It’s easy to meet and play with female types online or on Xbox Live! Well if you don’t mind paying for it that is. A new service called GameCrush is here to help lonely guys meet the gamer gal of their dreams… well, sort of.
The way it works is the guy signs in through their website and, for the price of a drink at the club ($8.25 USD), buys credits to trade in for a gaming session. Guys that sign on to the site are called “Players” (not Playas) and ladies that sign up are affectionately called “PlayDates.” After each session the Player can rate the PlayDate on various categories such as “hotness, gaming skill, and flirtiness.”
There is a respectably large selection of ladies (or in some cases “ladies”) to choose from. Each gaming session will get you 10 minutes of Xbox Live game time or 6 minutes playing one of the site’s Flash games. The Flash games also offer video chat, but they are strictly timed. There is no integration with the Xbox interface so XBL games have to be manually set up, but they are also not timed so they can theoretically last longer.
Sounds a little one-sided… Why would ladies subject themselves to this you ask? Well it’s free for them to sign up and a great way to meet gamer guys! Oh, and they also get to keep 60% of the money they bring in. That’s right folks, online prostitution is alive and well on Xbox Live! PlayDates with the highest ratings get preferred placement in the listings, which means more Dates and more money. What they do to get those high ratings is entirely up to them.
Ladies were initially recruited via Craigslist ads, and apparently there was an overwhelming response – to date there are over 1200 registered PlayDate accounts. While many of them seem like honest gamers looking to capitalize on their passion, it seems quite likely some non-gamer chix are just looking to cash in on guys’ gullibility. There is no screening or interview process, so as the saying goes, “your mileage may vary.”
Opinions on this service varied from favorable to meh to absolute disgust. Some guys thought it sounded interesting enough to try, others thought only a pathetic loser would try it (which is not to say they wouldn’t). Some girls thought it empowered women to get paid for their passion, others thought it perpetuated the disgusting gamer girl stereotype that they’d been fighting for so long to overcome. What do you think? Feel free to leave your opinions below!
XBL games currently supported: Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Halo 3, and Modern Warfare 2
Flash games currently supported: Battleship, Checkers, and Pool
Coming soon: PS3 games, Wii games, and World of Warcraft
Other reviews:
CNET – GameCrush: Pay to play–with girls
IGN – Would You Pay a Girl to Play Halo With You?
Gizmodo – GameCrush Lets You Pay To Play Xbox With Hot Chicks
VentureBeat – Dudes can pay hot girls to play online video games with them
CrunchGear – GameCrush lets you pay to teleconference with cute girls while they game (seriously (truly))
PCWorld – GameCrush: Pay to Play (Video Games) with Hot Girls
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4 Comments
03-23-2010 at 9:20 pm
As you already know PsychoVandal and I met while playing video games on Xbox Live. It’s because of this that I’ve often thought starting an online dating site for gamers to be a great idea. GameCrush however seems a lot more like calling a 1-900 number. These women are pretty much asking to be abused for 6-10 minutes at a time. Any guy willing to pay for this service has only one thing on his mind… and it isn’t gaming.
03-23-2010 at 9:54 pm
That’s what I’m thinking. It’s idealistic to think guys are going to use this service to play games w/ girls, but let’s be honest – people are not going to pay money for that. But they would happily pay money for other things.
03-23-2010 at 11:32 pm
So now I can call a sex line and tea-bag in Halo? Awesome.
Seriously though, this is sad, and it’s even sadder some will use this thing. I’d dig a game-date sorta site thing, Sick and Vandal are obvious examles of success in that, kind, but seriously, this is lame. I’m sixteen and I can see the bull here.
03-24-2010 at 8:48 pm
Well I don’t judge. Some people are more comfortable interacting in this medium. Look at the success of sites like ChatRoulette.