rage expo 2015

rAge 2015 Expo offends with The Attraction Academy

This past weekend was rAge 2015. It’s touted as the biggest gaming expo in Africa. I spent my Saturday pushing through the crowds to see what all the fuss was about. It’s a great excuse to hang out with gaming buddies, enjoy cosplay geniuses, play some games and generally have a good time.

And then The Attraction Academy happened. It started on the Friday when a friend of mine, Tracey Benson, found this:

rAge expo 2015

And then another community member hunted this down:

rAge Expo 2015

I went to rAge to have fun with my gaming friends and I walked away feeling rather upset that these men running this company infiltrated my community and made some gross generalisations about gamers. Zoe and I decided to podcast from rAge and actually interviewed the owner (the podcast is embedded below) and he offered up his view on gamers. Needless to say he had it INCREDIBLY wrong (about gamers and women).

Take a listen to The Cake is Lie and share your thoughts. It isn’t all Attraction Academy. We had a great opportunity to chat to The Division’s community developer, Hamish Bode from Ubisoft Massive. Zoe shared some views about Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. We also spoke to a local game developer about his game Stasis and the R1.5 million he made on Kickstarter to get it developed!

While hanging at rAge 2015 I created a Snapchat story highlighting the fun stuff. Even though its 24 hours is up I’ve loaded it up to Tumblr so you can check it out in case you missed it (or don’t have Snapchat… but WHY?!).

http://techgirlza.tumblr.com/post/130943806454/i-had-the-chance-to-attend-rage-2015-rage-is-the

I also photographed a stack of friends and Tech Girls at the event. If you want to find yourself then the album is on our Tech Girl Facebook page.

And now…. for the rAge 2015 Podcast:

 

  1. *bookmarks to listen to podcast*

    I really am upset myself as a guy. The fact that these guys think gamers are incapable of finding themselves a better half is quite frankly disgusting. Half the gamers I know are either in solid long term relationships or married with kids. I myself am married with a kid.

    This whole thing can GITFS

    1. This was the thing. For me it was less about the sexism – what upset me was this generalisation that all male gamers are basically inept at communicating with women and losers in real life. Not the case.

      1. Yeah, it’s funny how all the gamers I chatted to this weekend were cool and also had no problem talking to me or any other women…

      2. Agree 100%

        Look I don’t doubt there are those that are still very introverted and shy. But this is not the solution. Not in the least. If I was a shy guy this would just intimidate me more and make me less likely to get out from behind my PC screen

    2. Because those kind of things are not about lonely men finding someone to meet and stay with its about horny idiots trying to manipulate their way to
      as many sexual partners as possible

    3. I don’t see the problem with any of this. If anything the INTERVIEWER is bating the guy out to make a statement whereby he can be “caught out” while being recorded.

      Was being at rage a mistake for them? Name one place/location where a company like the Attraction Academy wont be upset some people about making generalizations about their target male audience.

      What if they had a stall at a university? or a chess club? What about a bar or a club? No matter where they go (and they knew this and answered your questions brilliantly)… people need to stop hearing what they’re NOT saying (all gamers/chess players/clubbers/students can’t communicate with woman) and hear what they ARE saying (We help the gamers/students/clubbers that CANT communicate with woman)

      my 2 cents.

      1. I dont see how communicating with a woman is any different than communicating with a man. There are all different personalities in both genders there is no perfect way. These type of things seem more about pick up artist type stuff which is offensive IMO .
        There is no need to have a thing purely about picking up women if you have low confidence and are shy address that and you will communicate better with everyone women included…

      2. Fair enough. But I still don’t think the stand itself is appropriate for rAge.
        rAge is a tech/geek culture/gaming convention. Their stand didn’t really meet any of those criteria so I don’t think it should be there. But, that’s my personal opinion and I can’t make the choice for rAge or anyone else.

  2. Did not attend RAGE this year. And to be honest, it has gone backwards fast. This Attraction Academy is just another example of how RAGE has lost its soul. It is insulting to all gamer Men and Woman, and shows how little they actually know about gamers in general.

    I will not be attending RAGE until they become more relevant again and get rid of all the crap stands they have been letting into the show.

    Most of the games shown are old (has already been released). And they did not even have a lot of the latest tech shown at E3 and other gaming expo’s around the world already (HoloLens, Playstation VR).

