Sep 16, 6:00 am
“Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success
None of us would get very far without the support of others, and I am no exception. I have been blessed with an incredible network of friends, family, and coworkers. This is my attempt to thank some of those who have helped me throughout my seven year journey with Ubisoft.
Kurtis Buckmaster and Chris Mancil:: for being my first community management role models and giving me the courage to apply my first CM position.
Josh Milligan:: for giving me a chance as a passionate gamer fresh out of college, despite my lack of marketing experience. Thanks, too, for the years of guidance and mentorship long after giving me that first chance.
Ron Meiners:: for being my first manager and mentor in the game industry, as well as for being a happy sounding board for my academic musings.
Mike Jeffress:: for your valuable (if joking) contributions during the conjuring of the idea for the Frag Doll team.
Nate Mordo:: for founding the team with me in 2004, being our first brand manager, and believing in this idea long before anyone else could really take it seriously. Your friendship, support, and creativity were all crucial to the creation of what turned into an amazingly unique project.
Michael Beadle:: for being our first and most cherished PR manager. Along with Nate, your friendship, support, and wisdom have been essential to the success of the Frag Doll team throughout the years.
Paul Caparotta and Jeff Dandurand:: for your direct supervision and guidance. Managing a hothead like me is never easy, but you both handled the task with patience, grace, and humor.
Jill Steinberg and Tony Key:: for supporting the Frag Doll team throughout all of the ups and downs of the past seven years. I believe that we would not have thrived under the supervision of anyone else in the game industry.
Melanie Desliens:: for being a powerhouse and role model. Thanks, too, for being such an inspiration and dear friend during (and ever since) our co-management of the team.
Adam Chun-Avila:: for being a patient but steady balancer as my co-manager for the past few years. Yours is a voice of reason that has been and will continue to be a blessing for the team.
Jasmine Ianneo:: for creating the Frag Doll look and logo, and for championing the team’s badass spirit within the company.
Whitni Radar:: for making us look good in photos and on the web ever since our inception.
Ryan Yount
Justin Landskron
Izaac Russo
Dave Macachor
Owen Grace
Alex Oliver-Gans
Phil Shpilberg
Anita Brey
Josh Ostrander
Amy/Valkyrie: for being the most passionate, competitive, and driven part of this team from Day 1. Thanks, too, for letting yourself trust me so much that we could become life-long friends.
Brooke/Brookelyn: for being a fun and vibrantly beautiful energy for a long as I’ve known you. Thank you for being a constant inspiration and source of a special kind of courage, whether you knew it or not.
Ashley/Jinx: for being an invaluable source of smarts, hard work, and sincere geekery during the first crucial years of the Frag Dolls.
Emily/Seppuku: for being our cool-headed, smooth-dancing, comic-loving fashionista. We could always rely on you for your wisdom and reason, as well as for your delightfully edgy aesthetic and creative sense. You brought style to the Frag Doll team.
Theresa/Eekers: for helping us hold true to our competitive roots during a first year, and for being a dedicated and delightful member of our community for the years since you were on the team.
Kat/Katscratch: for lending us your keen insights about the industry, and for helping to show that female gamers can be hardcore, knowledgeable enthusiasts, as well as kick-ass business women.
Alyson/Calyber: for being a wonderfully impossible blend of silly, competitive, ferocious, and fun. The Frag Doll team was deeply blessed to have you as a member during our years of rapid growth. You helped to keep us going and pushed us forward.
Renelly/Psyche: for being the most eager and indomitable spirit. Thank you for your thirst to learn and grow. You brought the rest of the team up to the next level, and have continued to be a role model for the rest of the Frag Doll family.
Alexis/Mischief: for always being the center of the most fun that anyone on the team had ever had. Every “best story ever” has Alex in there somewhere, and for that, I thank you! 
Marcella/Pyra: for being a reliable support for our team before and during your tenure as a Frag Doll. Thank you, too, for being a voice for PC gaming competition despite a team full of loud Xbox competitors. You always helped to lend us balance.
Faith/Phoenix: for being a relentless source of energy and ideas. You provided an infusion of optimism and enthusiasm that the team needed, and you have continued to be our most valuable source of fun and vision.
Anne-Marie/Spectra: for being a content creation powerhouse, and for being able to share your sense of wonder and genuine love for video games in such a relatable way. Your talent for expression on camera is unique and irreplaceable.
Lanai/Fidget: for helping to reinstitute our competitive edge, and for turning into our surprise dance pro. Thanks, too, for growing into the Frag Doll team so well, and for now helping the team to grow with you.
Krystal/Siren: for being utterly reliable, while also managing to be unpredictable and fun. I keep telling them that you’re the mischievous one, but nobody believes me…
Sarah/Glitch: for being a sweet and uniquely creative addition to the team. Thank you, too, for being a dedicated community member before your induction to the team, and for becoming a dear friend through the years.
