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I get spam now and then from the IGN Games website. I think I tried to unsubscribe at some point and failed, so now I just mark it as spam and move on.

But the latest piece of spam from them had an eye-catching subject line: “Boobs, Bad Games and Misogyny + Top PS3 & X360 Games for 2012.” So I opened the email to take a look.

Sure enough, the lead article mentioned in the email is an opinion piece by Colin Campbell titled “Boobs, Bad Games and Misogyny.” It kinda wanders around for a while, and qualifies too much (I suspect in an attempt to avoid taking too much flak from its (presumably largely male and non-feminist) readership), but its core message is a good one. Not the best feminist article about gaming ever written, but far from the worst.

So I wouldn't be linking to it were it not for the other thing I noticed in the email.

In the left column of the email, under the heading “Top Stories,” there was a link to the abovementioned opinion piece. In the right column of the email, right next to that piece, there was a link to a piece entitled “Babeology Warrior Week: Gabby Jeanne.” Which is, yes, a photo page featuring female models (real humans, not video-game characters) in extremely skimpy outfits and quasi-sexy poses.

The best part of all this is the pull quote for the opinion piece, which is included in the email, and which appears right next to the “Warrior Week” photo:

If game makers want to distance themselves from cheap marketing tactics, there's a really easy solution...

Sing it, brother. But you might want to start by talking to your own site. If game-site makers want to distance themselves from cheap marketing tactics, there's the same really easy solution.