Hot cars, exotic travel and Need for Speed, the world’s top racing video game – are you up for the ultimate job? Beginning today, EA and Need for Speed is conducting the 2011 ‘Need for Speed European Spokesmodel Search’. This continent wide search is set to discover two women with boundless energy, an outgoing personality and an edgy style fused with a passion for cars and gaming.
EA UKPR Press Release, 4th July 2011

I facetiously tweeted out the following:

My tweets - @Weefz

Other people on Twitter also mocked their use of the word “spokesmodel“. Some debated the validity of a female-only competition while others simply entered the competition. I personally didn’t think much of it; Games Company Wants Attractive PR Staff is hardly groundbreaking news and the fact they were looking for gamers was a big plus in my book.

I glanced through the terms and conditions and noticed a few things.

“To enter upload a photograph of yourself to ukspokesmodel.needforspeed.com along with 200 words explaining why you should be chosen to represent Need for Speed.”

Okay, promoting yourself in 200 words is par for the course. Photo requirement for a job? That gels with my model comment – distasteful but whatever.

Each entrant will also need to answer two (2) questions relating to cars and gaming.

Good stuff, you want people to prove they are interested in the product. But hang on, those questions are on the public entry page and the answers aren’t difficult to find. I couldn’t care less about motorsports, I can still tell you that Lamborghini are based in Italy and it’s easy to get Autolog from a quick Google.

You must be at least 5 ft 2inches tall and a maximum of 18 stone in weight to meet the safety requirements for the live track day.

Weight requirements. Omg they’re only taking HAWT models, WTFBBQ? But actually… taking the extremes there would give you a short fat woman with a BMI of 43 – clinically obese. Even if you took a particularly tall women at 6′ 6″, she’d still be on the upper end of overweight. These really are safety requirements.

The top twenty (20) will be chosen on a number of factors; the number of cumulative shares of profiles e.g. the most number of Tweets on Twitter, Facebook and social network recommendations, your written submission and your answers to the two (2) questions. The written submission wil be judged by a panel of EA judges on originality, creativity and legibility.

Cumulative shares of profiles? Oh god, a popularity contest. *sigh* Okay, I get that there needs to be some reason to get the community engaged and spreading the word about your competition. I was more annoyed about this earlier today when the website seemed to be broken. It was asking us to vote for the women only on the basis of their large portrait and not their given reason for why they should be picked. Obivously, that sort of competition would have been fucking atrocious. Happily, this is not the case and we now get to read why each competitor thinks they’re the best person for the job.

NFS: The Run Spokesmodel Competition Entrant, Kitty

On top of the popularity component, the top twenty entrants will be tested on their NFS gaming skills and their real-life driving ability. Athough the two knowledge questions in the form feel like a token effort, EA are making sure that these “spokemodels” are more than hired booth babes – hopefully even true car lovers who enjoy racing games. Use of the word “spokesmodel” does make it clear that physical appearance will be a factor. However, it’s not the be all and end all of the decision-making process and that’s really all we can ask from a marketing effort. If you want a professional marketer’s take on this, check out Joe Dale’s feature on Death by Robots.

Bravo, EA, for actually treating your female fans like people. It’s a refreshing change for the industry. Between this and the recent announcement that Mass Effect 3 will showcase female Shepard in a trailer, I hope it signals a new direction for your marketing. Frankly, last year’s focus on White Male Hero was getting dull.

If you’re female, over 18, based in the UK or Ireland and like cars and racing games then enter the Spokesmodel competition on the Need for Speed site, where the closing date for entries is Monday 25th July 2011 at 23:59 GMT. The competition also runs in France, Germany, Norway and Russia.

Sorry Nick, I just couldn't resist his manly charms

When it comes to Capture the Babe, this is essentially a capture-the-flag mode. Instead of grabbing a static flag, you grab a barely-clad woman, sling her over your shoulder and carry her off your hotspot (hurr hurr hurr). Sometimes the babe will “freak out” and you have to press a button slap her on the bottom to stop her waving her hand in front of your babe-napping face and blocking your view.

