Bombin' the A.M. With Jenn Frank

Bring Jenn back! She was easily the most interesting guest you guys have ever had on the show. I especially appreciated the discussion on The Castle Doctrine, as she was very level-headed and reasonable in a space where virtually no one else has been.

@atlas: I think I almost understand wrestling a bit better now thanks to that explanation. Kudos~

It still looks like a silly industry from the outside, but I can sort of empathize with the frustration.

I was too busy talking about wrestling and forgot to mention that Jenn Frank is terrific, and this was a very engaging and entertaining show. I don't think my taste in games lines up with hers at all, but she talks really intelligently about games that deserved to be talked about, and doesn't sound pretentious doing so.

Her love of Remember Me despite admitting it's a 7/10 makes me feel boring for preferring games that are polished and consistently good but less ambitious. Not to say I can't like a flawed game - I liked The Saboteur more than it probably deserved - but I don't have very many criticisms about many of my favourite games, and maybe that means I'm not able to be critical about them. Listening to smart, considered people being smart and considered is good for you.

I have no idea why I got that reference, given that I'm pretty sure I've never seen an episode of Ghost Writer in my entire life and I'm too young to have watched it when it was on the air. And yet, one youtube search later...

when Alex corrects "Manly"..... nuff said.

@milkman: As much as I dislike engaging in any hur-dur-feminism arguments that inevitably get dredged up in Patrick's videos I hate both extremes of the issue with equal intensity.

@humanity: Today we learned: sarcasm does not always translate well through text. No shit that's what feminism is about?

Loved Jenn Frank on the Retronauts podcast. That is all.

@jennatar: Jenn, thanks for being on the show this morning, I had a big smile on my face the whole time!

HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN RED ROCK WEST?!

great guest this week. interesting stuff.

@nophilip: Thanks!

@trashfawn: Well I learned that you are horrible at expressing sarcasm on the internet, but it's surprising how many people write exactly what you have in earnest which makes it impossible to discern from even the best online sarcasm so you shouldn't feel too bad about it.

I used to have a crush on Jenn Frank. Ever since the 1UP days. She did an awesome job in this. I think Patrick (also an ex-1UP member) played a big part since they've been buds for a while.

@myketuna: That's true. It's real nice stuff to be interviewed by an old friend. I definitely had a "leg up" in this case. :)

Howel

FUCK YEAH JENN FRANK

One of my all-time favourite oldschool Retronauts episodes (one of the Halloween ones) is a Jenn episode. I could never tire of hearing her enthuse about Haunted House for the 2600 (especially because she's got such a fucking cool voice).

"I talk; Uma Thurman sits here"

I got that reference!

Yeah, how people find it immediately offensive is pretty sad. Yeah, as a man it can be disheartening to be attacked for who you are, but you gotta understand is that all of society is based around marginalizing women, people of color, LBGT, etc. it has gotten better for sure, but in plenty of spaces it's still pretty bad. People who aren't in these situations will find it hard to see these issues because of their privilege/ignorance. I am in this situation myself, so I check myself before wreck myself so to speak. I would rather give a woman for instance to have a meaningful platform to speak about things that matter to them before brushing up against it in anyway. I cannot speak from a woman's point of view, end of story. You have to understand boundaries and see that oppressed people historically and in many modern contexts have the short end of the stick. If they're not loud, that's not going to change much, they have to stand up for themselves.

But yeah this is totally off topic and people need learn to not be so crass in general -dragging in outside topics like this is just pathetic.

P.S. Vampire's Kiss is a masterwork.

LINE, TRIANGLE, SQUARE - GAME OVER PFFFUSAUFAFJHDKSA

It's not feminism as a concept that most people hate it's the institutionalization of Feminism by people who are often self entitled, and miss the core concept of equality with consistent "women are in fact better than men" rhetoric. I have had plenty of good conversations about feminism and sexism in videogames, but these conversations are rarely with people who insist on self identifying as a Feminist.

Did it ever get out how much MS paid for Gears? Maybe they got it at a good price, considering all the points mentioned.

I feel like every time I look at a comment thread, the "don't be a jerk" rule gets more and more broadly interpreted.

