OOH, SHOW ME YOUR JOYSTICK

"I live on the second floor of my parents' house, thank you very much!"

Want to meet real, live girls? Like to play online and console games? Then GameCrush has an offer for you. Matt Hickey at CNet has the news:

GameCrush is set to launch at 6 p.m. PDT Tuesday, and its premise, in theory, is simple. It's the gaming equivalent of buying a girl a drink to chat her up, the developers say.

A Player (yes, they're called "Players") buys points--500 cost $8.25--and uses them to buy "game time" with a PlayDate (yes, they're called PlayDates). Xbox titles including Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Halo 3 cost 400 points and last up to 10 minutes. PC-based casual games like Checkers, Battle Ship, Billiards Pool, Four Across, and Tic Tac Toe cost a little less.

Players browse through PlayDate profiles, and once they find one they're interested in they can send a gaming invite. Right now the system works with the Xbox 360 and the site's own games, but the developers say they're hoping to have PS3 and Wii integration soon.

If the PlayDate accepts the invitation, she can set her mood to "Flirty" or "Dirty" and it's game on (though any real gaming girl would set her profile to "Hurty" and kick your ass). The pair can chat, play, or both for the amount of time purchased. When their time is up, the Player is invited to send the remaining 100 points to his PlayDate as a tip. The PlayDates can then trade their points for real-world cash.

Can such a scheme possibly work? Would anyone actually pay for this kind of service? Apparently so: GameCrush became active and claims they almost immediately crashed under the crush of applications. At the GameCrush website there is now this message:

The GameCrush Public Beta is temporarily unavailable due to the incredible user response (more than 10,000 inquiries in five minutes). We are adding new servers to provide players with the best PlayDate experience possible. Games with GameCrush PlayDates start at $6.60 for ten minutes.

When they launch again is anyone's guess, you can sign up for an email notification when it goes online. If this post is to be believed, it seems that they expected to make a business out of this, but not to have this much success, because they weren't ready for the number of applications they got. In five minutes, they made over sixty thousand dollars in initial applications. That's pretty successful. Another possibility is that they just threw the website up to see if it was remotely feasible and are now scrambling to set it up with proof of customer interest.

Why would any girl want to sign on with desperate geeky computer gamers? Because the mroe games they do with others, the more money they make, real life money. Some gamer girls are uncomfortable with the idea, calling it "phone-sex-ey" (especially with the "tip" option at the end of the session) but I have no doubt the idea will catch on rapidly and plenty of girls who want cash for jewelry, clothes, purses, cell phone minutes and so on will be more than willing to get on and play. And for a lot of gamers, being paid to play is what they believe to be a dream job.

What will be going on with the "Dirty" setting is a matter of imagination, since there's no video but you can get audio with many games and the concern of some girls listed above seems more literal. There's always the option of going out and meeting girls in real life, but that's not something at least some gamers are ready or willing to attempt - and let's be honest, at least some gamers, most girls wouldn't really want to be near anyway.