you seem to forget THEY CHOSE TO DRESS/ACT/RESPOND/LIVE that way.

So quit acting like a rampaging evangelical trying to save these womens form the horrors of the male gaming society when in reality it is a very lucrative lifestyle they actively chose to lead.

And don't blame the media fro covering it, because if they weren't covering you'd have someone bitching that all the sexy video game loving women out there aren't represented by media fairly...

Your damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And to the guy who is embarrased to even admit he plays games because they are "so sophmoric" etc etc. Your just straight up gay.

exo

Are you joking? Do you actually read Kotaku?

Brinstar

Anarchy for the U....SA!!!

...liberal garbage.

kgetz3

taomaster99

.....Hippie.

kgetz3

The hyper-sexualised women portrayed in gaming magazines are almost always "gamers", and the men reading about them are encouraged to laugh at their *ineptness* in gaming: it's not an attempt to show that conventionally attractive women play games, and play games well, just another iteration of the vacuous bimbo stereotype.

Interstellar

oh really? Is this why they posted 40 pictures of female voice actors and invited commentary on their looks? This happened today, btw.

Just_as_planned

"Shoot yourself!" as Bill Hicks said to them. Every industry has that A&M office somewhere. They will use any tactics to sell, sell, sell ! Including targeting teenage boys who can be persuaded to part with their money. Actually I think that's a bit unfair of me to teenage boys.

Maybe women are just a bit quieter ? How many of those "teenage boys" on forums are actually girls ? Maybe they just don't say anything about those embarrassing stereotypes that get used in adverts, or write ups.

I've just played Crysis. Very male. Look at the nano suit ... the epitomy of a young man's desire to be the strong warrior male. Nothing wrong with that. It becomes a problem when it excludes original game ideas and innovation.

BC_Man

BC_Man

--As the (female) editor who commissioned this piece -- it's just a humor piece with porn stars. Find it funny? Good. Don't? C'est la vie.

--As for the video game biz treating women like meat -- the entire entertainment industry treats women like top sirloin. Hot women are always paraded around in front of cameras for film, TV, music (when's the last time you saw a homely female musician? Now artists have to be TV-ready, aka attractive, to be successful).

--GameDaily runs scads of news stories and more highbrow pieces about the video game industry, so it's ironic that only our story with porn stars makes the front page of Gawker.

livegoats

bowleserised is off to the Obamafest

meteorcow

thespider

[www.gamegirladvance.com]

Bottom line, girls are here to stay and yes, we like to play too, thanks.

Mazy K

weedie

Nick, where's the analysis?

You could really do something with this kind of idea. Apply the same value-added stuff you applied in your other recent work, generate the stats, and SHOW ME what the demographics are. Don't TELL ME and sit there smugly on your soapbox - that's not reporting, it's livejournaling. Or columning, which is the same thing except you make a little money and get canceled every few months

Unless you're a horsefaced slut bent on slowly shitting all that remains of Feminine self-respect. I digress.

It's one thing to say that "game media should stop with the Animal House act" in a thousand words. But you have connections now, and a platform. Run Kotaku's pageviews, talk to their editors, analyze their competitors on the internet and other platforms, and prove it! I think your investigation would show you a few things that run contrary to your thesis:

1.) Gaming media latched onto a profitable business model by sexualizing itself

2.) That sexualization of the industry has helped it become more profitable

3.) The feedback loop creating the adolescent, sexual approach to game journalism has become more and more lucrative for its purveyors

4.) There is a perceived risk to creating sexless gaming media, and little perceived profitability

ADismalScience

I notice Kotaku jumps on the porn wagon too... [kotaku.com]

But I guess that's ok to you, because they're Gawker owned???

Time to do one or the other, Nick.

Time to stop being a sanctimonious git and put your balls in the vice; threaten to quit Gawker if Kotaku keep being childish.

Otherwise your words are meaningless.

FunkyJ

EmeraldDragon

It doesn't matter how many systems or games you own and play. My male friends who play about a third of what I do are considered gamers while I'm sexually harassed at EB games by a cashier.

DarlingMagpie

dcartist

StupidFace

None of this really affects journalism. Women outnumber men in online gaming but what are they playing? I'd be willing to wager if you don't factor in casual gaming that disparity would look different. What does the casual Bejewelled player care about games.

That being said it doesn't change the fact that gaming is a boys club. Maybe that does need to change, but gaming is also a little boys club as the countless Manhunt and Mass Effect articles out on the live wire will tell you. If you can get the age perception problem fixed we can work on the gender issues.

