As part of the all-girl pro-gaming clan Frag Dolls, Ashley "Jinx" Jenkins has travelled the world, rubbing shoulders with game development royalty and taking on the boys at their own games.

Currently Jinx has landed in Australia looking after local Xbox content for Microsoft, AusGamers spoke with Jenkins about the Jinx journey so far.

AusGamers: Can we start talking about how you got involved with your gaming habits?

Jinx: When I was seven, my parents gave my brothers and I a Nintendo, and I didn't think of it as gaming at the time, it was just something fun to do. But in no time at all, I was scheming to get extra turns, getting friends over to play and I sort of kept doing that. I guess a lot of people grow out of video games as they grow up; they get into middle and high school and find better things to do. I just never found anything better to do.

AG: Trust me Ashley, a lot of people don't grow out of it, even older than that, he says speaking from experience.

Jinx: I just kept playing, and it turned into a lifestyle.

AG: Did you have any issues battling with traditional gamer stereotypes?

Jinx: My experience when I was younger, I didn't realise that gaming was a hobby at all, it was just something fun to do, the same as watching TV or going out in the yard and playing with friends. And then as I was growing up, I was kind of in an isolated farming community, and I didn't know any of the girls were into video games, but at the time I didn't know that was unusual.

I didn't realise that there was a stereotype and that it was something only teenage boys did, until I got into high school and realised that some of the girls I was playing an online game with, were, not girls! [laughs]They were boys! It took me a while to process that and understand that not every girl that played online was necessarily a girl.

Then all the pieces clicked into place that I was really the only girl at school that played video games and that all my friends were guys, so I was kind of a tom-boy in that way. So I didn't even know until it was way too late.

AG: Did you find that awkward, or did you thrive on that?

Jinx: I was really a tom-boy; I got along with boys really well, more-so than girls. I had a couple of girl friends, and they were my closest friends. But I found that I had a lot of guy friends, so really it was just a good fit for me, it just made sense.

AG: From there you progressed into taking it a bit more seriously.

Jinx: Yeah, I started playing multi-player games when I got into high school, meeting up with other gamers. And then, started getting a little more serious about it, I would bring my computer over to my friends house on the weekend and we would hook all them up to play all weekend, and consume criminal amounts of caffeine.

At the same time I began getting involved in the gaming community; I started running fan sites for some of my favourite games.

One of the games was an online game called Shadowbane, it was in beta at the time, and I became acquainted with the developers of the game. Which was a dream come true for me, at the time I thought game developers all drove around in Lamborghinis with cool sun-glasses, and did all their work to techno music [laughs], and so I was just completely in awe that I knew some game developers.

These developers worked for a company that was having their game published by Ubisoft, and when Ubisoft started putting together a team of all female gamers, they said "it's for you, you should definitely do it'. I thought about it for a while, and I thought how I didn't know any other girl gamers, do I really want to know other girl gamers? I get along so well with guys, do I want to change that? And then I decided yeah, it would be great to have some girl-friends that I could talk "head-shots" and "hand-bags" with [laughs]. So I sent in an application, and they ended up putting me on.

AG: Where did "Frag Dolls" as a profession take you?

Jinx: It is really the reason for where I am today. I started out doing a lot of competitions, that's when my multiplayer gaming got much more serious. It was a whole new world that I hadn't realised existed, just in terms of how seriously some people can take competition. And it was a lot of fun, a huge challenge.

I did that for about a year, then I moved to San Francisco where Ubisoft is based, and hounded them until they gave me a job working in the Ubisoft office. From that time I was working with Ubisoft and doing Frag Dolls at the same time, I travelled around, met a lot of developers and did a lot of work with the gaming community, building communities, building up programmes for them where they could win prizes.

And then I decided to move to Australia.

AG: Does it annoy you that your sexuality might be part of what defines you as a gamer?

