RIP Polygon and Giant Bomb

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another installment of Aftermath Hours, the weekly podcast of aftermath.site, a reader-supported, worker-owned website about video games, the internet, and everything that comes after. I am Gustav from Claire Obscure. And today I'm joined by almost all of the site. Let's see, Luke Funkett. Hello.

Chris Person. Hey, what's going on? And Riley McLeod. Hello. And yeah, it's not a good day. It's a really, really, really, really, really shitty day. It's not good, dude. It's pretty bad, in fact. We were going to, dude, we were going to talk about a lovely game.

We were going to make all... We're still going to. We are, but that was going to be like most of it, you know? Yeah. I had my French accent, like I had French accent ready to go. I had mime jokes. I had everything. I was going to be a feel-good podcast about a fun French video game and like... And we have more important things to talk about. Yeah. For those who are just joining us today, both Polygon and Giant Bomb functionally.

They didn't necessarily die. They'll both live on in other forms, but they have lost a lot of their core people. And as we have hammered home repeatedly, you know, these websites are their people. And so with those folks gone, it may as well not be the same site anymore. It's just a name. In Polygon's case, the site was sold from Vox to Valnet. Valnet is a terrible sweatshop adjacent kind of operation.

They laid off at least 25 people, which is a substantial portion of the site staff. I think the site was at like, what, 40 something. So I think that they are keeping like eight editors. It's going to be very guides focused. A skeleton crew, basically, for an operation of polygon size. And then Giant Bomb has been having issues all week with a fandom executive stepping in and trying to, I guess, impose their will over the site.

leading to what now is the confirmed departure of Jeff Grubb. Other people are talking as though they have left. It seems like Dan Reichert might also be out. I'm not sure, though. Yeah, just an incredibly, incredibly bleak week for games media. Incredibly bleak day. Like, the Giant Bound stuff has been... swirling around a bit but um sort of both these things coming to a head one of these things happening one of these things coming to a head on the same day is like

Jeez. And yeah, it's a very games journalism day. None of this had happened when I went to bed. At time of recording, it's like 6am, I've just got up and... None of this had happened by 11 PM the night before. I've, I just have woken up to hell within like a timeframe of like five hours, six hours. It's just.

apocalyptic yeah well also to give context on that front i think it's especially surprising to see it happen to polygon Um, because, you know, and Luke, you were saying this in Slack, like talking to Polygon folks, even a few weeks ago, they thought their jobs were safe because Polygon is one of the few remaining or was one of the few remaining sites that like.

you know seemed to be a reliable place of employment seemed to be doing well like there just was not an indication that it was suddenly going to be gutted yeah like a few weeks ago i i i did a piece on this but i also just you know stuck my finger in the wind and spoke to you know everybody i know at every site i know for for one of the the inside baseball stories and um yeah polygon polygon people were exceptional

for being like, well, we're actually okay. You know, there was doom and gloom everywhere from most websites that you can imagine, but Polygon people legitimately. believe that website like we all did that it was a profitable successful stable video games media website and we've all worked on this morning to find that You know, I don't know what the numbers look like. I don't know how.

suicidal the executives at Vox are. I don't know what rationale there can be to sell the entire website at all, let alone to a shit show like Valnet. which i can't stress enough like if you don't know who valnet are yeah all the all the work we've done on on the gamers network valnet is essentially like you can swap it out it's the same deal it's exploitative sweatshop adjacent just

Just there to game SEO stuff and terrible pay, terrible conditions. Polygon was a stable professional workplace with a union. People were on... comfortable, appropriate, full-time salaries. And I have no idea what that's going to look like under Valnet, but like, it definitely does not look good. Yeah. Notably on the union side of things. A person who works at Eater tweeted about union negotiations earlier.

She said, what happened with Polygon today is so fucked. Fox Media has made some atrocious decisions in my six years here, but this is really something else. And to do this in the middle of us bargaining a new union contract where they scold us for asking for better protections is just unconscionable. So on fucking. Yeah. Yep. On Mayday. I think if you also for more context, if you want to really just turn your stomach, there's that rap profile on Valnet.

It's just reads Valnet blues. How online porn pioneer Hassan Yusuf built a digital media quote sweatshop. And that's a. Yeah, man, this this is the worst possible choice. It's it's it feels like spiteful. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know why. Because like. Like Giz is doing okay right now, actually, like fairly okay, as far as I know. But they like, like you send it to Valnet if you want to punish somebody, you know, like that's not.

That doesn't seem like anything except for that. Or maybe they were like the only person who would buy and they're like, fuck it, we don't care. We need to like get a big mountain of money because the economy is going to implode or something or whatever. Whatever dumb shit goes through the head of a CEO or executive.

Yeah, it's also notable as people are saying in chat that Valnet is now suing the rap for that piece that Chris just quoted the headline of. That's the kind of company that Valnet is. Like, just, you know, diabolical on pretty much every front. And now that's where Polygon is going to live. Like this is why people, I don't think people are being hysterical when they say that Polygon is dead.

Yeah, it seems like they've taken or have offered to take some number of people, my sense is like less than 10. But I think one of the MOs, it seems, of the Valnet sites from what people have said. is that it's, you know, a lot of freelancers and a lot of freelance work. And so, you know, I would imagine, but I don't know that that's what Delna would do as well.

Yeah, Rainy Day Jewels in chat says, it's funny because Polygon had a genuine fandom in a way I rarely see on video game websites. Like you've still got people on Tumblr making GIF sets of their videos. um yeah which is true like even even their like reduced video team because you know they had like brian david gilbert for a while and i think he really made that whole operation like uh maybe bigger than it was before but still like people really enjoy their content um they enjoy both like

the kind of more traditional coverage that Polygon does, and also the video stuff that they do. They managed to actually ride that line really well, which most websites have completely failed to do. Like, you know, they had something extremely special and extremely unique. And to just throw it away like this is, again, like it makes no sense, especially given the broader context of this being like a crazy year for games. The Switch 2 is coming out next month.

grand theft auto 6 is allegedly coming out sometime this year um the latter will probably be the biggest video game release ever yeah If you cannot make money off a video game website with those things on the horizon, then you should not be running any company on the planet. You should not be running like a small coffee shop, let alone a major media company. Are we not finding that across the board, that anybody in charge of a media company is clearly unfit to be running that media company?

This just makes no sense outside of the theory that it's spiteful. You know, like why, why sell the website to a company that surely wouldn't have paid what that, you know, there's no way Valnet could afford to pay what Polygon and 40 staff members and the brand value and the SEO from all their guides and tips posts, which. you know, by all accounts have just been...

Like, I don't know, I don't have, I've never seen the exact numbers, but I've heard from multiple people that Polygon's guides and tips section is just colossal. Yeah. Like the traffic that that brings in, or at least used to bring in, I don't know if SEO changes have affected that, but. Yeah, I can give you some numbers on that, or at least not hard numbers, but like an indication of how good it was. So when Tears of the Kingdom came out. Like the guides for that did so well.

that those months alone, like, completely obliterated traffic expectations for the entire site for, like, that year. I heard Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing was the same. It was doing numbers that just dwarfed, like, other figures from the entire network.

um because a they were doing a good because like this is very into the reads here but polygons tips and guides content is usually is is like the best there is i know we i know people often talk about guides content because of the nature of it but like no it's extremely good polygons was was incredible they had proper people working full-time on them they were genuinely like not only informative and accurate but would read like a person had put time and care into it

And so like, as far as that kind of content goes, Polygon's was light years ahead of everyone else's. And they would get, they obviously got the traffic and the metric. like as a reward for that they were doing so well so i don't know if the same seo changes that have affected networks like gamers and falnet have have hit polygon as well um i can't speak to that but like it's another possibility that you know a huge pillar of their network

being reliant on search traffic that recent Google changes to that. And which was, there was another one late last year. I don't know if it's affected that, but... Yeah, that's the one that a lot of people have been talking about is like really hurting traffic across the board for pretty much any website you can think of. Yep. Which, you know, probably again, we don't know anything concrete here.

But I would guess that probably played a role, at least in that I'm sure some of these media companies are like, OK. Well, you know, to compensate for this drop in traffic, like we want to get out of businesses X and Y to focus on these other ones so that, you know, maybe we can survive this like kind of difficult period or whatever. But even then.

selling Polygon of all sites doesn't really make a lot of sense. It was one of the biggest and most successful Vox operations. That's what I don't get, the selling. It's just bizarre. I was at Kotaku long enough that I was there during the financial crisis. and and then subsequent issues after that and then most of you guys were as well and and the way that even like Nick was ruthless with that stuff. He would see a storm coming.

And instead of seeing if he could write it out, he would fire a bunch of people just to make sure. Luke, I was there. I was an intern at the time. Well, no, so I was speaking about the financial crisis specifically. So that's like 2008. I know I was an intern at the time. I was there. I remember that. Oh, damn. Yeah, dude. Wow. I've fucking been here like as not as long as you, but I've been. Wow. Yeah.

I remember the blog that Nick Denton published about this, and it was like called Survival of the Quickest. And it was this blog about how he was like, we got to fucking cut staff now before we fucking descend into the darkness. And so that we can be lean and that we can build our way back up. And then like six months to a year later, he said, oopsie daisy didn't need to do that. Like literally fucking literally was like, whoopsie, you know, omelet eggs and like.

That's the only... But, like, so that's kind of my point, is that, like, as Ruthless... And as much of a prick that Nick was. And he was. Even he didn't, like, preemptively sell Kotaku, you know? He laid people off and saw how it went. Like, Polygon had...

I don't know. How many full-time staff did Polygon have yesterday? Like 35, 40? Yeah. I mean, somewhere in like the neighborhood of 40, I think. Like I know all layoffs are terrible, but like surely you didn't have to sell the entire site. Yeah. Like that's just... I think that's what...

i think that's what's getting to me a little bit is that like not just this but also the fandom thing is i mean perpetually we're we're we're in the like did you know what you buy like bought like thing like did you know what you bought do you know why you bought this

Do you know why people enjoy it? Do you know why people go to it? And it seems like we kind of transitioned from a new generation of Freak guys who are literally just doing like the fandom thing as well as the valnet thing like those are really similar feeling sites where it's like don't care shove a bunch of on here just optimize seo traffic we do not care what it's like we will just use

like abusive labor practices to get to that it's like have you been on wikia it's fucking hell and also i want to say uh tabletop coverage polygon had really good tabletop coverage yeah So I saw, I think it was... oh i forget his name i'm sorry but one of the few remaining full-time board game tabletop guys this morning i saw posting that like i mean rascal was uh one of the people rascal was like i or i got my start entirely because polygon gave me work writing about board games

yep yeah so board game and tabletop coverage at major websites used to be like me and charlie you know and i left kotaku and now charlie's gone and it's like cool who's covering this enormous seen an industry now at a major entertainment site like you're going to get press releases but that's just gone now that whole area of coverage is just gone and thankfully there are places like rascal taking its place but like one of the only

like we covered this last year one of the only tabletop and board game sites dice breaker is coming up for nearly a year since it died any like an inglorious death when it was just kind of shut down without people really shutting it down um so like it this is what makes it feel so malicious it's like just

There's people out there clamoring to read about this stuff. That's why I kept doing it at Kotaku because it did numbers. People wanted to read about board games and tabletop gaming and stuff and to just throw that on the trash heap. For fucking whatever reason, it's just...

I just don't, I mean, we do get it. We all get it. We all get that the people in charge are fucking idiots and don't know what they've got and don't know how to run a business and don't know how to run a media company and don't know how to manage human beings. But like at the same time, it's just. I mean. I was thinking about this earlier, too. And it's like, you know, I think that we often, especially in games, talk about like, who is in the industry slash part of the industry and who isn't.

And I think that generally speaking, like media is not part of the games industry. We are something separate. But I think that also it's helpful to view executives as not part of the industries that they are in. They are a parasite class.

do anything to enrich the industries that they are allegedly a part of. They're there to siphon money off the top, and they're there to purposefully not learn a lot about the daily ins and outs of their businesses, because if they knew those, then they wouldn't take these like

you know, what are functionally very big risks to try to make the line go up slow or to try to make the line go up like, you know, very quickly in one day or something like they'd be like, oh, this is a really bad long term idea. I shouldn't do that.

But instead, they just sit there and they just skim off the top forever and ever. Like, they're not part of any industry. They're just, like I said, they're parasites. But that's what's so crazy about the Vox thing. Like, Vox have been... I know Vox, there's still assholes there and they've still made terrible decisions, but at the same time, they have run a largely successful media company for what must be 15 years now.

This doesn't, this just doesn't feel like something Vox would do. Like even just, and I think that's what, like I said, I'm only an hour into this news, so I'm still digesting it in real time. But like. Is this how bad it is now? Like that even a supposed half decent steward of media properties. And I know, like I said, I know they're fucked up. I know they've done terrible things to places like Secret Base, which is one of my favorite.

sports outlets um but like to sell polygon and like have most of its stuff laid off in in just one swoop just feels like so inept and malicious at the same time, but also coming from them just makes it feel extra. Like, I don't know. It just really fucking shocks me that this is how bad it is.

The Vox Media Union noted in their statement that this is the fifth round of layoffs they've had in six months. And I know a few months ago, they had a big overhaul of like Eater that didn't make a lot of sense. And like, so clearly... Something is going on there. Nathan, I guess I think what you were saying before reminded me that...

