Bombin' the A.M. With Jenn Frank

I just want to say that Jenn Frank is awesome.

Year of the Cage is still ongoing in my heart.

This whole episode was coco nutty and I loved every %moment.

Suuuuuppperr hexagon

Begin.

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Gaaaaame over.

Yay for Jenn Frank! Bombin' in the A.M. continues to get a lot of really interesting voices in gaming on the show. :)

Really enjoyed Jenn Frank as a guest. Also Nic Cage discussion should just be a regular segment.

Great episode!

Jen Frank guest filled under WWE tag... this is relevant to my interests!

#YesMovement

#JenMovement

"He's ersatz Rock" is so Alex Navarro I love it.

Quality Nic Caging on this podcast. Quality Jenn Frank everywhere.

Prison architect is not about America. Kotaku has a premise that is inherently flawed.

Thanks for continuing to bring more women into the room in 2014. Inclusion is good.

This must be a tough time for you, these people coming to take away your man shooty toys.

Another Google expert! Nice to meet you. Here are some of Jenn's best pieces of writing. Hope you enjoy them.

• "He’s Still Alive"
• "All the Spaces Between Us"
• "Allow Natural Death"
• "On games of chance and 'cheating'"

You saw the developer's response, right?

@freedomtown: You're part of the problem.

Yea! Jenn was super rad on the up podcasts.

As someone who doesn't and will probably never watch wrestling, every explanation over the wrestling PPV "fiasco" the other day confuses me more and more. What exactly happened that caused my twitter to explode? Is it just that the "wrong guy" won? Was the "script" poor? Is that enough to betray their audience? I'm genuinely curious.

Oh dear, feminism!? How terrifying.

I really don't understand why not treating women like shit is a bad thing for a lot of gamers. It's utterly bizarre.

Yay, Jenn Frank!

@freedomtown:

lol

Brings me back to old episodes of Retronauts

Hey Pat, think you can get Bobby K on and axe him what's up with Guitar Hero?

Or get John Drake on and ask him what's up with Guitar Hero?

Or get Cliffy B on and ask him what's up with DJ Hero?

I need answers and you're just the man to get em, now go find out about Guitar Hero.

I only want to say that opposition to the big feminism push in the video game world isn't necessarily built on machismo, or hatred of women. I'm mainly opposed to the notion that women have it badly nowadays, when they pretty much run the show in every day life (as the saying goes "Happy wife, happy life."). It's got television cornered so that men appear as idiots in television commercials, sitcoms, you name it. Save traditionally male dominated entertainment mediums, say, football... hunting... golf... heavy metal... motoring... and yes, video games, it's actually pretty hard to escape.

I'm not necessarily opposed to the depiction of strong women (Tomb Raider is probably my favorite Uncharted game besides the second game) when you can't have the action hero saving the princess/his girlfriend/the President's daughter anymore without people saying the creators must think women are powerless/weak/etc, I think it's pretty ridiculous. Men as a whole are bigger, and stronger, and, as the inventors of most modern technology we use, dare I venture out to say, can be pretty dang smart as well. Men, as a whole then, would be more combat capable. You can hate nature, or say men are pigs, whatever you want to do, but that's the truth of it.

I get that women are smart as well, have two arms with fingers on the end that are just as capable of pulling triggers and shooting bad guys, are lighter and more agile as a whole, and a female athlete could probably kick my ass. I do not oppose strong female leads in video games, but I do oppose the neutering of something to the point that women can't be sexy (yes, this could even involve something as heathen as some cleavage on box art), can't be saved, or one has to be afraid about speaking up against this kind of thing, or in support of a game where a traditional hero saves a princess.

Those are my thoughts, but who knows. Maybe I'm just an old, irritable, bigoted misogynist.

The general idea is that the wrong guy won and the right guy wasn't even in the match.

I was getting way to many "Her" flash back's with Jenn was making me feel weird.

Hey y'all, and thanks to the max for having me. I've long refused to do the podcast thing, but I adore my longtime colleague PK, and I love Giant Bomb so much. I was friends with Ryan, and getting to be on the Morning Show meant so much to me. You have such a great crowd here, and I can't say enough great things. Thanks again for having me around today -- as your friend and colleague, it's the highlight of my career. Thanks so much.

Holy shit you guys, every piece of content on this site involving a woman does not necessarily have to become a referendum on the merits of feminism. Maybe Jenn's written about it elsewhere. Great, go comment on those stories or make a separate thread on the forums. But unless it was directly discussed in this episode let's try to keep these comments at least mildly related to the topics that were discussed in the show.

Ghost Writer they reference Ghost Writer...... goddammit. I'm done with this.

@rorie: Ugh, I know. It's so lame.

@alex Have you seen Spike Jonze's movie Adaptation? It stars Nic Cage as the two main characters, a neurotic screenwriter and his cooler twin brother. I thought this was an example of great casting on the production side and/or great role choice on his part. He's amazing playing both characters and perfectly captures the love/hate relationship between brothers and, despite both characters being obnoxious in their own way, plays them both in a very sympathetic way. I just saw this movie for a class I'm taking and, having never heard of it before, thought it was way underrated both in terms of the overall film and his performance in it. Why he does shit like Ghost Rider when he's capable of this is beyond me. Well, I guess the money probably ain't too bad.