Jinx: When it comes down to it I don't think there is any difference between male and female gamers, in terms of actual ability. I have never had a problem with it, I like being a girl, I wouldn't give it up, guys are great, don't get me wrong, but I love being a girl. I don't see any reason why being a gamer and being a girl need to be mutually exclusive.

A few years ago, once I did get into Frag Dolls and travelling a lot, and seeing just how, I guess, just how shocked some people were that there were whole teams of girls playing games, it did get a little Twilight Zone, where I was just fascinated by the fact that people thought there was some sort of mutual exclusive thing going on there.

But I like being a girl, and I like being a gamer and it is becoming more and more common. Whether they identify themselves as gamer or not more than 40 percent of gamers are women. Their playing Solitaire or Yahtzee online, or throwing down in Halo, there are more women in gaming. And it is becoming less and less unusual, I think it has been great because people don't bring it up as much. It is becoming less of a curiosity, it's nice that it no longer so unusual, like "How did that happen?"

AG: So you decided to move to Australia ?

Jinx: I was overseas in Europe at one stage, I met up with several Australians randomly, and I thought "Australia, that's that place with the kangaroos, right?" [laughs] I remember seeing a TV program when I was little that told me that I'd dug all the way through the Earth, I wouldn't come up in China as I thought, I would come up in Australia [laughs]. So I became interested, I started learning some Australian history...

AG: ...Started digging?...

Jinx: [Laughs] yep, came to visit and thought it was amazing, so I decided to stay.

AG: That leads you onto working for Microsoft?

Jinx: Yeah! I met up with the folks here from Microsoft, just to get advice about the companies here and so on, and they said, "well, actually we have this position available if you are interested?" Of course I said yes please!!!

AG: And what does that involve?

Jinx: I manage the Xbox website for Australia and New Zealand, so I schedule all the promotions we have going on there, including the games we promote, hints, tips, we run competitions, that kind of stuff for the website. And also in November we launched the new Xbox interface, so I manage all the programming of content for that dashboard for our region.

It's a lot of fun, I like being able to do things that get straight to the gamers, to let them know the best new games and content that they might not know about otherwise. I try to spotlight regular gamers on the website and get their insights, their guides, hints and tips for everybody else. It is nice to get that interaction with the gaming community.

AG: Being in Australia, and coming from such a wide experience in Europe and the US and working for Xbox, do you find it a little frustrating that we don't get the same experience, down here, that others do?

Jinx: I don't think about it too much really, I know there are some games we don't see here. The ratings board is definitely stricter. But it is something that just goes along with the culture. It is not the US, and so I try not to compare it to the US, because it isn't and that will only lead to tears.

AG: [Laughs] Fair enough, but what about more locally, it is such a small world now with everybody connected, so what about facilities like Netflix [streaming movies to the Xbox 360] that, because of technical or market size reasons we don't see down here?

Jinx: It is not necessarily the size of the market so much as licensing issues. They take time to work through. That kind of thing is something we would really like to bring here, and we are working on it, it just takes time. I am learning patience really.

AG: Are you still playing? What are your favourite games at the moment?

Jinx: I just finished the Fable II add on, and I have been playing Fallout 3 – I know it came out in November, but there is just so much game to Fallout 3 that there is plenty to play. I have been playing a lot on the Arcade [Xbox LIVE Arcade], The Maw, and Peggle waiting in the wings there, because all my friends are addicted to it, I am trying to resist because I know as soon as I start I won't be able to stop.

AG: Most of those games are not "online" games, are your Frag Doll competitive urges still there?

Jinx: They definitely are, I haven't met that many gamers since I have been down here. All the community and gamers that I have known for years are back in the US, and it is very inconvenient for me when they get lazy and go to bed, before I get home and turn my Xbox on [laughs]. So I have been playing a lot more offline stuff, and still trying to find local gaming crew to roll with and get in some Left4Dead, Gears of War, and those kinds of things.

I am loving what I do.