The sad fact is that plenty of male games journalists were up in arms over the idea of slapping a virtual woman’s butt. Few of them found it problematic that said virtual woman was treated with the same amount of respect as a piece of cloth tied to a pole.

Rob Fahey posted an article back in March that can be boiled down to this: sexism is real and slapping is like domestic abuse so Capture The Babe is bad, mmm-kay? [Slapped Down, Eurogamer.net] Ben Kuchera “began to take it a little more seriously” but limited his comments to “offensive misogyny”. [Duke Nukem Forever includes butt-slapping "Capture the Babe" Mode, Ars Technica] Jeremy A. Kaplan & Patrick Manning managed to condemn the “awfully sexist world of Duke Nukem” in an article illustrated solely with strip club screenshots. [Video Game's 'Capture the Babe' Mode Has Players Slapping Women, Fox News]

*sigh*

The Mode Itself

Here’s how it really plays out. You’re in 4 vs 4 teams. Each end of the map has a brightly lit circle that serves as your target. In the circle there stands a female character model. She has hardly any clothes, she has no name and she barely speaks or moves. Poor girl doesn’t even have a chair to sit on while all these burly Dukes run around spraying bullets past her. You charge in to your opposing team’s base, grab their babe and run like hell back to your own. Try not to get shot.

If you do get shot, you’ll vanish and respawn somewhere near your base. The babe will be dropped and remain in position until one of her team comes to “save” her. In order to return a dropped babe to your base all you need to do is run over her like you’re picking up some ammo. Poof! The babe is returned and the team is saved – huzzah for you!

Seriously, you’ve just shot and killed the enemy. Your team’s woman is curled up and whimpering in the middle of the battlefield, bullets whizzing past her head and explosions all around. Nah, there’s no need for you to charm or reassure her. There’s no need to comfort that beautiful babe that you respect so much and help navigate her around the many dangers between her location and the safehouse. You’re a Big Damn Hero. Your mere proximity is enough to transport her to safety. And that’s not even addressing the part where the opposing team’s woman will struggle while you try to kidnap her but will moan with pleasure and stop if you slap her on the butt.

The Real Problem

I’ve said on Twitter multiple times that, in my experience, ass-slapping tends to be a fairly innocuous, even affectionate, action. Spanking obviously has its place in sex-play as well, or it wouldn’t even be in the game. Thing is, you don’t ever see a slap (or an ass) while it’s happening.

In this first-person viewpoint you see the woman’s hand in front of your face. You push a button, Duke’s hand moves, there’s a smacking sound, a pleasurable female sex noise and the woman’s hand moves away. It makes no sense whatsoever. If we hadn’t been told by a magazine that she was being slapped, nobody would have talked about this.

For all Gearbox’s attempts at defence – Duke LOVES women. Duke has a HEALTHY RESPECT for women. Duke’s ENTIRE MOTIVATION is to save the women of Earth from the evil aliens – their actual attitude towards women is pretty incomprehensible. Does the opposing babe like being carried by Duke or not? Is she struggling to get free but his sexy, manly slap is enough to change her mind? Oh, that’s right. It doesn’t matter. She’s a flag.

All the commotion around ass-slapping from March simply did the entire sexism issue a disservice. There are many, many sexist problems with the way Duke Nukem Forever has been handled. The most notable example was probably treating journalists to a party in a strip club

[Hint: When your PR teams do a double-take at the suggestion of a female journalist covering your event, you're on the wrong side of equality.]

Closely following that was sneaking booth babes into PAX East under the guise of “cosplay”.
[Hint: When you pay women for dressing up in revealing outfits to pose with fans and are exploiting a loophole in the convention's rules, you're on the wrong side of equality.]

And of course, ascribing pure and well-meaning motivations to your male lead while literally objectifying women.
[Hint: When your design strategy involves taking a common in-game object and replacing it with an almost-nude female character model... equality? Hey, you're getting it. Wrong side.]

Yes, I fully admit that there are men in the world who think that it’s okay to slap an unknown woman’s ass at a party. (It’s not).

Yes, I truly believe that the media has the power to influence our behaviour and normalise things that are, frankly, ridiculous. (Bukkake and facials, wtf?)

But Duke Nukem promoting domestic violence? Not even close.

