ABSTRACT
It is early summer, 2001. I am walking through the great exhibition hall at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the most important trade show in the games industry. It is hard to imagine many activities that would pack in so many men per square foot of exhibition space and so few women. Many of the women we see here are dressed in scant clothing— leather-bound Valkyries, bikini-clad space bunnies, or women in tight jumpsuits prepared for motion-capture demonstrations. In what is the loudest, most visually oversaturated place I have ever been—with the possible exception of the streets of Hong Kong—women are used as bait to lure dazed buyers into the booths. One understands instantly why most of the games on the market look and sound the way they do. It has little to do with consumer tastes and everything to do with the competition for attention at the floor show. In this environment, subtle games—nuanced games—disappear without a trace. The Sims or Black & White, for example, commanded far less space at the Electronic Arts booth than the more action-packed games, and Majestic debuted off the main floor altogether in a corporate suite.