Can we make every piece of content on this site involving a man a referendum on the merits of masculinity? That would be amusing.

On a related note, I'm afraid Alex doesn't eat enough bacon to qualify as a man.

@makewithefunny: i think i might be too young to get that reference. i thought they were talking about that roman polanski film for a minute

@rorie said:

Oh goddamnit now I feel bad for responding to the topic in the first place. Even if this was not directed at me, I can't assume it wasn't because I can't help but think it was. Might as well just delete the post anyway.

Jenn Fraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank!!!

She is an awesome lady. Whenever I glance at my twitter feed and see a ton of her tweets back-to-back (which happens often) I have to stop what I'm doing and read them immediately. It's often a defty-worded takedown of someone who didn't know who they were messing with, or stream-of-consciousness pizza-related insanity of the best kind. Highly recommended.

She also wrote a Ryan Davis tribute that brought me to tears.

She definitely has a way with words, and I'm glad she uses them to write about videogames.

Love Jenn Frank! So pumped to watch this.

There were a few that I was referring to. I get that people want to discuss it but those discussions often devolve into poop-flinging. Better cut it off before it goes that direction and I have to spend half an hour deleting comments, which is the usual outcome.

@draxyle said:

There's a very old concept in pro wrestling which is based on the notion of "earning your spot" - earning the right to be granted significant titles and accolades by management, instead of other potential choices. Essentially, the person who won the Royal Rumble is not seen by the crowd as having earned the right to win it - Dave Batista is 45 years old and is in his twilight years, he was never that great to begin with, he doesn't care that much about the wrestling business, he was absent from the company for four years and had wrestled in maybe one match leading up to the Rumble, and he's partly there just to promote a movie.

Daniel Bryan, the person who the fans wanted to win the Royal Rumble, is 32, his career is on the rise, he's probably the best wrestler in the company in terms of putting on great matches and entertaining a crowd, he is passionate about the business, he's been working hard for WWE for nearly five years and before that spent the better part of a decade kicking ass on the US independent scene, and so on. But he doesn't fit the typical mould for a big WWE star, due to his small stature and technical in-ring style. Management doesn't view him as a viable main event star, but the fans disagree.

Only one man can win the Rumble every year, and it's usually a great way to give a big boost to an up-and-coming talent, but they wasted it on a guy who the crowd doesn't think had earned the spot, especially not when he has taken the opportunity away from up-and-comers like Bryan, Bray Wyatt, or Roman Reigns. This whole issue boils down to WWE leaning heavily on well-established stars who've probably or definitely peaked, when they could be building the stars of the future. The fans are desperate for someone new and interesting and different, instead of John Cena vs. Randy Orton for the 29,000th time. Daniel Bryan best represents a bold new direction for the WWE, and his continuing status as a "bridesmaid and not the bride" is starting to reach a ridiculous level.

The wrestling business is based on the idea of teasing the fans, stringing them along, but then ultimately giving them what they want - the bad guys beats up the good guy, good guy can't beat bad guy usually because bad guy cheats, good guy finally beats bad guy, big pay-off, everyone's happy, end of feud. The WWE in the past 10 years or so has adopted the philosophy of essentially telling the fans what they want and giving them that, often completely disregarding public opinion. And the fans are finally putting their collective feet down.

This is exactly the sort of simple minded and somewhat misguided thinking that makes people react negatively towards feminism in the video game industry. Feminism isn't about taking shoot man toys away. Feminism in the gaming world is making sure a female developer/artist/programmer is getting paid as much as her male counterpart, it's about making sure women in the workplace are treated with respect and dignity, it's about equal job opportunity and being rejected for a position because your qualifications didn't meet the standards and not because of your gender, it's about women having a fair say in development. Feminism in the video game industry is not about making sure the story and characters in Gears of War appeal to women, because that game is not targeted towards a female audience and that's not sexist or misogynistic. It's not about taking anything away from anyone, it's about creating a level and fair playing field for women in the industry.

It is the misuse of words like misogyny and sexism along with over dramatization of completely insignificant issues like how tight Lara Crofts jeans are that obscure the real goal of feminists and leave these sort of idiotic statements at the forefront.

@rorie: This is right-on. I didn't tell PK "yes" because I wanted to sneak my feminist agenda on-air; please. I said yes because I'm a big big fan of PK, Jeff, Alex, and Ryan, some of whom I count as best best friends. (I'm very open in my essays about becoming a feminist *because* I've been in this industry since '05, but PK didn't really ask about that ideology-set, and I gave my answers as I would've regardless, so no one is in "trouble," there's no "thing" here.)

I said yes because I love -- LOVE-- Giant Bomb, and I am here because I earnestly love those folks, and you. If I wanted to sneak "feminist shit" on people, I would've gone somewhere else, you know? I just wanna talk about video games and pizza and Nicolas Cage. That's all I want. I'm not purporting to be a particularly smart or loveable person, but I do love pizza and Nic Cage. And I had SO much fun talking to PK and Alex, so as for me, it was a Morning Show well served. Thanks everyone!

@rorie said:

Agreed. Truth be told I hadn't seen much of this policing myself usually because I happen to avoid it a lot of the time and didn't think too much of responding to what was (unfortunately) inevitable. Thanks for keeping it up in the trenches.

@fram: :)

@humanity: please stop