Frank Wu is awesome, and Gamergate should leave him out of This
I woke up this morning to my husband telling me, “I guess it’s my turn to get harassed on Twitter.” Sighing, I opened up my Macbook - and saw that Frank’s ex-wife wrote a blog post attacking him, which Gamergate quickly fed to their trolls - whipping them into a frenzy.
I’m not going to comment on any of the blog post in question. But, I do want to tell you a bit about the man I married.
My husband is simply the most amazing, supporting partner any woman could have. I want to be really clear here - Revolution 60 would not have shipped without Frank. To be perfectly clear, my career would not exist without Frank.
Here are a few Frank Wu stories.
Frank has a PhD in bacterial genetics, and works for a large pharmaceutical conglomerate writing drug patents for them. He’s an expert in this field, and honestly could be using the money he makes to pursue his own dreams - like building his own Batmobile, something he’s been planning his whole life.
But no. Despite not being a gamer, when I told him he wanted to launch Giant Spacekat - he stood behind me.
We poured the majority of our family’s money into shipping R60 for 4 years. To be blunt, we were desperately poor. Frank happily made giant pots of red beans and rice at the beginning of each week, which we’d eat three meals a day. I doubt I will ever be able to enjoy this meal again.
Early on in shipping R60, we had to go separate ways with our modeler. Without enough budget to hire someone to build geometry, I asked Frank if he’d be willing to try his hand at it.
Frank doesn’t understand computers well enough to update his iPhone, but he threw himself headfirst into this task. Working on a slow, 2011 Macbook Pro, he created practically every piece of geometry in Revolution 60. For years, Frank would work 40 hours at his day job, then work all evening and all weekend on building geometry.
Often when men comment on the game, they note the spaceship design - which was all Frank’s work. He did this unheralded for four years.
When I met Frank, he was a minor celebrity in sci-fi. He’s won four Hugo awards for science fiction art - and has done book covers for people like Corey Doctorow. But, for the last four years, he’s put all that on hold as I’ve built my career in the game industry. We’ve gone to GDC, not Worldcon. And the whole time, Frank has stood by me because he believes in what I do.
Frank and I were engaged three weeks after meeting. We were married 11 months later. The first day I met him, he asked me if I wanted to change the world, and I said yes. He says he married me because he wants to make the world a better place too.
Frank Wu is simply the most amazing husband any woman could ask for.
To the best of my knowledge, Frank has never written anything about any game for a publication. He has nothing to do with the pretext of ethics in gaming journalism. Even Gamergaters have reluctantly commented, “You know - he’s married to Brianna, but this guy seems pretty cool.”
Attack me all you want. But I’ll thank you to leave my spouse out of it.
