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 less obvious is the kind of writing that disappears in the process. Articles about new games, niche games, and experimental work don’t get traffic, so off they go. Deeply researched columns from subject matter experts don’t get traffic, so they’re cut. Not many people read interviews, unless you can get someone to say something controversial and pull it out as a news story, so it’s rarely worth talking to developers about their work. Articles designed purely to entertain with daft jokes, such as diary series, don’t deliver numbers at scale no matter how much their readers adore them.

Even reviews, the traditional bread-and-butter of games journalism, are increasingly squeezed. It would be impossible for even the mightiest of games outlets to review every stone in the quarry, but as the number of games released has climbed into the thousands, some major websites now only manage to review two or three a month.

We all have friends still working at major websites, and they all do fine work every day, but Jank is our attempt to make space for something more. If you’ve enjoyed a website like Rock Paper Shotgun over the past twenty years, enough to remember its name, then I think Jank is for you.