Seppuku. Valkyrie. Pyro. Xbox-Meets-XChromosome.

Wait, not that last one….

These are gamer names for the Frag Dolls, an all-woman team hired by Ubisoft for video game marketing and promotion.  The Dolls travel around the U.S. and give challengers an interactive thrashing at shoot-‘em-ups like Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six Vegas 2.

Most opponents at competitive gaming tournaments and consumer expos like CES or Comic-Con are male.  Most opponents lose.

That makes for some interesting moments.

“Yeah, we’ve seen guys throw chairs, throw their controllers down, but that’s not the norm. Online, it’s a lot worse. In person, people don’t pull that.” said Valkyrie (real name, Amy Brady) between on-screen explosions and gunfire at ScreenBurn, the video gaming element of Austin’s annual South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi).

The typical scene on the Frag Doll demo stage is four women in pink and black T-shirts lined up against four male challengers.  The Dolls work together seamlessly, with military precision.  They scan each others’ monitors, indicate their next move, warn of enemies (“He went up the stairs!”) encourage good teammate moves (“Nice one, Amy.”) and gleefully shout in victory (one girl’s favorite yell – “Yahtzee!”)

To give consistently-losing foes a break, the Dolls sometimes agree to use only pistols, but challengers can use any weapon.  The women still win.

Noted Brady, “One of the main reasons why we do win is because we are communicating.  We are a team, we do speak to each other, whereas everyone else who comes up, they’re kinda random. Even if they know the game, they’re going to play it for themselves.”

Many of the Frag Dolls met each other through PMS Clan, a women’s gaming group founded by Brady and her sister to support and nurture the small but growing subculture of female gamers.  They get a charge out of turning their play into a day job, and it’s undoubtedly a sweet set-up.

Wrote “Jinx” (Ashley Jenkins) in a blog entry: “I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty fantastic. I have a free laptop from Dell, more than 1TB [terabyte] of external storage kicking around my house, free cable internet from Comcast, a Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 courtesy of Ubisoft, free Ubisoft games, I’ve been able to go to Europe on Ubisoft’s dime, I even got a pair of slave boys to feed me grapes.  Well, no, I haven’t got that yet, but I’m working on it.”

Frag Doll backgrounds are varied – one is working on a PhD in anthropology, one is in sport development and HR, and one aspires to be a pharmacist. Most grew up in gamer families, and their Ubisoft work is a natural outgrowth of what they’re doing anyway for personal challenge and enjoyment.

“I was born a gamer – grew up in a big family with board games, card games, then naturally onto video games,” said Brady.  “I didn’t get into the competitive side, or I guess you’d call it the obsessive side, until I got into online gaming at about [age] 26, with Halo.”

How do you get a gig like this, where your big decision of the day is….Glock 18 pistol or rocket-propelled grenade?

In Brady’s case, she saw in a Craigslist ad that Ubisoft was hiring a group of girl gamers.  Since the company’s Rainbow Six was one of her specialties on PMS Clan, it was a no-brainer.  She worked up a gaming resume, sent it in and got a call the next day.

It is possible to make a living blowing up digital terrorists, but only if personal expenses are very low and you don’t mind a lack of benefits.

“[Most of us] don’t have regular jobs,” said Brady. “I do consulting. Alyson [player name “Calyber”] does some Web development.  I would say that maybe a college kid might be able to get by on a Frag Doll salary. For me, it’s a supplement to other income.”

There are no out-of-pocket expenses for players to travel to events, but there are no benefits, either, “because we’re part-time employees,” said Brady. “They’re trying, so I’ve been told, to make us full-time, which is gonna be the kicker for me in terms of how much longer I’m going to be a Frag Doll.  I know my marketability goes down as I age, too.”

Still, where else can you get a cool "I Play with Dolls" T-shirt?