I think because Luke might have posted it, but I was rereading Megan Greenwell's Adults in the Room the other night. Yeah, of course. Which, if people don't know, is sort of her magnum opus when she left Deadspin. and maybe it's more the fandom stuff but i think You said that the executives aren't part of the industry, and I think that's true. And I think that there's an argument to be made that they don't.

have to be right they're the adults who know how to make money and like right well that's how they like to position themselves yeah and i think when you look at fandom and i think some of the some of the giant bomb people were saying this it's that You know, your job as the person who writes or makes content or whatever, you know, is to know the content, to know your audience, and the executive's job is to make the money.

And I think, as I saw Kotaku and probably the rest of you did as well, like when that trust breaks down, when the money people don't trust you to know how to do your part of the thing, I think this is how those kinds of things start to happen. In Polygon's case, I just, I can't, I mean, you...

You have to wonder, like, did they, why would they sell their lovely site to, you know, Valnet of all people? And, you know, at the end of the day... that that's not their business they want to make money this makes them money like you know um but yeah i think it's such a particularly

sad um place to send it to well yeah i mean it's also just like it's very instructive in terms of the basics of how capitalism work works because i think that and you know i was talking about this on blue sky because i i published that piece this week we can get into this too, about the EA layoffs. And specifically, I published a piece about the amount of money that EA executives made in like last year. So, you know, maybe a little bit out of date.

But I got a lot of people in my mentions being like, well, you know, that's just capitalism. That's how it works. Like, you know, if you make a product that doesn't sell, then you lose your job, etc. And then people are talking about like, well, yeah, but at the same time, like these executives.

barely know anything about the companies that they are running, or at least know very little about the daily ins and outs of the companies they're running, about why people like the things that their companies are selling or the services they're providing, etc. And you end up in the situation where then you start to wonder, okay,

Like, what is the goal of all of this? Because the goal clearly is to make money. But again, if we're talking capitalism 101, people believe that that leads to better products ultimately. And that's just not true. Like, the actual truth of it is that making money is often at odds with providing something good or useful or something that lasts. In fact, they are some of the most diametrically opposed forces that you could encounter.

And so I hope if nothing else, people are fucking learning from this, that like, you know, these things that you think. are benefiting each other. These forces that you think are working in tandem to produce something that you like are actually enemies. And they will destroy each other. There's this quote. Can I read it? It's from Jim Bankoff. That's been like become a brand new intrusive thought in my head that I will never. It's just kicking around there.

You know, he goes on this, we're proud to have built Polygon, Gaming Authority, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Fox Media, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, This transaction will enable us to focus our energies and investment resources in other priority areas of growth across our portfolio of iconic digital publications and audio slash video programming while enabling Valnet to grow their leadership and authority in the gaming information category. And the phrase gaming information category is...

Right. That's like when when like the Simpsons joke where Pooh's like the nine Mets are my favorite squadron. It's just like you don't know what you're talking about. And it's like in your diction. Right. Well, also pointedly, they don't mention games journalism. They don't mention reporting. They don't even want it to sound like that. Gaming information. Games information. I mean, I think all the people who own these companies...

They don't know that we do reporting even when they know we do reporting. You know what I mean? Yeah, Nick didn't know that Jezebel existed. Or he did. He was like, oh, that's nice. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, as Apple Cider said in chat, gaming information equals guides. But I think that you were saying... Yeah, I mean, obviously, if you look at it... If you look at Polygon as having good guides content and, you know, they have these lists and best movies, blah, blah, blah.

I can, if you're like the CEO pilled, I see how Valnet seems like a good fit, right? They do that too. But again, I feel like it's predicated on literally never looking at the actual websites, right? And I think, Nathan, like you said before, the idea, and we saw this, I think, at the post as well, right, where they closed launch, right, when... The Last of Us show started. I think the people who own these companies just have no idea what's happening in gaming.

you know, focus on more priority areas, like you were saying before, in front of the Switch, too, and in front of, you know, GTA, if it's this year, like, you're about to get a lot of traffic on those things. And like, the idea that you'd be like, I don't know, and I think the same thing sort of...

I think a lot of these people maybe see gaming as a thing that got big during the pandemic and now it's over because people are going outside. And, you know, I would imagine that Vox wouldn't fall into that category given that they've own polygon, you know. for a long time but the idea that you know there's more priority areas right now than like the thing that's huge and getting huger is like it's kind of bonkers to me yeah and it's going to be like

That's guaranteed to be huge. There are not many sure bets in media anymore. That's a sure bet. It was pointed out to me that gaming information category is the, but this is according to my friend Kalen. It's the literal label, name of the label that Comscore gives gaming news sites. So it's just like.

Fucking lizards. He looks at the comms score. He looks at the comms score. Gaming information category, of course. It's my little chart. You gotta look at the comms score. But yeah, no. Like you were saying, Riley, there's the whole issue of... Yeah, again, like they just don't really seem to understand games in particular.

Because you also have, you definitely have a lot of these executives who obviously don't understand media in general. I mean, again, that's the adults in the room post, right? Talking about this notion of people who, on one hand, ostensibly are the leaders of these websites.

On the other hand, do not trust the people who are writing things, who are creating the like, you know, what basically is the appeal of the website to understand what would be best for the website. But then there's another layer to it with games. And that with games, they also don't even like have a point of reference for the subject matter. Like if you're somebody at GeoMedia or whatever back in the day and you have Deadspin, you're like, well, I know sports vaguely. Like I know.

i i've you know grown up with sports they're all around me i know how to play some of them because i went to school etc um whereas a lot of these executives with video games are like oh yeah i've heard of like Mario and Fruit Ninja or like something else incredibly basic that's not really indicative at all of the breadth and scope of video games in the year 2025. And so they're just like, OK, well, from this very narrow point of view.

I guess, like, what do people who read about games want? They want guides and reviews, right? There's probably nothing else happening in the games industry. It's not like it's bigger than Hollywood or anything. And so like, because their imagination is so limited and their understanding. is so incurious then this is where you end up they're like oh yeah i'm sure that we can just uh you know get rid of all these people who are intrinsic to the site's identity and just

slap the same label on some different guides because it's all interchangeable to them. It's all just like the same stuff, the same slop. I mean, this is every industry though, right? It's enough generations of business leaders have had their brains so commodified by business school number go up that the numbers are the only thing that matters. And the fact those numbers are actually representative of.

the actions and the work of people is has been lost a long time ago and so they will look at the numbers and think the guide They're worth this much money or they're going to be worth this much money to Valnet. Valnet look at Polygon's guides and think they're worth X amount of money. We will now have that money. And it's like, well, no, you won't because... The people who wrote the guides to make them good, which provided those numbers, are going.

You fucking idiots. You're not getting what you paid for because you're only looking at numbers. You're not looking at the people. Well, also to speak to that point, I mean, the annoying... But the thing that's so frustrating about today is that you have two tragedies stacked on top of each other and it makes.

like the more recent one which the bigger one obviously like take priority but it is the same dynamic with giant bomb because like giant bomb is very like the idea um so my understanding i mean I think with that one, it's just like, we'll just let you guys talk whenever you'd like to on some level. Like we are curious, but it is also like you don't want to like step on. i don't know it's one of those things where like you never know what what the plan is when a site's imploding and

In those cases, it's like brand safety. Like they got mad at them for fucking brand safety. Like they're giant bomb. Like why would you buy them if you don't like them cursing and shit? Right. Well, I mean, it's also like, so for one, actually, while we've been recording this, Giant Bomb, the actual umbrella of the site, put out a statement, a very short one that basically elucidates nothing. They said, we understand your frustration and appreciate your patience.

We're actively exploring creative directions for the future of GB and look forward to sharing more with you soon. Like, yeah, after all this, after a week, by the way, after a week. of like internal upheaval and you know clear unrest that's the best they could do. That sounds just like their voice, too. It sounds just like them. Yeah, yeah, really a giant bomb, right? When I think of giant bomb, I think of shit like that. Mm-hmm. Replies have been disabled. Of course, of course.

I don't know. The whole thing is especially weird to me in Giant Bomb's case. I think that this points to this, like, there's a tension between a wider shift in the landscape of media in general. And what the owners of these sites seem to want to do, which is that media has moved for better and for worse in a very personality driven direction, which is why so many people get their news from influencers in video games and outside of video games.

Meanwhile, a lot of the people who are buying up these sites Or like, no, we got to strip away as much personality as possible, whether it's this brand safety thing for Giant Bomb or it's like Kotaku, for example, not letting writers do personal end of the year lists anymore because that gives them too much of a face and a name, I guess. One of these things has proven to work, which is personalities. That's what people are into now.

But I think the personalities are hard to control and they can become bigger than the site in question and gain more power. And like the people in charge are so afraid of individuals gaining power that they're like, I will shoot myself in the foot. just to make sure that you can't carve out a space for yourself.

It is deranged and again goes back to this idea that these people do not know what they are doing and are not even good at running a business because the thing that would help them is clear as day. but they're too afraid to do it because they're too afraid of losing power. It's all just about power. Yeah. And I think that was one of our strengths at Kotaku was that voiciness. And I think at least.

We did a job. I think people got integrated into that voice, that there were individual voices, but there was also like a group ethos. But we let people be their own people. And I think that, you know, I guess I wasn't an outsider, but I feel like I hope that it seemed like a staff, a site staffed by lots of different people.

And, you know, you look at these, you know, just faceless guides, posts about everything. And I don't think, and even like Polygon's guides, you know, I've been, I guess Chris will be mad at me. I've been looking at like Polygon's like blueprints guides.

and stuff and even those i'm like you know i i read an i read an re post and i'm like this is an re post and it's hard for me not to you know secretly want to edit out his puns but like yeah exactly their guides have personality um which is really cool Yeah. Like I really enjoyed that element of their guides as I'd like. read through and be like, oh wait, this line is actually funny. Or like this little observation about how you get to this part of the game.

is actually really clever in a way that stems from this particular writer. And it contrasts to other guides I'd read that, because I'd read some other guides on other sites, and they were just sort of... So, and it was like. harder to understand and also just not interesting you know to read the way that like an interesting guide can be you know interesting and well i will say just for the record since i did shout out polygons tips i will say pc gamer also does good tips and guides

just so that's on record since we're talking about something we may never talk about again. I just wanted to get that out there in case anyone at PC Gamer is listening. Your guides are also great. Thank you. Yeah, they're very good. I actually like their coverage just generally. Yeah. Oh, yeah. PC Gamer is great.

um and it's another one where talking to people who work there um their impression is like things are going well and they're just and normally that would be like hell yeah good website uh will persist indefinitely but you never know you just don't know anymore um as evidenced by polygon yeah but even we were the same do you remember like when we when kataku was first bought by univision It took a year or two, but Kotaku staffed up to unforced. Kotaku used to run on six people.

You know, and by the time we were a year or two into being owned by Univision in the late 2010s, we were up to, I think, 16, 18 people.

We had a three-person video team, not a one-person video team. And everyone thought, oh, we got all this money. We got huge traffic. Everything's going so great. And then one day you wake up and Univision are like, oh, we're getting out of the website business. We're selling you. And they end up selling you to a... private equity garbage bin of a company um and then that's it and so you you if anything the last five years of media has taught me that even people that think

safe i'm fine my company's fine like great polygon people probably thought that a week ago as well um and have now woken up today to fucking being out of a job yeah or worse or worse than being out of a job working for valnet Oh, wait. People in chat are saying Chris Grant has posted about it. Here, I'm going to hop over to Blue Sky and read what he said.

Okay, so from Chris Grant, who headed up Polygon for a long time. 14 years ago, I pitched what would become Polygon to a startup called Sports Blogs, Inc. on the unfurnished third floor of a D.C. townhome. I had a laptop on my knees and went through a deck. Today, the same company, now called Vox Media, sold Polygon to Valnet.

Their press release proudly calls Polygon a premium gaming publication. Valnet literally refused to meet with me or answer a single question of mine throughout this process. They were wildly incurious about how a gaming publication even becomes quote-unquote premium. I really, truly hope that the remaining Polygon team gets a chance to continue the work we all cared about so much. But somehow, this is the... End of my journey with the thing I created.

I'm staying at Vox Media for now, but not sure what's next for me outside of taking time off to think about that exact question. My most heartfelt thanks to the entire team. I'm so sorry things ended this way. Yeah. I mean, abysmal. It's wild that they refuse to meet or answer a question, which and also goes back to, again, what were the people of Vox thinking? Like, why is this the buyer that you chose? I mean, I guess probably because they.

got an appealing offer but like holy shit did they lay chris off or is he or is he leaving he's still there no he said he's staying at vox oh sorry still at vox yeah just not at yeah like chris for those like this is this is getting old time chris previously to being With Polygon, Chris was Joysticks, EIC.

which goes back to before even I started in 2006. It goes back even before that. There are very few people, if any, working in this business now who have the longevity and experience of running successful websites. that chris does and for this to happen to someone like that is like well like he had a really good mind too for like trying to experiment with the form like um when i did my piece about kind of uh major publications

getting into making games, but not necessarily writing about them so much. So, you know, New York Times and stuff like that. I interviewed Chris because Polygon had just struck a deal with Puzmo. which is like a puzzle game company that's been supplying like little games to a bunch of different publications.

