This week, Nathan and Gita are joined by games and culture video essayist Jacob Geller ahead of his 24-hour stream to raise money for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. We discuss video game criticism in the age of drive-by culture wars on social media and conclude that – despite how bleak things might seem – there’s still a hunger for truly substantial, meaningful criticism, one that is not decreasing. We also learn about the ins and outs of creating heady essays on YouTube, specifically: Wh...
Sep 27, 2024•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 37
This week, Nathan, Chris, and Luke are joined by comedian and streamer Tom Walker to discuss the latter’s self-made nightmare: an ongoing Grand Theft Auto IV playthrough in which traffic speed is cranked up to max. We talk about how livestreaming comedy differs from traditional forms of comedy like standup and how Twitch chat facilitates a unique sort of chaos that might involve, among other things, a naked person announcing that they’ve spilled wedding cake on their dick. Also, we get two separ...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 36
This week, Nathan, Gita, and Riley are joined by Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media – another fantastic worker-owned website – for a special episode tied in with the Back To School theme week we’ve been running on the site, which focuses on changes, nostalgia, and learning new things. First, we talk to Emanuel about 404’s first year of existence and all the highs, lows, and scoops that entailed. Then we discuss Back To School week more broadly, with a special focus on Luke’s piece about game developer...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 35
This week, Nathan, Chris, and Riley marvel at the speed with which Sony pulled the plug on its latest live service offering, Concord, a game so focused-grouped for everyone that it ended up being for no one. Are live service games as a whole doomed? Probably not. But the way triple-A publishers approach them – toiling away for years and then releasing something that feels dated on day one – likely is. Then we reflect on the great Twitch vs YouTube livestreaming war, which seems to be ending with...
Sep 06, 2024•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 34
This week, Nathan, Gita, and Luke discuss the first big game of the “fall” video game season: Star Wars Outlaws. Despite an enormous budget and a four-year development cycle, reviewers were given just a week to play the gargantuan game before embargo. Not ideal! We discuss how that impacts the way reviewers play and perceive games. Then we move on to Concord, Sony’s new team-based hero shooter that generated more buzz by flopping than by existing in the first place. Why are people so gleeful abo...
Aug 30, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 33
This week, Nathan and Chris are joined by Wired’s Makena Kelly to discuss content creators at the Democratic National Convention. Was it a savvy move on Democrats’ part to give them press access? Did they do a better job of shining light on protesters and their causes than traditional press? And what was the deal with all the rumblings of conflict between creators and journalists? Then we move on to Black Myth: Wukong, a Chinese action-RPG that’s taken Steam by storm, but not without its fair sh...
Aug 23, 2024•1 hr 49 min•Ep. 32
This week, Nathan, Chris, and Riley examine the aftermath (lol) of the drama surrounding Deadlock, Valve’s new hero shooter that hasn’t been officially announced yet, and one brave (read: normal) reporter’s decision to, well, report on it. Why, in an industry where regularly unreliable leakers amass hundreds of thousands of followers, did so many people object to a journalist writing about a game to which they obtained legitimate access and which they did not break any NDAs to write about? Then ...
Aug 16, 2024•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 31
This week, Nathan, Gita, and Riley gather to reflect on the legacy of Game Informer, a magazine whose 33-year run unexpectedly came to an end late last week when GameStop unceremoniously laid off its entire staff and took down its website’s archive. Then we discuss the parasocial pivots of both the Trump and Harris campaigns, with the former appearing on the broadcast of sycophantic Kick streamer Adin Ross and the latter embracing Brat Summer, a social media phenomenon born of resurgent popstar ...
Aug 09, 2024•2 hr•Ep. 30
This week, Luke, Riley, and Chris talk news, sports, sports games, non-sports games, and geography. We start by discussing Wednesday’s layoffs at Destiny developer Bungie, which saw 220 people lose their jobs and other people and teams shuffled into parent company Sony. But throughout all this upheaval, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons has managed to hang on to his classic car collection. Then, we talk about how, instead of getting a new Sonic & Mario Olympics game, we got a crummy mobile game with a...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 29
This week, Nathan, Riley, and Chris tackle a very eventful week, beginning with news that broke mere minutes before we started recording: video game voice actors and mocap performers are going on strike. Major companies – including EA, Epic, and Activision – aren’t guaranteeing them necessary AI-related protections, so they’re taking to the picket line. We reflect on how things reached this boiling point and consider what might happen next. After that, we discuss Humble Games, which laid off its...
