Topless Woman in Contest Ad Sparks Fury by Geek Woman

Shame on you Eidos, female gamers are depending on game developers to be the ones to raise consciousness about women and video games. Apparently someone at Eidos was sleeping through all the conferences and seminars about gender exclusion in video games marketing. And letting down a lot of female Tomb Raider fans…

Here’s another contest to boycott ladies. It is sexist, exploitative, and it has absolutely nothing with gamer skills. The game contest is designed for a male dominated target, and it has nothing to do with the Kane & Lynch game. Apparently there is no female role in the game at all.

The advertisement for the contest has a topless woman on it in a place where anyone can see it. She is topless and holding her ample assets in her hands. It’s a softcore porno syle shot that you would expect on the cover of Playboy not on a game website. Images like that further engender the stereotypes that demean women to the next generation of boys. <strong> The next time people say ‘the industry does not objectify women’ we will point to that picture and this contest. </strong>

Not to mention the damaging imagery and expectations that this teaches girls. What should be focused on are gamer cred, artistic abilities, and writing skills. While the game industry lags behind others in employment for women, a treatment like this is unconscionable. Young women need to see encouragement about being interested in science and computers, not to take off their tops and answer a cattle call.

When major players like IGN, which is supposedly a gaming website, that kids and families use have it so wrong, the difficulty with the problem becomes how far the rabbit hole goes. Ignorant stunts like this take down IGN’s credibility as a gamer’s website yet another notch. One can only expect a non gamer website like Myspace to just go right along, because female gamers are not being represented properly even from within the industry. IGN is becoming only nominally a game review site, as their conflicts of interest with advertising dollars increases scrutiny on its reviews of games.

Woman who participates in such a competition is doing a great injustice to both herself and the entire cause of feminism. If we just sit by and let this kind of stuff continue then it will just happen over and over again and the people that orchestrate this type of marketing will continue to think it’s acceptable to continue to depict women in what is clearly a sexual exploit by their own definitions.

Here is what the contest says:

“We’re hunting for a dangerous sexy vixen with the goods to make us moan…”, “We want you to prove you have the stuff but you don’t have to bare it all to prove it”.

Here is how the contest is described in the Rules:

<blockquote> The “Playboy.com/MySpace.com/IGN.com Cyber Search Sponsored by Kane and Lynch ” (“Contest”) is a photo submission contest which will be hosted via IGN.com and Playboy.com. The Contest submission period begins on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 and ends at 11:59 PM Pacific Time (“PT”) on Sunday, October 21, 2007 (“Submission Period”). The Sponsor of this Contest is Eidos, Interactive, Ltd. (“Sponsor”). The administrator of the Contest is IGN Entertainment, Inc. (“Administrator”). Playboy.com will host a portion of the Contest. </blockquote>

In this excerpt from the contest rules the companies involved are listed. The contest rules go on to state some eye openers that have female developers, gamers and feminists mad as hell.

Each woman who enters this contest must be submissive to Playboy for eternity, and throughout the universe. If you enter the contest you are “owned”, which is not something a real gamer would ever allow.

Where it says “All media now known or hereafter developed throughout the universe”. By agreeing to this basically you grant Playboy, Eidos, and any affiliates the ownership and rights to <i> yourself, </i> it doesn’t end at just the photos submitted. It is a good idea to get a lawyer to look over any contract that you may sign if you are interested in the entertainment business. Talent contracts are notoriously bad for the models that sign them without advice. Go carefully if you should choose to enter a contest like this. Once you do, you don’t own anything that you submit.

<i> “Judgment will be passed on looks alone, nothing about game skills are in the requirements. “JUDGING CRITERIA: Photo Submissions will be scored in six (6) categories. Each category is worth a maximum of five (5) points:” </i>

1. Overall: 5 pts
2. Body: 5 pts
3. Pose: 5 pts
4. Photogenic: 5 pts
5. Sensuality: 5 pts
6. Face: 5 pts

The level of exploitation in this contest is above and beyond the IGN ads. The contest has been done in the most thoughtless, heavy handed, and patronizing manner possible and represents exploitation by definition.

Suppose you enter this contest, and later become famous? Pretty much any self marketing that an aspiring model could derive from the exposure in the contest is prohibited and owned by the contest. They also state very clearly that they can do whatever they want with your ” name, likeness, voice, quotes, comments, biographical information, photograph and/or image” without even telling you or paying you.

Eidos is based in Wimbledon, South London, consists of publishing operations across Europe and the US and several development studios including Crystal Dynamics, the latest developer of the Tomb Raider Games as well as IO Interactive and Pivotal Games.

Here’s Eidos upcoming release schedule in case you want to vote against exploitation of women in gaming with your cash. Below that you will find the list of all the websites that are under the IGN umbrella corporation. It may surprise you.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men PC PS3 X360 Nov 23, 2007

Championship Manager 2008 PC Christmas 2007

Conflict: Denied Ops PC 2008 PS3 X360

Highlander PC PS3 X360 2008

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Wii TBA

In 2005 News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media acquired IGN Entertainment for $650 million. IGN Entertainment, Inc. owns these websites: IGN.com, GameSpy, Comrade, Arena, FilePlanet, ModCenter, GameSpy Technology, TeamXbox, Planets, Vaults, VE3D, CheatsCodesGuides, GameStats, 3D Gamers, AskMen.com, Rotten Tomatoes, GamerMetrics, Direct2Drive