Wolfkin

The HZA

Gigith

They don't hire women to write about this stuff, and face it, even non-gaming editors play this kind of card and don't take women in the gaming world seriously. (Didn't Valleywag republish a piece about Morgan Webb having a bald spot at one point?)

It's kind of like how all the sci-fi books in the 80's and 90's had those drawings of hyper-breasted muscle gals all over the covers. Only different.

themediatrix

There's this stigma that female gamers exist, but they're all ugly, nerdy, socially inept, whatever. So sometimes journalists will portray these hyper-sexualized females playing games as a way to say "See? You can be a gamer and still be sexy and feminine."

Now before the flaming starts, keep in mind that 1)I'm not talking about the depiction of porn-star-looking CHARACTERS but about porn-star-looking gamers;

and 2) I know all of us on here are frustrated by society encouraging women to embody ideal feminine bullshit. But the fact remains there are A LOT of women out there who still believe in that. So this kind of marketing would be successful for that group of people.

and 3) No, porn-star-looking women are not directed at just men. Look at the cover of Cosmo, or a Victoria's Secret ad.

TheAntiFemme

HeatherNumber1

shellibears

Deedo

w.

willchristiansen

Plsk1n

Samos42

Faithless327

Also, I want to mention that I am replaying Princess Maker 2 for anyone who knows what that is. There are about 40 different endings--you can raise your daughter to be a princess, a nun, a high class hooker, ect. I brought up a writer, an army general, a princess, and now I'm going to raise a prostitute! Yay!

StupidFace

But no. You get the same boring old "boys will be boys" excuse and "are you saying I can't find hot girls hot!?!" whining. Honestly, I could play bingo with the tired and repeated justifications for male chauvinism...

"You want ugly chicks in video games?"
"Sex sells"
"Girls like to be objectified"
"Stereotyping men is the same thing!"
"Women aren't really gamers, anyway."

BINGO!

BStu

I enjoy the face I can 100% like a game/magazine without the need of a scantily clad woman gracing the pages of the magazine/pixels and polygons of a game.

Sadly, these stories will continue as long as the average gamer is male teenagers.

Atsumi

My360broked

teledingo

aesquire

Luziphir

"She's hot."
"She's a slut."
"She can't really know about gaming."
"Haha, that comic was funny."

*AHEM* as I was saying... Jade Empire had women that... you know what? Never mind, it's the community that eats this stuff up. -_-;

fuchikoma

Macloserboy

cybereality

BaconCat

And the "women overpopulate men online" article is bullshit, show me the cold hard statistics for today's popular online stuff, let's say, WoW, CS, XBL, and the Playstation Network, and we'll see just how unbalanced the ratios are in women's favor, odds are I'm not guessing by much.

I suppose it's possible if you count casual gaming, but that's hardly gaming at all honestly, and websites like Kotaku don't exactly cover those kinds of games because they aren't a part of the core gaming market, which is still pretty heavily weighted towards the male population. It's a shame that's the case, but until that changes to the point that females aren't heavily outnumbered, they'll continue to remain a spectacle.

Coldbrand

twobighands

latinogamer

King Of America

ProdigalMoon

Chip

exo

I personally believe there was a trend in the begnning with video game journalsim to booth babes, sex..etc. But recently the trend has really did not appeal well to the demographic audience.. thats why IGN changed IGN babes to .. IGN Stars.

The gaming journalsim is a young and adaptive media and is more open to change, if you would like to see acceptance of women as video gamers you should encourage the female gamers to join and share thier viewes with the general gamers demography.

Plsk1n

dotdigsgames

The gaming industry-- and media, for fairness' sake-- need to stop focusing on and behaving like adolescents who've just reached puberty if either ever want to be taken seriously.

I'd like to add that we, the rest of society, are also kind of trying to reach a state of civil equality, here. Consistently portraying women as vapid sex objects doesn't really help us.

Cyber

You know if some porno dude was talking about what games he liked, they wouldnt even post an article about it, let alone post pictures of him with his junk hanging out. But with women, it's perfectly ok/acceptable. They're just as bad as every other gaming site.

zaaa

darkthanatos

As for the gaming industry treating women like meat -- the reality is that the entire entertainment industry treats women like 'meat.' Why? Because people like looking at attractive women. It's as simple as that.

Also, when was the last time Gawker posted a thought-provoking piece on the gaming industry? GameDaily posts scads of news pieces and thoughtful editorials, but only porn stars seem compelling enough to make the cut...

livegoats

But it isn't merely the journalists at fault here either. The entire industry is completely obsessed with this kind of objectification. And I think it really comes down to a lack of real artists working in the field, a lack of talented and dedicated writers, and the over hollywoodization of the gaming industry. But this is far too much ground to cover in a single comment. I wish there were more stories about this kind of thing, however, because this is something that needs to be talked about.

