Aftermath Hours

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Nathan’s former Washington Post colleague, Mikhail Klimentov, to discuss the latter’s years-in-the-making report on former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s pattern of legal threats against publications who’ve reported on him in ways that he perceives to be inaccurate. We dig into why the story took so long to find a home, what Kotick—no longer running Activision and obviously quite wealthy—stands to gain from this, and how the knowledge that such a thing could happen shapes reporting coming out of sites without the time or resources t...

This week, Chris and Luke talk to The Verge’s Sean Hollister about the Steam Frame, Valve’s latest foray into the VR space. Both Chris and Sean reviewed it, and we get into the current state of VR, if it can be salvaged, the Beta test nature of reviewing Valve’s hardware and more. We also talk about FEX (the emulator that lets the Frame play full PC games) and the Big Picture consequences that this device might have on smaller, cheaper handhelds.

Credits

- Hosts: Chris Person, Luke Plunkett and specia...

On this week’s episode, Chris and Luke are joined by Stephen Totilo, formerly everybody’s boss at Kotaku and currently breaking stories at GameFile. The latest scoop is about Bit Reactor, developers of the latest inheritor of the “XCOM-like” crown, Star Wars Zero Company – and how most of the people who worked on it have been left in employment limbo, despite releasing the game to stellar reviews. But covering all of that left Stephen with little time to review the actual game, so it’s up to noted tactics-heads Chris & Luke to tell us how the game actually stacks up. A...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley recap the highs (read: mids) and lows of Geoff Keighley’s least consequential annual advertisement fest, Gamescom Opening Night Live. The new expansion for Witcher 3—yes, the one that originally came out in 2015—looks cool, as does an arguably even longer-awaited continuation of a beloved series: Pony Island 2. But otherwise, it was hard not to let our eyes glaze over as Geoff and co ladled out a slurry of same-y looking games that embraced AI, shamelessly cribbed notes from other series, or both (see: Hoyoverse, Krafton). Then, a whole day later—wh...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Luke of Aftermath convene to discuss the pre-math of Grand Theft Auto VI’s impending, insanely anticipated release. With a Netflix preview of the game—itself pretty unprecedented—a week away, fired Rockstar workers are asking fans not to boycott the game while a hacker group has taken to leaking gameplay footage that hints at various systems (gas for cars?) while broadly… looking pretty much like you’d expect a Grand Theft Auto game to look. We talk about how GTA reached these dizzying highs of hype in the first place and how a ra...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Ben Collins of The Onion, because, against all odds, he and his comedic cohort have managed to transform Infowars—until recently one of the internet’s deepest, darkest toilets—into something funny and good. We discuss how the new Infowars came to be, its larger goal of providing monetary aid to the Sandy Hook families Alex Jones spent years tormenting, and those families’ reaction to the new Tim Heidecker-led show’s deranged shenanigans. We also delve into the particulars of satirizing something as inherently absurd as Infowars, as well as the...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by game developer, consultant, and general industry luminary Rami Ismail to discuss his new Levelling The Playing Field series of courses aimed at making “the critical less-spoken parts of indie gamedev accessible away from expensive visa-locked hotel bars.” These come at a time when the industry is in a massive state of flux, to put it lightly, with layoffs and closures ravaging triple-A studios while indies are forced to appease the ever-changing whims of Steam and penny-pinching publishers. We talk about what it means to release something like this now an...

On this week’s very special Hater Week episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley are joined by the crown prince of hating himself, Ed Zitron. We talk to Ed about what it means to be an effective hater in his wheelhouse—going after the companies that are taking everyone for a ride (to hell) on the AI Express—and beyond. But whether the topic is games, tech, or whatever else, one truth pervades: To be a good hater, you must also, at your core, be a lover. You’ve got to be equally studious whether you’re obsessing over something genuinely...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Tyler Colp of PC Gamer to discuss an extremely pressing business matter: Chris wrote almost 9,000 words about his favorite FromSoftware farming spots, and somehow, he still has more to say about them. Tyler, a fellow FromSoft sicko, happily indulges him. We discuss all sorts of obscure nooks and crannies in games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, as well as larger topics like Sekiro’s (perhaps unearned) status as the studio’s dark horse. And of course, we spend plenty of time talking about Bloodborne’s legendary Cum Dungeon...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Kotaku’s Reb Valentine to discuss that which has long been prophesied (derogatory): The Xbox layoffs finally happened, and they’ve somehow proven even worse than expected. Thousands of jobs lost, seemingly with little regard for institutional knowledge or what the people in question actually, you know, did. Now remaining teams—cut to the bone—are left to pick up the pieces. Why did Microsoft choose to go about things so haphazardly? What happens to the studios that got hit the hardest, and is the decision to put Obsidian...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Wes Fenlon of PC Gamer to discuss his new project: Warp Point, a web 1.0-style webring of video game blogs for the modern era. We discuss how the current internet is dying while a new one struggles to be born and whether or not newer generations will take to a format with which most millennials are intimately acquainted. Does that even matter, though, or is a fixation on numbers and scale one of the main reasons the modern internet turned out so rancid in the first place? Then we...

