Ah but this video doesn't just show off her female parts at all. Yes there's an over the shoulder shot but she's not exactly showing off her boobs, they're in the shot but that doesn't make it a boob shot. She's also not acting overly girlish in this video. It really is just her opening up a box. Nothing more and nothing less.
Why would you think she was doing this against her will? It's not like Laddinface is in the video holding a gun to her head forcing her to like Mage Wars is it? She obviously got paid for this, and she just as obviously choose to do the job of her own free will.
Now booth babes people have argued for and against since their beginning and I imagine they'll continue to do so. Yes it's women using their looks to attract customers for a business, but these women choose to take a job that pays money of their own free will. Is using sex appeal inherently sexist? I wouldn't say so but there have been plenty of people on both sides of that argument for years so who knows.
IMO a sufficiently intelligent or observant person, (or sometimes merely a straight woman or a gay man) might notice that her sex appeal has nothing to do with the game, and that a rather attractive (by some cultures' standards) woman saying that she likes Mage Wars has nothing to do with whether they, the person watching the advert will like it or not.
Such a person will notice the two stimulus being linked: the unconditioned stimulus being Toni's physical appearance, and the conditioned stimulus being Mage Wars. They will also notice that there is no basis in reality to link their known certain attraction to Toni's physical appearance to the unknown likelihood of their finding Mage Wars attractive too.
However, the target audience of this type of advertising, while still smart in a real sense, is not wise and observant enough to realize that. It's probably aimed at slightly shallow young adult males who treat their intellect as if it's a mere substitute for masculine muscle, and who often treat strategy games as dominance contests to boost their masculine pride.
The kind of person who believes they are eating with their mouth and strategizing with their frontal cortex, when what they're really doing is eating with their frontal cortex and strategizing with their reproductive organs.
And as much as it pains me to say it, they're probably such a huge part of geek culture that we really do need more of them here if we want Mage Wars to be more successful.
If this is the best way to reach that audience, then I'm all for it. It's not arcane wonders fault if said audience is sexist and slightly shallow. People need to stop worrying so much about the expression of sexist attitudes and start worrying more about sexual discrimination. I would hazard a guess that there are probably many more women who have been victims of employment discrimination in the past two years then the number of times sexist attitudes have been expressed in the
mere portrayals of women that Arcane Wonders has produced.