Should Anyone Care?

Duke Nukem Forever is a game that lets you shrink your enemies down to the size of a cat and stomp on them. Every multiplayer mode has 8 Duke clones in fezzes and pumpkin hats hamming it around the map like Time Lords on testosterone shots. The single-player campaign starts out with Duke playing his own videogame while two extremely hot women perform implied oral sex upon him and, rather than enjoying it, he is bored. This is not an aspirational fantasy – it’s a deliberately OTT piss-take of the stereotypical male fantasy. From Duke? I would expect nothing less.

The fact is, nobody is looking to Duke Nukem for behavioural cues, explicit or subliminal. 14 years in development makes Duke infamous in the gaming world but he’s just not a large enough part of popular culture to matter. I don’t think Duke Nukem Forever as a game is relevant enough to the world to reinforce existing behaviours and attitudes, let alone change behaviours.

The conversations happening around him, however, are a different story. If Gearbox really believed that women were important to Duke and to the games industry as a whole, this could have been the perfect opportunity to own those conversations through great character design and show female gamers that you can still be a manly sex-lovin’ man while treating women as people.

They took the easy road.

As many of you will know, the portrayal of women in games and gamer culture is a specific interest of mine. Those of you who aren’t aware, have a quick look at some of these posts.

• On Games and Rape Culture
• It’s Not For You – Gender-Based Marketing
• Further discussion on why I think gender-based marketing is problematic in the comments section on Citizen Game (start from the bottom and read up)
• X-Blades: Now Featuring Almost-Porn
• “Video Games and the Female Audience”, a video written by Leigh Alexander which I haven’t watched since I first blogged it 21 months ago but it is still perfect.

This is not an exhaustive or representative list by any means – just a few of the lovely gaming ladies that I’ve come across over the past few years. Some I know personally, some I don’t. Some of these websites are exclusively about games, some are personal blogs covering a wide range of interests.

Are you interested in gamer culture that extends beyond the denizens of most gaming sites? Take some time during your Christmas reading to check out just some of these women.

In no particular order:
Jenn, staff writer at xboxer360.com
Border House, “a blog that aims to break down cultural and stereotypical walls.”
Bonnie A. Nardi, society and technology researcher at the University of California. Her chapter on gender in World of Warcraft is worth a read for any MMO gamer
Regina Buenaobra, Community Manager for ArenaNet
Deirdra Kiai, indie video game developer
Geek Feminism Blog, another group blog “to support, encourage, and discuss issues facing women in geek communities”
Tara, Brittney and Kristina at Zaxy.com
Lesbian Gamers, yet another group blog. You can probably figure out their hook.
Michelle Baldwin, web developer and owner of Pioneer Project
Ashelia, founder of Hellmode
Lauren Wainwright of Daily Girl Attack Panic Super HD Remix
Josie Campbell, Clare Swindlehurst, Rebecca Mayes, Lottie Rose, Amber Gilmore, Catherine Spencer and
Anechka G at Game People

Cheryl Rowell, staff writer at Xbox Live Addicts
bs angel, Community Manager for Halo Waypoint
Alice Taylor, former Commissioning Editor, Education at Channel 4
Leigh Alexander, games journalist and news director at Gamasutra
Annette P. of Yuki-Pedia
Ysharros at Stylish Corpse
Kirsty Payne, Director of the London Games Festival and PR at Blast Entertainment
Susan Arendt, Senior Editor at The Escapist
Rain Rainycat, Senior Producer at BBC Learning
Tracey Kennedy, PhD Candidate in Sociology and research consultant in virtual and physical worlds

On Twitter:
Alice O’Connor
Vixx
Brenna Hillier
Catherine Woolley
Diane Hutchinson
Ellie Gibson
Danielle Cantrell
Natalie Sabin
Katie Rossiter
Terrie Chilvers
Jane Douglas
And thousands more, no doubt.

Reader picks:
Abbie Heppe from G4tv’s Feedback show, suggested by @GoodReactions
Kim Richards, former Official PlayStation and FirstPlay staffer now a freelancer and editor of JRPGTribe and Rachel Weber, news editor of Official Playstation. Both suggested by Rich.

