Fake Gamers: The Quest for Authenticity in Faked Pictures of Faked Gaming?

Coming off the conversations we have been having lately on the podcast about booth babes, I thought another pertinent topic is the “fake gamer of the week” segment found at Kotaku. In this weekly blog, writers find ads and stock photos and write pithy responses mocking all of the things wrong with the photos. Often the “player” (aka. Model) doesn’t have the game turned on, impossible moves are being depicted, or some ridiculous over the top pose is being struck.

What I find most interesting though, and to be honest not all that surprising, is that many of the “fake gamers” are women. And they’re mostly sexy women. Let me rephrase that, mostly they’re scantily clad, wearing gauze and high heels, looking like they’re about to make sweet love to an xbox remote. And when they’re not playing the sex symbol, most often women are being cast in the “supportive girlfriend” role.

The commentary on these are usually very funny and pretty biting (for example the, “don’t laugh; she just never learned how to sit on a couch” girl). What I think is happening here is a backlash against the industry that uses models instead of gamers to display products. So, in a way, the “fake gamer” series is fighting against the booth babes of the world by demanding authenticity in their advertisements—or at least in their stock photos. I personally get sick of having the work many people do to help get women to a respected status in the gaming community undermined by having the public face of women be models who doesn’t even game.

But, it might not be as simple as that. If this were a perfect world, then sure, we could demand that our models have some cred before they’re publicly associated with the gaming community. Then we would be able to promote a positive view of women through women who are part of the community. I’m sure many of you, like me after I first had this thought, feel a bit uneasy about this for some reason.

The problem is that regardless of how good looking a male model is, he would not be attacked in the same way these women are. He would not be asked to prove himself worthy of being part of our community. We would be more inclined to either brush it off as “of course they use models for gaming ads” or we would never even question it. This is indicative of how much of the gaming industry (and technology-dependant or stem-dependant fields in general) often work. Women have to prove their “cred” before they can even be begrudgingly admitted—and even then, they’re often only admitted if they can fit into some stereotypical role that doesn’t rock the boat too much.

Elaine Low, the author of the recent article “Confessions of a Sometimes Booth Babe” on Jezebel comments further, shocked at how much hate she gets from people within the gaming community: “No one rips on Sofia Vergara for starring in Pepsi commercials (what does she know about quality caffeinated soft drinks?!) or complains that the Old Spice Guy is unnecessarily naked (how dare he pander to women with his shirtlessness?!). That companies use sex to reel in eyeballs is a marketing tactic as old as time, ranging from the fashion industry to pharmaceuticals.” And I get it. She’s right in a lot of ways. But, she’s also wrong in some pretty significant ones.

So, taking score so far, we have the following:

Problem:

The primary depiction of female gamers undermines their credibility, decreased respect for female gamers, and often it further solidifies their position as objects of sexual lust to be gazed at.

Kotaku:

Resisting depictions of fake gamer images by creating a weekly blog parodying them. Most commentary is incredibly insightful about how exploitative and ridiculous the photos depicting women are.

The Meta-Problem:

Constantly critiquing some of the only representations we have of women, in this way, only reifies that we have different (unequal, but more importantly, unfair) barriers of entrance into the community for women than for men.

Solution?

As we saw in Low’s article, we may not be correct in assuming that because the model in the picture is holding a vita improperly that she must be an idiot. The author of the above article writes, “While the bulk of booth babes may be actors and models, some of them are also budding video game developers, graphic designers, and gamers who leap at the chance to attend this media- and trade-only event – and get paid, no less. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to get paid to attend awesome cons like E3 or Comic-Con? (Snoozefest medical conventions are another story.) Almost none of them are “beauty-obsessed, frustrated wannabe models who can’t get work.”

Where I differ from Low’s opinion that the antagonism toward the “booth babe” is unjustified is that I believe we have to take the context of the gaming world into account. I don’t know how the soft drink industry treats female employees, or if the Old Spice guy had to prove that he smelled bad before he could pedal deodorant, but I do believe that the booth babe argument isn’t really about the booth babes. It’s about an industry that systematically, historically and currently, abuses, harasses, attacks, assaults, excludes, devalues, disrespects, and exploits women. Whether it’s a cartoon woman, a booth babe, or a game designer trying to make it, she will likely be subject to one of these. And, so I’m sorry if you read all the way to the end, I don’t have a solution that solves everything. But there is a larger problem that neither the parody artists at Kotaku or the booth babe defenders are acknowledging. That is all.