Here is a copy of an e-mail that I sent to GameTrailers.com earlier today:
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Dear GameTrailers staff,
I've been a regular user of your website since 2007, and I can tell you it's one of my favorite gaming websites on the web. I always resort to your reviews when I'm thinking about buying a game, and I tend to have a lot of fun with your countdown videos, retrospectives and ScrewAttack content.
However, today as I browsed the E3 coverage videos, I had the displeasure of finding a clip named "E3 09: Booth Babe Safari", described as "We get intimate with the fauna at E3 2009".
While I do have some problems with the whole "booth babe" tradition, I understand it's part of gaming convention's appeal. But I have to point that the video's title and description are rather sexist. As it's already been pointed in the video's comment section, it's really demeaning to refer to women as "fauna", specially in a "safari" context, that unfortunately implies that women are animals to be hunted and leered at.
I'm sure the GameTrailer's staff didn't mean to be sexist, and all
of this is just a bad choice of words, but imagine how a female gamer
feels when, vising your website to watch the latest E3 trailers or
interviews, she finds herself compared to a non-human animal. Imagine
how she feels when the site staff implies that she is nothing but a
wild beast to be leered at by male gamers. I can tell it can be a very
upsetting experience, and I wonder if this gamer would be confortable
visiting your website again.
This declared, I'd like to politely ask to the video title to be
changed to something that doesn't offend and demean half of humankind.
While I understand this was not the staff's intention, the gamer
subculture is already a very sexist one. Female gamers already have a
hard time, and are often disrespected and treated as less-than-human by
their male peers. It's hurtful to see a great videogame website like
GameTrailers to make this same mistake.
Thanks for your attention
Respectfully,
(My name)
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Since I am myself a videogame designer and gamer, I'm used to put up
with all kinds of sexist bullshit. I tend to ignore all the "booth
babe" videos, but this title really made me angry. I left a few
messages in the video comment section, but, of course, I'm being flamed
like every word I posted was a personal offense to every visitor of the
site.
Any ideas of anything I can do, besides e-mailing the website staff?
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Uh...
Women ARE animals.
What, do you think they're robots? Plants? What else WOULD they be?
Oh, for the love of...you know EXACTLY what she meant by that, you idiot. I managed to realize that her problem was with the implication that women were not human beings - and I came to that conclusion by READING WHAT SHE WROTE.
As an avid gamer, I am often embarrassed by how dumb the culture tends to be. It's nice to know that someone is holding them accountable for their occasional juvenile stupidity.
i'm glad i'm not the only one who feels disgusted by the gamer culture.
I agree GameTrailers made some real poor word choices here, and indeed they could have just NOT made a video featuring the "booth babes" of E3. But I think GameTrailers allows user-generated content, so it would have been only a small matter of time before someone uploaded a video of said "booth babes" to GameTrailers (or YouTube or Vimeo, etc.)
You were very smart though NOT to ask them to take down the video... such a request, even if they did not comply, would have resulted in some lovely anti-feminist backlash from a certain portion of the gaming community.
As a gamer myself, I find the use of "booth babes" to promote products to be stupid and sexist. I'd recommend gamers contact the game companies themselves, and scold them for such actions... again. Alas we've brought this up before, with little to no official response.
Oh good god! I made the mistake of reading through the comments... Argh! They're choc-a-block full of sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia. This hasn't been my experience with gamers in real life (my partner and many of His and my friends are gamers) so I'm hoping this is just a vocal minority. The anonimity of the Internet seems to bring out the worst in some people.
You did the right thing sending that email. It's the small sexisms like this, the ones that go unnoticed, that lead to the more obvious forms. The GT people probably didn't even realise that their use of words was unwise and sexist.
I read an article recently in which a woman was discussing the lack of female game designers. She said that the prevalence of game companies that use "booth babes" makes some women uncomfortable at the thought of working for them. She went on to say that some companies were decreasing their use of "booth babes" or halting their use of them altogether.
I guess no one at E3 got the memo?
I wish I could find the article, it was from the LA Times and had a lot of interesting information. For instance, another source said that many game companies take prospective employees out to strip clubs to get to know the candidates better. Ew.
Let us know how gametrailers responds. I visit that site all the time.
Oh man. I haven't kept up with E3 news in recent years, but I was sort of assuming that since they downsized the convention (it's not open to the public anymore, is it?), booth babes would become a thing of the past. Shoulda known better.
It baffles me that as gaming become more and more of a mainstream hobby, rather than a niche obsession for us gamer nerds, it stays so male-oriented.
I thought booth babes would be gone as well. Both me and my husband were rather surprised when they mentioned them on G4 after one of the press conferences. Apparently, from what I can gather, E3 started doing poorly after their downsizing a few years ago. This year was an attempt to try to get back to their glory days, including booth babes.
Nintendo has at least given me hope for a broadening of the industry. The new metroid game looks wonderful. Gotta love a game that features a female protagonist that isn't just eye candy.
"Nintendo has at least given me hope for a broadening of the industry. The new metroid game looks wonderful. Gotta love a game that features a female protagonist that isn't just eye candy."
I agree, except for the fact that Samus appears to be wearing a bikini in her first "reveal." Then there's the overly sexualized way her legions of admirers tend to draw her in fan art depictions. Link to google image search for "samus":
http://images.google.com/images?q=samus&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
In theory, though, she is a much better role model for female gamers than most.
Well, you gotta give some credit to Nintendo. Samus doesn't wear a top and shorts under her armor anymore. Now she wears the Zero Suit, that, while very tight and form fitting, shows almost no skin.
About the fanart, while disgusting, it's not a reason to like Samus any less. Insecure males will draw strong females as sex objects in order to feel safe. It has happened to Jade Raymond, it has happened to a female teacher at my college and it will surely happen to strong female videogame characters. It just shows how threatened these males feel by the mere idea of a strong, independent female. What works, in my experience, is to shove this insecurity back to the face of the "artists". Call them on it. Tell them they did this because they are afraid. They will, of course, deny it. But it gets them thinking.
About the e-mail I sent to GameTrailers, no answer 'till now. And no changes in the aforementioned video either. I will wait a bit more and them assume they are ignoring me.
"Then there's the overly sexualized way her legions of admirers tend to draw her in fan art depictions"
Fanart doesn't count, because people draw sexual fanart of pretty much every character (male and female, plus various nonhuman creatures) that exists...
Rule 34.
Exactly.
You know they hire "booth babes" for everything from video games to engineering and bridal conventions, to sell liquor (obvious) to mac n cheese and yogurt. For liquor and engineering they generally hire women - for yogurt and mac n cheese and energy drinks and cell phones and everything else like that they hire young, attractive women AND men.
I completely agree that the "fauna" comment was inappropriate and I would VERY offended if anyone ever took my photo or video at work and put that sort of terminology to it.
I'm often torn about my job. It's a complicated issue, but I really don't think using beautiful young people to sell shit is evil. It shows that humanity has a long way to go. But I enjoy my job. I'm paid well. I like talking to people.
I hope that ya'll can hate on the terminology used, and not the women working these conventions.
I received an answer from GameTrailers today. They apologized, changed the video title and thanked me for bringing the matter to their attention.
Made my day a little bit happier.
This comment has been deleted because it violates our comment policy.
they definitely need to change the name of this game. Especially if kids are going to be playing this. I am glad that they went a head and changed this game title.
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