Oh, grow up!
THE ORGANIZERS OF E3, the annual video-game trade show, are cracking down on one of the event’s most celebrated features: scantily clad “booth babes” used to lure attendees. Exhibitors have been told that they could be slapped with a $5,000 fine if their models dress or act in a sexually provocative way.
The move means that the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- “Where Business Gets Fun!” -- could have a more demure look when it comes to L.A. in May. Instead of being distracted by flesh-baring women, attendees can focus on the giant video monitors showing virtual men and women being chased, beaten, shot, blown up or hacked to death. Oh, and maybe some cars racing through famous places.
Let’s face it: with or without booth babes, E3 is an orgy of inappropriate stimuli. The event thus mirrors the $10.5-billion video-game industry itself, many of whose biggest sellers are graphically violent pulse-pounders. Granted, half the titles sold fall into more sedate categories, but teenagers don’t line up to buy them the minute they hit the store shelves.
Still, the abundance of female eye candy at the show made the industry seem juvenile. Last year, for example, one exhibitor offered attendees (who must be 18 or older) the chance to try out games on portable players leashed to the waists of two young women, with cords just long enough to hold the games up to the models’ chests. Get the picture? “We were like a human game pad,” one of the women said. “I wanted to scream by the end of the day, I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Exhibitors can still do this sort of thing with impunity under the new E3 policy. As in the past, the show’s rules bar “conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing-suit bottoms.” The only change is the addition of the aforementioned $5,000 fine, which suggests that maybe, just maybe, organizers will enforce the dress code.
The Entertainment Software Assn., which owns and operates the show, declined to comment on the change, leaving observers to guess the trade group’s motives. Some suggested that the association, whose activities also include lobbying and litigating against mandatory game ratings and restrictions on sales to minors, is trying to make the show seem less lascivious. After all, when the TV coverage focuses more on preternaturally endowed models than on the games they’re supposedly demonstrating, the message isn’t exactly “trust us not to corrupt your kids.”
The association, though, may be just as concerned about the booth babes’ other message: that video games are for males stuck in adolescence, physically or mentally. Businesses seek to maximize revenue, after all, and it’s hard to do that when you’re offending half your potential customers.
