Don't turn your (virtual) back on team of female online gamers

Don't cross Alexis Hebert. She's likely to kill you, then stomp on your lifeless corpse. Virtually, that is.

Hebert is a Frag Doll, one of nine members of an all-girl gamer team assembled by San Francisco-based game publisher and developer Ubisoft. Some techies work in cubicles; Hebert's workstation is a squishy chair in a Redmond apartment that sets her 18 inches off the ground in front of a 20-inch Samsung TV monitor.

Four to six hours a day, from their homes across the country, Hebert and her teammates play online video games. The Frag Dolls' mission: to promote female involvement in the historically male world of video games, to give women a safe forum to play in and, of course, to push Ubisoft games.

Ages 22 to 32, bound by their passion for games and their identities as women, they're flown at the company's expense to industry tournaments, parties and expos — including this weekend's Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center. And they go by monikers such as Valkyrie, Seppuku and Jinx.

The name on Hebert's personalized Xbox 360 console: Mischief. Her iced coffee is already history on this August afternoon, and she's worked up a sweat. She's joined online on Xbox Live by teammates Calyber and Psyche, as well as fellow female gamer Shedevil, all of them in different time zones — Arizona, Texas and New York. The plan is to prepare for Sunday's 128-team Halo 3 tournament at PAX.

In combat-oriented games like Halo, the philosophy is simple: Kill or be killed. While one recent study says 44 percent of U.S. women play online video games, most lean toward "casual" games such as trivia or video solitaire; only a fraction go for action-based role-playing games that involve, for example, sneaking up behind your enemy and cutting his throat.

It's this small but growing force that girl groups like the Frag Dolls are leading into battle. The name itself refers to the act of killing, or "fragging," one's enemy.

It's also a nod to "rag-doll physics," which for animators is the art of making a character's body flop when it dies, instead of toppling like a tree.

Hebert wears her Frag Doll T-shirt, black with pink lettering that matches her painted nails. But make no mistake: She'll frag and trash-talk without remorse. After killing one attacker at close range, she abuses his dead body for good measure.

In these live forums, they're randomly pitted against rival teams; anyone with a console and a Web hookup can play. In Halo 3, armor-clad soldiers maneuver through concrete bunkers and overpasses, dark corridors and dirt-hill landscapes, dodging snipers and grenades — or 'nades — while trying to frag alien enemies with their own weaponry.

With all of them — including their occasionally chauvinistic foes — communicating through microphone-equipped headsets, Hebert sounds like a squad commander leading starfighters into action, their controllers in hand, thumbs dancing, index fingers firing.

Watch your right — watch your right!

I got him.

I need help over here!

Look on the left ledge; he's sitting on the left ledge.

There you go. Nice 'nade.

On-screen, it's as if they are each inside their own character's body; only her character's gun-wielding arm is visible as Hebert fires through the viewfinder at enemies hiding behind distant walls or charging through hallways. Felled characters resurrect after five seconds, and teams play until one side scores 50.

The victories pile up for the Frag Dolls — 50-38, 50-32, 50-33, 50-30 — and it's two hours before they lose a game.

One day in 2004, Theresa Pudenz saw a Craigslist ad seeking avid gamers for an all-girl squad. At the time, she was 22, living in Denver, used to staying up until 5 a.m. playing games.

More amused than eager, she e-mailed her résumé noting that, among other things, she had beaten the red dragon in Final Fantasy seven times.

The phone rang at 10 a.m.

We got your résumé — it's amazing. Oh — did we wake you up?

Pudenz and six other women from around the country became the original Frag Dolls. They were outfitted with Xbox gear and asked to practice against veteran players.

"It was scary when they would start talking strategy," says Pudenz, who chose Eekers as her moniker.

In their competitive debut — at PAX 2004 — the Frag Dolls took first in the Rainbow Six competition; at PAX 2005, they took first in Ghost Recon.

The next year brought more firsts and seconds at PAX and the now-defunct Cyberathlete Professional League games.

Meanwhile, their appearances at local-area network (LAN) parties — where players convened to play in person — drew stares. Here came the Frag Dolls in matching shoes, hoodies and T-shirts, vaulting past lines of scruffy dudes packing consoles and computer monitors.

Skeptics questioned the team's purpose, criticizing the cutesy caricatures on the Frag Dolls' Web site, calling the team a marketing ploy and dismissing them as "booth babes." Debates raged on gamer forums over which Frag Doll was hottest.

The Dolls — like other girl squads such as Girlz of Destruction and Pandora's Mighty Soldiers — let their skills do the talking. The job is part time, and they won't say how much they're paid.

Some team members go to school or work other jobs. One Frag Doll is a full-time pharmacy technician. For Hebert, being a Frag Doll is her primary gig.

In July alone, the Frag Dolls appeared in Montreal, Orlando, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle.

As passionate gamers, they're aiming for careers in an evolving industry. Pudenz, who left the Frag Dolls in 2005, now handles PR for Seattle's Flying Lab Software, developer of the game Pirates of the Burning Sea. This year, Jinx will "retire" to work with Xbox's Australia outfit.

But once a Frag Doll, it seems, always a Frag Doll.

"Sometimes, people still recognize me," Pudenz says. "I still have a fan group... . There's two people, and I think they're 14 or 15. They're, like, 'Eekers for life!' "

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com