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…And Thanks for All the Fish
August 15, 03:05 PM

Four years ago this month I joined a team of girls and for the first time had a whole group of girlfriends as enthusiastic about gaming as myself who were also, and this is an important distinction, not dudes. Nothing against dudes, of course. I like dudes. I interact with them on a regular basis. I’m even friends with some of the more interesting specimens. But as a girl, who one day realized that all her fellow gaming buddies tended towards the “snips and snails” gender, it was great to find a group I could discuss cosmetics, headshots, and chick flicks with. Fast forward and I’ve had an excellent ride, made some great friends, played a whole lot of games, and seen more of the world. Enough of the world, really, that I’ve decided to move overseas and pursue the adventure of the game industry on another continent. Next month I’m moving to Sydney to take up an amazing position with Xbox, live in a house by the water, sip girly drinks by the pool, pet kangaroos, and puzzle out how to get my American game consoles to work. It’s going to be a wild ride and I’m excited, but it means that I have to hop off this ride. PAX was my first time out as a Frag Doll, and this year it will also be my last. It’s lucky for me that this year will also have a …

XBOX LIVE GAMERTAG: jinx FD
GAMES I'M PLAYING
* Oblivion
* Rainbow Six Vegas
* Assassin's Creed
* Mass Effect
HEIGHT: 5'5"
EYES: Hazel
HAIR: sort of brown blond and hairy
LOCATION: Northern California
HOMETOWN: Ogden, UT
FAVORITE GENRES: adventure, rpg, rts
FAVORITE GAMES: Final Fantasy X, Homeworld, Prince of Persia: SOT, Morrowind, Psychonauts, Splinter Cell: CT
FAVORITE SNACK: Ben & Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream
FAVORITE CHARACTER: Link from Zelda
FAVORITE EMOTE: /tackle
FAVORITE QUOTE: "What fun is destruction if no precious lives are lost?" - Kefka (FFVI)
FAVORITE MUSIC: Tori Amos, The Killers, Garbage, Thievery Corp Eskimo Joe, The Cat Empire, Powderfinger, Arcade Fire
FAVORITE TV SHOWS: The Brak Show, The Daily Show, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Spaced, Heroes, Entourage
FAVORITE BOOKS: Kushiel's Legacy, Sevenwaters, Harry Potter, Ender's Game, Diamond Age, His Dark Materials
FAVORITE COLOR: Orange
FIRST GAME ADDICTION: Super Mario Bros, Myst
FIRST CONSOLE: Nintendo Entertainment System
GREATEST MOMENT: 2 bullets, 2 headshots
LONGEST SPREE: 12 hour days on Final Fantasy X for over a week
OBSESSIONS: video games, board games, snowboarding, yoga, IRC, hardcover novels, calvin & hobbes, nerd cred
I HATE: grit at the bottom of my tea
I LOOK LIKE: the last thing you see before you have to respawn

Ashley Jenkins, more commonly known to fellow gamers as Jinx, is one of the Frag Dolls, a team of professional gamers owned by game publisher Ubisoft.  Jenkins, originally from Ogden, Utah, now lives in San Francisco, California and works full-time for Ubisoft developing online communities and facilitating communication between the developers and their fans. She has helped to launch major titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and Red Steel, and is currently working on Far Cry 2, Prince of Persia, and Shaun White Snowboarding.

Jenkins, a gamer since she was young, began playing videogames on the Nintendo Entertainment System.  She discovered PC puzzle games with Myst and moved on to Massively Multiplayer Online Games with EverQuest.  Since then she has sampled from nearly every genre, including: RPG, Adventure, Strategy, Platformer, and FPS.

In 2000 Jenkins began making the transition from average gamer to industry expert when she began creating fansites for niche titles like American McGee’s Alice, Black & White, and Shadowbane.  Through her work on fansites, Jenkins began community writing and was quickly offered a position as a professional writer for Shadowbane.  As a Herald she wrote regular articles on events and the political state of the virtual world.

In 2004 she applied to become one of the seven original members of the Frag Dolls team, and left her programming job to begin traveling as a professional gamer.  She has played as a member of the competitive team for Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and has traveled with the team to nearly all of the major videogame industry events since the team formed.  A fascination with the minds behind the games has led her to pursue the journalistic side of the team, and she has travelled internationally to interview developers about the games they are creating. She currently acts as the creative director, webmaster, and PC hardware expert for the Frag Dolls.