PlayDates

Wow. So I actually am startled by how fast I started receiving emails asking my opinion on the new social network GameCrush. The concept behind GameCrush is you pay to play video games (mostly Xbox titles and Flash games but it promises to expand) with attractive girls over the video interface:

On GameCrush, guys are Players and girls are PlayDates. Players pay to play and PlayDates get paid to play. Guys can browse PlayDate profiles (there are currently around 1,200), view photos, and even chat with girls for free. Publicityhazard's turn ons include vibrating controllers, for instance, and is turned off by three red lights. Once you find a gal you fancy you send her a game invite and if she accepts you get six to ten minutes of one-on-one gaming time. PlayDates have the ability to block any guy they want for any reason. When the service launches tomorrow it will only support the Xbox 360 and a few casual games hosted on the GameCrush website, but there are plans to add PlayStation 3, Wii, and World of Warcraft support as soon as possible.

You must be 18 or over to create a GameCrush account -- it's being touted as the first social site for adult gamers. It's not an explicitly explicit service, but PlayDates set their gaming mood to either "flirty" or "dirty." What the two of you chat about is entirely up to you. Signing up is free, but you must purchase credits in order to get your game on. For $8.25 you get 500 credits, which is enough for one game (400 credits) and a 100 credit tip at the end. An Xbox Live game will last 10 minutes, while a casual Flash game will get you six minutes of face time with your PlayDate. That's literal face time, because you can video chat with your lady while playing a casual Flash game. Again, what goes on in that video chat is up to you and your PlayDate. GameCrush says it modeled its pricing structure after the cost of buying a girl a drink at a bar. In a bar, you're basically buying the opportunity to chat a girl up. GameCrush is hoping players will look at their service the same way.

Basically, it's chatroulette, except choose-your-own hot chick. Oh, and you pay for it. But then "after a session you can rate your PlayDate on her hotness, gaming skill, and flirtiness." Oh good. So unlike prostitution, men get to rate women on the basis of their hotness. Wouldn't want the men to seem pathetic or anything.

Such a site sounds ripe for exploitation, and the rankings themselves are inevitably setting up a system where women will be rated highly, I'm sure, for doing things on their camera probably wholly unrelated to playing Halo. And if the 14-year-old boys playing on XBox right now are any indication of the site's clientele, girls who are capable of beating guys will be penalized, surely with reviews containing more than a few choice words about her sexuality.

Ok, I'm being a bit unfair. The site does give women considerable agency to choose their PlayJohns, sorry, Players. And since you can play Flash games, she doesn't even have to be capable of playing games to sign up!

I'm sorry! There's nothing poignant to say about this. It's absurd and leaning towards sad. It's banking on two things I already hate: 1) men's inability to approach women in *real* life and 2) most girls feeling so uncomfortable entering into this industry, men have to pay for their company. I can predict how the site will devolve into a pay-for-tits model and such a model will undoubtedly not do much for recruiting females into an industry they already feel alienated from. So without rehashing a pretty familiar argument, I'll leave you with a pretty good video rant about the schizophrenic marketing of games as it relates to females (especially towards the end when it discusses how many women are complicit with the objectification for personal gain):