I don't know if it's the slight Scottish brogue or just that, like most gamers, I'm deeply in love with the song Still Alive, but this video of Scottish Frag Doll Kitt fulfilling a promise to sing a song with Jam Sessions is adorable. More so because she's singing the Portal song.

Kitt's Video Blog Number 2

For the third year in a row Seagate is taking to a dozen cities to pitch their harddrives.

The tour schedule includes Denver, New York, LA and plenty of places in between and each stop will feature several daily gaming tournaments. This time around the Frag Dolls will also be making an appearance at the New York, Dallas and Las Vegas events.

Hit the site for the full break down of locations.

Seagate Digital Experience Tour

Turns out it wasn't actually an audition as the finalists had already been chosen and were going to be appearing on a panel that very afternoon. The girls had been put through their paces all weekend, competing in various game competitions culminating in the aforementioned panel. Here, the finalists were grilled with questions from the audience so that everyone could get to know a little bit more about them. Once it was over, audience members were allowed to vote for their favorite, but the stringent process doesn't end there, oh no. Now the current Dolls must make some hard decisions about who amongst these lovely ladies will be admitted into their super glamorous gaming sorority. I'm on the edge of my seat in anticipation of the announced winner as I'm sure you must be too! Who will it be? Only time will tell...

Frag Doll Finalists [Frag Dolls]

Dell is sponsoring a search for the "most hardcore, competitive female PC gamer" to offer her a spot on the Frag Dolls, as part of their sponsorship of the Ubisoft gaming team.

"We can't wait to welcome a new Frag Doll to the team," said Morgan "Rhoulette" Romine, Frag Doll team captain. "One of our goals is to be advocates for gaming on all platforms and Dell is an ideal partner to help us make this a reality."

Dell is also sponsoring Swedish pro-gamers Team Pandemic, setting the team up with Dell XPS systems and then sending them around to universities to host on-site and online collegiate gaming tourneys.

Hit the jump for the full release.

GET PWNED! DELL SPONSORS FRAG DOLLS AND TEAM PANDEMIC
Female Gamers to Compete for Spot on Frag Doll Roster


ROUND ROCK, Texas, July 20, 2007 - Ready to get PWNED by the most talented gamers?
Two of the world's most recognized gaming teams - Team Pandemic and Ubisoft's Frag Dolls - have scored sponsorships from Dell, the company announced today. The deals bring together some of the best professional gaming talent in the industry, male and female, and the best PC gaming products, specifically Dell XPS™ gaming platforms.
"With these sponsorships, Dell is ratcheting up its ability to network and play directly with college student and women gamers, via gaming events, online forums and other digital media," said Susan Kittleson, director of Dell games and customer marketing. "Dell wants to showcase PC gaming at its highest level, and there's no better way than to partner the best talent with our awarding-winning hardware."
As part of the Frag Dolls' sponsorship, Dell and the team will launch a search for the most hardcore, competitive female PC gamer and offer her a spot in the unique lineup — and the opportunity to compete in tournaments around the world. Female gamers who think they're tough enough to go head-to-head against the world's best can sign up at www.fragdolls.com. Applicants will have the opportunity for in-person interviews Aug. 2-5 in the Dell booth at QuakeCon in Dallas. Qualifiers will compete in the finals on games like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, Aug. 24-26. The winner will be offered a spot on the team.
The Frag Dolls, a team of seven dedicated female gamers assembled by game publisher Ubisoft, are recognized as some of the best players in the world. In addition to attending gaming events, members of the unique and popular gaming team will post monthly columns with tips and trends, participate in podcasts and interviews, and post blogs on a special section of Dell's new interactive web destination, www.delllounge.com.
"We can't wait to welcome a new Frag Doll to the team," said Morgan "Rhoulette" Romine, Frag Doll team captain. "One of our goals is to be advocates for gaming on all platforms and Dell is an ideal partner to help us make this a reality."
The Dell University program is also sponsoring Team Pandemic under the Dell Unleashed banner. Team Pandemic will be the first pro-gaming team to exclusively game on Dell XPS systems featuring Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processors and Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate.
"Dell's college initiative provides us the opportunity to work closely with the industry's technology leaders," said Chris Lemley, president of Team Pandemic. "With Dell Unleashed as a title partner, we have a unique variety of media to further reach the college-aged gamer."
This fall, Team Pandemic and Dell will travel to several university campuses to host on-site and online collegiate gaming tournaments. Top individual prizes will include a trip to Sweden with Team Pandemic for the World Series of Video Game finals. For more information about Team Pandemic's Unleashed activities, go to www.TeamPandemic.net.
The Dell University program offers education discounts and customized PC bundles, including XPS systems, for students, faculty, and staff at hundreds of participating schools across the country. More information and eligibility requirements are at www.DellUnleashed.com.

