Gaming’s Whacked Out Week: Sextastic Doesn’t Sell? Since When?

As many a pissed off wife will tell you, men will buy anything a sexy saleswoman is offering (Maybe we do already have a vaccuum cleaner, honey, but this is the Turbo Dust-Ass-Whupper 4000.And the girl's top three buttons were undone. I never stood a chance). Well, allegedly. This is lazy stereotyping, of course, and we are appalled, outraged and completely in agreement with the insinuation.

That's to say, we were. Earlier this week, Kotaku blew our minds --blew them right off-- with the revelation that booth babes don't work. At E3 and other such nerdly gaming expos, these fine ladies are employed to attract punters to certain stalls. By virtue of (oftentimes) knowing slightly less than eff all about the game in hand, but looking pretty damn great while doing so.

But sometimes, skimpy outfits and tightly-trussed cleavages are no match for the alluring power of... grandmas. Marketing guru Spenser Chan conducted an experiment at a past show, Kotaku reports, to determine the effect these ladies really have. He staffed one area with booth babes and another with "...show contractors that knew the local area and had established people skills." The result was "two ‘grandmothers' doing the job that booth babes usually did," and kicking their asses at it.

The babes only succeeded in attracting a third of the visitors the elderly experts did. Which... probably goes to show something or other. We don't have a clue what.

Source: Kotaku. Header image: gameslife.