Edelita/Pixxel and Kim/Sabre: though I haven’t gotten enough time with either of you, thank you both for being so incredibly awesome despite all the ups and downs of the past couple of months. Your resilience in the face of so much change bodes very well for the team’s future.
Expo
BCA
tooth
Nutty
Borfase
Mookel
NinjaKnight
Stan
Lambda
Ukyo
jon
Gypsy816
RedCoatKezz
SlickRick
Stonelance
Brimtown
Pino
CRM
Butta
Calistah
Steel
Marcus/ERRR151
SeductivPancakes
Warholism
Special love to babycheeses and gtz
I would want to thank ALL 60 of our Cadettes!
I also want to specifically call out those female gamer friends that we have known for a long time, many of whom were Pre-Cadettes and helped to inspire the Cadette academy:
Jamie King
Daniela Lao
Tunesha Davis
Ashton Williams
Carolyn Glatz
Sarah Gordon
Kathleen Grohman
Kari Toyama
Melonie Mac
Megan Perry
Kristen Maloney
Heather Hooks
Jennifer Wadella
Special love to my little Cadette sisters: Daniela, Jaspir, HeyCheri, Lireal, Elisa, Jodi, Lauren, Sheena.
Special Acknowledgements
Amber Dalton
The PMS Clan
Yvonna Lynn
Kathleen Sanders
NerdPoker
Personal Support Team
Mom
Dad
James
Kallah Maguire
Sasha Doppelt
Alexander Jackson
Grace Jeong
Elham Mireshghi
and of course, my Joe Dodson
I couldn’t possibly thank every deserving person here, but know that I feel blessed to have been a part of your lives, and look forward to our future adventures together.
Until the next one… cheers!
And remember...
SHARE THIS:
Aug 23, 8:00 am
After seven incredible, glorious, affirming, heartbreaking, educational, never-woulda-guessed-this-was-possible years, the time has come for me to step down from my role as Captain, and retire from the Frag Doll team.
This whole adventure has been a product of blessed circumstances and a naïve faith that this road would lead to something awesome. When I helped to found the team in the summer of 2004, I unknowingly embarked upon a journey that would transform my life. All the people I have come to know, and all the things I have been able to do, have helped to define who I am and what I hope to become. The Frag Dolls project has carried me through the first steps of a fascinating and unpredictable career, and delivered me into indelible friendships that I cannot imagine my life without.
I have carefully nurtured and ferociously defended the Frag Dolls project ever since we debuted at the very first Penny Arcade Expo. In spite of immense external doubt, we have survived years longer than anyone predicted, and grown into something more vibrant and meaningful than I could have ever hoped. I radiate a nuclear-glow of pride when I think about the things we have accomplished together as a team.
We are still the only all-female competitive team to finish semi-pro in an MLG pro-circuit (Rainbow Six Vegas, 2007). In 2008 our Twitter following skyrocketed to near 1.4 million, putting us in the top 100 Twitter accounts worldwide. A large fraction of those followers proved to be women who love technology, games, and geek culture as much as we do. We have attended countless events and supported a full spectrum of different game interests. We have spoken on behalf of female geeks and gamers on panels at industry events like the Game Developers Conference and SXSW, and consumer events like PAX and the San Diego Comic Convention. We have been given the opportunity to represent the interests of game industry women on media platforms as large as The Today Show, CNN, and Good Morning America. Most recently, and of special importance to me, we have developed a genuine community and sisterhood in our Frag Doll Cadette Academy, providing a wealth of knowledge, experience, and support to a diverse group of amazing women.
There are numerous people to thank for giving me the opportunities necessary for me to be part of this wild adventure. So many people, in fact, that I plan to write a blog full of gratitude sometime later, before the end. But it goes without saying that none of this would be possible without my incredible teammates. A leader can only ever be as good as those on her team, and I have been unbelievably fortunate to work with people who are as talented as they are passionate. The strength of this team is built upon the quality of my teammates, and we are stronger now than ever.
Each Frag Doll (past and present) deserves special credit for her contributions, and again, I’ll give each her due in another blog. But for now I want to call out special thanks for Amy and Brooke, the two other uber veterans who have stuck by me, through thick and thin, for the past seven years. I will forever imagine them as the beating heart of our team, and I am certain none of our accomplishments would have been possible without them. I thank my lucky stars that I will get to call them both lifelong friends for a long time to come. There are those at Ubisoft who also deserve special thanks for their unwavering support of the team through the years. You know who you are, but be prepared for specific shout-outs in the near future. Last but not least, this preliminary round of thanks warrants a big nod to our devoted community. I can think of so many occasions when I have been glad to have you all as a sounding board and support system. I am delighted that I will have one more opportunity to thank many of you personally while I’m still wearing the black and pink.