And he was sort of talking about just the thinking behind that and of this idea of like, well, you know, there might be these ways to expand both how we make money and how we engage with our audience that we haven't thought about before and that gaming publications haven't thought of. And so even though this is making us like.

you know, it's less than a percent of our revenue. It's still worth trying. And I, you know, I appreciated that approach because I think that so many people who run video game websites are just like, You know, layoffs, layoffs, traffic, layoffs, traffic. And that was not his philosophy at all. I also personally, because I did a sort of part-time, like two months stand at The Verge.

And one, I wouldn't be doing a lot of the writing I'm doing today without it. And two, he was also the only person, one of the main people there who was like, if I needed to talk to someone about their home assistant instance, he was like, oh yeah, I already got that going.

and so like he's the like he's a hardware freak like me and so like he not only cares about gaming he cares about that as well it's just like yeah to see your shit fucking ruined like like like this is i don't know sorry like we're an ecosystem just losing these people yeah yeah forever because like i think it was last year i wrote that piece that i think it was called there are what if there are no opportunities where it's like traditionally someone like if polygon would have layoff

or vice versa like you know kotaku has polygon has a lot of ex-kotaku people you know for a reason um and that doesn't happen anymore we're just we're just losing Like so many of these people affected today are 10 years plus veteran experienced, extremely talented. video games, journalists and writers. And that, you know, I don't want to speak to, I don't want to be too grim, but like the opportunities in this field.

to to do what you were doing with the money you were making are just not there anymore um and it's just i think that's what gets me more than anything else But those media layouts would often be met with, oh, well, you know. There's a new site opening up instead, or this site that has 80 people on staff are hiring, you know, and people, like I said, the amount of ex-Kataka people on Polygon staff was testament to that. And now it's like...

We just keep losing these people. And just everything about it gets worse. We lose that experience. We lose that talent. We lose their ability to nurture new and upcoming talent as editors and as people who run websites. everything just becomes worse because of it. And we lose an entry point for new talent. Like, you know, people have talked about us in the kind of larger tapestry of all of this.

And, you know, obviously we want to help as many people as we can. We'd like to grow to a point where we can employ more people. By the way, subscribe at aftermath.site slash products. But anyway, at the same time, like we are not. and probably never will be at a scale where we can employ like 40 or 50 people, right?

And we certainly won't get there in time to swoop up a lot of these people who were laid off. That's simply not possible. Yeah. And like it leaves everyone, everyone is worse off for this having happened. um this kind of an industry contraction is not something that you come back from like these people just

go somewhere else. They have to find jobs in other industries or they have to go into PR or whatever else. And then what you have is just this landscape where there are almost no writers or reporters in games anymore. There's nobody covering it in that way. And I saw people earlier also making the good point that You know, a lot of folks look at video game websites and think, OK.

It's just guides. It's just reviews, whatever. Why does it matter? And it's like, well, no, for one, people are also doing reporting and important things of that nature. And for two, like, they're not just influencers before you had video. A lot of what games journalists do is choosing not to write about things or not to...

you know, signal boost certain things because they are incorrect or because they can't be verified. You know, the goal when you are a journalist or a reporter is to surface good information and ensure that bad information doesn't circulate. If you don't have these like publications. acting as kind of places where you can go for reputable information. If, say, for example, you hear something from an influencer, you think, that sounds dodgy. I need to figure out if this is true or not.

If you don't have a place where you can go that reliably will tell you if it's true or not, then the whole ecosystem breaks down. There's nowhere you can go to know for sure that the thing you heard has been vetted. And it is an ecosystem. Like everything that Nathan just said.

Video game blogs used to be notorious for just throwing up any old rumor. You could read something on a message board. You could get one email about something and you'd see it turn up on a video game website. And it took an industry-wide... sort of concerted effort over 10, 15 years of hard work, not explicit coordination, but of everybody sort of looking over each other's shoulders to turn that into

multiple outlets with serious credible reporting where you would develop websites that used to make a living off posting rumors became the sort of stewards of original reporting and video games. And that took 10 to 15 years of hard work from experienced people with journalism experience.

Um, and it's not an easy thing to cultivate and it's not an easy thing to maintain. And the more of these people that this industry loses, the harder and harder that work becomes because there's no one left doing the job. There's no one left to teach new people to do the job. There's no, there's no jobs for those people to be able to do that reporting and have it published and seen. And we are all, and as brands become ever more sort of.

all encompassing in their attempts to sort of sell us things and tell us things and pull the wool over our eyes, that just makes things worse for everybody because we need more. Truth in reporting and honest coverage.

than ever before and we're going to get less and less of it now and and also i need to just say that like we struggle to keep up with the amount of games that are coming out like do you think that like i i mean i mean this is like really like it's hard to keep up with the number of games that are that are coming out at any point and like

There's a choice like the less outlets you have, the worse it is for the industry because fewer things are going to get covered. And like you can't just put that on YouTubers because that's not like. It's not enough. You know what I mean? You can't just put this all on like because that's just magical thinking. You know what I mean? You can't you can't cover an industry that large.

Well, also, the incentive structures surrounding YouTubers are really different. Like, if you want to break it down, if you have a salaried journalist, They are making the same amount of money no matter what happens with their work. It didn't always, you know, at various points, some websites used to pay more for better traffic.

They don't do that anymore. You basically have a flat salary. That's what you get paid. And so your incentive at that point is just to seek out information, report it out, put it on the page. If you are a YouTuber or a Twitch streamer or some other kind of an influencer, then what you make is tied to the performance of the things that you post. And so you're incentivized to get things up fast.

And not necessarily with a ton of fact-checking or vetting, because you might miss the moment. And also you're incentivized to sensationalize the fuck out of them. And again, journalism has never been free of sensationalism. It's a good way to get your story in front of a lot of eyeballs. But there are at least slightly different incentive structures that... enable some people to not do that whereas if you're in the fucking youtube rat race

Or the Twitch rat race. It's just like, you know, go as big, over the top, and ridiculous as possible. Don't be responsible. Just get your stuff out there. And also, if you were wrong, who cares? People will forget in a week. It's just not a good way to circulate information. Not if you actually want people to know what the truth is. That's the thing with these being institutions. I don't think the average person realizes.

goes into reporting news at a quote-unquote real website is that like you can receive a tip from someone and then Maybe a junior writer gets the tip and wants to pursue it. And that person would then go to a news editor and the news editor would discuss it with them and look things over and maybe help them or take over the story. And they would do reporting. Maybe there's multiple news reporters on that site.

And they all start doing reporting and calling around and taking notes. A story starts to take shape. There's an EIC that will probably become involved on a bigger story and they can look at it. A proper website would have a legal team. they can look over it. And it's a piece of actual reporting from a credible news website goes through so many hands and so many processes to make sure that the information being presented is as accurate.

and as truthful as possible. And as right by the sources, which is another really important thing. Yeah, it's just light is beyond the kind of work that almost every content creator pursues. And it should be noted, a lot of those content creators make a living. rehashing riffing on or talking shit about that institutional work in the first place.

And so as that goes away, we're just poisoning the information ecosystem with more and more bullshit. And there's less and less people around to be able to verify it and speak truthfully and accurately about it. The exploitative weird YouTube ecosystem needs press because it needs a fucking enemy. Like if even they even they need not only just for that, but also because that's who they cite.

They're still citing the source that they claim to hate, that they claim to be opposition. And now it's like the fucking dog that like, you know, cut the car. You know, it's like it. the fuck man you know i mean the there's an example of this today very literally um you know grums was cheering the death of polygon and he was like source kotaku which is probably next

Okay, so you hate Kotaku and think it lies all the time, but you will source it when it reports news that you like. Yeah, Grumms' traffic will tank, too, once he's got no one to be mad at. Yeah, well, because... That's the thing is that so much of, again, going back to incentive structures and social media, like one of the main ways to grow and to maintain an audience and to like keep them engaged.

is by having a perceived enemy and making content about that perceived enemy all the time. It's just like, you're incentivized to constantly be on these crusades, which is why the video game right-wing griftosphere has a new thing every week. because you've always got to keep like jumping from one thing to the next with this core cast of characters that you hate, one of which is like, you know, Kotaku is their word for it. But in general, they mean games journalism.

And yeah, what will they jump to when games journalism is gone? I don't know. But right now to them, games journalism is the perfect enemy because on one hand, compared to them, it is incredibly disempowered. But on the other hand, it's still. Like, they can portray it as like a faceless entity, as an institution that they are the rebels fighting against. When in reality, the power dynamics are totally flipped. It seems like one of the knock-on effects, too, of what Luke was saying is like...

With the loss of these institutions, you also have less new journalists learning these skills and then being able to take those skills to other places. So then you have less editors who know how to edit news and you have less people who know how to write news. Does the whole field just kind of...

regress because we've lost, you know, the professionals. And I think that's always something that I found really valuable at Kotaku was being able to work with new writers and teach them these skills. I've learned new skills myself. You know, Polygon was able to do that too. And it's, I think. you know, you're not going to get that experience writing, you know, contract guides posts at, you know, whatever outlet. So definitely not.

Yeah, like I'm sure Polygon was the same. I don't know the specifics of their structure, but I'm sure it was the same as Kotaku where like I have zero journalism. qualifications. You know, I came into my job there with an arts degree and a graduate diploma in history. I had, I had no idea I'd be working in journalism, but we had journalists on staff, you know, between Brian Crescento earlier on and then Steven and Jason, people who actually were very like good.

reporters and that institutional knowledge, they teach you how to do it. And so I am now someone who I'm not the world's greatest journalist, but I at least know how to do the job. because I learned on the job from experienced people in the position. And not just the way these institutions and websites are closing, but news has been devalued at them for such a long time now.

that this was an issue long before these layoffs and closures started happening on mass is that like once Kotaku lost you know Kotaku's had Ethan doing incredible work for a long time but Ethan used to be part of a large news team you know which which most of them were gone three or four years ago now. Yeah. I want to. I want to interrupt you to purposely shout out Ethan, who I think is, I hope I don't embarrass him, I think is such a good example of this. Hi, Ethan. Is he? Maybe. Oh, he is.

Ethan. Like, I think Ethan came in, you know, as our weekend guy doing weekend stuff. And I think the way that he has grown and blossomed as a reporter and learned from what we had and then come into his own as this incredible reporter.

Not to be a nerd, but for me as an editor, I'm like, this is what you do it for. To see that is something that I'm... you know so happy about and and yeah yeah that's the kind of thing that a legacy outlet staffed by professionals can can do and you know in a perfect world ethan could generation of people how to do that. And I think that's so important. And instead of just as...

instead of just his beautiful children. Yeah. In his creepy, weird house. I think it's cool. Yeah, I'm proud of you, Ethan, in chat. But no, I think that the alternative to this... has also been very visible recently. And I'm going to talk some mild shit. And I think that I'm talking shit not necessarily on the people who are doing this, but rather on the clear, like, procedure surrounding it or lack thereof.

But in the YouTube world, and especially surrounding a lot of the alt-right grifter types in video games, people like Groms, there have been recent attempts at these big YouTube exposés about them. And they are just a mess.

They are, in terms of structure and the way that they try to present information, like almost illegible. They're all over the place. They include a bunch of irrelevant bullshit that doesn't matter. They mostly fan the flames of drama instead of like... digging into anything substantial that would actually portray someone in a disqualifyingly negative light or in the way that would make their fans have second thoughts about them.

They are these pieces that attempt to be akin to like investigative journalism, but they don't understand why any of it works the way that it actually works. And they don't understand why it's structured the way that it is. And it's not because these people would, if given the opportunity to be reporters, be bad ones. It's because there's been there's no one there to guide them like they are youtubers moonlighting as attempted reporters and what you get out of that is just kind of again

which is a shame because what it shows is that there are people who want to do this kind of work. They desire to, they see the need for it, but there's no one else mentoring them. because we've destroyed the institutions that would do that. Nicole, I think, is Nicole Carpenter in the chat? Hi. Another great reporter. Yeah, we have all the all-stars in here. We've got Ethan, we've got Nicole. Yeah, two of the absolute best in the business.