On this week’s episode, Chris, Gita and Luke discuss the recent price announcement for Valve's console-competitor, the Steam Machine - it's $1,049 USD, but unfortunately that's kind of just what computers cost now. All that said, Chris does make it sound like a pretty cool little PC. Then we'll turn our attention to the grand monolith casting a dark shadow across the gaming release calendar: Grand Theft Auto VI. Has there ever been this much hype for a game? Will there ever be again? And why does none of it strike a chord with Luke, who is ostensibly a GT...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by a second Chris, this one of the Plante variety, to discuss the latter’s Earliest Game Of The Year awards. Why now? Because games that release near the beginning of the year often get ignored or forgotten by the time GOTY season rolls around. Also, as of now, nearly 11,000 games have already come out this year. We ask Chris why, despite a glut of same-y industry award shows, he believes we need more—not less—and what the value of those shows could be if they focused more on speci...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Ethan Gach of noted Aftermath origin story Kotaku dot com to discuss… well, originally we were gonna talk about Summer Game Fest, but then—moments before we began recording—news broke that Xbox is on the verge of yet another devastating round of layoffs. We find ourselves once again lamenting the irreparable damage Microsoft has done to the video game industry, made all the more puzzling by the fact that the company seemed intent on acting like it was doing an about face following the appointment of Asha Sharma a...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by musician, writer, and game developer Liz Ryerson hot on the heels of counterprogramming Summer Game Fest with the second annual Unearthed Treasure Room showcase. The basic idea? SGF is made up of nearly 20 showcases of games yet to come—too many, frankly!—but there are countless already-released games that deserve another shot. We discuss why it’s important to counterprogram something as commercialized as SGF despite a relatively tiny viewership, as well as what games can look like when they’re less constrained by the bounds of specific genres. Th...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita bid farewell to the Aftermath Twitch channel—at least, in terms of using it to record the podcast—and turn their sights toward a pre-recorded, more-thoroughly-edited future (coming soon!). We also discuss Valve’s decision to massively increase the Steam Deck’s price thanks to “global logistical challenges” (read: AI and an incredibly stupid war) and how what seems to be the end of affordable consumer hardware might impact the games industry five or ten years down the line. Then we talk about the latest Boots Riley movie, I Love Boosters, and...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Jordan Hoffstetter of the incredibly-named Tran Girlismo podcast, a show about car culture and living during the decline of empire. We use Forza Horizon 6, the latest in Microsoft’s long-running open-world racing series, as a jumping off point to discuss Forza, Gran Turismo, Japan, irritating story elements in racing games, and the F1 series’ surprisingly great “Breaking Point” career mode. Then we move on to some sobering news: Destiny 2 is ceasing operations as a live-service game and being put on life support. It’s the end of an era in multi...

On this week's pod, Luke, Gita and Chris got together to talk about the game that people inexplicably cannot stop talking about: Mixtape. We talk about the way that it's portrayal of teen nostalgia hits, and more frequently, doesn't hit, as well as the bizarre series of conversations that are occurring about this game on social media. Then, Chris and Gita chat about the orb-tastic Saros, a game for total sickos that these two sickos are truly enjoying.

Credits

- Hosts: Chris Person, Gita Jackson, and Luke Plunkett

- Podcast...

On this week’s episode, Nathan is outnumbered by Australians when Alanah Pearce—games writer, voice actor, YouTuber, and filmmaker extraordinaire—joins the show (and also Luke is there). We discuss Alanah’s new production company, Charred Pictures, and its goal of involving indie developers in the process of adapting games into movies and TV shows. We also talk about the overall state of video game adaptations and the glut of tales that have already been told. Then we dig into the controversial (at least, in Hollywood) element of Alanah’s operation: She’s working with YouTubers where possible to secure fu...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Luke have a merry old time discussing cheery news from a normal week. For example: A video game CEO casually said the quiet part out loud by opining during a routine interview that “We've been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security,” suggesting that it’s time to instead rely heavily on a merry-go-round of beleaguered contractors. And this CEO is also the head of the head of the UK trade body for the games industry. Great! We also discuss...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley are joined by games reporter extraordinaire Rebekah Valentine, formerly of IGN and now (very) newly of Kotaku—which of course none of us have ever heard of. We ask her about the whys and hows of her big move to a site that—fingers crossed—seems to be in the midst of a renaissance, as well as little things like The State Of Games Journalism. We also discuss the way discourse around games has evolved as games journalism’s influence has waned, handily exemplified by the absolutely deranged takes that Capcom’s o...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Chandana Ekanayake, director of Dosa Divas, a new turn-based RPG about cooking, culture, and reconciling with loved ones. Also, mechs. We discuss the game’s inspirations, as well as the way food and other elements of culture are often stripped of their original context and commodified—which allows for the dehumanization of the very people who made the food in the first place. We also talk about what it takes for a small studio to keep the lights on as the video game industry sinks deeper and deeper into t...

