E3 time always brings with it a webload of exciting announcements. We thought that this year, we’d like to kick-off the E3 news with our own fabulous announcement. We’ve been dropping hints for the past week that this announcement was coming, and in the theme of hints, we have more to drop about another E3-related announcement later this week (#E3Drum anyone? Keep an eye on @fragdolls). But for now, here’s one last teaser for our big Frag Doll Announcement:

Yep, it’s exactly what it looks like: we hired two new Frag Dolls! If you’re curious how we managed this without a Casting Call, please keep reading through to the end. I have explanations and even more good news to follow, but before getting to that I’d like to introduce the cute girls in that drawing. Meet Glitch (left) and Siren (right)!

You may recognize Glitch, otherwise known as sarabellum or Sarah Oliver, from her previous involvement as a finalist from our 2009 Casting Call, a member of the first Cadette class, and long-time Frag Doll community regular. We’ve come to know Sarah as a tireless gamer geek, talented troll charmer, and exceptional artist (see above cute drawing). We love her style so much that we decided to bring her onto the team in hopes that her cool will rub off on the rest of us.

We got to know Siren, otherwise called xHOODLUMGIRLSx or Krystal Herring, through her time spent as a semi-finalist in the 2009 Casting Call and an esteemed member of the first Cadette class. From our earliest encounters with Siren she has proven herself a highly motivated competitive FPS player. Her accomplishments include membership on the PMS Clan Halo 3 team that finished Top 5 in the 2008 WCG Nationals. We’ve also seen her apply remarkable shooter talent and outstanding teamwork to games like Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Modern Warfare 2. On top of her mad gaming skills, she has demonstrated through her event work as Cadette that the leadership ability and professionalism that she’s honed as a manager for M.A.C. cosmetics will make her an invaluable asset during our gaming events.

In the past, we’ve hired new Frag Dolls through Casting Calls. This time around, our Frag Doll Cadette Academy provided us with an alternate mode of recruitment. Instead of having just a few weeks to assess a hundred candidates through only their applications and play tests, the Cadette Academy allows us to get to know the individual potentials of a dozen talented female gamers at a time through several months of events, play dates, and community fun. The Frag Doll Casting Call is not an extinct mode of hiring and I’m sure there will be more in the future, but we are quite pleased with our first direct hire out of our pool of Cadettes.

Don’t stop reading yet, I have MORE GOOD NEWS! We will very likely be hiring again soon, and almost definitely before the end of the year. Things are always subject to change, so don’t send me hate mail if for some reason we can’t follow through, but the current plan is to hire again in the coming months.

This is where I have some words of advice and encouragement for any female gamers aspiring to join our team. For starters, don’t forget that we have very few spots on the team for full Frag Dolls, certainly not enough to accommodate all the gamers we know who have the potential to make fantastic Frag Dolls. Considering that, we usually end up hiring based on two things. First: we hire based on what we need at the time. Our “need at the time” can be shaped by new team projects and directions. It can also be determined by what girls we have on the team already and what roles they fulfill. For example, if we already have four or more pro-level FPS players, we might be more open to hiring a pro-level player of another game genre, or perhaps someone with a specific talent that would be especially useful to the team’s marketing and community activities.

Second: with so many other talented gamers around, we end up hiring those who stand out for one reason or another. It is not usually enough to be solid in everything, though we of course expect our best candidates to be well-rounded in the basics (console FPS, camerawork, writing, online community interaction, etc). We end up hiring those who have developed their natural talents into an exceptional skill set that will make them indispensable to the team.

So here’s my advice: Recognize your strengths – your most vibrant passions and noteworthy talents – and turn them into a stand-out quality. You are encouraged to think about how you, personally, might best contribute to the team and make us better. It’s OK to consider what we need specifically, but you have the best chance of sincerely standing out if you offer something that is organic to you, and representative of your natural talents and inclinations. Even if you’re a supremely talented kazoo player, you should think about how that exceptional quality could be an asset for the Frag Doll team as we play competitively, promote games, and advocate for gamer culture and women in games. It’s that kind of exceptional quality that motivated us to hire Glitch and Siren (er, well not kazoo playing, but you know what I mean), and it is undoubtedly what will motivate us when we hire the next Frag Doll.

Please take a moment to welcome Glitch and Siren into their new roles as Frag Dolls. We know you all will come to love them as much as we do. Congratulations!!!