Pink on black. Ubisoft booth. I just got my ass handed to me by a Frag Doll.

Valkyrie, to be exact, who then continued to beat me two more times before I gave in, despite the fact that she continuously stopped fighting to give me pointers and completely failed to get off Kakashi's special move, which involves a rapid button-pressing fight. During my Track and Field days I learned how to tense my muscles so my hand vibrates, allowing for superhumanly fast presses. I demonstrated this to her by holding up my hand and making my fingers vibrate before realizing how many different ways that could be taken wrong and possibly get me kicked out of the convention hall. Not to mention I am much taller than she is. Hasn't anyone heard of height advantage? I am sure it applies to this situation somehow.

I left the hall slightly humiliated, but vowed revenge. The next day I returned and triumphantly had my ass handed to me two more times before victoriously conceding that I suck. One day I shall beat a Frag Doll at something other than facial hair growing and writing my name in the snow, and I will make them give me a t-shirt that I will wear proudly wherever men are repressed...a living symbol of hope for mankind.

Amy "Valkyrie" Brady, Emily "Seppuku" Ong, Nelly"Psyche" Morel and Alyson "Calyber" Craghead won after taking down the previously undefeated team The Unknown.

"There were a few good teams that we were worried about especially with the team compete team but we were confident about our team work," said Nelly Morel "Psyche." "It was a very long tournament that started at 7:00 p.m. and ended at 1:00 a.m.. I kept counting down the clock, we were up by a good amount of kills and after we won it was such a relief - it was an amazing feeling."

Team captain Morgan "Rhoulette" Romine said the team has been playing Vegas up to 12 hours a day since it came out.

"We have been getting more experience with competition and playing under pressure by playing in pro-circuit tournaments like MLG and WSVG over the past year," she said. " Being able to come here to play Rainbow, always our favorite multiplayer series, and bring our experience with both online and live event competition made for an ideal combination. We played as a team, communicated well, stuck to our strategies and won."

That's it, Team Kotaku totally has to get their asses kicked by the Frag Dolls, it's written in the stars. Brian Crecente

The Frag Dolls, Ubi's marketing/gamer vixens, have been running a little competition on Rainbow Six Vegas this week.

Starting on Monday four of the Frag Dolls have been playing 4X4 matches from 7 to 10 p.m. pacific nightly. Any team that beats them wins $2,000 cash. Rhoulette says the random match-ups could result in Ubisoft giving away $100,000.

While you might think you have little chance against the FDs, so far the team has lost ten of the last 21 matches, giving away $20,000 to some often skilled, but sometimes lucky gamers.

I hit team leader Rhoulette up earlier this week and asked her to do some 'splaining.

She was pretty straight forward, pointing out that sometimes a good team wins and sometimes a good team loses.

"Tthere are a lot of good players out there and anything can happen in team sharpshooter. It'll be exciting to see how the next few days unfold," she said, adding: "We're just glad it's not our money on the line."

Cheeky monkey.

I tried joining one of the matches Tuesday night but wasn't lucky enough to catch one. If you're interested in trying your luck here's how:

Put the following setting into Custom Match search -
(NOTE: the Game Mode is subject to change. They may play some objective modes as the series goes on. Refer back the Frag Dolls site each day before 7pm to see the match settings)

Game Mode: Team Sharpshooter
Min players: 2
Max players: 10
Type: Player Match
Language: German

The game will be hosted by one of the following:
IGN niteStar
Valkyrie FD
Calyber FD
Rhoulette FD
Jinx FD
BrookeLyn FD

And to make things a bit easier, the group intends to try and play three games an hour. So to catch a game you're best chance is to look around these times:

7:00pm
7:20
7:40
8:00
8:20
8:40
9:00
9:20
9:40

Brian Crecente

Rhoulette [Frag Dolls]

The first half of the Ubisoft talk was about Spinter Cell: Double Agent.