And, you know, tellingly one who got laid off and another one who is constantly hampered from doing the best work you can do. Great. Wonderful. Love it. Hi, guys. Yeah. Because I'm sure they could both speak to it. It's like you also, a legacy outlet, a big outlet also gives you the legal protection to do that kind of reporting, which, you know, I think we're also losing. You can't take these big swings, you know.

without the lawyers and the money to back them up. Well, I mean, Kotaku is a perfect example of that. If you look at the specific Kotaku story that was the target of, or is the target of a lawsuit from Bobby Cody. There were much worse and much meaner things written about that man when Kotaku was still a largely functional website. But those stories had the benefit of more experience. writers and editors and a legal team looking things over and making sure they were largely

okay. Whereas the story in question, and you can just Google this if you don't know, if you don't look it up, it's not hard to find. has chinks in its armor that Bobby Kotick's legal team were able to exploit. And that's a really sort of boots on the ground example of... what we've been talking about, that that's a story from a legacy outlet that's been kneecapped.

not, you know, finding itself vulnerable to the whims of a man who has a lot more money and a lot more expensive lawyers than they do, because that reporting wasn't watertight, or that writing wasn't watertight in the way that it would have been, you know. three four five years ago right and that's something that we may just see more and more of as these sites, you know.

as the levels of experience dwindle in leadership positions and the number of sites doing this work, doing the number of people around and the amount of resources each website has for stuff like lawyers and editors goes away.

um yeah just goes back to our original point earlier on of just every like everything gets worse around this it's not just that we're losing a website and i don't know how many people 28 people are out of a job as as terrible as those things are like everything gets worse as a result of it it's in terms of it being a larger ecosystem yeah um dating hippo and chat says

I think there's a dissonance because I don't think the guy who made the Grumms video is looking to do classical hard-hitting journalism. He's just looking to punch crumbs in the nose, which I agree with. Yeah, I do. But it's also badly edited. Oh, yeah, it's really badly edited. Really? No, that's another thing about incentive structures is that, yeah, the social media ecosystem does not necessarily incentivize you.

to, you know, unearth information for information's sake. It's always about like, you know, a longstanding beef. or trying to take somebody down, whatever that means, in an ecosystem where you can constantly just revive because your audience will never actually leave because it's all about taking sides. It's not actually about anything of merit.

Like, it's so funny that the goal is to take somebody down when the way that all of this works is that you simply can't be taken down. Like, there's no dirt you can dig up on somebody like Grums that will cause his audience... But even if you were going to, I keep thinking when that video came out and it's like, I understand what they were attempting to do. I just kept thinking of that one meme.

of the baseball with a face that says what are you going to do with the big bat you're going to hit me better make it count better make it hurt better kill me in one shot and it's like if you're not if you are going to say like

If that is your goal, you can't do this shit in half. You have to research it. You have to be thorough and you have to fucking do your job. I don't necessarily think that's the goal of journalism, but it's like you at least would have the same rigor to be like, what is this? What is the story? Yeah, man.

that that's that i mean i i'd really rather not talk about that man or his work any longer than we have to but but just to quickly talk about that story that that took a swing at him i think one of the things that a lot of game journalists thought especially looking at it was was how like Chris, you mentioned it needed editing. I think an editor would have said, why bother? Like, what's the point of trying to embarrass a man who embarrasses himself on an hourly basis?

you can't do that. You can't embarrass him unless you can find something that he can be criminally charged for. And in that case, it's like your reporting would have to be absolutely bulletproof. And so from either approach. You would just tell that person not to bother, you know, unless they could do the latter because it's like just a waste of everybody's time. But, you know, it's a waste of everybody's time under our traditional.

metrics of what makes something worthwhile, whether they got any kind of benefit from just the publicity around it. Um, and can now move on to doing what they want to do next, because let's be real. I, I cannot remember who they are. If you showed me something that they made from two days later, I wouldn't know it was the same person.

So they can just get away with that scot-free too, I guess, which is, hey, here's this thing. It's fucked. It's potentially wrong. It didn't really do anything. But two days later, I'm going to move on to something else. um and you don't really have to face any repercussions for it whereas like and this is not to like toot my own horn or whatever this is more to give an example um like i i ended up publishing a story about otk recently which is like a company that used to be uh

run by like Asmongold, who's, you know, another big figure in that scene. And the motivation there was not, let's bring down Asmongold or like show that he, you know, engaged in malfeasance. It was to reveal how something worked. to reveal like how an organization run and owned by streamers um like the underpinnings of it what made it run and how it ultimately broke down in part because of who those streamers were and what they prioritized um i think that regardless of

who that like says good or bad things about, that is simply an interesting story. And it's something that in this modern age, where so much of what we do is backed by content creation. It's worth knowing. It's worth a general audience understanding better than they currently do.

And like, you know, that's that's the motivation that I think as content creation takes over more and more. Unfortunately, we are like missing in investigations and journalism. And it becomes pettier and more about squabbles than it is just like.

here's something fascinating and like to be to be fair you know there are youtube essays there are video essays there's this entire scene where people are like yeah i just found this thing interesting and i wanted to do a deep dive into it i'm not saying there's none of that

But I am saying that in the way that journalism tends to operate, there's now kind of a hole there. We can't all be age bomb. Yeah, but we should also add we're not like it's not just journalism that's suffering either. It's criticism as well.

for them for very similar reasons like as you lose experienced critics who are able to to to really get to the heart of what It's made them feel something about a piece of media, whether it's a movie review, whether it's writing about Andor, whether it's talking about Grand Theft Auto in an interesting and unheard of way or whatever. It's done the same way as experience.

critics who do amazing work at large institutional websites are able to teach new and upcoming critics how to write something that goes beyond this game was good fans should check it out seven out of ten you know like it's We're losing that as well, which is in some ways just as important because we also live in a world where every piece of criticism has devolved into an 8 out of 10 that can go on a video game.

PR poster, you know, eight out of 10 from gamesrule.org or something. And as we lose website... On staff at places like Polygon and Kotaku or whatever, we lose those experienced critical voices who are able to sort of elevate.

the art of just talking about video games as well so it's like it's not just reporting that suffering it's it's serious long form like criticism and writing about games as well yeah uh apple cider and chat said look i'm a critic and i don't i don't want to uh make youtube videos And Noescape said, yeah, same. Like, that's another thing. It's like, there are different sets of skills. There are different modes of expression. And a lot of people who...

want to express themselves in one of those ways, have no desire to do the other one because it doesn't appeal to them. And it's not how they feel comfortable getting their ideas across, which is totally understandable. In a sane world where things just function, which we have the means to create, we super have the means to create, it would be easy. You could just do whichever one of those things you wanted to do, whichever best suited the ideas you were trying to express.

but we don't have that. And I guess the question, I was talking about this earlier on Blue Sky, that was like, what... I feel like every time this happens, we're all like, oh, it's over. Like, what happens now? And I saw some people in the chat being like, work around media. And like, yay. But it feels like... You know, I think a lot about, you think about these big sites like Kotaku and Polygon and how did they get started? And sometimes I'm like, will that be us? Like, well, you know, we'll...

In 10 years from now, will you be Jim Bancroft? I'm like, no, you won't, obviously. Jesus Christ, I hope not. In a good way, but also somehow you'll... I don't know that regular folks like us could ever amass the kind of capital or what have you to... to recreate the ecosystem and and to be those jobs and like that said if you are a very wealthy person who is watching or listening and would like to jump start our operation such that we could you know swoop in and hire a lot of these people

We will absolutely take your call or your email or really whatever you want to use. If you want to send me a dove, I will feed and care for that dove. You know, whatever. Because, yeah, after a certain point, that's what it becomes a matter of is like. You need money and the amount of money that you can make.

from a subscription-based model uh does not scale super well um and you see this across a bunch of different industries too like um one of the reasons one of the under-reported reasons that like the esports bubble burst is that the means of making money through platforms like Twitch is good for supporting, you know, one or two people or a handful of individuals, but you can't support.

it's often very hard to support an entire company through that kind of revenue model. Similarly, like subscriptions for a site like ours, you know. We are barely managing to support ourselves right now if we're being real and getting to a point where we can support even more people full time is like, you know, that's going to take. Probably at least another year. Maybe.

And even then, that'll be one or two people. That's not going to be, you know, 20. Is that how it happens, though? I think you see it a lot of places that have had layoffs, you know, that they scale too fast. And it's sort of the... If you're only a handful of people, you don't need as much money as if you become...

you know, the messenger, let's say, I feel like I'm listing all the greatest hits. Like you need more and more money as you scale and everything becomes more and more precarious. And in some ways, maybe it doesn't surprise me that some people succumb to like... you know bad plays and maybe that's you know that's how it gets you um

But I just, yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't want to believe that like there just won't be any more video game websites and there's no more jobs in games journalism. But I think I'm just a bit like naive. but when i try to think of like what's the next step it's like man i don't know yeah yeah i mean i my hope is that

At the very least, we see more independent outlets. And I think we probably will from this. If I had to guess, the giant bomb people will be back with their own indie thing. And, you know, there's evidence that that can work in, like... a bunch of the like various other indie outlets min max next lander etc um that already exists so there's room for that remap um as for something more polygon shaped that's harder but again i think that

No actual information here, but just speculating. Some of those folks, I'm sure, will create their own thing together, at least give it a go. It's just that it's really, really hard to do, as we've learned. Even like the successful version of it is really hard. I mean, at the same time that we launched, you know, like Mikhail and Jacob Wolf tried to do their thing.

And like that crashed and burned. Because if you don't like have everything go perfectly for you and like call in every favor that you possibly can and all this other stuff, then it's really hard to get off the ground such that you can even become self-sustaining doing something like this. um you know for those in chat because i'm sure that some of the people in chat or some of the people who are watching um

are probably in this business and are thinking of doing something like this. Make sure that all of your ducks are in a row. Every single one. And then get some more ducks and put them in the row, too. It's me. I'm done.

And also, we are happy to consult and give advice. Yeah, literally talk to everybody, you know, to the extent that we can. Everybody wants to help you. But at the same time, the reason we'd say this, these aren't the first layoffs and site closures that have happened while we've been running. That's so sad, Jesus. Isn't it?

oh my god yeah not even close not even close to the first this is like the 10th round yeah we were really stressed out in the run-up like we had what six months between cooking this up and actually launching um We were terrified the entire time that someone else was going to beat us to it. And then we were terrified just after launching that someone else was going to do it. And in the 18 months or so that we've been around.

There really hasn't been other people do it, not for lack of market space or anything, but just because it's fucking exhausting. It's so tiring, dude. It's so tiring. There's only five of us to run an entire business. And so every time someone gets on BlizzCon and says, oh, just go work our own media. I'm like, that's cool. It's really satisfying to do your own work.

man it's so much work that i don't know like it just not everybody is going to be able to or want to do it like it's it's it requires such a different set of skills motivations than what you're used to in a salaried position. that like, this is, this is, sorry, this is advanced free consulting for everybody looking at doing it. But like, I don't want to, I don't want people to have sunshine blown up their asses that like, oh, everyone can just go work around media. It's like.

shoulder to the wheel every day at this place just doing just doing stuff just keeping the business running and trying to keep subscriptions growing and then just trying to do the work that goes on the website on top of that And then doing all the work that involves appearing on this podcast or stream for two hours. Like it's just, it's nonstop, like seven days a week. And so it's not going to fill that space. Like people aren't going to be able to make that transition because it's just.

I'm not saying that we're better than people. I'm just saying it's a different set of skills. You know, if you can't find a group of people all willing to do that work, it's really hard. To be clear, we're definitely not better than people. We are a bunch of idiots. Yeah, we are idiots. On a boat together. Just idiots. On a daily basis.

Riley Smart. I mean, we had like, I just like to figure things out. I mean, but I think I've had the... I was thinking about this earlier, because it's Mayday, and I was thinking about it being Mayday, and I was thinking about how, like, I like that I don't have to interact with CEOs and executives anymore, but I do miss...

I miss having a boss in the sense of like, it was somebody's job to help you get better at your job. And I think that's one of the things that I, as a nerd, who's like, oh, my professional development, like kind of miss is just like. How do you keep growing when you're all of the guys? But I also think that obviously it's worth noting that one of the reasons we've been able to be successful is that, you know, we had that experience from other jobs and also we have...

you know, as a group and as individuals to various extents, like, like a kind of a name recognition. And like, I think every time this kind of thing comes up, you see people talking about that. And like, you can't pretend that's not true.

I think it's a kind of privilege that other people don't have or don't want. And I think that... you shouldn't have to be you know finger quotes famous to be able to have a job as a games journalist like that's ridiculous and like oh yeah and it's also just at odds with like

what i think a lot of people in journalism want to and should be doing which is again yeah like gathering and presenting information this is not the same thing as being a personality or like trying to get your name out there trying to make it all about you and in fact these things are often at odds with each other As soon as you start making the whole thing about yourself,

you present the information less effectively. You get to the point more slowly. And it becomes a story involving you. And it's like, not every story is going to involve you. A lot of them actually are not going to, and they shouldn't. If you are constantly stirring the pot everywhere, you're probably doing something wrong.

But again, that's where things are at now. You've got to be part influencer, part journalist. And it's just not healthy for those involved. I will say as a counterpoint to all this, something I've been meaning to do in my head is like...

I really want to do like a flow chart of where all games media went and what companies they did. It's like when you look at like... uh i've seen people do this with cartoons where everyone looks at like the adventures of flapjack and it's like and then every cartoon that came off of that like steven universe and shit and it's like you just do that with one up And then like maybe like joystick and then like Kotaku. And then just like everything leads to the only people who are still around.

are either doing their own thing or doing their own thing as a group. or doing something else. But like it is like it is funny, the percentage of which when you look at particularly Nextlander remap us, you know, just like anybody fucking in this space. doing anything. It is funny, the degree to which it's just like, yeah, now we own our own company. Congratulations, Chris. This is your blog project for the next...

Fuck. Two weeks. Slack law. Oh, man. Yes, you gotta do it. Yeah, Slack law. Oh, fuck, yeah. Can't believe you just did that on the podcast of all places, man. Jesus Christ. There's an audience for it, even. And now you're going to be held accountable. Everyone's going to be like, okay, so where's the blog, Chris? Yeah, where's the blog, Chris? Where's the flowchart, Chris? There with TikTok content, I've been mis-fucking-up editing. Yeah, in chat, somebody said the danger of having a good idea.

