I can finally understand and appreciate why I've watched so many games journalists walk away from all this -- and, bless them, you usually never have to hear about it.
Recently I wrote a piece for The Guardian. Some of you wondered—on this blog, on Twitter, at the Guardian, on discrete forums and image boards, and in our inboxes—why the article, as it first...
http://infinitelives.net/2014/09/01/regarding-the-conflict-of-interest-in-my-latest-piece/
This month’s Patreon essay. You might not like it, and that is absolutely okay. Here is the Readability link (which should work. I hope). *** My name is Jenn Frank. You may know my byline: I ha...
http://infinitelives.net/2014/08/31/you-have-to-protect-yourself/
VGXPO – Philadelphia Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:31:53 PDT Moral Kombat Panel Discussion (3:30EST) Jack Thompson debates Lorne Lanning (N’Gai Croal as moderator) There are two winding lines. There’...
"Can I be honest?" I asked my husband-to-be. "Work, I don't mind. Playing games, I don't mind. This? This kills me. I hate this. I don't like feeling like your mother. I'm not your mother."
http://infinitelives.net/2014/07/27/on-destiny-and-game-widows/
I do remember some things about my birth father. I do remember his impossibly long stride as he came down the airplane’s gangway. I remember his brown guitar case in one hand, his duffel in the...
http://infinitelives.net/2014/06/19/the-map-is-not-the-territory/
I just played through Jason Nelson’s latest, Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise (via Terry Cavanagh at Free Indie Games). I wrote about Jason Nelson’s games right here in late 2010; N...
http://infinitelives.net/2013/07/01/lets-play-nothing-you-have-done-deserves-such-praise/
Recently, online, I picked a battle that isn’t mine to pick. Relief finally came in the form of an email. “My wife and I are Quaker,” the letter-writer explained; I was immediately overwhel...
What horror movies and video games share in common Late last night I tried my hand at posting to Medium for the first time. It was something I was originally going to post here but, you know, it ...
Some quick thoughts. A little over a year ago I wrote a short, half-baked thing for Infinite Lives, Why “virtual reality” will never catch on. Now, fewer than 400 days later, my little treati...
http://infinitelives.net/2013/05/21/the-oculus-rift-is-probably-here-to-stay/
content note: depression, suicide, bullying I don’t know whether it’s okay to talk about this. Maybe it doesn’t help. At present, we don’t actually know for certain whether a game designe...
Two of the best events at this year’s Game Developers Conference were, technically, not GDC events at all. First there was Lost Levels, a rotating, three-ring speaking engagement held one after...
http://infinitelives.net/2013/04/29/ahhhcade-at-the-san-francisco-moma/
For fuck’s sake, Internet. What are you even trying to do to me. I laughed and cried a lot today. I did those two things at my laptop, and also in the real world. I have had the strangest—and...
http://infinitelives.net/2012/11/29/allow-natural-death-post-mortem-aka-thanks/
I am livid. Which superficially might sound very stupid, except that this kerfuffle combines ethics, DRM, social networking, and my integrity, all in an interesting and infuriating tangle. I was ...
Late last month, in the course of conversation, my colleague J.P. Grant asked me about the business model of any particular blog. Like, how do you curate content? (Or aggregate it, depending on w...
http://infinitelives.net/2012/08/05/you-arent-really-buying-a-goat/
I promise to stop posting spit-takes to the Internet, but there was a comment left on game designer Mitu Khandaker’s blog some weeks ago that might be worth revisiting. Maybe you’ve already r...
Man. Man. I don’t think I’d ever used the word “gender” in a piece of writing until 2010. Wow! What a strange time for me, too. I was three months’ out of my six-year on-and-off romance...
http://infinitelives.net/2012/07/18/i-get-tired-of-talking-about-it-too/
I’d promised to write something, anything!, for Artifice Books, but its editor Tadd was not too sure about my very first pitch, a catalogue of movie clips in which women get punched in the face...
http://infinitelives.net/2012/06/03/linksplosion-t-shirts-hefty-seamstress-and-more/
My last post here was about my friend Brian, and this one is, too. I don’t think I’ve talked lengthily about anxiety or depression in any public venue, but I will say that, after a pretty ser...
http://infinitelives.net/2012/06/01/what-to-do-when-youre-depressed-prey/
My friend and colleague Brian Taylor visited Chicago over the weekend, and I tell you, I barely got to drag him all over town the way I’d planned. In another life we might’ve gone to Three Ac...
http://infinitelives.net/2012/05/29/nerd-notes-game-shopping-with-brian-taylor/