A recent study showed that 60% of women who play video games regularly don’t want to be associated with the term ‘gamer’. The term has become loaded, suggesting someone who will play for extended periods of time, probably male, probably young.  When the player is female, we need the qualifying term to go with it – she’s a girl gamer, just as you have to take about’ male models’, or ‘male nurses’. Otherwise, it’s just confusing for our tiny gendered brains.

Whenever you’re a minority, whether its women who play video games, men who enjoy pairs figure skating, or anyone who watched episode two of Lonestar, it’s all about the small victories. For the female game market it could be female character options, or the advancement of female characters from the victim of the kidnapper to the gun-toting homicidal maniac. Every little bit helps, which is why it’s such a kick in the teeth when something like GameCrush arrives.

GameCrush is somewhere in the venn diagram between X Box Live and sex webcams. Its chief selling point is that pathetic, tubby, virgin males can play games online with hot, sexy women .  Before I get angry tweets, I am of course, hyperbolising. I am suggesting that in creating GameCrush Eric Strasser, David Good and Anees Iqbal have debased all gamers, and set back the development of a real gaming community by about 1000 years.

I decided to investigate GameCrush further, thinking that something so geek-oriented couldn’t possibly be as sinister as I imagined. I hoped to discover that all the ire directed at the concept was merely an overreaction. The opening paragraph of the ‘About Us’ page appeared to confirm this.

 “GameCrush is the first social gaming site that allows gamers to meet, match and pay to play other gamers. Designed for both female and male gamers alike, GameCrush offers games to suit a variety of tastes, from casual web-based games to the hottest console titles.”

Ah, so this is for female AND male gamers! No need to be offended, this is just as much an opportunity for women to reduce fellow gamers to simply conduits for their own sexual gratification. It seems like all of this fuss is over nothing, just some busybody feminists looking for trouble where there is none. Oh wait, sorry, what’s this in the FAQ…?

“What if I want to play a game that is not listed?

If the PlayDate has the game you want to play, go for it! Just check with her before starting the game session.”

Her?

Actually, now you mention it, GameCrush doesn’t make a big deal of the male PlayDates. The news blog shows young, attractive women showing skin and wearing heels. Where are the shirtless boys in tight pants? At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking that the focus of GameCrush is to get male hetero gamers to play games with hot girls for money. There is also the name ‘Playdate’, which is remarkably similar to ‘Playmate’ – as in those buxom ladies who hang with Hugh Hefner. The website’s press portal happily links to articles which proclaim this to be for guys who like girls. “GameCrush is essentially an online dating service that substitutes gaming for dating — you find a girl’s profile, request a match-up, and then pay her to play video games with you.” So says Spandas Lui of gamerpro.com. She also links to the Wikipedia entry for ‘Playmate’ and says “Do you see what they did there?” Yes, Spandas, we saw.

In the same article, JoyButton,one of the PlayDates, has this to offer “I would say maybe if you’re a little bit more attractive, you have better chances, especially with games that require face time like the casual online games. But for the most part, they really just care that you are a female gamer.” She goes on to say that the PlayDates are “Predominantly females. Very few males in comparison and even fewer who actually get games — we seem to attract mainly a male audience.”

Despite the protestations in this interview with the PlayDates that Game Crush is just harmless fun which seeks to link up like-minded gamers,  the dark side is evident in a nasty, uncensored comment at the bottom of page three which tells the PlayDates exactly how their service may be construed.

A much tweeted Mashable article goes as far as to say that ‘The Edge’, one of the ‘zones’ in which people can play, is the site’s ‘Red Light District’. It also implies that a lot more than gaming will be going on – “before you ask, yes, you’ll find girls that are willing to do more than just play games if you ask nicely. Part of the reason for this is the service’s points system; Players are expected to tip points to PlayDates, who can then trade them to get real cash. Simply put, there’s a big incentive for PlayDates to “do more” to earn more points.” The usage creep seems sadly inevitable.

GameCrush’s argument that this is a platform for men and women to simply chat nicely with others has so many holes that it could have been hit with a few Dragon’s Breath rounds.  One assumes that gay male gamers could hit up the male PlayDates and suggest a move into ‘The Edge’ for some extras in return for tips – would this be a service the PlayDates sign up for? If, as the founders suggest, there is no ‘hotness level’ that any PlayDate has to aspire to then what’s the point in the service it all? Could it not potentially be flooded with the hideous masses who would eventually be the only option a lonely gamer has when they log on?

It’s easy to say that those who don’t agree with GameCrush can simply not use it, but its very existence suggests that gaming is a male world where women can either play as sex objects or as avatars but never as equals.  While Nintendo boasts of the in-roads it has made with females in the marketing of the Wii and the DS, it seems that the parameters of what makes a  ‘gamer’ have been  reduced to actively exclude those games and hardware which are most popular with women. Gaming is Call of Duty, Halo and Red Dead Redemption. It is X Box 360 or PS3. It is men, with guns, killing. Female characters are mainly prostitutes or victims. Animal Crossing, is NOT gaming.

This August, the 3G Summit (The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender) took place at Columbia College, Chicago. Organisers aimed to invite young girls to find out more about gaming and the gaming industry in the hope that it would stimulate their interest in what is still a male dominated field. 3G Summit founder Mindy Faber asked “If only a tiny fraction of game designers in the industry are women in what is our society’s fastest growing and most lucrative cultural medium, what does that mean if girls are left trailing in the dust?”.

It’s the noble aims of people like Mindy Faber and the 3G Summit that can really suffer from the implication that girls in games are there for nothing more than titillation. GameCrush promotes the idea that female gamers are not serious, that their skill and accomplishment are not enough but that they must also look ‘hot’ while playing. I don’t remember the last time I wore a vest, hotpants and heels whilst playing a game, but that’s the image that the PlayDates progressed when they hit the floor of E3 this year to show female gamers their place. The choice seems to be hide your femaleness behind an avatar and pretend to be male, or take some layers off and give the boys an eyeful.

Let’s call GameCrush what it is – sexist, divisive, degrading to all gamers and part of the continuing normalisation of the sex industry. At least pornographic webchat services are up front about what they do, what GameCrush offers appears to me to be almost as sinister. If this is not about sexual power, then what are the gamers buying? Social power? If the average transaction is between  a male punter and his female PlayDate, if he can choose to tip her at the end of the interaction as well as rate her in sketchy categories like ‘thrill’, then this is not just a bit of fun, this is what the sex industry sells -  a lie based on women being attracted and attentive to someone they’re not, in return for cash.