@jennatar: You were an awesome guest, and your voice brought back memories of joy and terror. Nice to have you!

What an awesome guest! She brought an amazing amount of depth to the show. I would welcome Jenn as a regular addition.

Hit me with your best shot!

I'll interpret the forum rules as broadly as I want to, thanks. I don't want every thread to be a collection of "this comment has been deleted" markers, but likewise there are members of this community who manage to make completely unrelated threads into back-and-forth battlegrounds on unrelated (usually political or social) topics, and that shit's getting real, real old.

If the political or social views of a staff member or an interview subject disagree with your own, great: go make a blog post or reply to that person on twitter or in a PM, or comment on a story if its directly touching on those topics. If they're not being discussed in the specific article you're commenting on, though, it's going to be treated as irrelevant at best and disruptive at worst; either way they're probably going to be deleted. I've been lenient here but I'm becoming more and more cranky in my old age.

Again, not everything has to devolve into a political back and forth. It's absolutely wearying to see that shit pop up time and again when it's not relevant to what's being discussed and I think it sucks a lot of life out of what could be fun discussions on the topics and games at hand. If we have to we'll make some politics in games board for everyone to yell at each other, but for the moment let's try to keep the sniping to Battlefield 4 rather than on article discussion threads.

Her description of Remember Me is almost completely my opinion of the 2009 Bionic Commando. Man, that game was almost...ALMOST the best game ever but it pretty much misses everything just enough that it's hard to love.

Great episode everyone! Hopefully you can get Jenn on again. She was a great guest.

The actor Alex actually looks like:

Paul Giamatti, circa 2002.

Also really appreciated the talk of Remember Me. It's one of the most interesting games I played last year. The criticisms are spot on, but as they said, it's a 7/10 game that everyone should play. Also the soundtrack is the one thing that's definitely not flawed. It's awesome, best original soundtrack from last year in my opinion.

Damn. Those analogies about Remember Me. I'm totally re-using them at work or something.

@rorie: Thanks. I regret my face didn't actually show up because I do feel like an old person -- I'm almost 32! -- and I would've liked to've conveyed that. I do wonder if people are maybe not watching the interview (and are "gendering" my "byline"), since Patrick begins by describing the start of our friendship in '05 (which doubles as the start of my career). Again, I agreed to do Morning Show because I'm a huge fan of Giant Bomb.

This interview isn't about "feminism," unless feminism is about me talking, laughing, and discussing the games I've been playing. I'm pretty sure those are normal things to discuss. It's frustrating to have my name appear and then have people discuss "feminism" etc., when, why? I'm no different, I hope, from any other guest.

I hope I don't sound imperious, because I don't mean to. I hope other people get to have as much fun as I had. This entire post feels like such nonsense.

--j

Jenn was quite pleasant! I hope they get guests who are as awesome as Jenn was!

That is a good nickname origin story.

I had a -in hindsight- very fitting nickname in highschool which I also -in hindsight- think was clever and funny. People called me Prozac. Yes, like the SSRI anti-depressant medication. The 'zac' syllable is a reference to the first syllable of my last name. I don't suppose I need to fill in the other reasons for this particular choice. -____-

I guess the highschool peers had keyed in on something I had not, at the time. It wasn't until some years later that I wound up in a hospital psych department learning that I had not one, not even two, but three separate psychiatric disorders. -___________-

Oh, and incidentally I have never taken Prozac. That is one of the few psych meds I haven't been on at one point or another.

@jennatar: It's nothing personal. Some of these discussions tend to go off the rails in ways that are neither healthy nor pleasant, though, so sometimes it's good to be pre-emptive with the warnings.

It's not because of you Jenn, it's Patrick. Some commenters have a Pavlovian response to anything Patrick does that involves a female guest or interviewee because he's done a bunch of social issues editorials and interviews on Giant Bomb, which inevitably draw some ire. Don't be frustrated because of some of the site's pre-existing baggage. You were a cool guest.

Treating women like crap in video games is bad, but it's a relative non-issue. Unless you're talking about rapelay, video games targeting a male audience is simple demographics and marketing, it's not misogyny. I'm sorry that having animated characters with boobs is offensive to some people, that's your problem, get over it.

