Chatroulette has become the new Twitter by allowing strangers to randomly meet via webcam. In other words, it’s a virtual bar. But as we saw in last week’s episode of Pure Pwnage, its not always easy for hardcore gamers to meet girls in bars. (Maybe because girls in bars don't want to be met by hardcore gamers, especially ones wearing bandanas and/or sweatpants).

Besides, most of these guys would probably prefer to build their own dream girl that they could talk dirty to while playing videogames with. Alas, life is not like Weird Science.

But GameCrush apparently come close enough for some. 

The new online gaming-slash-"dating" service is actually more like one of those late-night 976 partyline numbers where sad sacks pay good money to talk to hot girls (though the GameCrush folks liken the cost structure to buying a girl a drink at a bar). The site launched in beta last week and promptly overloaded the servers and shut down after 10,000 gamers bombarded the site in its first 5 minutes.

Not bad for a brand-new site which plans to charge its male customers US$6.60 for a ten-minute webcam or voice-chat-enhanced gaming session with a “PlayDate” who can set the parameters for “flirty” or “dirty” and keeps a reported 60% of the proceeds.

GameCrush, when it starts up again, works with Modern Warfare 2, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Halo 3 as well as several casual games like pool and Battleship. It certainly gives gamers a break from the sausage parties that plague Xbox Live and PC gaming. But at what cost? Well, yes, 66 cents a minute.

But it’s much more than that since GameCrush takes the ongoing objectification of girl gamers (already an oppressed minority in the testosterone-soaked world of online gaming) to its ultimate conclusion by practically turning them into prostitutes. It doesn’t treat male gamers much better, feeding the lonely basement-dwelling loser stereotype that has kept gaming culture down for years.

On the other hand, it did inspire this hilarious parody, so it's not all bad.