by RAF KATIGBAK

“My parents always asked when I’d get a real job,” types Jinx over Instant Messaging. “So I did—gaming.” As a Frag Doll, Jinx (aka Ashley Jenkins) is part of the six-woman professional gaming team recruited by game company Ubisoft to promote their games and spread the gospel of female firepower (“frag” is the gaming term used to describe eliminating other players in multiplayer shooters, i.e. fragging).

While the term “professional gamer” may sound like an oxymoron, the truth is, it’s a serious endeavour, with payouts ranging from several hundred into the tens of thousands of dollars at international-level competitions.

Indeed, recognition of electronic gaming as a legitimate sport is gaining wider acceptance by the day (Fox Sports recently listed professional gamer Fatal1ty as the #2 most feared person in sports, just behind boxer Mike Tyson).

But as the public’s knowledge of the gaming community increases, the gaming community finds itself in a stage of redefinition; the image of video gamers as crater-faced teenage boys lurking in their parents’ basements playing hours on end is quickly dissolving. The truth is the average video gamer is older (23), and while it’s difficult to find concrete numbers, a surprising number of them are females.

The main mission

Enter the Frag Dolls who, over the last 15 months, have been converting non-believers by winning competition after competition, leaving a trail of pubescent boys quivering in their wake. On the eve of their appearance at the Arcadia Festival, the Mirror caught up with Frag Dolls Jinx, Rhoulette (aka Morgan Romine) and Seppuku (aka Emily Ong)—in San Francisco, Austin and Silicon Valley respectively—for an online chat to find out more.

Mirror: What’s the main mission for the Frag Dolls?

Rhoulette: One of our primary goals is to raise the general awareness that girls play games too. Many of the super hardcore gamers know that girls play, so it’s not surprising to them, but we still get looks of shock when we talk to strangers and explain what we do. Eventually I would like to be able to walk into a game store to preorder the next hottest title and not have the guy behind the counter exclaim, “Wait. You’re getting this game for YOU?”

Jinx: So, just by being here, we hope to make the casual gamers aware that this isn’t just a guy’s world. Expectations are high, and it’s always a challenge to meet them. It’s hard, but it’s worth it. It’s great to hear some guy scoff over a girl playing, only to slink away after he got dominated in a game.

R: We’re not trying to go out there to humiliate the guys, we’re just there to play. But sometimes it turns into a battle for their masculinity.

J: Yes. A lot of guys think it somehow makes them less masculine to lose to a girl.

Seppuku: It’s always fun beating those smack talkers.

R: Definitely. But we always make a point to be good sports after the game, no matter what happens. We can trash-talk all we want in-game, but there’s very little that’s gained by taking that outside of the competitive arena.

Logging game time

M: How many hours do you practice?

R: If we’re not preparing directly for a tournament we often play two to four hours a day. Sometimes those of us with the time can spend up to 12–14 hours a day gaming to get ready for a tournament

M: Whoa, 12–14 hours? I know that if I play that long, I get a little wonky.

J: Yeah, after that many hours my brain tends to shut down.

M: After a long session, do you guys keep relating to the real world in gaming terms?

R: Yes. One of my favourite examples is when I’ll go out on my balcony, which looks out over a canyon, and if I see someone across the way go out onto their balcony, my thumb twitches to zoom in on them as if I were scoping them with a sniper rifle.

J: I’m always wishing I could zoom in like that!

S: After too much Halo, I see red dots on people’s foreheads.

R: Katscratch has described wandering around a grocery store and seeing a reticule light up red as she scans past people.

S: Brookelyn’s alarm went off and she woke up screaming “GRENADE!!!” Katscratch told me once that she said, “But we hardly used the battle rifle” in her sleep.

Girls’ world

M: What are the major differences between the Frag Dolls and teams of guy gamers?

J: Our conversations range from game strategies and techniques to shoes with surprising ease.

R: We talk about boys and makeup!

J: And we admire each other’s armour.

R: And whenever we travel together we share clothes.

R: I would say that girl gamers have a higher propensity for drama. Although after travelling around with some of the guys at these tournaments, I think they’re just as much drama queens as we girls are.

M: Do you think that there’s something about being a girl that inherently makes them better suited to gaming?

J: Women tend to work together. A lot of men have issues with personal ego getting in the way. Everyone wants to be the big hero. Women aren’t immune to that, but it’s less ingrained.

M: There was a time when game developers were trying to create “pink games,” so-called games for girls, but more often than not, they got it wrong.

R: The game industry is just now starting to learn how to market to the female gaming demographic. In the past they’ve been focused on that 18–35-year-old male gamer. But there is this misconception that you need to make entirely different games for girls. The reality is that girls’ tastes vary as widely as guys’.

J: I hope developers relax. As a woman, I care about playing a good game. I like story, I like sympathetic characters, but I don’t want gameplay to suffer or be watered down to suit “feminine sensibilities.”

R: Developers don’t need to make “pink games.” They just need to make a wide variety of games and market them to the women. There are girls who love the shoot-’em-ups with unrealistically proportioned female characters; there are also girls who want to play puzzle games like Myst with their friends.

S: And girls dig violence and gore too sometimes!

