OMG! Look there's some hot girl who plays video games! And, like, you can see her boobs on the Internet! But she's talking about LAN parties! This is completely contrary to my expectations! Plus, I love boobs!
I assume that was the reaction Kotaku was going for. There certainly aren't any new ideas in the article, or even mention of any games released within the last five years. I don't think "hey, try talking to people," is groundbreaking dating advice, and consider me unimpressed by the timely, salient, in-no-way-awkward Charles Kettering reference. Maybe I'm a tough audience.
Kotaku is easy to pick on sometimes, but they produce some good stuff. Totillo is great. Leigh Alexander is great. Crecente himself is usually really good. Tim Rogers rubs some people the wrong way, but at the very least he's a unique voice. The other writers there put out interesting things too, like the recent article about the obsessive achievement hunter. Hell, even this celebrity thing they're doing isn't necessarily a terrible idea. I thought the Chunk one was pretty funny.
That's why shit like Raven Alexis's Guide to Cliched Understanding Of Women and Gamers is so frustrating. Kotaku gets so many page-views that the editors there have an opportunity to really change the discussion about video games. A discussion, by the way, that has degraded to the degree that the first hit on a Google image search for "boobs" links you to GameTrailers.com (seriously, try it). Kotaku seizes that opportunity sometimes, but then those articles get lost in a sea of rehashed press releases "improved" by the addition of pirate/boob/LOL-of-the-moment jokes, exhaustive outlines each and every instance of cleavage at each and every vaguely game related conference, and OMG LOOK BIKINI COSPLAY!!!
I have nothing against boobs. In fact, I think they're great. But if games are really important, if they really are worth spending time thinking about, and if they're worth talking about, then they're worth talking about seriously. "Comparing The Boobs and Butts of Bayonetta" is not serious talk. It's weird and misogynous and ensures that video games will forever be considered the playthings of children.
There are plenty of women who write about video games, just look for them. Reading Alex Raymond, led me happily to The Border House. Leigh Alexander writes well about video games for more websites and publications than I can count. Play Like A Girl is a great blog, and there are many others. There are new voices straining to be heard everyday. Most of them will say things that are far more interesting than "people at LAN parties often eat pizza and drink red bull."
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