On a this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by journalist-turned-politician Kat Abughazaleh, who recently managed to nearly win the Democratic congressional primary in Illinois despite odds being stacked against her. We discuss what she learned from her narrow defeat, both in terms of politics and an unexpected tool in her fundraising arsenal: livestreaming on Twitch. We also talk about her plans for the future now that she’s at least for the moment out of the political limelight and, of course, her great idea for a video game (it’s kinda like Pikmin or maybe Untitled Goose...

On a this week’s (very special) episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by podcasting royalty, Michael Hobbes of If Books Could Kill and Maintenance Phase, to discuss Aftermath’s latest, greatest, possibly dumbest event, Woke Week, as well as Michael’s true passion: video game speedruns. What was Woke 1? What were its true ills versus those centrist pundits have wrongly tried to diagnose? And why are Woke 1 and Woke 2 fighting? Can they stop? There are also multiple shocking—to Michael—reveals throughout the episode, such as Nathan’s role in Gamergate. We fill him in on all the deep gamer l...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Samantha Kalman, a game developer who’s worked on everything from experimental indies to Apex Legends, to discuss her very cool-looking new game, Verses: Hyper-Kinetic Aerial Joust, and the fraught industry climate surrounding it. What does it mean that even somebody with such a proven track record has been unable to secure funding via traditional channels? And can a Patreon, a podcast, and a dream really keep an inventive idea afloat in such choppy waters? More broadly, what will the games industry—or games industries, considering how many differ...

Today Gita and Chris are joined by our good friend Stella to talk about job precarity in the Game Dev world and her own recent troubles getting screwed over. Then we discuss Pokopia, the best game on the Nintendo Switch 2, which manages to fuse what we enjoyed about both Viva Piñata, NieR, and Dragon Quest Builders? We then answer your reader questions!

Credits

- Hosts: Gita Jackson, Chris Person, and special guest Stella Sacco

- Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude

- Subscribe to Aftermath!

A...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Jack Ryan – the investigative journalist, as opposed to the Tom Clancy character – to discuss his months-in-the-making report on Clickout, a secretive company that has taken to buying up once-revered video game websites like The Escapist and filling them with AI and gambling. Why is Clickout so secretive? How is it getting away with this? Why target video game websites, specifically? What does a company get out of burying them in borderline-incoherent garbage? And what goes into reporting out this kind of story when a company has proven more than w...

On this week’s episode, Nathan is joined by two media luminaries, Polygon editor-at-large Giovanni Colantonio and freelancer/Aftermath columnist Joshua Rivera, to discuss all things Resident Evil: where it’s coming from, where it’s going, and of course, the newly released Resident Evil Requiem. The series has spent its past few installments promising a fresh start; does Requiem actually deliver, or is it lured astray by the siren’s call of Leon Kennedy-flavored nostalgia? And during an era that’s decidedly post-zombie, what makes this series, in particular, so enduring? Also, Giovanni’s review of Requiem, which put the game...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley find themselves tangled in a rat king of interrelated AI stories: leftists apparently hate technology because they’re rejecting AI (and the mass exploitation that comes with it), the computer – a theoretically magical device hijacked by tech industry perverts – has become massively more expensive as a result of AI, and a former indie games luminary has dived into the deep end of AI psychosis and given agents free reign to blow $10,000 on the stock market. Keeping in mind that AI is nothing but stringing together sentences by predicting words at mass sca...

On this week’s episode, Gita and Luke welcome special guest Brendan Caldwell of the newly-launched website jank.cool, which is all about PC gaming. Brendan is quickly learning how owning a website can be both exciting (you’re your own boss, no one else can tell you what to do or what to write about) and very scary (how even do websites work?). But if it gives you a place to publish your weird trauma about getting attacked by Australian magpies under the guise of reviewing video games, the rest of it is worth it. Then in video game...

