THEY'RE YOUNG AND pretty, perform in front of large crowds, travel with a hair-and-makeup team and have fans lining up for autographs. Les Seules may sound like the girl group of the month, but they spend their days bathed in the sterile glow of computer screens - they're a Scandinavian all-female outfit of professional online gamers.
Les Seules, who compete in circuits dedicated to Counter-Strike, the popular first-person shooter game, were in town last week as part of a promotional tour that has already taken them across the US to Tokyo. Their adventures on the road are being filmed for a 12-part reality television series, Play Us, which is expected to be shown in 20 countries next year.
All in their 20s, the five members - Sofi Bystrom (Sophie), Line Marie Haug (Miss Hyper), Nathalie Ek (Nat0), Anette Skarderud (Cazzidy) and Louise Thomsen (AurorA) - are better known to fans by their player names or handles. With their glamorous looks, Les Seules seem to be antitheses of the bespectacled hard-core gamer.
'It's a myth that gamers look a certain way,' says Skarderud. 'When you go to any of the big conventions you can see there are all kinds of shapes, sizes and cultures represented. There are beautiful people and plain people. But they all have something in common - they all love Counter-Strike.'
Developed in 1999 by Minh Le and Jesse Cliffe, the game has since been expanded into a series; it's now estimated to be played by 70 million people worldwide. A team-based contest featuring blazing Uzis and grenade blasts, it pits a special forces squad against a terrorist unit in rounds that are won by completing a mission or eliminating the opposition.
Les Seules play up that violent image in their publicity material: they're photographed wielding various deadly weapons; and the brief CVs credit the women with memorable quotes such as 'a single blow to the head always does the trick', and 'shopping's fun, but so is mowing down five opponents with a machine gun'.
