Having spent three years in the video game industry, the concept of a booth babe is nothing new to me. I’ve seen hundreds of pictures from E3 where unbelievably attractive women are paid to interact with geeky guys. Now, with the recent announcement of the scaling down of future E3 conventions, I thought that along with the entire spectacle of E3, booth babes would be a thing of the past. I would never know what it would be like to awkwardly stare at one from several feet away.
So anyways, I have this friend, let’s call him “Don”. He works for a major telecom company in the Lower Mainland. He tells me that he’ll be at the Vancouver Convention Centre at Canada Place on Thursday to man a booth for his company. Since I work right next to Canada Place, “Don” says I should drop by on my lunch hour to visit and pick up some free swag. It sounds like a good idea.
On my lunch break today, I head on over to the convention centre. I meet up with “Don” at his booth. He tells me it’s so boring just standing there. Then he motions me over to one corner of the booth and then quickly points to another booth not far away. At this booth is an amazingly beautiful woman. The trade show floor is full of middle-aged guys in the telecom industry so she stands out like a supermodel in a telecom convention. She had a great tan, long dark hair, and a beautiful face.
“Don” said, “Go talk to her.” No one was with her at the time, so I thought, why not? I walked on over and I said hello to her. She smiled back and said hello. I asked her, “So what does Company XYZ do?” Now, at the time I actually thought she was a full-time employee of said company and that she might have been a PR rep or something. Then she rattled off a long, technical description of the company’s product. She kinda paused in the middle which made me think she might be a hired spokesperson just for the show.
Now I really had no idea what she had just described to me because I’m mainly a software guy. I asked her if she’d been at the show the whole two days. She said yes and that she’d been hired for just for the show to drum up as much business as possible. Hmmm… ok… so she was a hired gun. I told her I was just here visiting a friend and that I knew very little about the telecom biz. I mentioned that I worked for EA and my office was just down the street. She said, “Oh yeah EA, I did some work for them.” It turns out she was in both Fight Night and Need for Speed. Which ones I didn’t find out. She was a ring card girl in Fight Night and she was a magazine cover model that you saw when you won a race in NFS. Wow!
I told her I’d tell the boys back at the office that I saw her and thanked her for her time. I actually don’t know too many guys on the NFS team but I’ll have to mention it to them later. I walked back to “Don” and told him what I had found out. “GTF outta here! Really?” I told him yes.
“Don” was nice enough to snap a picture of me talking to the supermodel-type lady in question. It’s kinda grainy but click here for it. Oh, and I’m pretty sure this screenshot is her from Fight Night. The PS2 sure looks bad now compared to the 360.
I feel kinda silly about the whole thing. I didn’t really care for Company XYZ but I went over there and actually asked her what they made or did, all because she was super foxy. I was so predictable. I thought I was better than that!