On this week’s episode, Nathan is joined by two very special guests – former (until, you guessed it, layoffs) Verge reporter Ash Parrish and prolific freelancer Joshua Rivera – for a special announcement: both will soon be regularly contributing to Aftermath! Ash will be blogging a day per week, and Joshua is the monthly columnist prophesied in our subscriber goals. We discuss our shared histories at Kotaku, as well as current beats and interests (ask Ash about monster fucking). Then we delve into the media landscape at large, where we can’t even go a week without, for example, The Washingt...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Ben Hanson of worker-owned media outlet MinnMax to talk about what it’s been like covering games – and just generally existing – amid ICE’s violent occupation of Minnesota. Ben tells us about the strange juxtaposition of tragedy (abandoned cars, large portions of the population terrified to leave their homes) and triumph (ordinary people working together to protect their neighbors on a previously unprecedented scale, the generally good vibes of any given protest) that characterizes Minnesotans’ daily existence. He also explains his decision to publish a video demonstrating what ICE is doing...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Keza MacDonald – currently of The Guardian and formerly of Kotaku UK way back in the day – to talk about her new book, Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. We discuss Nintendo’s vast history, dating all the way back to 1889, as well as how its innovative past gave way to the Switch 2 era, perhaps its most iterative yet. Keza also tells us all sorts of stories about legendary figures like Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who despite his sunny exterior, is actually a very intense...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Maddy Myers and Zoë Hannah, both formerly of Polygon – you know, before all the bad stuff happened – and now of the newly announced Mothership, a site at the intersection of gender and games. Maddy and Zoë tell us about their plans for the site and what it means to launch a publication like this in an era when feminist media has been gutted, and even venerable institutions like Teen Vogue – a primary inspiration for Mothership – have fallen. Then we talk about how much money $8 is (actually $10, but also possibly $5...

On our first episode of 2026, Nathan, Chris, and Riley start the year off with a bang, or at least the next best thing: a discussion about video games. We begin by reflecting on Nathan’s time attending Awesome Games Done Quick, the annual speedrunning marathon that raises money for charity and just generally rules. Gaming communities can be forces for good – at least, when they don’t allow their ranks to be overwhelmed by shitheads. Who knew? Then we move on to less positive happenings: Ubisoft just shut down an entire studio mere weeks after its workers voted to unioni...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley convene one last time to close out 2025, a notably horrible year for the world but a pretty solid one for Aftermath. We begin by talking about a controversy that was unexpected, to say the least: Larian, riding a wave of goodwill by making perhaps the ultimate example of a big game for people and by people in Baldur’s Gate 3, ran right off the road by openly embracing AI. The studio’s CEO, Swen Vincke, has spent the past several days both digging his heels in and doing damage control, but the...

This week, Gita, Riley, and Chris talk about many games that came out recently that will never win a Game Award, and what our attitudes about the event are.

First, the enigmatic Ys-alike Angeline Era, a beautiful game with thoughtful design. Second, the toe tapping Rhythm Doctor which feels like it takes cues from Rhythm Tengoku and iNIS games like Ouendan.

Then we discuss Skate Story, Faustian Tony Hawk with an incredible soundtrack that reminds us of Arctic Eggs. We give a shoutout to Demonschool, which has surprisingly good...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Gita, and Chris are joined by the one and only John “Super Eyepatch Wolf” Walsh, YouTuber extraordinaire and, now, author of The Bizarre World Of Fake Games, a book about exactly what it says it’s about: meticulously crafted settings and rule sets for games that don’t actually exist. Walsh explains his fixation with fake games and how, as he sees it, they broaden the landscape of who can create and imagine games in the first place. He also gives us a history lesson about proto-fake games like the almost unnervingly strange Codex Serap...

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by two of the finest internet culture reporters to ever lace up their boots and wade into the muck, Kat Tenbarge and Steven Asarch, to discuss why MrBeast’s new theme park, Beast Land, is so bad – and why quality was never the point in the first place. Spoiler alert: It’s a giant ad, as many so-called theme parks, activations, and experiences are these days. We live in an era of flimsy disposability where nothing – whether it’s a short-form video or a branded IRL pop up – is built to last.

The...

This week, Chris, Riley, and Gita raise our heads above the water of Aftermath’s relaunched website to talk, excitingly, about things that aren’t relaunching a website. To start, Chris and Gita talk about the movie Bugonia, a remake of 2003’s Save the Green Planet. We talk about how it’s different from the original, for better and worse, and what it says about class, society, and whether or not humanity is a failed experiment.

Then we talk about Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s new Apple TV show Pluribus. We’re a bit divided...