e3-2009-booth-babes posts

We remember reading an article a few years ago from a respected journalists about how E3 and the game industry in general wouldn't be taken seriously if they continued to allow publishers to have booth babes parading around in the exhibit hall. Today booth models at E3 are not just expected but celebrated as part of the culture of the show.

The latest evidence of this turnaround is an upcoming one-hour special on the G4 cable TV network called Confessions of a Booth Babe. The show, hosted by former Playboy bunny Sara Underwood, was filmed at last month's E3 2009 event and "explores how these young women were chosen and what exactly their job entails." We predict part of the job deals with keeping sweaty geeks from hitting on them. The show airs on Saturday, July 25 at 7 pm ET/PT. Of course you could prepare for the show by checking out our own E3 booth model galleries . . . just a thought.

Yep, E3 is definitely back and the reason we know this is because there were quite a few booth models in the exhibits and just hanging around the convention center this week. We close out our look at these various models for the third and final (official) day of the show.

And yes, that is Eliza Dushku in this set of pictures. She was signing at Bethesda Softworks' booth on Wednesday to promote Wet, a non-PC game. But she has the look and feel of a booth model so we figured that we would put her in the gallery with the others. If you haven't seen our frst two galleries of pictures you can still check out Day 1 and Day 2.

It's day two of E3 2009 so naturally we wanted to give you folks what you apparently want: more booth model shots from the show floor. From shots of the G4 television school girls to the dirty ladies of DiRT 2 to folks that don't seem to be promoting any game at all, we have them here.

Overall, while E3 2009 does mark the return of the booth babe, it definitely hasn't reached the level it did in previous years of E3 as a trade show. There are not any massive dance numbers with huge stages and even the famous Tecmo babe shows are silent this year. Hey, at least the sexy Everquest elf is still around.

E3 2009 is officially under way and we decided not to waste any time. We roamed the show exhibit halls and took pictures of the various booth models. Even though the show was open for just one hour we found quite a few models (both women and men) already dressed up. We suspect that even more will be in place later today.

One bit of very disappointing news on the E3 booth babe front, however. Remember when IGN reported that Activision was going to have some Wolfenstein Elite Guard models at their booth? Well today we were told that for some unknown reason those models won't be showing up at the show after all. Epic fail, Activision.