs, but Bayonetta as a character is actually really good. She's a rare example of a video game woman with full confidence in herself, a sense of humor, likes and dislikes, and top-caliber ability.

Plus, it's Word of God that she'd wipe the floor with Dante, no contest. Dante just kills demons. Bayonetta makes them her playthings.

It has a few issues. Camera is a bit wonky at times, for example. Boss fights are lacking. Having to find most of the weapons is something that I didn't really dig.

The story suffers from the dialogue being some of the worst I've heard in years.

Not really. She's a bitchy porn star. The poorly characterized boss monsters were more sympathetic than her. I'm not joking.

I'll agree to this, but

I think we'll have to agree to disagree here. Yes, she plays it sexy and yes, she's a strong female character, but she's not a slut in my opinion because sluts don't play with people like she does and I wouldn't call her overall bitchy because that would imply she just tears into everyone she meets and complains a whole lot. She's simply got more class than that.

Also, the boss fights looked pretty good from my end and the finding weapons just encouraged exploration in my view.

That's not how gender stereotypes/masculinity/femininity work.
 

I do not think you understand what feminine means.

I'd say it would be more accurate to call her offensively female, because while she flaunts her sex, I agree that gender stereotypes do not work that way.

back when EGM still existed, they did an interview and the reason her power is her hair, is because "women really care about her hair" meaning its game play mechanics are intentionally based on gender stereotypes. I haven't played the game so i wont comment on it as a game, but progressive, it is not

She treated everyone she encountered like complete shit. This makes her a bitch. She did everything as sexually as possible. This makes her a porn star. Making her shadow in the shape of a butterfly does not take all that and make it classy.

So I'm guessing you didn't actually play the game? Several boss fights were dragged out, none of them felt particularly menacing or threatening, and none of them had any real personality.

Encouraging exploration is good. But even if you actively explore, it's still possible to miss the majority of the weapons in the game, unless you pull up a strategy guide to find them. I was actively trying to find them. Discounting the ones the game straight up gives you, I think I got one weapon... Honestly, the DMC3 method of getting your weapons from the bosses worked much better, and in turn made the boss fights feel more rewarding.

I honestly didn't see that. She played with a lot of people. She was never snide or crude. The only person I recall her being bitchy to was, uhh, oh, yeah, a giant-ass two-headed dragon that was going to otherwise leave her alone and look for who woke it up (likely Jeanne). And kill them for doing so. Also Cereza, because she hates squalling children. On the other hand, she was quite willing to defend her and save her from a hulking giant that got a pedo-crush on her.

But I guess that makes her terrible. ;)

You'd guess wrong. Yes, they were long. It took a lot of doing to kill some of them. But it also was fair. For a guy like me not used to some of this stuff, the bosses were doable instead of being a mile-high brick wall. And looking for personality in one-off bosses? Good luck with that.

I just raided everywhere and broke everything as a policy (RPGs have conditioned me to this), so I didn't miss anything. Besides, it's always all in the same level and you can go back for it. You don't actually need them all, anyway. Odette was nice enough, for example, but there were definitely other options, and you could do just fine with nothing but the Scarborough Fair.




Edit: Let's get this back on topic, though. If we want to talk Bayonetta, we can make a thread.

...I don't really know how to respond to this.

Devil May Cry 1 and 3, and maybe 4. The bosses for the most part had quite a bit of personality, even the ones that only show up once. For instance: Agni and Rudra from DMC 3.

Just as a final OT, then I'm done.

Not like that, they don't. It's "what I'm offering" versus "what I know you want, but you're getting when Hell freezes over."

Honestly, I'm just going to reiterate my statement, then. :P

In all seriousness, they get about the same screen time as in Bayonetta and the only ones I'd actually say were in the least interesting that I saw were Agni and Rudra, and also the vampiress that turned into the scythe-guitar if only because she tried to seduce Dante instead of muttering about eating him or something. Bayonetta's all had the decency to skip the horrid dialog in many cases, yes, but in those cases, they skipped the horrid dialog. That alone is worth points. And the ones that didn't were just about as interesting to me as anything not Agni and Rudra or she-guitar.

My view is that it makes no sense to try to make me care about an enemy I'm going to be killing in two seconds, anyway. Agni and Rudra standing out how they did was first off somewhat annoying because of how dragged out it was and second left me disappointed that the seed of a good idea was there and ultimately got potted in cement mix and watered during the battle.

Jade is still one of my favourite heroines.
 

If it perhaps shifted it's focus to people dressed as characters in costume I think that would be pretty cool. Saying that some costumes can be seen as more...appealing that others.

But hey, they must keep doing it for a reason and people continue to queue up for photos.

Either that, or let there be the man equivalent; Stand Studs or something. Equality for all!

I'll field this one

On that note, I think they should introduce Booth Dudes. Like some body builder at the Gears of War booth who's all shaved and oiled with a cod piece and like Marcus' bandanna. And he'll have a replica chainsaw sword but he'll just kind of prop it up against the wall after a few hours and after the second day you can tell he really doesn't want to be there and he's starting to think about just how much his time is really worth because he could be screwing some chick or at the gym or pretty much doing goddamn anything and it would be better than this shit. I mean look at all the sweaty, pasty nerds drooling over him and that one fat one that keeps coming back for the last two days at least and must have heard the spokesman's pitch a hundred times but be still just keeps coming back and staring like some kind of horror monster. And you can see while you're watching him that he just wants to pants that nerd so bad he could get kicked out and not have to listen to anything else about this stupid computer game thing.

So would throwing the annoying fuckers in a lake, but I digress.

Why do you hate me Prem. I already got pissed about this last night!

Am I missing something?

The part where CliffyB says "only women and gay men" vote for such and such, he gets called out on being a casual homophobe, and responds "I like gay guys. The keep straight people cool." AKA CliffyB is a fucking douchebag.

Was planning on trying Gears. Not anymore.

I'm still not positive what that's even supposed to mean.

He's saying that how uncool/whatever gay guys are makes straight guys look cool by comparison. More or less.

I thought it was about gays being on the cusp of fashion trends and telling the straight people how to be cool but that was a pretty tame joke so I wasn't sure.

omg teh gays tak3 away our b00th b4bes?

I here I was thinking this was going to be an awesome forum survey about booth babes.

DISAPPOINT.

"HAY guyz want a pixchure wif us? yaaayay! giggle!"
 

What the fuck? Please go turn in your man card.


"Booth babes" are retarded, and I don't direct that at the young women themselves. The whole concept is pretty disgusting, but hey it works and it moves product/gets attention. So I guess I'll deal with it.

I still like my booth dudes idea because two wrongs make a right.

Ohhhh, served.

*Insert joke about three lefts*

Now adays gamers have girlfriends, the target audience has shifted and personally speaking if a game invests in anything other than gameplay or necessary components of the game it's flat out denying their audience a game that will live past 5 years on the classicometer.