Keep that shit to yourself next time. Anyway, this has all been a nice, great, big bummer. but we do still have a good video game to talk about we could finally shift to that because um Riley, you've also been playing Claire Obscure, so you can stick around for this, actually. I'm playing a ton of it. He's struggling enormously. Cool. I've probably played the least of it of all of us, but yeah, let's talk about Claire Obscure.

If I get my part out of the way, then you guys can be smart. But we were talking yesterday in our meeting. I've really been liking it, but I realized that I've never really played an RPG before, which I kind of didn't realize. I kind of sort of thought I had, you know, like surely I must have. But it's such an RPG in a way that is like...

That like, as I play, I'm like, what do I like? What is I'm finding it just hard, really kind of hard to get my head around or just remember everything that's happening or understand how the systems work together in a way that I'm like, oh, it's it's an RPG. And like.

I just am not that. Yep. So for reference, Riley spent all week, Riley spent all week just asking in Slack, like, what does this mean? What are these things? And we've all just been like, are you idiot? It's just the final, it's just. It's just Obscure's version of this Final Fantasy thing or this Persona thing. And then it's dawned on us finally that he's like, oh, he doesn't know those core.

tenets um this means nothing to you yeah i didn't realize i didn't know them until you would say that yeah which does kind of lay bare the arbitrary nature of like a lot of rpg mechanics because i was like i started it last night And, you know, immediately began like leveling up or gaining like attribute points. I just immediately have to pull up like a build guide because as per usual with RPGs,

Like you can just put points into things and they don't like, they give you a description of what they mean, but like, is this optimal? Is it actually good? Am I fucking up? Like every RPG does this. And I wish they, I wish we'd evolved beyond this because it. It's such an old school approach to point. No, I disagree. I disagree fundamentally on my core. And the reason is because it's not just that because like people are like, OK, they made a French JRPG.

cradle to grave, 35, probably a lot longer if you do all the other stuff, which is, as we've talked about, the correct length for an RPG is 35 hours. Yes. That is correct. Yes. That's in the that's in that good zone. It should actually be 33 hours long. They should they should just end it at the 33 hour mark immediately. So so here's the thing. I like Riley and I, I respect.

so heavily and think that Riley's point of view is like so enriching to me because I am the opposite. And in fact, uh, Because this game isn't just a JRPG. by French people. It is... A very specific kind of JRPG. shadow hearts 2 shadow hearts covenant as it's also known uh is if nobody played this fucking game is a really absurd PlayStation 2 game that had like a big wheel. So it had like the timing wheel.

And so you could do like it like every every time you had to attack, it was like a weird rhythm game. And this game is that just taken to its logical conclusion. We were saying it feels like a mist walker game like this game feels. Not just like an RPG. It's not Final Fantasy. It feels like an RPG that Microsoft would commission from like... Square people. Yeah, like a Lost Odyssey adjacent game. Like I said yesterday, this is an Xbox 360 RPG that was revealed at the Tokyo Game Show in 2000.

seven like this is it's lost odyssey adjacent they sold 50 xbox 360s in akihabara at like super potato in like 2006 because of this shit You know, like that is that is the kind of game. And like, I think the director has said as much, you know what I mean? He's like, oh, I love I love Megaten. I love all these like crunchy, strange ones. And and so I think a lot of its success is not just mechanically being kind of fucking strange because it is a lot of.

pair it's a very it is an RPG where you can walk up to the like the biggest boss in the game and if you Parry enough. Never take damage. That is also Riley's nightmare. Yeah, if I parry enough. Wait, Chris, I have a question. How does this fit into your dispute of the idea that stats should maybe be less...

If not opaque, then at least less like, you know. I believe that there's a way to do RPGs better where you're not just like handed a bunch of numbers up front and you just like put points into things and either A, hope that you're correct, or B, inevitably look at a guide. um like we there's got to be a better way to handle that well i think because i think no because i think that like there is games like okay If this is a genre, it's a genre for people who like an older thing.

And like, I think that's like critically important is that like much of the reason I think much of the reason why so much of the conversation around this is infuriating is because people are like. Well, here's my precious 20 RPGs that came out that are like valid and lovely and we don't need this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's ignoring the fact that Final Fantasy has fucked up being Final Fantasy since if we're being charitable.

You know what I mean? On some level, you can make the argument for 12. I love that game. Thank you. You can make the, I do, but it is also a game that where you program robots. You know what I mean? Like it is not giving people what they want, which is stand in line and fight. You know, 13 is another thing that is I respect, but is also weird. You know what I mean? But the the juice of like. That, yeah, that, like, PlayStation 2 cuss.

That has just been like thrown to the wolves on a large scale, not on a small scale because they're still making pervert RPGs like the hundred, the hundred, uh, what is it? The hundred line. I'm going to play that game. That game looks fucked up, but that's like a, you know, a different strategy RPG. They're still making that shit, but they're not making it at scale like this. And so I think in order to successfully do that, you need to have it mechanically resemble the thing that people want.

And there's a real synthesis here. Like, OK, like you guys didn't understand how scaling works. And the reason you don't. Or some people in the chat didn't initially because it's confusing. It's like, why does this weapon have a B and a C next to it? It's like, because that's better at scaling your attack than this. And the reason is because those people play Dark Souls and that's why there's Estus Flak. And shit in this now. But like RPGs this flack.

flasks because they're doing a thing for nerds yeah this is the interesting part though is that you draw the line it like you know, making the, like, having a stat system that resembles that of these older RPGs. But then you have actually tons of mechanics from newer games in there as well.

And so it's sort of arbitrary after a certain point because, you know, the game in many ways does not play like a Final Fantasy at all with the dodge and parry mechanics. And as you're saying, all this Dark Souls influence stuff. No, no, it plays like Legend of Dragoon. Yeah. Which nobody likes except me. And you know what? That's fine because they made one for me.

Just make the numbers go up. Just put them where you want to put them. Do you want a guy that hits harder than everyone else? Put might higher. Do you want to get more roles? Like, put your agility out. That's all you do, right? I'm going to do a zero everything else only, mate. That's my RPG strategy. One shot, everybody.

no dude okay so i hear here's a here's a real fun thing there's a part of the game where you um it's like mid-level it's not this isn't really a spoiler because it's a side area but like it's basically fight club But for these little weird little guys, for people who don't know, okay, we should probably describe what this game is very quickly. You are in a surrealist version of France.

There appears to be a lady on the horizon who keeps painting a number. When she paints the number, everybody who is older than that dies. And so people have they've been sending out it's like a downward counting where they've been sending expeditions out to try to fight the paintress. So it's really like high.

It's a game that gets to like the end of a Final Fantasy game and just makes that the whole game. Like that bullshit that happens at the end of Final Fantasy IX. What if you just made the whole game? that thing in Chrono Cross where you're in like a painting or something what if that was the whole thing and that I respect about it you know what I mean just just make that the whole game And so it's this small team that's going out there. You end up running, having a run in with Gollum.

or that slash that guy from Andor. No, it's his voice actor. Oh, that is Andy Serkis. Andy Serkis, Andy Serkis. Yeah, that is Andy Serkis. There's some great interest. And, you know, it's about sort of uh find this like surrealist fantasy world um importantly they have the most french thing you can have which is little weird guys who kind of speak english kind of speak a legible language but mostly it's just gibberish so they do have minions in this

Yeah, it's Nier, it's Xenoblade 3. Yeah, it's really Xenoblade 3. Like, I've spent my whole time playing this game thinking... damn, I should go back and finally finish Xenoblade 3, a game that is, by the way, brilliant. I fucking love that game, and I don't know why I never finished it. I got super close to the ending, and I was like, I don't want it to end, so I just stopped.

here's what you should know here's other things you should know about this game this game's fucking got a great soundtrack and it was apparently like it was like some guy on soundcloud or something like is the is the story at least um It's got, again, go back to Shadowheart Covenant. It's a great soundtrack. But there's a part of this game. Okay, I'm going to do a little mechanical spire. There's a little fight club where all these little rabbits are having their own little fight club.

You can fight all the guys, and each time you get a Bicto, which is like a little equipable skill slash trinket, it gives you equipment that makes it more powerful if you attack on your own. And not only is that a place where you can just get like 15 levels in like two seconds. You do it by equipping it to one character, usually Mayel, but sometimes Gustav. And then just like they're the party. They go in and they just destroy everything.

I think the harshest criticism you can give to it is that its difficulty curve is really uneasy. But part of that is they fully expect you to just break it in like. Like Bane fucking breaking Bruce Wayne's neck, like back. Like that's what they want you to do to the combat system in this game. And I'm sorry. That's just something I like. No, I like that too. I mean, that's for me, like what Larry and RPGs are like.

uh divinity original sin 2 and baldur's gate 3 like i feel like both those games also like oh yeah please break the shit out of this combat system that is the fun of it is like as soon as you realize you can break it then the game begins when you try to play it the normal way you're like

i don't know this doesn't feel that good i'm getting my ass kicked all the time um that said so i only started this game last night because i needed to be able to talk to you guys about it and i uh after like the first couple fights where i just Couldn't quite get a feel for the dodging and paring mechanics. And this is uncharacteristic of me because usually I'm a consummate normal player. I always play on normal difficulty, whatever the intended one is. But I was like, fuck this story.

um yep and i've actually been enjoying that a lot because you still like the core mechanics are still there you're just beefier you just take left less damage but you still have to learn how to dodge and parry and like you can still enjoy how the game i think is meant to feel um so i'm just like doing that for now and you still you still get your ass kicked if you're at a point where the game is like

you are not ready like it will still beat the shit out of you so it's it's actually one of the best story modes i've ever played because it doesn't The ways that it accommodates you, because I did the same thing. I was like, I'm not a Souls player and I was not fucking having the first opening section. And the game is very explicit. It tells you you can change the difficulty at any time. So I was like, cool, I'm going to check out Story.

And I found it forgiving enough to let me keep playing through because I don't want the challenge of this game. This game is beautiful. I just want to walk around and see the next beautiful part of the game. Fucking rules.

It still presents enough of a challenge for me to stay involved in the game, but not enough that I'm frustrated because this isn't the type of game that I'm normally... Like, I have some exceptions for RPGs, but I'm not a huge, like... jrpg turn-based rpg guy but i'm fucking so into this game um and i think part of that is that story mode it's at a perfect point where it's accessible enough to keep me going but it's still enough of a challenge to keep me interested

Because the battle system in this game is the most interesting thing by far. Not only because it gives you the real-time... controls like the, okay, so for anyone who hasn't played it, what makes Clare Obscure so amazing to me is that it's a turn-based battle. So you've played old Final Fantasy, you've played Persona, whatever. Everyone lines up, takes their turn, whacks the bad guy.

interactions in a way that i don't think i've ever played in one of these games before so if you think of a game like uh mario rpg or paper mario where you can like press b and you like hit a to make the jump better Yeah, this has that, like every attack, you can dodge it, you can parry it, and some of them you have to jump, and then later on there's another thing you've got to learn as well.

every attack and they mix it up and the timing's different every time and so it's kind of like playing a rhythm game and there you learn that there are cues for each attack and the payoff is that your spells and your attacks aren't often the primary way you kill one of these guys is that they're... The counter-attack you launch from a parry

is often the most powerful attack that you can manage. And so you're actually incentivized to get that timing right a lot of the time. And it's so satisfying to feel that your physical act of dexterity in a turn-based RPG has made all the difference to you is like... just it's such a fucking rush it's so cool it is also i think uh an easy way somebody actually just pointed out i was gonna say it's like

It's actually audio cues more than visual cues are the things that are doing that. Also, if you parry. an attack that attacks all three people. All of them, it'll just say, Expedition 33 counters this attack. And it's just all your guys doing a backflip and just slamming whoever attacked you. Yeah, it's so sick. And it's so sick. Also, this game is phenomenal at in-battle.

Like the actual animation of things that happen inside the cutscenes or inside the battles, like integrating the space as a real space instead of an other space where drama can happen is phenomenal. Also, it's earnest. It's like the snark. The performances are phenomenal. There is like real. being in this world there's like a little bit of stuff it's not too annoying they they ride the line really believably close to an rpg like like a traditional jrpg in a way that's really really um

But fascinating. Also, I will say I we were talking about this male is 15 and I got thrown off because I think it's what is Jennifer English's voice? And I was thinking of Shadowheart and I was like, is this just a small woman or is this like a child? And it turns out it's a child. So we talked about this. I swear it says in the intro that she's nine years younger than them. No, she has nine years left.

which is different because the number is going to keep ticking down. And so by the time it reaches her... it will be lower. She will. Yes. Oh, they got me. I was with Luke on this. That's what I also thought. French math. I've got you. French math. French time math. Yeah. I think what Chris is saying about the combat is true, though I also think sometimes I have a lot of trouble with the parrying and the dodges for reasons that will be a blog.

that I'll live to regret. But I think sometimes the camera angle makes it hard to tell. Like sometimes a dramatic moment will kind of be the wrong, I can't tell. when a guy is coming at me or when I pair it. And I had also, I think Kirk told me about the audio cues. And I really liked that idea. But then I think I screw myself up when I try to listen to it. And I guess I think I tend to forget.