Wuth

And might I add another point of contention: there is an equal though not often talked about parallel going on with race and video games. The terrible stereotypes and ignorant commentary happening in modern games regarding race is very much attributed to the homogeneity of the industry. The gaming community needs to find a way to teach itself to be more sensitive to these issues. EVERYBODY plays games, but those makin games and those writing about games seem to be content with the nerdy, middle class white male stereotype. It's not a matter of being PC but about broadening one's perspective and just straight up not disrepsectful and stupid/

$.02

myDingling

At least here we make sure to treat men like pieces of meat for a change.

Tpocket

The real issue is "gamers" aren't seen as people at all but as a market, which you've so aptly proven with your oh-so-witty comment.

Marketeers have homogenised the varied and diverse group of people who play games into one single group, and the journalists have taken that and are pandering to it, because it can easily be defined by dollar values.

It is no different to the way any other group is targeted. Look at the way young girls are targeted by toy marketeers.

So here's my suggestion to you: How about YOU stop defining "gamers" as a some kind of homogeneous group using pathetic stereotypes, before claiming other people should do so?

FunkyJ

twobighands

And TWO BIGHANDS, yes, the accompanying pic to this article is a propos, and I didn't suggest otherwise. There are plenty of pics round here though which arent, like good ol JA in a bathtub.

teledingo

Rohstafari

Lysergic Asset

Mr. Mastodon Farm

Hate to say it but just because you play Peggle and MapleStory or whatever doesn't mean you are a 'real' gamer in the eyes of the hardcore crowd. It's not until you start playing games that not everyone's heard about when they start to accept you.

And gaming journalism will stop doing this when the gaming industry and humanity as a whole stops doing this. Horny teenage boys are a reliable demographic.

And by now, a lot of it is a tongue-in-cheek look at what we know is a stereotype, particularly at Kotaku (see 'Hot Tears of Shame' updates). Just look when they start talking about jiggle physics in Soul Caliber or whatever.

But in short, sex sells. If you don't like it, go play Metroid.

Sabre_Justice: Okay, no more long name.

sethmad

EvoAnubis

The answer is ... get more women working on game sites as editorialists and reporters -- they'll start covering the stories they are interested in and will begin to pull in the female demographic.

Change always starts at home ... so, before we get too politically correct, why don't we try that first. However, I don't see any point in getting upset about a free press writing about their interests.

jayntampa

Nick Douglas

Robotube

Plus I am married sex is not an option really... I am just waiting for the sweet release of death...

giddieon

opt2not

Cenobite

The series such as Call of Duty targets an older audience with more mature themes and stories. They may have males targeted in their demographic but its the same males who watch the History channel on a regular basis. Bioshock doesn't try to sell sex but they appeal to a more literate audience with references to Aynn Rand's literature. Peggle and Bejeweled are both highly casual titles with a high female demographic base and once again no sex.

The titles you'll see pandering to a more base demographic are also the titles that are going to contain sex symbols. These games are going to use sex to sell its image just as television has shows that use the same tactic. Marketing is Marketing and just because one person may be tired of seeing this content doesn't mean there isn't any money in it.

Just a few points from someone who works in marketing and the online adult industry.

DasKonstruct

Nick Douglas

I don't like it either, but I can't blame gaming journalism for pandering to the audience of gaming journalism, not games in general.

celery

Cenobite

Sex appeal is fine, but it needs to be done in a way that isn't so... well, asinine. You can have sexy characters that aren't modeled after RealDolls.

onidavin

rennyf77

TheHonJudgeSmails

theespacepope

Anyways, next you might as well go on about how women should be equals in sports as well, since they are Olympic athletes and all. Forget the fact that your average football game is jam packed with cheerleaders, bikini beer commercials, and sexual innuendos.

Your friggin blind.

exo

EvoAnubis

Go Like Hell Machine

twobighands

IndianSlipper

pooradley

Nick Douglas

Sarcastro

Project Thanatos

On another note, how many hits have you gotten around here with articles adorned with close-up shots of cleavage for no reason whatsoever?

teledingo

fiveinchtaint

Nick Douglas

twobighands

Nick Douglas

picardia

Cheap Shot

TheHonJudgeSmails

TheHonJudgeSmails

PrincessKashmir

KarenUhOh

Cheap Shot