Given that we started the team at a community-focused gamer event like the first PAX, it is fitting that the 10th PAX will mark my last event and accomplishment as a Frag Doll. With that in mind, I will delay my sappiest sentiments for a real goodbye in a few weeks (yes, I get sappier), and for now start preparing myself for an epic PAX. I plan on partying, hugging, and thanking as many awesome members of this community as possible this week. Once I’ve partied with, hugged, and thanked you all, we can carry on like normal when I see you again, probably at PAX East. My last hurrah as a Frag Doll will herald the first steps down a new path, and I plan to share my future adventures with you all, just as I have been eager to share this one.
See you all in Seattle for massive hugs, nostalgia trips, and sworn promises that you won’t ever really be rid of me.
<3, Rhoulette
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Aug 11, 6:17 am
With every Casting Call, I hear the Highlander rule in my head: “There can only be one…” To which, I always hopefully, secretly reply, “unless there are two!” It’s no secret that we’ve been slippery with this rule in the past. We always start out with the agreement that we will only hire one new Frag Doll. Then, we are faced with the reality of an astoundingly talented group of applicants, and we return to our Ubisoft bosses and beg them to let us hire the whole lot of them. Management compromises by allowing us to hire two.
This Casting Call was no exception, even though our slippage meant bringing the total Frag Doll team count to TEN! This is a testament to the strength of our applicant pool, actually, because we’ve never had more than nine Frag Dolls, and we wouldn’t have been able to argue for this expansion if not for the exceptional quality of our Finalist group. Even after we got the green light to hire two, we realized that we’d hardly made our decision any easier.
But after the amazing marathon of San Diego Comic Con, and a couple weeks of heartbreaking decision making, we are happy to welcome our two newest Frag Dolls, Pixxel (aka Edelita) and Sabre (aka Kim)!
Thanks to the Cadette program, we already considered these two girls to be part of our Frag Doll family, so this is more like a promotion to Big Sister status rather than a brand new addition. Many of you may know them in their previous Cadette forms, but the following profiles are the first of many ways that you will get to know them better as Frag Dolls.
SHARE THIS:
Aug 04, 8:00 am
Exciting news! I am delighted to announce that we will hire a new Frag Doll before PAX Prime, and the recruitment process is already well underway!!! We selected applicants directly from our Cadette pool based on estimated best fit for our team at this particular time. The initial set of hand-picked recruits has already been put through an application process for which we requested several components, including video blog, written blog, bio in the Frag Doll format, and a written interview.
All of this backstage activity has resulted in the selection of 11 Finalists to continue to the next round of consideration! These 11 will be accompanying us to the San Diego Comic Convention next week so that we may get to know each of them better and have fun together before what will be an extremely difficult choice.
Over these next few weeks, we want to help you get to know each Finalist better, too. We are going to post each Finalist’s key application content as blogs here on our site and on YouTube so they are available for your perusal. We will go alphabetically through the list, posting one Finalist per day, and with each new update, this announcement blog will also be updated to make this a central hub for all 2011 Finalist information. The final decision will not be made until August, but you will have all of that time to get to know and love all of the Finalists before then.
Without further ado, here are the 11 gamers in the running to become the next Frag Doll!
Note about future recruitment: For those looking hopefully ahead to Casting Calls beyond this one, we predict that we will be pulling directly from our Cadettes for the forseeable future. If you are a Cadette hoping to get selected to apply for a full Frag Doll position someday, my advice is to stick around, keep having fun, and do good work! The Cadette program provides opportunities to develop your marketing and creative skills, as well as the persistent opportunity to get to know like-minded women in games. But remember that our team’s limited size necessitates that we will only ever be able to raise a tiny fraction of our Cadettes to the Frag Doll team. The simple odds of this situation make it especially important to appreciate how every experience you have and every connection you make through the Cadette program will help you towards some career in the game industry, and becoming a Frag Doll doesn’t have to be a step in your journey towards reaching your long-term professional goals. We encourage you to shoot for your goals, and if that includes being a Frag Doll, then by all means work for it! But we would also encourage you to think beyond the Frag Doll team to imagine what your life-time career goals might be. You might discover that the Cadette program is already the perfect launching pad for reaching your dreams.
SHARE THIS:
Jun 28, 8:00 am
At E3, I was lucky enough to grab some time with May Ling Tan, one of the designers on Ghost Recon Online in the Ubisoft Singapore studio. We plan on playing this game relentlessly when the closed beta begins this summer. It’s well-balanced, free, and feels like a Tom Clancy multiplayer game should. Since this is so clearly ideal for our team’s gaming style, I was keen to get some inside strategic tips that would give us a head-start. Luckily for you all, I can be a generous girl before the competition gets tight, so I’m willing to share these tips for now. Study up before I change my mind.
To read more about Ghost Recon Online, be sure to check out Spectra’s exclusive content from the E3 Preview Event in her blog Ghost Recon Online Revealed.
Go to www.GhostReconOnline.com for more information about the beta. Afterall, we’ll need people to practice these strategies on.