You can kind of practice, I guess. You can just lose a fight and practice. No, the game tells you to practice by dodging. Because your window of time for a dodge is much... All I do is dodge. I don't parry. You can fuck up a dodge once and then hit B again right at the very end and still get that dodge. I've done that a bunch of times. I've been like, ah, shit, that was way off. Oh, I'll do it again.

sometimes i hit dodge and the guy just doesn't move at all and i'm just like wow there's those really fast guys who like zip through you and like i can't even a little bit yeah well so once you know what the audio cue is though it it becomes Like it's like a little whoosh or like a little, like you can definitely pick up the cues once you get used to them. And it took me like, it took me like three or four hours to really start nailing.

that that's how it worked because I was doing the same thing I was trying to learn each bad guy individually and it was getting really tedious and then I'm like oh no I just wait till I hear the little whoosh like the animational freeze there's a whoosh and then he hits and I wait till the whoosh and then I just press parry and it works yeah yeah Basically, the Dodge is training wheels for the pair.

Yeah. It's basically how that works, which is a really good system because you're like, if you face enemies, you're like, oh, I'm just going to dodge this shit until I figure out like, but, but, but. You know, like whatever it is in your head. I should try. I should try more parries. I kind of just stuck with the dodge because I was I've parried like twice, maybe.

Because I'm too afraid. You're not going to get through the game without parrying. Yeah, you need to learn how to do it, man. I'm sorry. There's like the hard drive article that's like, gamer decides they're just going to ignore that mechanic. I mean... Like entirely for the full duration of the game. Yeah.

I do it. I feel like I've told this story, but that happened to me playing D&D with my friends where I didn't understand the leveling up and all the nitty gritty, whatever. And so I just didn't do it. And then at some point they were like, wait, are you not leveling up? And I was like, no. And they're like, why? And I was like, I don't like it. And they were like, no, that's literally how D&D is played. And I was like, well, I don't wanna.

And then I start playing with them. Riley, I treasure you. Man, it does seem like it could be interesting, though. The other thing that's really cool about the battle system is the... Each character is wildly different. And you don't have many characters in this game, but essentially Gustav... startup guy whatever me he's quite traditional he's yes nate sorry nathan yeah nathan you should be saying your stuff section i mean you know it better than i do but he's quite traditional

um you know there's there's direct attacks there's a charged attack that you you can accumulate over time and unleash it's really powerful whatever everyone else has these like insane custom dedicated ways of of doing battle that it takes you quite a while to get your head around so um Yeah, Miel has basically like fencing. So like just stances that she... Yeah, it's all stances. But the stances are activated like a card game. And then you have to like play a stance.

And it's activated the next turn, so you have to plan for it. It's really cool. There's actually a weapon she gets in one specific area that makes her start off in the purple stance, and it's really busted. Um, but, but basically, yeah, so there's, she gets, she gets one that's like basically certain moves will.

Like if you go from one stance to another, you'll get a benefit. And, you know, in Gustav's case, he has a lightning arm and he builds up charge as he goes along. And then when he can actually if you get it to 10. he can just like slam into the person and just destroy them, which is actually great because one of the accessories you get in the Fight Club is crit-based, and it means you can just charge it in one turn basically every single time.

um if you're using him solo so you just immediately get second turn every single time destroy the guy um But and then was it Lunae has like basically an elemental wheel kind of chrono crossy, I guess, where it's like. You're building up like the elements that you're casting and then you can burn those in very specific ways. It's just a really cool thing. And there's also no MP, which I really like. There's just AP.

Um, because MP is annoying to me a little bit. And I like that they went that route because it makes it so the battle self-contained. And so you don't have to like worry about two different things that you're sort of dealing with. And yeah, then there's also the whole like pictos.

thing where it's basically like kind of like materia except everybody can use it like if you know how you like learn materia in final fantasy 7 and then that character it's like once you learn a skill everybody can equip it and so you end up like

doing like build crafting and it's it's interesting but it's also like kind of poorly explained i think that's probably yeah i think that's the issue that's happening because i know a lot of people don't equip a lot of people don't equip the lumina point

Until a very long time into the game from people I've spoken to, because it's like you accrue them and it sounds a lot like something else in the game. And then you're like, I've got these 20 something Lumina points. What are they for? And then you finally find the one little section on the inventory screen where it's like, ah, that's where they go. And then you start assigning them to get your permanent perk.

This is what happened to me the other day where I thought I was I thought at some point I was like, oh, maybe because some stuff I guess you can't do to like camp and you have a guy. And so I was like, oh, maybe I just can't do it yet. And then I think just yesterday I was like. oh, like I haven't equipped them at all. I just like thought I had or something. And I was like, oh, come on. Like they don't, it gives you a lot of words up front and it doesn't.

tell you what they mean. And so I think it gets a little like...

And again, I have to say enough that I really like the game. They do a really good job of explaining most of it, and that's just one area that they don't, because normally they take you into the menu and make you... equip the thing or change the thing those points are maybe the one thing they don't explicitly do that and that's why i think a lot of people fall down because everything else you get led into like upgrading your weapons

equipping pictos whatever yeah it's the one thing they don't they're just like oh you got these points and you're like cool what does it mean and then it's not till you stumble on in the inventory that's like oh this really important mechanic in the game where i can keep depict those powers that I've leveled up. It's buried in this sub menu. I better use it. And then it's like, oh, cool. I also also worth noting that pictos of stats, which they don't ever tell you about.

Uh, so like there is, I, and I only realized this because of the weird aforementioned fight club area is like, oh, why do I have like 400 more HP now? And it's like, because there's like a one they give you that like. Even if you don't use the thing that it specializes in. will radically help you out early game you know what i mean it's so and i think the the way uh you learn a picto is you have to defeat four enemies with it, which is like nothing.

And so basically you're there are times where you'll just be like doing rounds where you're equipping those so that everybody can learn it and then maybe use that. Is it the concept then that once I've learned the picto, then any of my party can equip its lumina? Is that the idea? Yes, that is the idea. Are they just kind of like copies? Okay. But they're not exactly copies because the Pictos have abilities that the Luminas don't have. Yes.

Yeah. So the passive ability, you can learn any of your characters. So like they'll do stuff like they'll do stuff like, you know, Dodge will be like. Every time you dodge, you get one AP. And so somebody can like build that up. There's one where you always attack first, even if you're... That one's really good. Even if you get jumped.

And I'm like, oh, I'm keeping this one forever. This one's amazing. That one's useful for like the whole time. Yep. So like once I've learned like the Dodge Picto, because I have that, that means I should unequip it and equip the Lumina. Dead? I don't have to have the dodge. You don't have to have the dodge limit. You can just use that ability unless you.

unless you want it to be like uh unless there's something about the stats that it gives you that is particularly useful right okay um and so a lot of those are like speed health you know defense speed's really useful crits useful there's ones that will just like wildly increase your crit um And yeah, the... This is I was looking up like some late game videos of the kind of damage that people were doing. And it's like.

It's like Bellatro math near the end if you get really into it. Yeah, it's like millions. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it gets crazy. It's also like, I really appreciate that the underlying premise of the game is And every year we're going to send our sexiest 30 somethings out to try and save it. It's the most French design choice imaginable. Oh, dude, I really like that there are 30 people who are like 33 years old in this game.

Because that's something you just don't get a lot. I mean, minus the 15 year old and a couple of like one other character, I guess. But like. It's just really weird. You know, like, that's usually the thing. It's like, I love when there's an old guy in a party. And so it's like literally the most I'm 30 or 40 years old RPG in history.

i was gonna say when you think about the because i was you know lying in bed thinking about the game as one does and like i guess what will happen is like you know people will get you'll eventually have a city full of children who can't care for themselves who will starve to death right yeah that's the idea like it'll get lower and

Yeah, which is sort of hideous. Yeah, I was going to make a joke about Oran from Final Fantasy X being in his 30s, and then I looked it up and he actually was. Yeah, he's like 33. That's so funny. I mean, he had a rough life. Yeah. That's amazing, though. It's like that meme of like,

30 year olds in the 90s, 30 year olds now. And like one of them is George Costanza. That's extremely good. Also, Charlie Cox is in this game. Yeah, Charlie Cox is Gustav. Yeah, I actually went, I started playing in English. And I went, oh, this game's too French. And so I did the Assassin's Creed thing where I was like, oh, no, I'm going to play this game in its native tongue. And I played through a bit of French and I was like, the English voice acting is actually...

yeah like better in this game the french voice acting is so the voice acting is really good it's just so bizarre yeah that they're all french and they're speaking in british accents like i can't quite get past that that's how it always no that's why i switched yeah sometimes they do say something like a little French. They say the name's very French.

And the swears. They'll throw a Mondieu in there and I'm like, that's a good shit. Yeah. There's one cutscene where they do nothing but that. Everything's put down and Mondieu and Gustav just won't stop. And it's like, did they cross the audio files over for this cutscene? Also, I think this is wild. This dude's just gone from zero to 100. He's gone British to French within one cutscene.

And then goes back again. I will say I do. First off, the cast is phenomenal. Don't look up the full cast until you like a little layer in the game. But also just like, I don't know. I think that a lot of.

this game is has so many wild swings like that it takes and that i've really been enjoying and like i will say you know just generally just just don't look up online like anything about this game if you plan on playing it plot wise until you get to like a point where you're like oh that sort of stuff is going to happen you know like go you know like there's like so many cool choices they make in it that remind me of like

when rpgs were smaller and they could kind of account for that sort of thing you know what i mean like snes era rpgs would take these like really cool swings in like how they choose to like like plot things out or even just depict things or even just how the world is like.

constructed you know like i i miss choices and it feels like a lot of games don't and the ones that do are like the really small ones that like guys with anime avatars go insane trying to recommend to people And and I know I think that it is both perverted enough for the people who want it and accessible enough. For the people who are like, hey, I like I got a PS5.

What Final Fantasy are they up to? And you could just point them to this thing. It's also like $45. I have recommended this game to everybody. And that's very rare because I'm like, I really think. It's so fucking cool and it looks so good and it's so interesting.

Even if you aren't really into turn-based RPGs, like it's still a really interesting combat system that's really accessible. Yeah. The world's cool. The characters are cool. The art's incredible. Yeah, the art is crazy. I cannot believe. I'm so good. I mean, again, I'm only like two hours in and like every every location that I have stepped into, I've been like, holy shit, like just breathtaking, like the backdrops, especially the skylines, all that stuff. I'm just like.

Man, it's like a painting. Everything you look at is some sort of gorgeous landscape painting. It's crazy. Even the audio logs in this game are good, which is really rare because they're not... Like you pick up, so what happens is you're, you're an expedition, but every year there have been lots of, well, there's been what, 70 something. Yeah. And they super duper have not succeeded.

No, they have not. And so as you go onto this island where 70 odd expeditions have been already, you find the logs of the failed expeditions that have come before you. And that's actually the way that they've built the world and your part in that story makes each audio log you find super interesting. And so it's not a game where you just skip them or just put them on in the background and they're just incidental world building.

actually filling in huge parts of the backstory of the game as you go. So even that tiny little incidental thing about a game that you don't normally think about. is, like, fucking perfect in this game. There's a place where you find some paintings, and paintings in games are my thing, and they're very good paintings. It reminds me, a lot of it reminds me of, like, the Forgotten Capital in Final Fantasy VII. uh or like some of the other like weirder chronocross locations um

And yeah, no, they just, they, they, they really lean into like surrealism. Um, also as someone was quick to point out games, funny, the game is really funny in a, yoko taro before he'd like this is the other funny thing it's it's like we've had it's been so long since near automata automata sorry that like um

that it's it feels like somebody's like well if you're not gonna make a near game we can kind of do it with like little little like constructs that are making like cryptic kind of existential remarks that are funny like You're making gacha games instead of a good game. Even the minions are good.

The minions are great. I'm sorry if we mentioned minions and made that sound terrible. Absolutely not. These guys are extremely cool. They're just little guys and they're fully subtitled and they have an existential crisis about where they are in the world. Relatable. Yep. Aren't we all gestrals in a way? Aren't we all just little paintbrush guys? Yeah. So...

I want to play more of this game. I'm very excited, too. You guys have made me more excited. And I also am really enjoying hearing you talk about it. That said, I do want to bring to your attention the fact that... We have the longest mailbag that we've ever had in the site's history to get through. Okay, sorry. Yeah. No, no, don't apologize. I just...

I wanted to bring that to your attention because it's really formidable, in part because we changed how the mailbag works. By the way, for people who are just joining us, we do a mailbag every week where readers can ask us questions. We handle that with the Discord. And so you can join our Discord if you subscribe at the $10 reader tier. You can do that at aftermath.site slash products. Anyway.

We have a lot of questions this week because now we have a dedicated mailbag as opposed to a new thread every week. And so people have been adding to it for the past couple of days, meaning that it is real long. So let's, yeah, let's go ahead and try to like, you know, rapid fire around it. I'm sure that we'll find a few that are just too interesting to speed through, but otherwise. All right.

you know let's see what we got like 15 questions holy All right, from Metroid, what game or hobby do you most vehemently refuse to get into because you know you'd love it to the point of devouring all of your time? Bellatro. I haven't touched it. I haven't touched Bellatro. I've never played Bellatro because I know I can see the end game of me playing Bellatro. And so I haven't touched it out of a sense of self-preservation. I specifically, I used to play a lot of WoW.

uh that's like all i did in college and you know film school and it like destroyed my life and so i don't i have refused to touch an mmo since because even though i know final fantasies really good i'm like that's cool i can't get that it's just like It's like, I can't fall off the wagon again, man. I can't do that. I know it would just suck up other game time in addition to this. Yeah.

