On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Ethan Gach of Kotaku dot com and Garrett Martin of the newly rechristened Endless Mode, two beneficiaries of the only good week for games media in the past century. The former finally managed to wriggle out from under G/O Media’s suffocating boot via a sale to the same seemingly benign company that bought Gizmodo, and the latter represents that rarest of unicorns: a new video game website with a functional budget in the year 2025. We talk to both Ethan and Garrett about the state of games journalism and their cautious optimism about the future now that MBA-brained business idiots seem to have moved on from blindly buying up websites for their ponzi schemes. Then we discuss decidedly less good news: Microsoft just laid off 9,000 more workers, many of them in games, resulting in cancellations of multiple promising projects as well as general industry brain drain. Finally, prompted by a mailbag question, we talk about the many cool world records we’ve broken, only some of which involve eating a waffle to discover a clue. Credits- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Riley MacLeod, & special guests Ethan Gach and Garrett Martin- Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude- Subscribe to Aftermath!About The ShowAftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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1:11:22
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1:11:22
Zohran Mamdani, Gamer Mayor
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris celebrate the NYC democratic mayoral primary victory of Zohran Mamdani by bringing on a whopping TWO guests: First, Max Rivlin-Nadler joins us to talk about how Hell Gate – a fellow worker-owned publication – punched well above its weight during this election, organizing a town hall that every candidate except Andrew Cuomo showed up for and hosting an election night livestream that aired in bars across the city. Then f ormer Kotaku writer turned professional Genshin Impact advocate turned laid off person (hire them!) Sisi Jiang comes on to share their experience knocking on over 1,000 doors for the Mamdani campaign – part of a wider canvassing effort that resulted in an unprecedented turnout for a leftist candidate. Lastly, using the scant information available, we attempt to divine what kind of gamer Mamdani is.Credits- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, & special guests Max Rivlin-Nadler and Sisi Jiang- Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude- Subscribe to Aftermath!About The ShowAftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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1:32:10
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1:32:10
Live From New York, It’s Stream Big
We’re off this week because of Juneteenth, but back in February, Nathan released a book! About Twitch! As part of that, he hosted a launch event at Wonderville in Brooklyn, NY with a panel featuring Chris and Gita, as well Polygon’s Simone de Rochefort. It was basically a live episode of Aftermafh Hours, so here it is now, as an episode of Aftermath Hours. Enjoy!Credits- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Gita Jackson, & special guest Simone de Rochefort- Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude- Subscribe to Aftermath!About The ShowAftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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1:30:28
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1:30:28
Summer Game Mess
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley reflect on the latest installment of Geoff Keighley’s mid-year video game advertisement carnival, Summer Game Fest. It was a weird one! High-profile announcements were few and far between, leaving relative no-names shaped kinda like the industry’s heaviest hitters to fill in the gaps. But at least Stranger Than Heaven, which is basically noir Yakuza in the 1940s, looks cool. Then Nathan talks about what it was like to actually attend SGF’s in-person Play Days event, which took place roughly a mile from the locus of LA’s anti-ICE protests. Game developers and press struggled with mixed feelings over the unavoidable tension between the perceived frivolity of advertising video games within the event’s walls and the enormity of the protests raging outside. After that, we move on to perhaps the week’s most telling story: what happened to Dragon Age: The Veilguard. A new Bloomberg report details trend-chasing, reactive mismanagement nearly every step of the way. At what point do we determine that these execs are simply not fit to lead? Lastly, we figure out where we fall on the Aftermath community’s incredible Many Emotions Of Geoff Keighley chart.Credits- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, & Riley MacLeod- Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude- Subscribe to Aftermath!About The ShowAftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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1:42:01
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1:42:01
The Satisfying Snap Of A Switch 2
On this week’s episode, we are joined by Xalavier Nelson Jr. of Strange Scaffold to talk about the Switch 2 (because neither of us bought one at launch.) We discuss the satisfying click of the magnetic controllers, the strange emptiness of Mario Kart World, and the idea of trying to return to a yesteryear that can never be recaptured.Then, we discuss the State of Play, Luke’s piece about vibes, Sony’s entry into fight stick hardware as it relates to Arc System Works making a Marvel game. Last, we talk about what games we’re playing lately. Chris talks about Elden Ring Nightreign and Luke talks about Keita Takahashi’s latest To A T. To close, we answer some mailbag questions about books we read and more.Credits- Hosts: Chris Person, Luke Plunkett, & guest Xalavier Nelson Jr.- Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude- Subscribe to Aftermath!About The ShowAftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info.
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