The Frag Dolls showed off the multiplayer mode for the new Splinter Cell game. Each team consisted of one Frag Doll and two audience members.

The point of the game is for teams to extract files. First, they explained, you have to download a file and get it to an extraction point. You have to do that twice to win a round.

The game has been reimagined by the developers. It's much more cat-and-mouse now.

On the screen are concentric circles; it's called a proximity sensor. If it is blinking it means that someone is within 10 meters of you.

Mercs have guns, grenades, flashlights, and electromagnetic vision. You can hook over a rail and repel or zip line down.

There is a persistent motion detection system. If they are close to you and running the spies will be automatically outlined in white.

Merc have three lives, spies have four.

Spies can run around downloading a bit at a time for the different files, you don't have to finish one to move the next.

The spy HUD shows how much of each file you have downloaded in the top right corner. The closer a spy is the faster they can hack a file.

Spies can also hack a merc's vision. You can mess with their flashlights, play with their detection devices.

Spies can break just about any light in the game and hack doors.

The spies can only carry one gadget at a time, when you start you choose. If you want to change gadgets you just need to go back to your starting point.

The four the Frag Dolls knew of wer a jammer, that fakes mercs out into thinking your somewhere you are not; smoke grenades; health needles and flashbangs.

The game has a cool kill cam to show you exactly where the person was when they killed you. It's like a frozen 3D shot of your last moment that you can move around in. Very cool.

The three versus three, obviously, is a new thing, but you can also turn on mercenary bots. The AI in the current build are incredibly hard, apparently.

The game is coming to the Xbox 360 and PC. They couldn't say how maps the game has, but the Frag Dolls have played on at least five of them so far.

They couldn't say a lot about the single player mode. They did say Sam Fisher goes into deep cover to infiltrate John Brown's Army.

A lot of the missions are much more outdoors. One of the levels is in Africa during the civil war and there are a lot of people running around, but they are mostly fighting each other.

Brian Crecente

Exactly when will Sam Fisher stealthily sneak up behind you and garrote you with his latyest adventure, Splinter Cell: Double Agent? According to jiggly pin-up girl turned Fragdoll Rhoulette over at the official Ubisoft Forums, October 19th.

Not only that, but demos ahoy. PC gamers will get both single-player and multiplayer demos. 360 single-player enthusiasts? You're boned: you'll only get multiplayer.

Of course, when are these demos coming? The way it should be done — before the game's release, so you can inform a first-day purchasing decision accordingly? Of course not: they won't be released any sooner than a month before release, to help keep disinformation about quality (or lack thereof) high. Marketing, don't you know. Florian Eckhardt

New Splinter Cell Gets Official Release Date, Demos [1UP]

GameSetWatch points out that a UK Frag Doll defected to form her own mini-clan.

Siren, the Frag Doll formerly known as Voodoo, posted some interesting thoughts on the whole concept of sponsored girl gamers on her new site, VersuS, in the about section under the subhead Freedom instead of Adverti$ing.

Although we may have strong opinions, you can be sure of one thing; We're not here to endorse any product or sell you anything. If we say it, it's because we mean it, not because it pays our wage. We've both seen the perils and pit falls of "selling out" and have learnt one vital lesson; if you love something then honesty, independence and freedom are the best path to take. We hope that you feel the same and are sick of just how invasive and abundant advertising has become. If so and you are ready to join the resistance, if' you're ready to stick the Vs up to the advertisers... then welcome to VersuS!

On a similar note, we may both be girls who game but we are not here to wave the "girl gamer" flag. We believe that by drawing attention to gender you create a barrier that is otherwise irrelevant. In our experience "promoting girl gamers" can often be used as the cover story of big business trying to widen its market whilst still getting some pretty faces in the Magazines, in other words: Free advertising.

It's a natural progression that more and more women are getting into gaming and of course we fully support that.
However, we don't see any need to define ourselves by gender. We're just two people who love games.

In a pre-emptive strike against the endlessly cynical we want to make it perfectly clear that we have a gallery because we are proud of ourselves, what we do, and what we stand for (and obviously to record our exploits.)

On a completely honest level we enjoy posing and messing around with a camera as much as the next person - so hopefully you can relate to that and share the fun in it. It's all about relaxing and letting go, being comfortable and proud in yourself. Enjoying yourself with your friends. Hopefully our site can help promote and share a little of that fun.