For me, it's probably, and like, I don't know if it's because I got these out of my system or because I think that they could like grab me in the same way again. But when I was younger, I was really into collectible trading card games, stuff like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic. Oh, yeah. And ever since then, I have not really played those. Like, I used to, you know, obsessively tweak decks, compete in tournaments every weekend. Like, that was my whole social life when I was in, like, middle school.

And like the one time that I sort of dipped a foot back into that, it was Marvel Snap and Marvel Snap like became all consuming for me for a couple of weeks. And so I mostly avoid trading card games now just because. They have that potential. I did that during COVID. I got into Magic the Gathering online and it fucked up my life and I had to stop again.

Riley, what about you? I don't think I have any games like that. I guess in terms of things that I will suck up all my time if I do them. Probably drinking. So I don't do it. Yeah, fair. Same. Got an easy one on that. All right. Um, from Jack, why is there an industry gold rush around extraction shooters? I mean, I think it's because it's the most recent genre to really get big in the Twitch and live streaming world.

albeit mainly because of one game, which is Tarkov. I think others have not really succeeded to that same degree, at least to the degree where executives at major companies are like, oh, we got to do that. And also like probably for the same reason that a lot of genres catch on with game developers, which is those developers are playing those games and they're like, this is interesting. I'm enjoying this. I want to do my version of it. Yeah.

I know Tarkov is technically big, but it also doesn't feel like it has as big a community as people think it does. i don't know i feel it feels like too it feels too aggressive to have like the groundswell that i think I think I think on some level it's just like, well, what haven't we done? Because we did a bunch of battle royales. Well, maybe we'll do Tarkov, but like everybody likes it instead of just like.

pervert to like play stalker game i don't know it's it feels like it feels like uncolonized territory more than anything else yeah just it feels like they're hitting the earth's crust and like the the more desperately they have to dig to find these this new space to exploit

um the more the returns are diminishing is that we we can't do the big multiplayer shooter we can't do the battle royale that's tired you know what's left oh extraction shooters is is like one of the only untapped genres by these triple a dead And so congratulations, we're going to get a bunch of extraction shooters. I hope you like them because there's going to be a whole bunch of them come out in the next 18 months.

Don't meet growth expectations, then get cancelled and everyone gets laid off. I'm really sceptical they'll do well because extraction shooters are stressful. Like, by their construction, an extraction shooter is kind of an annoying thing to play. You know, like what's the one that was like in the South or Louisiana?

uh fuck it was it was it was good but it's just like every one of these showdown hunt hunt showdown yeah yeah showdown is a great game but it's also really kind of stressful and uh it's not the kind of game that can support the level of exploitation investment that they're going to put into these games like man marathon looks cool as shit but

Like I would watch a movie set in that universe in a heartbeat, but I got no interest in playing an extraction shooter with people online in the year of our Lord 2025. All right. Let's see. From Rave Pet. Positivity Minute. What's a thing big or small about the current trajectory of the world that makes you genuinely excited or hopeful? Let's see. About the world, not much.

um i i can say like i was just thinking about it Games like Claire Obscure or like Baldur's Gate 3, these like labors of love coming from, you know, relatively small studios, at least smaller than we're used to in the AAA space, like coming out, breaking through, finding audiences. And hitting this point where everyone's just like, yeah, I appreciate what they're trying to do. I get it. And it rules.

It's neat that I think we're seeing maybe a little bit more of that now than we have in previous years. I guess the electrification, which seems immune to government attempts to not support it. I think people and market. And certain governments are so supportive of a drive towards electrification that I think it's a huge climate bonus that we're going to hit regardless of.

you know, administrations like the current US administration trying to stimmy that and block it. And as someone who has semi-recently like done that, like I've put a bunch of solar panels on my roof and have an electric car now. It rules. Harnessing the power of the sun in the palm of my hand, we should all be doing it. And we are, more and more countries.

are building more and more you know batteries and solar networks and and wind turbines and everything else and so the quicker we can decarbonize our human infrastructure, whether that's personal cars. the shipping of goods, transportation, whatever. That's going to make a huge positive difference to our environment that I can't see coming from many other places at the moment. unfortunately. But they asked for one bright spot, and so that's one. I hate that I like the Tesla $20,000 truck.

uh the slate one that they that may or may not exist if anyone knows what this is it's it's basically like the the amazon truck the jeff bezos truck it's it's 20 20 or 25 000 it has no radio it has no Nothing's in the dash. It's supposed to be vinyl wrapped. They're like, here you go. Here's the cheapest EV we can make, which is great because EVs fucking are expensive in America.

Cause we suck at making that. It's got crank windows. It's got crank windows, like old fashioned crank windows, which is super cool. I'm going to put, I will, if I ever need a car, I'll put a bunch of 3d printed horse shit in that, you know, like why not? I think things are sort of worse. for trans people than they've been in my lifetime of being trans, but the sort of widespread push against it and the sort of widespread support for trans people.

I feel like this is going to make me sound real old, but the fact that something bad happens to trans people and cis people come out legitimately shocks me and my old withered heart. It gives me a lot of hope that I definitely didn't have in the past. All right, from Send. About to be grilling season. What's the best stuff to grill? Are there any foods that you don't eat unless they're grilled? I think the best step to grill is like sausages.

sausages and you know variants on that i mean hot dogs are not like strictly speaking a good food but they are great during the summer the summer enhances their flavor brings something out in the same way that like having a bloody mary on a on an airplane makes it taste better Hot dogs, the same scientific principle applies to hot dogs. I went to a weird, like...

The last two years, I went to a hippie high school because I went to Catholic school for a while. And then they're like, fuck it. I can't stand this shit anymore. I don't care. And so I learned barbecue from my English teacher who was from Texas. And as a result, I really, yeah, I know. Like there's a really good pit barbecuing book, I remember, but I don't have the space to do pit, like to like dig a trench.

But I like anything that's like grilled with wood. I hate the way charcoal tastes. I think it tastes weird and it imparts a strange flavor. Uh, propane's fine. Hank Hill was right. Um, but I don't know. I, I, it's less, it's like, it's like, I like fucking like a real, like a smoked brisket with wood. Oh, yeah. I mean, if we're talking about like proper barbecue, well, then I have completely different opinions and it's all brisket based. I mean, I'm from Texas.

You know, most of the barbecue in New York, fucking garbage, absolute heaps of trash on a tray. I will say, I will say the one meme photo was like somebody getting like five dollars worth of meat at Fetso, which sucks ass. Yep. Fetso is so bad. Jesus, I hate that place. That place sucks ass. But also that was like rage bait because they got like no, they could have gotten more food. They're like, it was intentionally photographed in a way. That was a psyop. I'm sorry.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I don't know. I think I like dogs. I don't think you should microwave a hot dog unless you're really depressed. Yeah. And even then, like you need to be reevaluating your life, not eating a hot dog. Truth and Ask's Hometown. I'm from... Dallas, the Plano area. If you want to get really specific, I grew up in Wiley, but no one knows what Wiley is. It's kind of close to McKinney, but not really.

Oh, hometown, the barbecue place. Never mind. Well, whatever. I haven't been there. Hometown, Brooklyn. Good to know. All right. Next question. I mean, I'm not a game dev, but I... But I do know that it's just it's like fucking they've made it really easy. They just they've made it like it's just I've used UE5 and I'm not even a fucking game dev. It's like it's just super easy for things to sort of work. And like regardless of like. stuttering I think someone who made the joke I was like

I think the more interesting thing is why do games all look like that in Unreal Engine? Because they all look like that. They all have that look that looks like kind of too crunchy and strange. a little too textured in all the wrong ways. Like Inzoy looks like that. You know, Claire Obscure, despite looking beautiful, does look like that. Black Myth Wukong absolutely looks like that.

You know, and it's this it's and also they stutter really aggressively. You know, it's I think they someone said they the joke they made was like. It's it's they've sort of gentrified the means of hiring this man. If you know the whole Nintendo hire this man sort of meme. It's just, it's just, it's, it's relatively.

i mean these things these two things are related it's universality it's ubiquity means it's got the highest level of of support and ubiquitousness and that makes it the easiest to use and so if you're gonna if you're gonna get something you're gonna reach off the shelf and get unreal engine Like you're absolutely not going to use CryEngine or something else, which is like by all accounts.

um a nightmare to use and more limited and is only useful in specific scenarios well and like you you can communicate with other people less about it yeah everybody uses unreal engine for a reason they're not trapped using it um it is the best option for most people out there so yeah all right from elon um Can we address the calendar controversy? This is, of course, referring to my notepad app calendar, which Riley is a huge fan of.

Riley thinks that I should change nothing. I've told my friends about it, like my real-life physical meatspace friends in conversation. I largely organize at least my social life, not necessarily my work life. around a calendar that I keep. Are you just saying that because I'm sitting here? No, no, it's true. I mean, for work stuff, I use Google Calendar a little bit more. And also I have a separate Notepad app on my PC.

that contains a calendar. But you can get a basic idea of what it looks like here. I'm scrolling through it because I also have previous years entries in it because I like to preserve these things. um here we go here we go christ almighty yeah so see it's just a bunch of stuff on my very smudged phone screen

For people who can't see, Nathan just keeps his calendar. Nathan just keeps his calendar in his notes app like a fucking psychopath. Yeah, well, it's because sometimes you just want to listen. Riley, can I tell you something that will cause you harm? I don't want to hear your shit, Chris. Would you do it too? No, no, tell him, tell him. No, I do something. What the fuck do you do? Go ahead. What's the phrasing? Are you in a space to accept information that might harm you?

Make this day worse. Yeah, sometimes because reminders don't really work for me. Sometimes I'll just send myself an email that is the subject line. where the subject line is the thing I got to remember to do so that I... Yeah, I do that. Yeah, so that I have to clear it out. How do you see it again, though? It's a priority alert. The calendar notifications sometimes become just another notification. But if I send myself...

A reminder to my work email address with the subject of like call about car or something. I'm like, fuck, that's the thing in my brain that has to be addressed. First. And if you want to zero the inbox. Now, see, that's insane to me. You don't use the count if you zero your inbox. Give me a break. I don't zero my inbox, but I do need to get it out of my way. Now, what I do for this issue.

is I just set a series of alarms on my phone. If I need to remember something, like to send an email or send a message or whatever. No, just stop, Nathan. I don't want to know any more. You've already told us. I feel like these are the simplest options. Like on your notepad app is just a list of things that you made yourself. There's no like surrounding framework where like the phone will like.

update and add to it or change things up like the nomad pad app will stay the same no matter what you can rely on it similarly they're not going to fuck up alarms because alarms are like one simple and central function Um, like I know these things won't change or getting shitified. They'll. just always be the same. I feel like you're only one step removed from carrying around a little moleskin.

in your back pocket with a pen. Yeah, this is the modern version of that. I must buy eggs today. Yeah, see, now you're bringing Riley over to my side. Strange bedfellows. Like, get a day planner with the... I mean, like, it's like... A manager type, like, you know, you have to, you learn to be good at calendars, but also like everyone else's calendars.

So like hearing these psychotic ways that you all keep track of your own time, like one puts my own experiences with all of you in a new light where sometimes I'm like, I don't understand how X or Y has happened. And now I'm like, oh.

I get it. But like, you know, I feel like a large portion of my professional life is like keeping strict and detailed calendars. And the fact that other people are just out here writing down days and words in a notes app is like... A large part of your workday, Riley, is you being someone who craves. order and structure and the rest of us being just people who thrive in chaos. I mean, but that's why, that's why I have to be such a weirdo about order and structure because of your, I have to.

Turn your chaos, you know, into a functional day. I also do have a notepad that I use. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I have a day planner and I have a to-do list and a notepad. If it helps slash to reassure people. I am actually very organized. Or not even organized. It's very. What? If I have calls that involve sources or that involve a story, I'm very rigid about it. Like, I do not miss that shit. I do not like.

Forget about it. I'm always, I always make sure to do that. I just, you know, my own personal life is less organized. We got to move on to, cause it's going to kill Riley. Okay. Okay. Next question. Could you highlight some talented former Polygon employees that listeners with open roles should reach out to to hire?

yeah i mean all of them all of them they have the uh yeah so i think i got linked in chat earlier but there's a polygon starter pack on blue sky and it contains pretty much everybody um Yeah, I mean, like, you really can't go wrong. They, you know, they got hired there for a reason. Yeah, the hiring process for a Polygon job in the last five years is basically... It's been about you overcoming the resumes and applications of 150 other people who are all...

Yeah, sometimes more. No, more than that. The job that Tyler Culp got, I think a thousand people applied for that. So yeah, I think that question is, going back to what we said earlier, it's less about which ones would you recommend and like, are there any jobs? Please tell people about any jobs that are open, not the other way around. Yeah. So yeah, either that or again, if you're a very wealthy person with a lot of money,

Go be a jobs creator, as everyone likes to talk about. Make some jobs for these people. Well, give us the money and we'll hire some of them. Exactly. That's the main thing you really should do. By the way, we have a means by which you can do it. We have a donation page. Which is what? Aftermath.site slash donate.

