Topic: Bonnie Ruberg EDITORIAL: Role-Models or Ubisoft Dolls?

[Smash_Brother]

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This story seems strangley true, too plain to be consdered a stunt.

Honestly, I think it sounds more like a stunt than anything.

I've seen sites like this before: the idea is to build up a rhetoric so the male gamer will be looking over it thinking, "Boy, these must be such nice, sweet girls! I had better brush up on my skills at <insert game name here> so I can beat them and win their respect at the next trade show!" The end result is to get male gamers to buy more games.

It's attempting to tap into the part of the male mind which attempts to find anything it possibly can in common with the female mind in the hopes of romantic involvement. The sad part is, it usually works. Not too long ago Sprint had paid models carrying their phones go into bars across the country and sit there playing with their phones. The idea was that, by the time the guy hitting on them was done talking to them, he would be convinced that the Sprint phone would make him desirable in the eyes of attractive women (since these were presumably attractive women pushing these phones). Even if a man reads the site and is disgusted by it, odds are he'll say, "Damn, I need to get better at <insert game name here> to prove these girls are fakes." Trouble is, when the only battlefield you can meet them on is being sold by Ubi Soft, then the trap has worked.

There's no feminism going on here. To call it as such is to spit into the face of any progress which actually stems from the efforts of feminism.

If this was ACTUALLY about advancing the female gamer, these girls would have been selected on their gaming skill alone and would not have been chosen based upon their looks whatsoever. In fact, they could have been downright ugly, but that doesn't matter as their SKILLS would have been what carried them into reputable status.

I don't buy the notion of them being good gamers. Unless they all tied for first in the PAX Halo tournament or something, I'm not buying it. It'd be ridiculously easy to drown out people saying, "Yeah, I played the frag dolls and I kicked their asses at everything." with Ubi's own coverage of "some guy" who was supposedly on the floor saying, "Wow, those frag dolls sure do win at everything!"

-SB