Finally, someone gets it.

Personally, I have nothing against the gamers who make up the Frag Dolls, I'm sure they could handily kick my ass in any game in which we played. My problem is with the idea of using these gifted gamers as walking advertisements for a publisher. Worse still is the notion that perhaps, when Ubisoft is doing a casting call for a new Frag Doll, some Ubi-troll may not be as interesting in their gaming skills as they are in the way the future fragger would look in a newspaper article or on the cover of a magazine.

I don't even think this is just a girl gamer thing, It's a gamer thing. I'm sure that there are sponsors out there who look at guy gamers the same way. They don't want some fat, inarticulate slob representing their brand, they want someone pretty. But pro-gaming shouldn't be about beauty or charisma or speaking skills, it should be about ability. Brian Crecente

Ex-Frag Doll Branches Out, Bits Back [GameSetWatch]

I'm sorry. I must be missing something here. Are the Frag Dolls — a group of hot, sexy gaming girls employed by Ubisoft to do almost nothing except pose for photo shoots and get customers limping up to the EB counter with a Ubisoft title in hand — really complaining about the judging standards of another fatuous gaming beauty contest?

A question so incredible we've got to quote it again: "How is a Miss WSVG being crowned based on a beauty contest and has nothing to do with gaming?" Look at this post's image: that is a picture of the Frag Dolls. I don't see any fat, ugly Frag Dolls, Valkyrie. Do you?

We agree that the emphasis on Miss World Series Video Games' gaming credentials could be a bit better emphasized — one prospective Miss WSVG didn't even bother filling a favorite video game in on her application — but the Frag Dolls are the wrong people to be fronting the war. Florian Eckhardt

Female clans launch protest [Eurogamer]

Well, for one, a puerile penchant for embarrassing smack talk...

As we waited, Valkyrie, one of the existing Frag Dolls, yelled out rhetorically, "Can I ask each of them to give me an example of their (smack) talk?"

"OK, girls," she shouted after the eight entered. "We've seen that you can talk the talk. Now we're going to see if you can walk the walk. Stand up and give me an example of your (smack) talk."

"Say my name," shouted Monica Inderlied, a 21-year-old from Norman, Okla.

"You shoot like a boy," 27-year-old Jennifer King of Seattle said to huge laughter.

"I want all of you to eat it," shouted Rennelly Morel, 19, from Brooklyn, N.Y.

News.com's article on the April Frag Doll auditions ends just short of the most important stage of the try-outs: an interview on the casting couch with an Ubisoft director and the six original Frag Dolls. Which is too bad... that would have been an excellent opportunity for some real gonzo style journalism.

Frag Dolls tryouts: More than mashing buttons [News.com] (Thanks, Jane!)

Ubisoft is looking for a new Frag Doll. (Eekers has retired) The publisher said they will kick off their national search for a new member of the all-woman clan at this year s Penny Arcade Expo. As if winning a lifetime s supply of Nintendo history weren t enough of an excuse to attend.

Here s the lowdown on applying for all you Doll Wannabes out there.

Female gamers 18 and older in the United States interested in participating in the open call at PAX should bring their video game resume and a few photos (these can be color photo copies) and are invited to take advantage of an onsite videotaped audition to help their selection chances. The video tape segment, which is not mandatory for consideration, will consist of a one-minute taped response to the question: Why should you be a member of the Frag Dolls?

In addition, the Frag Dolls will also accept resumes at the upcoming Major League Gaming (MLG) events, where prospective Frag Dolls can meet members of the team and conduct video-taped segments as well. Resumes can also be submitted online by e-mailing a cover letter, a resume and a few photos to fragdolls@ubisoft.com.

The official announcement goes on to talk about how the team has done a lot to help dispel stereotypes about female gamers I just love the irony of a company that sponsers a women s game clan with the word Dolls in it tooting their own horn about how they dispel stereotypes.

Aleks over at Gamesblog has been asked to help select the UK Frag Doll and is asking readers to suggest questions to put to the future female pro-gamers. My favorite suggestion so far:

How can you retain any shred of self respect when you're being referred to as a "Frag Doll"? Is the games industry so tediously misogynistic that the only women it can accept are comic book dominatricies?

Frag Doll-ing [Gamesblog]