Games - Frag Dolls

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The Frag Dolls are a group of girl gamers recruited and employed by Ubisoft with the aim of promoting women in gaming as well as Ubisoft's games. The Frag Dolls are all accomplished gamers; they are also attractive women, which garners them negative as well as positive press attention. The term 'Frag Dolls' usually refers to the American Frag Dolls, but Ubisoft continued the marketing initiative and recruited Frag Doll teams for the UK and France in 2005.

American Frag Dolls

Originally recruited by an advertisement on craigslist in 2004, the American lineup consists of six Frag Dolls: Brookelyn, Jinx, Katscratch, Rhoulette, Seppuku and Valkyrie. Rhoulette, a full-time Ubisoft employee, helped initiate the group . Eekers was a seventh Frag Doll but left the group in 2005; the Frag Dolls are hiring a replacement. According to their recruitment page applications have closed, though no new team member has been announced. According to an on CNET, 8 finalists have been announced and will compete for the open position in a reality series broadcast on the internet.

The American Dolls have attracted a lot of media attention, primarily due to the fact that they are attractive female gamers; in gaming, women players are seen as rare, and due to the anonymous online nature of much gaming, female gamers rarely flaunt their looks and gender. The Frag Dolls fulfil many functions for Ubisoft, from attending industry events to playing competitively, both online and offline. They are known for their skill, particularly at FPS titles, although do not exclusively play Ubisoft games.

The American Dolls have acted as ambassadors of competitive gaming, having toured with the Major League Gaming console professional circuit in the 2005 season. Much of their press has indicated that their mission is to show women that gaming can be fun, and that women can enjoy the same games as men. They have received some negative reactions from female gamers, who claim that they market exclusively to men. Mainstream gaming media, however, has embraced the team's stated goals.

Katscratch, Valkyrie and Rhoulette spoke at the Women's Gaming Conference in Austin, TX (October 2005) about their role as Frag Dolls and how they are attempting to reshape the image of female gamers and raise industry awareness of the female market. In February 2006 the Frag Dolls attended the Women in Games International conference in San Francisco, CA, speaking on a panel and roundtable entitled "Women Who Play." Coverage from the event can be found on Wired and Slashdot .

UK Frag Dolls

After the success of the American Frag Dolls, Ubisoft ran a similar recruitment drive in the UK . Five Frag Dolls were selected: Jam, Kitt, Sarin, Voodoo and Lucky. Lucky left the group shortly after formation due to an increased University workload. It is unknown whether Ubisoft will replace Lucky as she was employed as the "newbie gamer" of the group and her role was mostly to bridge the gap between hardcore gamers and "noobs"; An experiment that had not been attempted in the American lineup and is probably superfluous to the concept of the Fragdolls ideology. Lucky and the UK fragdolls had not been established enough at this juncture for the loss to have any real relevance or impact on either the group or the groups fan base.

It appears that the heavy focus on competitive gaming has been dropped with the UK team. The group places heavy focus on showing everyone that games can be fun, rather than acting as ambassadors for professional gaming, as the original American team has been shown to do in the past. This may be due to a difference in culture between the US and UK or due to limitations of the team's small size.

French Frag Dolls

As a French company, the third territory that Ubisoft have chosen for the Frag Dolls initiative is France. The French Frag Dolls have been announced and introduced as Arwen, Katana, L!lie, Meiko, and Mya. No further information is available for this team as of March, 2006.

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