Comic-Con ended yesterday, so I’m afraid you’ve already missed out on a wonderful opportunity. I don’t mean attending Comic-Con itself. I’m referring to a contest that S. and Mordicai K. told us about, the Sin to Win contest from video game company EA (image from Kotaku; also see the discussion at ars technica):

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The text about the “steps” of the contest:

1. Commit acts of lust. Take photos with us or any booth babe. 2. Prove it. [Gives Twitter and email address]. 3. Repeat. Find more babes for more chances to win.

Brian Crecente at Kotaku says,

Despite the tone of the contest, the rules state that judge’s reserve the right to disqualify any submission that are “inappropriate for any reason, including without limitation, for depicting or mentioning sex, violence, drugs, alcohol and/or inappropriate language.”

Um…ok…Mixed messages, anyone?

As S. pointed out in the email to us, the “You” figure in the instruction is almost certainly meant to be male (though it theoretically could be a short-hair female), and the prize is specifically a woman–not a date with an attractive person. So we see the reinforcement of the presumption that “gamer = heterosexual male.” S. also says,

You can take photos of “us” (presumably EA employees or possibly developers) instead of or in addition to “booth babes”, but you cannot apparently win dinner with one of “us” — only with “two hot girls.”

So the possible prize isn’t to maybe hang out with some of the people who maybe create or market games, because apparently, who’d want to do that? Or, perhaps, what developer/EA employee wants to spend an evening being forced to hang out with some random contest winner?

For other examples of women being offered as (less explicit) rewards to men, see this post about Tag, a Dell Computer ad, and an Air Conditioning Technical Institute van. I was going to post links to posts about the presumption that gamers are male, but there were so many, it’s easier just to tell you just to go to the “More” tag and then search for “video games” or “video games gender.”