    When rage started, they were at the front on gaming, and had a lot of new stuff, even two years ago, we got to see the PS4 and X1 before launch. Now we have to wait for stuff to launch before we can see it. No thanks. There was a lot of free stuff available, where almost anybody could get a free mouse, mousepad etc while walking through the isles.

    The only thing nice about RAGE is the stand where you can try out board games.

      1. The Lazygamer event after I would easily attend, and yes, the community is nice. But RAGE is not what it use to be. It needs a serious shake up.

        Unfortunately for me I was at the vet from 5 till 8 on Saturday, so could not go to the lazygamer event 🙁

          1. My Cat actually. She is ok now, I am looking after her. But there are despicable people out there. What they did to her is horrible, and cannot believe there are people out there like that.

  3. Well look….It’s a bit of a weird one. I know how it is to struggle with social interactions. I can’t really talk to ladies that well either even though I’m married. These types of establishments never sat well with me, it always trivialized relationships into some sort of game where interacting with the opposite sex requires certain techniques. It never felt right, but I personally can’t berate it, especially since I don’t know how much these types of practices helps people who really can’t interact with others. It’s tough, really tough. To some it may seem stupid to think that some men can’t talk to women, but it’s a real problem to some, and hey….Maybe this helps them, I don’t know. What I do know however is that it is disgusting to generalize men this way, especially male gamers, but alas, this is the perception that society still has of gamers…I understand that it’s easy to get upset, easy to get offended, but rather it’s best we try and change that perception, try and educate people as best we can so that one day we’re not viewed as those ‘kids’ that dwell in their mom’s basement.

      1. I would drag them all around rAge and show them that gamers are actually doing just fine in the social department. Hell I’ve seen gaming bring people together from all walks of life. A shame really. Makes me sad that people still think gamers are a bunch of hermits that know nothing about the outside world…

  4. I had to do a double-take when I saw this stand.

    I thought “no way is that actually something, has to be a trolling of some kind”

    Sadly, this was not the case

  5. I thought it’s the biggest joke ever :P.

    How they allowed this bull at rAge, no one knows >_<. It's uber offensive, insinuating that all geek men are losers who need help bedding a girl. They don't offer to help you meet people, it's literally to get you into a girls bed. Which opens another can of worms: apparently that's what all girls are looking for then.

    Love your article!

    1. I really felt what they offered wasn’t really a service. I think they were honestly just there to make as much money as they possibly could in the shortest period of time.

      1. And the other stalls there weren’t attempting the same? Please..every stall there want to make a crap load of money as fast as possible in that short period of time.

        The fact is its obvious in your questions and post you just don’t like them and will find any reason why. I have my suspicions about why…

        Chanel, these guys never insinuated anything… listen to the podcast, then read this: people need to stop hearing what they’re NOT saying (all gamers can’t communicate with woman/ are losers) and hear what they ARE saying (We help the gamers as an example among any group of people communicate with woman)

        Techgirl if this is not a service, then we have different definitions.

        1. The other stalls were sustainable businesses that offered a return on the money you gave them. In my opinion this was just two scammers who probably watched a TV show and figured they could milk a few folk for whatever they could in a short period of time.

          Let’s chat again in a year and I guarantee this business no longer exists. As the person who recorded the podcast and edited it, I can assure you there was far more you haven’t heard or seen (I’ve been privy to other publications’ footage). So I maintain my opinion – this was not a business, just two men attempting to rip off a group of people who they defined as beneath them.

  6. That oke needs to catch a wake up. I met my boyfriend by playing Counter Strike and we have a beautiful daughter. Next time ppl should boycot his stand if he will ever come back LMAO!

  7. What an incoherent article this is. Your heading suggests you’re going to go into detail about this Attraction academynando’s the offense they caused. Bit next you want me have a look at what you did on the weekend.

    Is this click-bait?

      1. Listened to the podcast?

        Well that’s a very strange way to make a point. I will have a listen and respond if it bothers me some more 🙂

  8. I don’t think it’s such a big deal really. It’s not fly-by-night at least – a quick google makes that obvious. I know a couple of guys who really could use something like this – great guys who are just majorly shy or really bad at getting their vibe across because they’re so nervous. People go to classes to learn all sorts of things that will have less impact on their lives.

    Also not sure what’s offensive about it. Unless there’s a section of their course called ‘The Art of Rohypnol’ I can’t see how it’s damaging to anyone let alone women.

    At the end of the day if it makes people feel more confident it’s a good thing. Each to his own or her own. You never know, perhaps your soulmate goes on this course and it gives him the courage to speak to you…

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