This is a very worthwhile fight but the arguments most "feminists" make about video games is rarely the lack of women in the workplace and is more often "sexist" content in video games. That's the problem that I have, unless a game is being disgusting towards women, marketing a game towards men shouldn't be a problem. However, misogyny in game development is an issue, but it's not just an issue in games, it's an issue in all forms of entertainment. Let's not try to pretend that the news, movie, and TV industries are any better.

Let's all love video games and Giant Bomb together, kk?

And you wanna hear something ridiculous - just got a brand spanking new PC and the first game I started was Banner Saga. That thing is dope.

You have too much to play, and yes, Banner Saga is amazing.

Great interview/talk as usual, Patrick and Alex. "Bombin'" is some of the best content on this site as far as I'm concerned. Keep. It. Up!

Really fun episode! Jenn's an interesting person and I'll play Remember Me again now with renewed gusto.

Its always nice to have new personalities on the show, but personally I could not stand Jenn. I don't personally dislike her, I think she is a decent person,I just can't stand her personality. The things she says and her opinions make me want to pull out my hair. I think its important to get opinions from both sides of the fence on things so I begrudgingly listened to the whole show. Maybe lay off with the guests for a while and just leave it to the almighty dou: Scoops and the Wolf.

@icantbestopped:

I can sort of see where you're coming from, and I don't think you're necessarily being bigoted.

However, I think you have a skewed view of things if you think women "run the show" in most things. There are still very real socio-economic hurdles for women to overcome in even the most progressive and developed of countries. The hurdles are much, much lower than 100 years ago without a doubt, but they're still there.

It's also a little bit of a stretch to say that "the action hero can't save the princess/etc... anymore" because firstly; those tropes are still widely used, secondly; no-one is policing it, and thirdly; the main complaint is the ubiquity of it, not it's mere presence. I don't think that there would be anywhere near teh same level of complaining about the perception and treatment of women in videogames if hyper-sexualised characters and save-the-helpless-princess ideas were just part of the tapestry in games. In reality, if there's a woman on the box of a videogame then nine times out of ten her unrealistic tits are popping out of her unrealistic clothes.

Now don't get me wrong - I appreciate a bit of that from time to time. But when it's everywhere all the time, it grates on me - me the single-in-his-twenties-male-nerd. It goes from the occasional bit of titillation to a puzzling obsession.

And it's also *really* weird. Seriously, why is a fighting game which is about people pummelling each other into unconciousness/death trying to arouse me as I fight people? What's the mindset behind that. Look at the latest Mortal Kombat game. There is not a single female character there who has sensible clothing. None of them wear underwear for crying out loud - mechanically they are as capable as any other, but aesthetically they look *ridiculous*. Again - if this was an isolated example then it'd be a curiosity which some people liked and others didn't, but as it stands; it's everywhere.

The main thing to me is though, I'm not really sure why you *want* these "male dominated" entertainment mediums to be so gender-specific. I don't get that at all. If a different demographic enjoys similar things to you, how does that diminish your own enjoyment? And is the cleavage on the box art *really* so vital for your enjoyment? The idea that making something appealing to women will cause all men to dislike it doesn't make a scrap of sense as far as I can see.

However flawed, I loved 'Remember Me' too.

I finally got around to listening to the podcast and for those of you that were bothered by the gender, lifestyle, whatever talk you should take Jenn's advice and get outside of your comfort zone. Because, lets be real here dudes, they didn't say anything to warrant any sort of a response of note. So to be bothered by this your comfort zone has to be the size of a fucking pea. Meet new people. Here about different view points. Don't assume you're always right and be ok with not agreeing with everyone or having everyone agree with you.

For everyone else, what's up dudes?

I will forever correlate Jenn Frank with pizza.
Where can I find her pizza Tumblr?

GHOSTWRITER! *makes horn noise with mouth* Starring Sheldon Turnipseed and Blaze Berdahl! Yes I remember everyone's names, because SHUT UP.

Some of the comments here have been disappointing, but let me say this in no uncertain terms: I will still continue to have what I consider to be interesting, smart, thoughtful, and intellectually challenging guests on this show. Jenn is one of them.