New Age Feminisim?

AM: I don't see myself belittling female gamers - they seem to be doing that well enough by themselves. Again, I have to stress that what I have a problem with is the public image of female gamers, as typified by the "Can't touch this" clan with their ass-in-a-bikini website, and the "Suicide Girls" with their bare-naked World of Warcraft playing. I'll admit to having played videogames in bathrobes and underwear, but I never invited the cameras in to join me (nor, I suspect, would they have wanted to do so...)

Women are at the GDC - great! When you go to E3, you'll see plenty more of them, whether or not there is a rule change. Otherwise, you can fire up Bloodrayne, or perhaps catch a glimpse of her in Playboy. You can see plenty of women in gaming, and at the likes of the GDC, plenty of them are high-flying types who will do well for themselves.

However they can't go too far, if at the end of the day, the industry is more obsessed with cute, half-naked female clans than any interesting ideas they may come up with. The propagation of this is as much down to the bimbos who flash their breasts in the name of "new age feminism" - or whatever the hell they'd like to call it - as it is the people paying them to promote their products. These girls are essentially booth babes from E3 who can actually say that they play the games.

Booth Babes at E3

Again I stress that I don't have a bone to pick with female gamers in general. What gets me about the female gamers of today, in the professional sense, is that they start out as sex symbols with no real talent - and end up that way too. Yeah, so they may be better at Counter Strike than I am, but then I don't practice very much. They could give me a run for my money in games, but then so can the kids down at the local football club. Neither performs at a professional level, however.

I'm not being puritanical - heck, a while ago I wrote about wanting to see more sex in videogames. Neither is this about being against female gamers. I simply take issue with people falling and fawning over these female gamers, and talking high-mindedly about how professional female e-sports will soon be on a par with the male circuit. Bullshit. When you see a male clan and a female clan facing off against one another for grand titles because they both earned the right to be there, then you've got a game. Hell, perhaps there might even be mixed clans (glory be the day). But the fact of the matter is that for that to happen, there has to be a paradigm shift on the audience's behalf as well. At the moment, no female clan worth their salt could make it to the finals of the World Cyber Games without an invite, because they can't get sponsorship.

As long as the audiences continue to look for cam-slut poses on the female clan pages, that's where the money will go. And of course, the female gamers have to give up the easy money. I don't doubt that there are many good looking or perhaps not so good looking female gamers who could do well. And no, I don't think the first successful female clan will have to be comprised of butt-ugly chicks either, but in reality it shouldn't matter whatsoever what they look like. It's the combination of audience and sponsor expectations, combined with willing participants, that creates the current environment.