By Erin Bell

Supposedly girls now make up one third of the gaming landscape, but figures like that seem hard to believe while strolling through the crazy maelstrom that is the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Sure, there are a fair number of women there—behind PR desks, or latched onto their gamer boyfriends looking very tentative. Then of course there's the third group: the booth babes.

I spent the first two days of the conference taking pictures of the luscious beauties who are hired by companies to stand around and promote product. No E3 report is complete, it seems, without a gallery of booth babes to drool over, and GameCritics.com has historically been no exception.

Joy promoting Saga of Ryzom

But I began to notice how the girls would be talking amongst themselves between photo ops—how occasionally an arched eyebrow or rolled eye would break through the plastic smiles and offer little windows into what they actually felt. As I watched them good-naturedly accommodate wave after wave of uncouth photo-seekers, I found myself curious about the tales these women had to tell.

And so, in the last hours of the last day of E3, I decided to talk to some booth babes.

My first stop is Kentia Hall, where I find a model named Joy stationed at the foot of an escalator handing out Saga of Ryzom demo discs. She wears dark blue, and keeps a large sword sheathed in one of her knee-high boots. I asked her what being a booth babe is like.

"It's hard," she replies. "I'm standing on my feet all day, but sometimes I break into an English accent and it helps pass the time." She flashes a warm smile, and touches my arm conspiratorially as her voice shifts easily into a London lilt. "I've learned a lot here, though. Before this, I didn't even know what an MMORPG was."

Joy tells me she works several trade shows a month. We have to pause our conversation frequently as men approach to have their pictures taken with her. For each one she pulls out her sword and flourishes the blade while striking a pose.

I ask if she's comfortable with so many guys posing with her. "It's weird when they put their arms around me," she replies, "but then I feel them shaking and I'm like, whatever, if it's so important to you . . . it's funny when guys come up to me and tell me that it's their first time touching a girl."

I head into the frenetic South Hall and find Lauren working outside the Gizmondo booth handing out coupons for free T-shirts. She is more than happy to talk with me as we move off to one side, out of the busy aisle. "Wow, no one's ever asked us anything before," she says. Lauren's day began at 8:30am and will end at 6pm. After the show she will go to her second job working as a cocktail waitress.

"I was having a discussion with my friends here," says the UCLA graduate, "about how we would be millionaires if we could corner a women gamer market. I personally don't play a lot of games because I don't want to spend the time getting acquainted with the controls. I just want to get right into it."

As for the guys, "it really makes their day to be with five girls at a time," Lauren laughs. Her friend Leah, a USC graduate in Film Production and Business, joins us and adds, "This environment is definitely over-stimulating for them."