J: I personally dislike characters that couldn’t possibly do acrobatics with those proportions. In a fighting game, I’ll never play one of them. I do like attractive characters—I just don’t think breast size is the only indicator of beauty.

The battle ahead

R: Ultimately, we play like any other guy, we can get as obsessed about games as any guy, and we can geek out about games with any guy. So in fact, we’re aiming to have girl gamers become a normal thing. We want the general perception of the gaming community to include female gamers naturally. But because it’s such a shock to many people still, the way that we are working to increase this awareness is by pointing out that we’re girls.

M: So you’re in a weird position in that the Frag Dolls are a special thing but the goal is for you not to be so special…

J: Yes. If we’re successful, we’ll cease to be anything special.

S: We’re just hoping to pave the road for future girl gamers.

R: I don’t know if the Frag Dolls will be around as we are today. I’m not sure how long this reformation of the gamer stereotype will take. I know that in 20 years I want to see professional gaming tournaments that are being won by teams consisting of men and women working together. This is one of the few competitive levels in which men and women can compete fairly without natural physical advantages.

S: And unlike professional sports, it sounds totally more doable.

J: The ultimate battlefield.

The Frag Dolls will take on all comers at the Arcadia Festival, Nov. 4–6 at Université de Montréal’s CEPSUM (2100 Édouard Montpetit)

by JESSICA ANDREWS

The Arcadia Festival promises something for everyone, from the novice player to the aging hipster and hardcore gamer alike.

Scheduled to take place on the heels of the International Game Summit, Arcadia runs from November 4–6, mightily asserting Montreal’s station as an industry hotspot “du jour.”

The event will be held at the University of Montreal, where five separate but parallel universes have been created over a 20,000 square-foot venue (and that doesn’t include the wall space, reserved for projections of celebrity game face-offs and a variety of Québécois VJ shenanigans).

The zones in the multimedia playground are: the Flashback Zone, the Zone Plays, Zone PC, the Arcademic Zone and the Arcadia Scene.

In what could be the largest video arcade experience this side of E3, attendees will be able to try out the latest in preview release titles from Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and A2M as well as other console titles.

Must tries are:

• Peter Jackson’s King Kong, produced to coincide with the release of the feature film out at the end of this year. Players can play as either Jack or Kong and face the ultimate survival challenge of fighting a T-Rex where the animation, movement and interaction are all controlled by its AI. (Ubisoft)

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is the demo that had the industry buzzing after E3, where Link warps into the wolf version of himself. (Nintendo)

• Sony’s Eye Toy system, which puts you right into the game by using sophisticated camera motion sensor technology. (PS2)

• FLOW: Urban Dance Uprising, the first break-dance simulation that lets you battle with up to eight dancers, with hip hop tracks from Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow and Eric B. & Rakim. (A2M, Ubisoft; it’s Eye Toy compatible)

Old timer zone

In true pilgrimage ritual, participants can also return to the roots of gaming culture by way of the Flashback Zone, where they’ll find original consoles from Atari, Sega, Coleco, Neo Geo, 3DO and more, supplied by the Quebec Video Game Collectors Club and the Classic Gaming Collectors of Canada.

As well, the re-release of Atari’s 2600 console (Atari Flashback 2.0) will run 40 classics, including Pong (the first home video game ever), Centipide, Asteroids and more.

Brainiac zone

There is also the chance to learn about how these titles get made and brought to market in a behind-the-scenes look at game development. Supervised by Samuelle Ducrocq-Henry from UQÀM, the Arcademic Zone’s schedule includes creative workshops, demonstrations and talks (many are in French) about the ins and outs of game production.

There will be a presentation on the making of Myst IV by its writer/director/producer Michel Poulette, as well as talks on game soundtrack composing (Tom Salta, Persist Music) and voice-over acting (Annick Vermette, Prince of Persia ).

The Arcademic Zone will offer schmoozing opportunites for those looking to enter the industry. For future developers, information booths from colleges and universities will show off training programs specific to the industry.

Hip hop & electro

As the days morph into night, the festival will be staging live music. Friday the floor is devoted to hip hop, featuring Team Canada DJ’s DR One and Grandtheft.

On Saturday the main draw is legendary DJ Junkie XL (for eXpanding Limits), best known for raising Elvis from the dead with his remix of “A Little Less Conversation” (originally made for Nike’s World Cup 2002 commercial), but who before that created sounds for commercials, videogames and movies like Blade and Resident Evil.

Four members of the 8bit group (Bubblyfish, David Kristian, Nullsleep & Bit Shifter) will open, followed by the Minibosses, who are described as “progressive-rock-metal-Nintendocore.”

Whether organizers can attract the 10,000–15,000 they hope to is debatable, but I for one will be there, trying not to drool ’cause that would just be un-lady-like.

Arcadia, Nov. 4–6, Cepsum, Université de Montréal, 2100 Édouard-Montpetit. Nov. 4 & 5: 10 a.m.–5 p.m., 7 p.m.–2 a.m. Nov. 6: 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Tickets: $10 for a day pass, $20 for an evening pass: $25 for a full-day/evening pass, $25 for a three-day pass; $60 for a three-day/two evening pass. For more info www.arcadiafestival.ca