Frag Doll Casting Call

Are there any women out there looking to quit their day jobs to devote more time to playing first-person shooter games?

My gaming skillz are pretty terrible, but there are a ton of female gamers out there that could put their male counterparts to shame. Ubisoft, creator of games like Prince of Persia (which I don't play, but really enjoy watching), the Tom Clancy series and Shaun White Snowboarding put together a competitive team of kick-ass female players in 2004 to challenge the male-dominated perception of the genre. They are called Frag Dolls, and from their site, I gather the genesis of the name seems to be the following:

frag /frag/ n. & v. · n. 1 number of kills. 2 a fragmentation grenade. · v. 1 to eliminate other players in multiplayer shooters (fragging).

rag·doll physics /ragdol fiziks/ n. 1 a program allowing videogame characters to react with realistic body and skeletal physics.

frag·doll /fragdol/ n. 1 a female gamer with the skills to dominate in multiplayer shooters. 2 a lady with the sass to use the laws of physics to her incontestable advantage.

Since they came together the ladies have been taking competitions by storm winning awards and major street cred. Lo and behold, they seem to be looking for a new member, but the deadline is tight - applications have to be in tonight by 11:59 pm. Do you have what it takes? Of course that was a rhetorical question, but secretly I am thinking of two women in particular who could probably tear it up. Kiran? Amy?

Girls Want to Play Too

Nien is always telling me stories about his "work husband" Larry. Most recently, Larry has been griping because his 8 year-old daughter has been begging him for a Nintendo DS. It seems all of her friends have one and she wants one too. It's amazing how while the "bells and whistles" game companies, Xbox and Playstation, have been scratching their heads about reaching a female audience, Nintendo has quietly cornered the market with less advanced, more casual and interactive offerings like their hand-held gaming system, the DS and their Wii console.

If Larry decides to be a cool dad and buy it for her, he could really score some major brownie points if he hooks her up with the latest version, the DSi, which hits shelves tomorrow. With even more interactivity like dual cameras that can distort images, audio recorders that let you change the backing tracks to your games, downloadable games, mp3 storage and the ability to upload content to facebook, this thing clearly doesn't want its users to be able to put it down. I guess if I had one of these things when I was a kid it would have been a preview of my current iPhone addiction.

Though I never bought my own, I do occasionally steal Nien's DS Lite to obsessively play countless games of sudoku. I like the simplicity of it and also appreciate that it isn't trying to be anything more than it is. However, that unit is a totally different animal than this new version, and it is nice that buyers will still have a choice between the two.

I also applaud Nintendo every time I see one of their commercials featuring well-known female celebrities playing with the DS. They've featured Lisa Kudrow, Liv Tyler, Nicole Kidman and here is one with Carrie Underwood, who I personally think is a better choice to reach out to the younger audience, though I love them for trying to pitch to my generation as well.



So will DS continue their quiet, yet aggressive campaign to take down the big boys by stealing market share from Apple as well? I don't know too many 8 year-olds who have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, but then again, I don't know any 8 year-old period, so I clearly don't have the answer to this one.

Paint It Pink and Put a Bow On It

As I was trying to come up with a name for my blog, I found myself turning to cutesy phrases like herPod, femmetech and Ladytainment...all equally cringe-worthy. I had to take a step back and think about what I was trying to do.

Ideally, I would like this blog to be about the way women consume entertainment and technology, however, in my very first interaction with the subject, I found myself doing what I think a lot of marketers do when it comes to tech products - thinking that if they make it pretty we will buy it.

Now, I want to make it clear that I am not going to get all crazy feminist here. I am just as guilty as the next gal for buying something I thought was cute or flirty. However, I do find it very interesting that company's like Sony are focusing their energy on women like me, trying to beautify their products so that I will crave them as I would crave the latest purse or shoes.

The female tech market has amazing potential, and companies have seized on this audience in the last few years. Also, as new platforms emerge, designers are finding ways to pique our interests and get us involved, even to the point of enticing us to get in on major testosterone realms like gaming. So with this blog I'd like to look at my experiences with tech, my obsession with entertainment, and the ways in which both industries try to engage the feminine consumer.

While in the interest of full disclosure I have to admit this is a class project, I think there are a lot of interesting topics to explore, so I hope you will enjoy it. Please feel free to chime in if there is something you'd like me to talk about, something I say that grinds your gears or even hopefully something you have experienced yourself.