As if the shame of the Spike TV Music Video Awards wasn't enough, it's the time of year when Playboy highlights the depths to which the videogame industry will stoop for attention. "See the results when video-game vixens shed their clothing pixels," Playboy.com says, advertising the upcoming December issue of the magazine. The fifth annual "girls of gaming" feature will consist of pictures of less-clothed-than-usual videogame characters. I like nekkid women as much as the next guy, but I prefer if at least 90% of the woman is real.

According to a post on Kotaku, this year's sad desperate publishers, willing to trade dignity for cheap publicity, include Deep Silver, Namco, and THQ (twice over!). Gamecock would also be on the list, but that assumes they ever had any dignity to trade. I'm not going to bother listing the games, because it doesn't matter. These companies would invent a female character if they thought it would get them a page in Playboy. There's a reason you don't see Cortana, Alyx, or Judy Nails here. Their games sell based on qualities less fleeting than titillation. Or in the case of Lara Croft, her absence from this year's feature brings to mind William H. Macy's line about Sarah Jessica Parker's breasts in State and Main: "The country could draw [them] from memory."

(The censored picture above is a cropped image from last year's spread. I'm sure you recognize the young woman as one of the characters in Tabula Rasa.)