Also read:
Go Make Me a Sandwich. Presumably a female gamer but I’m not jumping to any conclusions.
Know any other female gaming voices that should be shared? Post them below and I’ll add them to the list.

First up this morning was Activision. Lauren Wainwright of Daily Girl Attack Panic Super HD Remix queued outside GAME in Oxford Street for the midnight launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Here’s Lauren’s take:

“It wasn’t until I got home that I just got pissed off. The main reason people go to midnight launches is the extra goodies they pick up along the way. I did well, grabbing t-shirts, bags and posters to decorate my life in. It’s silly that I like these things. I opened up a rather sweet looking booklet to find a CD with some extra goodies on, a see-through poster and a downloadable code for your avatar. Sweet! I love avatar stuff and some exclusive Black Ops clothing would do quite nicely. Well no… it won’t because it’s for blokes only.”

Yup, if you’re a lady who likes Black Ops, then STFU and use a male avatar LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.

Would it have been so hard to provide male and female avatar codes? It couldn’t cost them any significant amount even if people did give the unwanted codes to their friends. Certainly not in comparison to the amount spent on the Battersea CODBLOPS launch event.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I found out earlier this evening that Sony put out a call for gamers to playtest and provide feedback on the new MotorStorm, with a £200 cash incentive. The kicker? You need to be male, aged 18-35 (because that’s not already a saturated demographic, right?) and British. Jennifer Allen posting this to Twitter . There’s also another take on this issue over at BeefJack

Click through to read the idiocy

I’ve highlighted the key points but here they are for those of you who can’t be arsed to load the image:

“This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in gaming on any level.”

Good start.

“Please note: WE ARE LOOKING FOR A BROAD RANGE OF GAMING EXPERIENCE HERE”

Excellent.

“I confirm that neither I nor any of my close family or friends work in market research, marketing, public relations, journalism or anything related to the computer games industry; also that I am male aged 18-35 and either a British national or medium term (10yr+ or since 10 years old) resident. Yes/No”

I understand that focus groups like to target specific types of users but how the fuck is British males aged 18-35 a broad range of gaming experience?

Hey, I guess I am angry after all… -.-

Related posts: Cover Art and X-Blades: Now Featuring Almost-Porn

Update 1: Seems like Activision may be trying to make amends, via Paranerd. Efforts much appreciated by this female gamer.

Update 2: And Sony have changed the survey. Hooray! Sad that it ever happened in the first place but if this is how the industry needs to finally learn its lessons, so be it. Of course, you still need to be British or a longtime resident for some reason.

Finally… I no longer need to struggle to make my points. Leigh Alexander has teamed up with Daniel Floyd to produce a fantastic 10-minute video that covers everything I’ve been trying to say about women and games for the past two years.

Although I do add the caveat that IMO, Ubisoft’s Imagine series does more harm to equality than good, as the choices offered to girls are Babies, Fluffies (Animal Doctor), Ponies, Fashion and Cooking. Hellooooooo life-limiting sterotypes. I suppose I should just be grateful for Imagine Figure Skating. Daniel did intend the Ubisoft reference to be tongue-in-cheek but it doesn’t come out that way at all.

Anyway, the the reason I’m posting is to point you towards Alihja’s hilariously withering reaction at NotAddicted.com:

Lets take a look at the requirements… Number four. Loves the beach? Uh-oh! This one looks like trouble…

…You see, as a gamer I love dark cold rooms that are lit by flat panels and LCD monitors. The hum of the fans in my Scorpio “Z” 668 case with its kick-ass “Z” backlight on the front panel which is a lovely shade of blue… kind of like a beach, right?

…A couple of months ago, when I was at DragonCon and I sat on two video game panels, did I think about the beach then? Alas, my sweet adorable cupcakes, no, I did not fucking think about the beach. I hardly even remember what the beach looks like. I think it has water, and sand… and—hey, wait a minute! Computer chips are made out of silicon, and sand is also known as silicon dioxide. And guess what’s at the beach?

Okay. I love the beach! Hooray!

Link:
Miss Video Game 2007: Sexism In The Name Of Equality!