Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
People are employed to sell stuff all the time. Usually, it's just a job.
Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
I think in this case it is great marketing - but I agree some companies' use of the scantily-clad chainmail bikini girls are a bit over the top (of course you don't really see that anymore in Gen Con's hall.) I think Flying Frog's is great...they are costumed as characters from the game, and I don't think it's demeaning...they are after all working voluntarily. If I didn't know the company, it would make me stop and think "oh, cool costume, I wonder what this game is about"...and, they have "booth guys" too that are costumed, not just women.
Truth be told I didn't realise that was a costume.
First thing I noticed was: nice smile and than wondered if she had a make-up mishap, but this is how they are dressed in the game, with the pins and stuff?
I could have been fooled into thinking it was some kind of punk outfit or maybe some new kind of goth thing.
It looks to me like this is Jade, the high school outcast. She's a new character in the Hero Pack 1, I believe. You can see a blown-up version of her character card in the background.
Cool to see Something Wicked on display there as well!
Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
I'm not flaming you here, but most people in the world are dehumanized at work. I have not kept my job through the recession because I am more human than my co-workers that have been let go, I kept my job becasue I produce more tangible results than them - numbers on my boss's boss's spreadsheet.
Most people, even the one s that say they "love" thier jobs, would not do 8 hours a day / 5 days a week of whatever activity their employer pays them to do without the pay, period.
We are all dehumanized; we all whore ourselves out (except professional board game testers of course).
One of the cool things about Flying Frog is that quite often the "Booth Babes" are actually the models that they used for the actual card in the game. Just so happens they pick lots of hot women to play characters in their games. Sounds like a pretty good strategy to me. I am not sure if this girl is the original model or not (looks like it), but I am sure Scott can tell us.
One of the cool things about Flying Frog is that quite often the "Booth Babes" are actually the models that they used for the actual card in the game. Just so happens they pick lots of hot women to play characters in their games. Sounds like a pretty good strategy to me. I am not sure if this girl is the original model or not (looks like it), but I am sure Scott can tell us.
TR
Travis got to the post first This likely is one of the models, which I think is brilliant of Flying Frog. The whole game is supposed to look like it is based on a movie that was never filmed, and having those same models come hock your game is like having a celebrity there to sign boxes and rulebooks, which absolutely rocks.
We are all dehumanized; we all whore ourselves out (except professional board game testers of course).
This kind of talk bothers me. I am a union man in a company with a very active union. Love the union, I hate to think about what my workplace would be like without it. HOWEVER, every now and then one of the sisters or brothers trots out the old prostitution analogy. The exchage of labour for money, which we in turn we exchange for goods and services is a fundimental building block of ANY civilization. Really, don't like being dehumanized? Go back to hunting and gathering. PS we don't call them whores anymore, they are "sex trade workers", less dehumanizing
Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
Sorry to flame a little bit. But this particular picture is probably one of the worst to use to make your arguement. First, she's portraying a character from the game; the intent is to bring the game to life, not turn her into a cardboard standee. Second, as far as 'booth girls' go she's one of the most clothed I've ever seen. I don't see anything demeaning about being an atractive woman with a winning smile. Try this on for size: is the following person being more, less, or equally demeaned?
I think a big part of being demeaned is a projected state. I'd agree that sign holding is very low on most everyone's desired employment. So when a sign holder is seen advertising on a corner I might wonder what choices they've made to end up with that job. But my imagined impressions of them do not define them.
Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
Are you saying pretty people deserve our pity? Nay. NAY, I say. The pretty people don't deserve anything but our scorn and derision! Let loose the dogs of pettiness and jealousy! Let them feast on their fine flesh and gnaw on their perfect bones, for tonight we shall have our REVENGE upon those who spurned us and cast us out!
Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
I don't share your viewpoint. I think you need to get out more from your sheltered life.
If you want to see demeaning, watch the last 60 minutes episode where they track a shipment of old computer parts sent off to be "recycled" and sent to china, where people are paid 8 dollars a day to sort the parts while their face melts from all the toxic chemicals and mercury.
I am not a fan of booth babes unless they know the games...and in that case I like anyone who knows the games and is enthusiastic about them. Most of the Flying Frog people I have met at the booth like games and are extremely intelligent. In this case there were old, young, male, and female characters from the game and I don't think they were being distasteful.
"Booth Girls" dressing up as characters from games, at the booths for those games? Makes sense.
"Booth Girls" dressing in incredibly skimpy silver costumes, pretending to be superheroes, at a science convention, at the booth for Analytical instruments? Makes NO sense.
But that's what I saw at two different conventions I've been at.
Ill probably get flamed for this, but these 'booth girl' jobs that are at the conventions (not just boardgaming by anymeans) seem demeaning. Kind of like those people who have to dress up and hold signs on the road for some furniture store. I hate seeing people become the advertisement, rather than the product. Dehumanizes them in my eyes.
Are we looking at a different picture here? This is a model from the game itself wearing more than most women wear these days.