Jul 26, 2024•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 28
Nathan, Luke, and Chris gather to discuss a week that feels like it’s lasted ten years, largely due to an assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the aftershocks of which have rattled every corner of the internet, including the world of video games. Almost immediately after it all went down, players of games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft began digitally recreating the scene. Companies, in turn, have moderated some instances of this and washed their hands of others. We reflect on what ...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 27
This week, Nathan, Luke, and Riley reconvene after a holiday weekend to discuss everybody’s favorite, inescapably pervasive topic: enshittification, defined by writer Cory Doctorow as the process by which "the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.” This week alone, it happened to both Xbox’s Game Pass service and Apex Legends’ battle pass, all in service of making numbers go up on a balance sheet somewhere. Then we talk about the sudden death of Kotak...
Jul 12, 2024•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 26
This week, everybody’s on break because of the Fourth of July, but we don’t intend on leaving you high and dry. A couple months ago, we hosted our first live event at Wonderville in Brooklyn alongside Merritt K, author of “LAN Party: Inside the Multiplayer Revolution.” We spent our time on stage discussing the golden age of LAN parties and why they (sadly) went away. Also Bawls soda, because you can’t have a discussion of LAN parties and the early 2000s without Bawls. Here is the never-before-re...
Jul 05, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 25
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Ash Parrish of The Verge to discuss the reason behind Dr Disrespect’s Twitch ban and how it finally came to light after all these years. We answer one of the major questions the recent torrent of information has produced: Why did it take journalists – some of whom had known the reason for years beforehand – so long to finally make it public? Why now? We also talk about the process of reporting out sensitive stories involving victims and what...
Jun 28, 2024•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 24
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by John Warren, formerly of Fanbyte and now of the just-launched VGBees. First we discuss John’s new reader and listener-supported website, which aims to provide a home to good writing about video games. The more the merrier, we say. Then we hop on the endless merry-go-round that is the question of what a game review should be, as inspired by discourse around Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. If said discourse makes you want to tear your hair ...
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 23
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by some guy they know named Ethan Gach to discuss the aftermath (lol) of Summer Game Fest. Ethan was on the ground at the show in LA, so he fields questions about the Geoff Keighley-powered husk that E3 left behind. We ultimately arrive at the same question people do after every single one of these things: Is an event like Summer Game Fest needed in a digital age where video game companies can spin up showcases whenever they want? Then we move o...
Jun 14, 2024•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 22
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley gather on the eve of Summer Game Fest – aka Keigh-3 – to discuss pre-show announcements and an investigation into the show itself. Turns out, it costs $250,000 to buy one minute of trailer time during Geoff Keighley’s summer advertisement extravaganza. And that’s just the beginning, with pricing tiers that go all the way up to $550,000 for 2.5 minutes. Is it worth it? Especially when SGF has historically underdelivered compared to E3’s attention-g...
Jun 07, 2024•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 21
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley huddle together after another week surviving the slow-mo media apocalypse, this time with (even) more AI. First we discuss Vox Media and The Atlantic’s mystifying decisions to feed their journalists’ work into OpenAI’s woodchipper, shredding years of credibility and goodwill in exchange for a quick buck. Then we talk about Sony’s Neil Druckmann interview, which the company ended up pulling after the Last of Us maestro revealed that he was egregiou...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 20
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Janus Rose, author of Aftermath’s first-ever freelance piece (made possible by subscribers like you!). She tells us about what inspired her to write her piece, which focuses on parallels between Final Fantasy VII and real-world resistance movements in the face of imperialism. Then we discuss IGN’s purchase of The Gamer Network – which includes sites like Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, GamesIndustry.biz, and VG247 – and ensuing layoffs, which ...
May 24, 2024•2 hr 7 min•Ep. 19
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley discuss the new Assassin’s Creed, Shadows, which is set in feudal Japan and stars two main characters: a ninja and a samurai. It looks more interesting than the past few games in the series, if nothing else! Of course, since the ninja is a woman and the samurai is black, a certain subset of gamers are Big Mad. We (begrudgingly) talk about that part, too. Then we move on to Animal Well, an unexpected Metroidvania-but-not hit that came out last week...
