Jank (Page 17)

27 Jan 2026 By Jon Hicks Jank business

Jank is partnering with Total Playtime

As part of our launch, Jank is partnering with the fine podcast Total Playtime, which not-at-all-coincidentally is hosted by Jonty and Brendy along with fellow veterans Alice Bell and Nate Crowley. It has been running for a little over a year and publishes free episodes every two weeks, or monthly for those who back it on Patreon.

The free version of Total Playtime is available here, and every two weeks it offers:

Discussion of the latest PC gaming news
Judgements on the games we’re playing
Recommendations for new games
Updates on Alice’s dog and Nate’s cats
A recommendation every week of something that is not a videogame, because true satisfaction can only be achieved from a balanced cultural diet.

As part of the partnership, paying subscribers of Jank will get access to the paid tier of Total Playtime, starting from this Thursday’s episode. That means you get an exclusive members-only episode every two weeks, mostly about PC gaming, although the backing of our Patrons has permitted it to wander to some more esoteric places. Recent episodes have included:

Ranking game awards shows, because they covered the games already
Hypothetical product partnerships between major videogame franchises

27 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

Life at Telltale was “complicated”

"The whole point is to bleed a little bit for this"

When survivors of Telltale Games get together, they tell war stories. I know because two veterans are speaking to me now, and they look into the middle distance as they tiptoe around the complex feelings they have regarding their time at the ill-fated studio.

"The stories would just go on for days," says Michael Choung, who wrote for a handful of Telltale's games between 2014 and 2016. "Whenever Telltale people get together and talk," explains Choung, "it's not like 'what fond memory would you like to share with me, because I will share my fond memories with you!' It's always just like: 'Oh my god, that was happening to you? Oh my gosh.' Yeah, so it's a very complicated feeling."

I'm chatting to Choung in a video call alongside fellow Telltale alumni Nick Herman, director of The Wolf Among Us and choreographer across many Telltale games. He agrees things were sometimes messy, but would later sum up his time at the studio as "worth the squeeze".

"It's got to look like premium animated television," says Herman. "You got to look at it and think it's something that would be on Netflix."

Choung and Herman are now two

27 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

Why we are making Jank

Because if we didn't we would probably explode

What I want from Jank is simple. I want to find the good PC games, and write about them with an honesty and thoughtfulness that only independent ownership can allow. An oasis where good writing on games can live in peace. I want Jank to be a little tropical island you can visit, where you will always find me in the shallows, trousers rolled up, spearfishing for something interesting. Like Tom Hanks in Castaway.

Except I'm not a shill for FedEx. So I also want to fire autoplaying videos into the sea. I would like churn to take a backseat to quality scribbles. And if the noise of deals posts could please diminish into nothing, that would be nice. Perhaps paragraph-long headlines could also get straight into the bin? No worries if not. At the very least, I would appreciate a place where I can safely shit on Call Of Duty when annually called upon to do so, a high horse upon which to laugh at Leslie Benzies' latest disaster. What? You mean having your own site allows you to just do all that? Cool.

A woman with white hair looks dead-eyed toward the ground, saying "This is good for me". — From egg frying simulator Arctic Eggs, a tale of culinary independence in a hellish

27 Jan 2026 By Graham Smith News

Welcome to Jank

It's safer here.

I've been writing about PC games professionally since 2005, a time when popular opinion was that the platform was dying. The popular opinion was wrong, of course. Then and now, PC gaming is where the future is. It's where indie developers and modders are free to experiment, where experimental browser games can rub shoulders with mega-budget blockbusters, and where new genres are born.

Welcome to Jank, a new reader-supported website about PC games.

We're starting this site because we want to do the kind of work that's hard to maintain on a traditional ad-funded games website.

We should know. Jank is founded by Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and me, Graham Smith. Between us, we have nearly 60 years experience writing about games, from running magazines like PC Gamer and Official Xbox Magazine to websites like Rock Paper Shotgun and Eurogamer. We know first-hand that even ad-funded websites with the best of intentions need to constantly chase traffic growth just to maintain stasis.

You know half of this story already. Browsing the modern web means wrasslin' with notification popups, adverts that cover the articles and follow you down the page, auto-playing videos, affiliate links, sponsored content, and more.

Perhaps