These were about the responses I expected. Please feel free to mail me if you want to debate the point. I did want to mention though that the girl pictured above is in no way an egregious example (go to a car show for that), and I do feel the same way about the older gentlemen pictured, as well as labor in general (ooooh, that sounds a little pinko, am I gonna get reported to homeland security?)
What I do find interesting is that the responses here are very similar (in terms of the core philosophical argument) to responses on another forum I read where the merits of MMA (mixed martial arts) were debated. I don't really know what that means, but I thought it was interesting.
In a comment aimed at what's going on in the picture, does anyone who was there comment on what Jade's abilities are in the game, there looks like a big version of her character card behind her and was wondering what it said! Thanks for any help
I think most of us owe Colonel Ripper an apology. I know I do.
When I read his comments about "dehumanizing", I must admit I felt like I imagine many of you feel. My first impression was that here was a psuedo-intellectual taking the pulpit to claim his 15 minutes of fame. In an albeit safe environment, his mini-sermon was designed to make him appear deep, poignant, and not to mention, wiser than the average bear without actually having to possess those attributes.
Yes...yes... yes...at first, I too was taken in. As I sprayed my morning drink of orange juice through my nose upon reading the aforementioned comments, my thoughts were that Colonel Ripper was a pretentious bastage (Johnny Dangerously quote) railing against a plight that goes unseen except but by his knowledgable eyes. Here is a spotlight where he could pick up cudo's and garner attention. Even negative attention is better than no attention at all, eh?
But, sadly, I was wrong... completely and utterly in error. He wasn't commenting on society at large in a pompous display of imaginary wit. He was commenting on how well the actress "dehumanized".
After all, this is a game about Zombies, isn't it? Good ol' Colonel Ripper was complimenting her ability to immerse herself into the role and dehumanize before his eyes into the Zombie she was representing.
He was the only one to catch this. All I saw was a cute girl with a friendly smile. Colonel Ripper saw the deep, inner soul as she underwent the transformation.from paid actress to zombie character. Otherwise, his comments would be a completely ludicrous and self-serving diatribe.
Way to go, Tyrone!
.... or, am I off the mark again? Errr.... Tyrone... step in here and defend me, bro.
Count me in! Hell if I could get to travel all around the country and the world to attend cons to advertise a game I had modeled in and tell people about said game Id be all over it! And get paid on top of that? Hell ya, where do I sign?
What is more dehumanizing - going to work for a corporation, making a decent living, making the world a slightly better place by what the corporation is doing/producing and making a contribution to that, or sitting on your rear watching TV all day and doing nothing? At least the young lady is doing something to help sell the game(s) and it looks like she's enjoying herself. There are a lot worse things one could do to make a living.
Yup. Met all the models at Gen Con this year (both men and women). They all seemed genuinely happy to be there. The girl who is "the old, high-school girlfriend" was especially nice and chatty...and very pretty!
Ok, what the hell? How the heck did the topic of booth babes come into this? Totally random and off-topic. She's not a booth babe, she's a character dressed the same way she does in the game. When she does it in the game she's just a model for a character, so how is it different if she's at the game's booth? Booth babes usually have little to nothing to do with what they are promoting and are there simply to attract guys to their product with their looks. Apples and oranges, anyone? I don't even know why you people are indulging their argument...They fully expected to be flamed and when they did they act like it's our fault. Maybe if you expect to be flamed and do infact get flamed it's your fault and you shouldn't open your mouth and go so off-topic and rant about something has nothing to do with the picture. If the picture was of one of the male characters you would have never brought it up in the first place.
I totally realize that, lol, I was just going through all the pircures and came across this one with all the comments and just had to chime in despite how late to the party I am, haha.
Is this the actress who played Jade for the LNOE photos? (The blowup of the character card is outside the shot's depth of field) If it is, it's promoting her own work; certainly no more demeaning/dehumanizing than any actor showing up for their film's publicity event. Probably far less alienated from the product of our labors than most of us are, really. Even if it's another actor, it's still much less degrading than putting on a bikini and draping herself across a car (or refurbished PCR analyzers, apparently).
Flying Frog really isn't the best target for anti-booth-babe sentiment, since their in-constume con reps are (often the actors themselves) dressed exactly like the in-game characters. The characters themselves are supposed to be from a B-Zombie film, and are thus only as exploitatively comstumed as the genre the game is emulating/lampooning.
Most of the anti-"booth babe" arguments I've heard haven't focused how dehumanzing it is for the "babes" themselves, but rather how their ubiquity at cons (even when selling totally nonsexual products) helped to create a unnecessarily hyper-sexualized and sexist atmosphere that was hostile towards female attendees. Regardless of how valid that argument is, I've never heard substantiated allegations of lousy working conditions or substandard pay for the workers.
Edit - Just noticed how old this thread is, nice - on the internet, flame wars are eternal!
Caleb, the best 6 month old little brother ever
I am not sure if this girl is the original model or not (looks like it), but I am sure Scott can tell us.
This likely is one of the models, which I think is brilliant of Flying Frog. The whole game is supposed to look like it is based on a movie that was never filmed, and having those same models come hock your game is like having a celebrity there to sign boxes and rulebooks, which absolutely rocks.
