Critic / Writer · Offworld / The Guardian · 2005–2014 · American
Jenn Frank was among the most distinctive personal-essay voices in games criticism of the 2000s, writing about games' emotional and social dimensions for Offworld and The Guardian at a time when those perspectives were marginal in mainstream coverage.
Jenn Frank wrote personal criticism about video games that drew on autobiography, cultural theory, and literary essay traditions at a time when the dominant mode of games writing was still structured around score-and-summary consumer guidance. Her work for Brandon Boyer's Offworld blog at Kotaku and subsequently for The Guardian's games section explored how games functioned as emotional and social spaces — addressing topics including grief, identity, and the experience of playing as a woman in online environments that the mainstream press was not discussing. Her criticism was widely cited as an example of what the New Games Journalism approach could produce at its best. She stepped back from public games writing following the Gamergate harassment campaign of 2014, which targeted her personally, and her absence has been frequently noted as a concrete measure of that campaign's harm to games culture.