Since learning of girlie gaming troupe Frag Dolls on Saturday, I've been doing a little reading. As they explain it, they are to gamers what Olympians are to athletes — and female. Athens just finished showing us what aesthetics can do for beach volleyball, so it comes as no surprise that video game company Ubisoft would scoop up a gaggle of Nintendo-thumbed beauties, assign them uniforms and plunk them down into a gaming convention. Why not? As Bungie software — from whom I first learned of this little arrangement — more or less put it, the A-B-B-A-Select-Start bombshells turned heads, put mitts on controllers, drummed up some buzz for Ubi and Penny Arcade, and invited a long-absent market demographic to the console aisle by proving that an attractive mien and top-tier ladder skills are not mutually exclusive.
It's part Power Puff Girls, part A-Team, part Spice Girls with IQs easily busting 120. The Frag Dolls say they're sponsored by Ubisoft. Even if they really are the winners of a talent search and the makings of a collective sponsor (are we supposed to pick a favorite? Er, how about "Jinx"?), their place in gaming is earned — just ask the nebbish con-jockeys who got creamed at the Penny Arcade Exposition. It almost makes a casual XBox player want to go serious.
Anything that adds a little blush to a sport that used to be two four-eyed nerds in a rec room is worth a closer look — and a permanent link. Well done, Dolls.
AHA!: Their flame-haired organizer is an Ubisoft "Community Manager." Half coterie, half marketing. Brilliant.