I'm not a fan of stereotypes. Not any of them. Sure, my background is in Sociology, which is basically studying groups of people and predicting how they react, but that's a bit more complex than stereotyping. But one of the stereotypes I really don't like is the idea that a guy would do anything for a pretty girl, especially nerdy guys who of course have no chance of spending time with a pretty girl outside of hooking up their computer. But now there's someone out there who seemed to think this made a pretty good business plan and called it...
Game Crush
So here's how Game Crush works: for $8.25 per 10-minutes, an "attractive" female gamer will play a game with you. It ranges from a quick flash game to Xbox Live. In exchange, the girl gets paid 60% of the final cost for her time. Doesn't seem like a bad deal, does it? The nerdy guy gets to spend a "date" playing video games with a hot girl without leaving the confines of his obvious home of his parents' basement and the girl gets a decent chunk of change for just playing games and talking.
Here's the thing, there are some major ethical issues going on here. For starters lets look at the target audience. The entire business plan is based on the idea that there are some hopeless geeks out there who believe that some girl out there will play video games with him and somehow fall madly in love with him to spend the rest of her life with him. Obviously geeks have money to blow because they just waste it on Star Wars merchandise or whatever obsessive fetish they have, am I right? What harm is there in relieving them of this burden by exchanging social interaction for money? That's healthy, right? Here's the thing, when you're marketing to a crowd that's already socially insecure it becomes morally questionable to play on those insecurities. Sure, it can be argued with body images for women and things like that, but that's an argument for another day, one that I support. This kind of act targets people who are already emotionally fragile enough to keep them from socializing on their own, and tries to crush them even more with the idea that not only would a woman not have sex with them without payment, but they won't even spend time with them unless there's money involved.
There's also the issue of where fantasy and reality blur. What about the obsession you see on occasion with some men and strippers? I don't think it'd be too long before we start hearing about girls being stalked because they played a game with some guy. When I was growing up phone sex lines were all the rage on the news with reports of the actual women on the phone being nothing as advertised. It all came down to how their voice sounded. I tend to be quite cynical when it comes to things and I honestly believe that's going to be going on here. Whether or not the girl is "attractive" is the issue. If somebody wants to play a game, I could care less how they looked. Where this becomes an issue is the truth in advertising and how damaging it would be to both players if the truth were known. There's enough racist, homophobic, angry teenage trash talking going on with online games as it is. How do you think the reaction will go when they find out the "hot" girl they're playing with isn't as advertised?
My other issue with this is part of the debate of sexism in our culture. This is part of that slippery slope that runs down through strip clubs and prostitution into sexual violence and the objectification of women. This is no different than GameFly adding a bonus girl to your game rental. It treats women as a commodity, categorizing them as "flirty" or "dirty," depending on what you're in the mood for. On top of that, the girl is rated based on "gaming skill," "flirtiness," and "hotness." Only one of those should really matter if they're just selling someone to play games with. This is a step into the "female companionship" of the digital age, where the girl is reduced down to a voice and an avatar, the sad old man sitting alone at the strip club at 3:00pm.
On the other hand, if you're interested, I wholly endorse is SessCrush. I honestly would pay for this.
The girls employed by GameCrush and the people that actually pay for the service are guilty too. Everyone is exploiting everyone else, it's like a snake eating its own tail.
ReplyDeleteThat's an argument that's used for strip clubs too, but it's like labor in third world countries; are they really aware of how much they're being exploited? Really the people I blame are the ones who created it because they're taking advantage of both sides.
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