May 17, 2024•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 18
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita take stock of Microsoft’s no-good, very-bad week, in which the increasingly embattled giant shut down four studios, two of them – Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks – beloved by fans. More small games or big franchise hits? Microsoft doesn’t seem to know what it wants. Then we check in on Sony, which is having the opposite problem. After landing the biggest breakout hit of the year in Helldivers 2, it nearly fumbled the bag with a bunch of needless ...
May 10, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 17
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita ponder orbs. There used to be so many of them in video games. What happened? Where did they all go? And whose idea was it to replace the smooth, satisfying act of vacuuming up orbs with slow, tedious loot grinds? After that, we discuss Another Crab’s Treasure, a Spongebob-inspired Soulslike that’s surprisingly great (and surprisingly existent, considering that I just typed the phrase “Spongebob-inspired Soulslike”). Then we move on to a subject I’m...
May 03, 2024•2 hr 9 min•Ep. 16
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by IGN’s Matt Kim to talk about Stellar Blade, a culture war battleground that, as it turns out, is a perfectly alright video game and nothing more. Seems to happen a lot! Maybe we could all learn something from this. But we probably won’t. Oh well. Then we discuss the impending TikTok ban, which is a load of dumb bullshit that doesn’t seem like it will pan out the way the United States government is hoping, but it’s happening anyway, for some ...
Apr 26, 2024•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 15
On this week’s episode, Riley and Chris are joined by games journalist Ian Boudreau . We start by talking about Riley’s stressful quest to get internet in a new apartment, before pivoting to the stressful quests of the Fallout TV show and what it does and doesn’t borrow from the games. Then, we discuss the drama around Marques Brownlee’s review of the Humane AI pin and how we can all avoid being conscripted into AI hype, which leads into a brief reminiscence about the ill-fated Juicero. We talk ...
Apr 19, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 14
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita are joined by New Blood Interactive founder and Fallout expert Dave Oshry to talk about Amazon’s new Fallout TV series, which just premiered. The general consensus: It’s good! But it’s also very Bethesda-era Fallout, heavily reliant on iconography and references (Stimpacks! Nuka Cola! The Junk Jet from Fallout 4!) in a way that can be distracting, bordering on nonsensical. Dave makes the great point, however, that Fallout embarked on this path even...
Apr 12, 2024•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 13
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Luke find themselves wandering a news desert, so they decide to discuss games they’ve been playing recently, almost entirely for the purpose of getting Luke to pronounce the title “Doronko Wanko.” It’s a great moment, worth the price of admission on its own. Then Nathan and Chris discuss Content Warning, a new Twitch and YouTube sensation that’s like Lethal Company but you play as incompetent content creators, before spending a long time digging deep in...
Apr 05, 2024•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 12
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by writer, podcaster, PR guy, and former games journalist Ed Zitron to talk about, well, a lot of stuff. We begin by talking about “media being destroyed by idiots,” as Ed puts it, before discussing Nvidia’s pivot to AI and how it could crash and burn, taking countless jobs with it. Then we discuss AI NPCs in video games, which Nathan got to try out several different flavors of at GDC. The verdict: They can be fun to mess with, but the novelty ...
Mar 29, 2024•2 hr•Ep. 11
On this week’s episode, Luke, Chris, and Riley talk about Kotaku's editor-in-chief resigning over guides mandates, our favorite indestructible tech and gadgets, why AI writing in games sucks, and how to get the most out of your local bikeshare program." Credits - Hosts: Luke Plunkett, Chris Person, and Riley MacLeod - Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude - Subscribe to Aftermath ! About The Show Aftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website c...
Mar 22, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 10
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by their former Kotaku colleague, author and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, for a special Inside Baseball Week episode of the show. True to the theme, they spend most of the episode discussing the state of games journalism: Are layoffs and site closures a sign that traditional games journalism is dying? Or is it just evolving into a more sustainable form and, in the meantime, shedding some unneeded flab? How can new websites hope to grow whe...
Mar 15, 2024•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 9
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley discuss the wild (and wholly inaccurate) conspiracy theory surrounding a small video game narrative studio called Sweet Baby Inc, which has recently taken the internet by storm. It begins with “wokeness” in video games and ends with multi-trillion-dollar investment company Blackrock, so buckle up – and if you feel your brain begin to melt, don’t worry, that’s normal. After that we dig into Chris’ long-awaited piece on Sanrio, the Japanese company ...
Mar 08, 2024•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 8