Yeah, we have it listed as a tips jar on our sidebar, which is super confusing because we also have a place to send tips, like for news. We really need to change that language. It drives me insane. We do. Yeah, it's donate. Aftermath.site slash donate. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it has to be different because technically it's not a donation. It's not taxed up. A donation's not taxed up. Anyway.

From April Showers brought May Jerfs. No question. Just wanted to say I love what you all do. I'm happy to be supporting y'all. Wish I had a vast fortune to keep everyone else afloat too. But until such time as I come into that massive windfall, this will have to do. Thank you. Thank you. Very kind of you to say. Okay, from Doogie2k, related to the previous one about Polygon stuff. Do we have any good memories to share of working with...

slash alongside now former Polygon and or Giant Bomb staffers. Basically everybody there. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody there. Maddie. Yeah, Maddie was great. Maddie is like. Many of them worked with us, Maddie and Arnie. Yeah, Maddie Myers is used to like.

be an integral part of kotaku and was first to compete then became a what managing editor was that her job yeah deputy deputy editor yeah one of those anyway um yeah just like one of the smartest most skillful people you could work with a great editor and also like incredible knack for story ideas, both like day to day and like bigger ambitious ones. Yeah. I mean, just like, yeah.

Sorry for ever putting up with my bullshit. You're a lovely person to work with. I treasure every moment. I don't know if he was affected today because I've only just got out of bed, but Mike McWhirter. He was. He's out of a job. Kotaku. Fuck him.

yeah so mike mike was primarily responsible for the transition of kotaku being like uh an absolute loose cannon to being a very tightly packaged respectable website because he was so good at like the intangibles at a website which is was a huge inspiration on stuff i did at kotaku where it wasn't necessarily stuff you put on the website under your byline but in terms of like the overall site

style packaging presentation imagery that kind of stuff and he carried that on and did an amazing job at polygon for what must be 15 years now um but i just i'd love to working with mike mike was super cool and did amazing work every time he did anything so it's another one of those things where you most people won't recognize that kind of stuff um as readers because it's the kind of work you don't see

But he would have been, yeah, the fact he's one of the people Adolf says volumes about how little they respect the stuff that made that website. Good. Yeah. Ari. Basically, everybody we've worked with, you know. Yeah, Ari. Yeah, well, Ari's still there, fortunately. He's not been laid off. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I forgot. Sorry. No, it's all good.

Let's see. Off topic of today, oh, from dead end. Off topic of today slash recent months. What kind of mouse surface is the best? Second, why is everyone else wrong about their mousepad choice? Okay. Just like Chris, just like Chris. Yeah. We're all going to be wrong. Just like Chris do it. Yeah. all right um i which one do i have uh i think i have a an artisan which i really liked um I have a friend who got a glass surface.

Glass mouse pads are really fucked up. You need a special like special mouse gates for them to work. He also well, the reason why is because he has a cat and the cat was just fucking up his mouse pad pretty aggressively. I know there's a pretty they're more expensive. Yeah, I think he also has like a sleeve for it.

So he has like a mousing sleeve to prevent any kind of glass mouse pads are the most fucked up one is all I'm saying. I don't have one. However, I do know a pretty good middle budget one that I should probably post about, but also. As with as most of my writing's been about, I don't know how much stuff costs anymore. And if I can get it. And please, President G, set my people free. Shout out to the large format IKEA desk mouse pad, which is like 20 bucks.

It attracts cat hair, but if you have a suede brush, like I'm holding up in camera now from sneakers or whatever, you can just brush the hair off. It's fine. It costs 20 bucks. It's not glass. I'm sorry, but like... It's fine. Okay, but you having a special brush for your mousepad is not that much weirder than having a weird glass mousepad.

I had this already for sneakers. It's just a happy coincidence. I did not buy a special brush just for my mouse pad. I say weeping. Now I'm going to get that fucking glass mouse pad. Jesus. Here at Aftermath, we're all freaks in our own ways. You guys with your nice things. Me with my calendar. I will say my mouse is a Vaxi. Vaxis are really good. All right. from boolean lfgm equals through semicolon. How long is too long for in-laws visiting and staying over at your house?

I don't have in-laws, so I cannot speak to this. Yeah, I think Luke's the only one of his in-laws. They can't fit in my house. Mine live in the same city, so never. They can come for dinner. That's it. There's no excuse for them to be staying here overnight whatsoever. They live like 10 minutes away from my house. I'm blessed. I don't have to have that happen. Hypothetically, I would say two nights. Do you like them or do you tolerate them?

They're fine. Okay. They're fine. They're going to hear you. They're not my parents. They're fine. All right. Got that on record. Sending it to your wife. Yep. She knows. She knows better than anyone. All right, let's see. From I Once Was a Cat. With consoles now increasing in price due to tariffs in the US, do you all think this will delay any future iterations of consoles? Maybe.

I don't know. Sure. I don't know. There's no predicting the future. I was going to say, the dollar isn't going to be the reserve currency. Who the fuck knows anymore? I don't care. Things have gotten so bad, I don't care. I think my big wouldn't it be funny if, which is the closest I get to predicting these days, is wouldn't it be funny if this just crushes everything that isn't like a weird Chinese handheld that you get at a mall?

And that's just where the future is? I mean, entirely possible. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of, you know, based on the direction tech seems to be headed, like where the future is anyway. So this just kind of expedites it. Anyway, from Drew Warm, what's a blog you're especially proud of slash fond of from your time before Aftermath? Oh, um...

I, uh, you see the thing behind me, the little, that thing, the little vacuum cleaner. Uh, that's probably one of the hardest hacking jobs I had to do because I had to hack the firmware, uh, on my robot vacuum and that one. That one's joy. I really enjoyed doing that. But it also requires you get a special PCB from a guy on Telegram and then have to root it in the most annoying way possible and then build the firmware manually.

But it's cool because it doesn't tell the Dream Corporation the shape of my house. I mean, I don't know if I'd call it a blog exactly, but I liked my... my story about like how how and why g4 died at the washington post um especially because i got so many details on like the head of comcast spectacore or whatever it was called Or not the head, but the son of that person who ended up like...

spearheading g4 and like being totally absentee i got all these details on his like weird um death star themed office office yeah like that he put all of this worker that he had other people put all this work into building and then used like twice Yeah, that was a fun one. I did two blogs at Kotaku, which were like satirical takes on how a video game. was made like a timeline from conception through to marketing, through to release, post-release. I did one in 2015 and I did one in 2022.

And I thought, like, I enjoyed writing them. I thought they were funny, but I think long-term they've proven to be quite prophetic, tragic. Like I laughed, I laughed because it's kind of funny, but it's also like tragically the case, like from, you know. layoffs to to bullshit press coverage to you know exploitative working conditions um yeah i don't know i i just when i think of stories that

but which also were cool things to have on the page. I think of those two. They did terrible traffic because I couldn't package them properly, which is a very inside baseball term, but it's like the means of like headlining and imaging and selling the story.

um it was too hard to pin them down and sell them so not many people read them but like i never got nicer feedback than from people who did read them most of them being sort of worn down game devs who are suffering through the conditions that i was making fun of but um yeah those two yeah um i got to write a blog about an article about how the ouija board works which is like part of my niche expertise in like spiritualism from the 1800s and um

It was really fun to get to just kind of like be a super nerd. And I got a lot of weird responses of people, some people being very angry. They're like, it's sinful. And I was like, who is like sitting around being mad about this thing? But I thought that was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of cool stuff. Yeah. If we're talking like dumb, funny blogs, I remember there was one that I wrote that I believe Riley edited that was like a day in the life of the main character of Red Dead Redemption 2.

And like that, you know, agonizingly detailed, like all of the little mechanical things that were happening that made his life terrible, which was itself inspired by a similar blog that Kirk Hamilton did about The Witcher 2 many years ago.

and which I think both of those directly precede tim rogers la noir video i think that we walked so that he could run he also did one for red dead as well kirk had that whole thing about like np npcs yeah would do like focus on like specific npcs and i thought that was oh yeah the the yeah my my rip to a real one series yeah i really enjoyed that and then that was also my like kota blog at kotaku because the the real one that died at the end of that was myself

Yeah. Damn, I forgot about those. I hadn't thought about them in a while. I agree. That was a good series. Great job, Nathan. All right. Let's see. Also from Drew, softball question number two. What's your favorite candy? Oh, that's easy. Trader Joe's peanut butter cup.

Best peanut butter cup in the world, bar none. I even recently got really fancy peanut butter cups because when I finished my book, my agent sent me these really nice ones, which was great of him. He didn't even know how much I like peanut butter cups.

even though they probably cost like fucking 40 bucks or something, not as good as Trader Joe's. Comparable, but not as good. Ritter Sport. Swiss chocolate. Probably also peanut butter cups. Yeah, they're the best. Sweet, savory, all in a nice little... From Matey Boombatty.

Gotta also make it boom-baity so that it still rhymes. Anyway, it's fine. I keep saying video game news site management trying to pivot to writing parentheses more guides for games with the intent to get more clicks through SEO. That feels like a scam in the same sense pivoting to video for Facebook. What's your take on sites doing that as an add-on? Personally love guides and dedicated fan sites. Shout out to SarahB.net. Is there a dedicated fan site you go to for guides?

I mean, yeah, I think we've already talked quite a bit about guides pivoting. Yeah, we did that a bunch. Sites pivoting to guides. So yeah, let's just answer the second one, which is, is there a dedicated fan site you go to for guides? Well, I play a lot of GameFAQs from fucking 20 years ago. Basically. I don't know. I like Polygon.

i guess past tense i don't know do like polygon stuff yeah i think they mean like more specific in this case potentially like something akin to um fuck oh i don't know off the top of my head Just not like any of the like wikia stuff. Okay. Okay. Cool. From shy.

I picked up Shadow of the Erd Tree after beating the base game back in 2023. It is hard because the controls are so not what I want them to be, and I've lost all my muscle memory for the game. What is the most difficult experience you've had returning to a game after a break? Minish Cap. legend of zelda minish cap i was playing it on a game boy micro this is so specific but which is like the ultimate way to play that game and i got up to the last boss

And I just wasn't feeling it and I put it down and then I kind of like played some other games. Every time I would come back to that.

like i'll be like oh my game by micro and i turn it on and it'd be minish cap and i'd boot it up final boss battle and i'd like die and then i'd put it down again and i'd die and because i'd lost like the flow of the game and everything i've just had like god it must be 15 16 years of this save game just like right at the end of the game but i just can't get over the hump because i only try and do it every like 18 months to two years yeah um mine is definitely and without a doubt warfran

which I put 100 hours into in 2020 and then have not played much of since. I tried to get back into it in like 2022 and quickly learned that the... It's not getting back into Warframe isn't as hard as getting into Warframe, but it's really close. Like in terms of just like, oh, I've got to remember all this stuff. I need to remember what all of these different numbers mean. Like what happened in the story again? Because it's a really good story, but there's a lot going on.

Like you have all these planets that you've got to go to for like your correct like leveling and gearing up curve. And like I had already been struggling with one before. And I was like, this one's still giving me trouble.

And now there's a ton of new content on top of that that I've got to like play through to catch up to where things are. And like, yeah, that said, I'm going to try to do it before TennoCon, which is the convention that happens this summer because I think I'm finally going to go. And so that'll probably be a blog series for the site is my struggles getting back into Warframe.

I had so much trouble with it that last year at the Game Awards, I asked the creative director of the game. I was like, what are your recommendations for getting back into the game? What should I do? And she was like, man, it's hard. I don't actually, I mean, there's some good guides like on YouTube. I'm good. I don't know. I definitely have an answer I can't think of. Chris has never struggled. I've never, I've never.

soiled and then let's see riley i have a problem with every game if i put down a game for like a day i completely forget how all the buttons work but um

probably also Zelda. Like I tried to play the new Zeldas and I never really played a Zelda. And I would like put it down for a little bit. I forget what all the buttons do. I forget who everybody was, where I was, what I was doing. And I kept starting over. And at some point I was like, you can't you just can't keep starting zelda over and over again like this is ridiculous But it's like a problem that I have personally. Yeah. All right. Wow.

We finally made it to the mailbag, our longest ever. We will figure out a way to make it less long in the future, given this current structure. Thank you everyone for sticking around for such a long episode. Obviously, there was a lot that went into that. The circumstances mainly account for this. Nonetheless, we usually don't go quite this long. And next week, I hope that we will not because this is a little bit too much. That said.

If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe at aftermath.site slash products. We also have an entire website. That's our main thing. You can check it out at aftermath.site and you will see all of our good, cool stories. We record this show every Thursday at 4 p.m. ET, live on Twitch, and then it's also a podcast.

But until then, have a good rest of your week and hopefully things will only get better from here given how bad they've been. Also, last thing, rate and review us on iTunes because apparently that matters. Oh, yeah, that doesn't matter a whole lot. So if you can take a second to do that, it'd be much appreciated. Please. It helps us a lot. Helps us get discovered. And then we can become famous and stop being journalists. Anyway, have a good rest of your week. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye.