Fair warning: This blog is long and heartfelt. I put our GOTY results towards the end so people might have more incentive to read the rest of it, but if you have a bad case of TLDNR, I’ll find a way to forgive you if you skim and/or skip towards the end.

I started this blog with the intention of waxing retrospective about both the year and decade past, but we still don’t seem to have a satisfactory name for the last ten year period. After failing to find any sort of consensus among the various resources I checked, I figured I might as well pick my own name for them and stick with it. I picked “The O’s” because it’s easy to say and we already tend to refer to years of this decade as “O-3” or O-9 “. This is not to be pronounced “zero-3”, but as the letter “o”, or as in the “O” of OMG. That’s the best I could do, so let’s move on.

2009 was a year in-flux. The sense of transition and change was global and multifaceted such that the effects of large-scale events rippled through a large majority of the world’s population and yet affected each individual in a personal way. As an employee of the game industry, I was exposed to the negative side-effects of the widespread economic crisis, and though I didn’t lose my job, it is always difficult and disturbing to see friends and colleagues lose theirs. I do feel exceptionally lucky, however, that we all seem to have weathered the worst of the storm (knocking on wood), and that our Frag Doll team was able to accomplish some incredible things despite the hardships, uncertainty, and not having our games in any live competitive circuits.

In 2009, we found ourselves excelling in the exciting, unpredictable, and unusual space of Twitter and somewhat inexplicably gained a foothold that rocketed us beyond the rare marker of 1 million followers. In 2009, we celebrated our 5 year anniversary as a team, the graduation of two seasoned veteran Frag Dolls on to bigger and better things, and the recruitment of two fresh faces who have reenergized and reinvented our purpose. In 2009, we continued to grow our community while also gratefully maintaining good ties to most of the friends who have already supported us for so many years. In 2009, we began the Frag Doll Cadettes Academy in an attempt to actively grow our family of girl gamers and share the benefit of our opportunities. The first class of dedicated and passionate Cadettes exceeded our expectations and proved themselves a useful asset for Ubisoft as a company. In 2009, we were able to participate in our first charity event with the Child’s Play auction in Seattle, and our auction item (a Beat-Down session by the Frag Dolls) looks like it is going to be parlayed into yet another charity event. In 2009, we continued to evolve as a team and as a marketing project within Ubisoft, and have emerged now in 2010 better prepared to support gamers and gamer culture even as these concepts are rapidly growing to include a much more diverse audience. You could say that I’m pretty proud of team and community for continuing to be awesome.

“The O’s”, as a decade, are much harder for me to reflect upon because they represent such a significant set of changes not only in the world but in my life personally. Just to name a few highlights, The O’s saw me through my mega-addiction to EverQuest, a stint as a walk-on for NCAA Division 1 basketball team, my graduation from college, meeting my now-fiancé, leading a 200+ guild in Shadowbane, choosing to work for Ubisoft instead of going to law school, founding the Frag Dolls, traveling to countless new places, making new life-long friends, and learning some hard lessons about trust, having my geek musings published for the first time, moving to a new city, beginning the long journey towards my PhD in the anthropology of online games… The O’s saw me through a lot of big changes. I’m tempted to think of this as the decade when I grew up, but since I’m still really just a big kid who uses big words when she needs to seem all grown-up and plays video games the rest of the time, I’ll hold onto that declaration a bit longer.

One fun way to track how much has happened in the past decade is to think about it in terms of all the games we’ve played and which ones made the biggest impressions on us.
In honor of this, I have compiled two lists. The first is a list of our Frag Doll community’s Favorite Games of 2009. The results were determined by a poll I started in our forums, and it should be remembered that each of us voted on our one favorite, which likely produced different results than had we each picked our top 5 favorites. The list represents what we’ve played and loved most as a community.

According to this poll, our FD Community Game of the Year is: Uncharted 2. This is pretty cool considering that we have seemed to be an Xbox dominant community for a while. I might be wrong about that, actually, because we have always been a diverse bunch, but it’s nice to see a PS3 game get this nod.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is our runner-up, and I don’t think this is very surprising considering how many of our community members are hardcore Xbox FPS players.

Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands, and Batman Arkham Asylum tied for third place, Dragon Age came in fourth, and Forza Motorsport 3 came in fifth. Honorable mentions go to Left for Dead 2, Demon’s Souls, Street Fighter 4, Super Mario Bros Wii, and UFC 2009 Undisputed.

This second list is my own personal list of the games from the past decade that left the most indelible marks on my psyche. All of these have special meaning to me for one reason or another, and may not even be strictly “the best” (or most highly rated) of the games that I was lucky enough to get my hands on, but these sit on the top shelf of my brain’s gaming collection. In no particular order:

EverQuest – played for the better part of four years, and at times I would play upwards of 10 hours per day. This was my first MMO love and undeniably the reason why I chose to dedicate my career and academic work to online video games.

Shadowbane – “played” for two years in the community before the game was released, gathered a guild so we could be a power from launch, then actually played for six months before getting burned out by the thankless drain of being a guild leader. If you play MMOs now and are part of a guild, do me a favor and stop to send your guild leader a random thank you for all the work they do. You probably don’t see 95% of all that they do, and it makes a world of difference to hear some gratitude now and then.

World of Warcraft – more influential for the effect this game has had on the lives on my friends than it is for the effect it has had on mine. I’ve played WoW on and off since beta, and though I haven’t put the same amount of time into it that I did for EQ or Shadowbane, I do adore it, and it has been everpresent in my life for years so it deserves a spot on this list.

Okami – no art in any game I’ve ever played as delighted me as much as that in Okami. It is breathtakingly beautiful, and the story and gameplay are fantastic too. Beyond that, I can’t really explain how or why Okami touched me like it did. It’s not rational, but I can easily declare this game as one of my all-time favorite non-MMOs.

Animal Crossing DS – this thing had me hooked for a good four months. I was working full-time and on deadline for the writing of my chapter for She’s Such a Geek, but all I wanted to do was play Animal Crossing.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory – this was the first big game that I got to lead an online marketing campaign for while working for Ubisoft as a community manager and online marketing manager. I loved the first Splinter Cell before ever working for Ubisoft, but Chaos Theory marks a monumental career first for me.

Rainbow Six 3 - Black Arrow, and Rainbow Six Vegas – the first (and favorite) series of games that we Frag Dolls competed in officially as a team. The whole Rainbow series deserves credit, but I’m calling out Black Arrow and the first Vegas as my personal favorites.

Beyond Good and Evil – the main character, Jade, was one of the first portrayals of a strong, lovable female protagonist in a video game that made a big impression on me. I was struck by how she wasn’t a typical game hero in many ways because she wasn’t wearing sexy skimpy clothing and she wasn’t toting big weapons. But armed with her tomboyish haircut, bo staff, and big hearted nurturing of orphans, she is still one of my favorite characters to have saved the world vicariously through.

Prince of Persia Sands of Time – I find the puzzle-solving and monkey-like acrobatic gameplay in this and the latest Prince of Persia entirely soothing. They’re noteworthy because, among so many of the games that I start but never finish, I played both of these until they were finished.

Portal – innovative, sweet, simple, and brilliant. I frequently use Portal as a “gateway drug” when attempting to convince non-gamers that games aren’t all about violence and shooting people. Sometimes it’s about creatively using dimensional apertures to escape the maze that a robot has built to kill you.

Guitar Hero 1 – cross my musical training, love of rock ‘n’ roll, and enthusiasm about video games, and you have the explanation for why this game rocked my little world. This was also the first non-FPS that I ever officially competed in. I still consider Cowboys from Hell as my worthy nemesis and 5-starring it as one of my best game accomplishments.

Halo 2 – what can I say? Despite so many of the rude turds that played the online multiplayer in Halo 2 (and Halo 3), I loved Halo 2. I was never more than moderately good at it, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of the strange, bouncy shooter dynamics and fun sci-fi stylings.

All-in-all, it’s been a good year and a good decade. Here’s to looking forward to the next! Cheers, and Happy New Year, everyone!