December 5, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Nathan Grayson of worker-owned games site Aftermath to talk about building an independent media outlet and the state of the game industry writ large.
Nathan Grayson:
https://aftermath.site/author/nathan-grayson
https://bsky.app/profile/nathangrayson.bsky.social
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm our host ed
Zetron and today I'm joined by the esteem Nathan Grayson,
co founder of the work owned gaming website Aftermath. Nathan,
(00:27):
Thank you for joining me again.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So you just did two years. What's it been like.
What have you learned in the last two years from
doing this?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah? Just nothing.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You know.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
We came in as experts. We were you know, we
didn't need to learn anything at all. We were perfect. Yeah. No,
we have learned so so, so so so much. You know,
we entered it as five people who wrote for a living,
who never really had much experience with the business side
of things because that wasn't really our purview. And when
you go from being at a major public sure of
(01:00):
any sort, whether in our cases that was Geomedia with
Kataku with the Washington Post or Vice or whatever else,
you know, a lot gets handled for you, whether that
is payroll or promotion or in some cases social media
things of that nature. We have to do all of
that ourselves now, in addition to expanding the business, finding
ways to grow, finding ways to support ourselves and keep
(01:21):
it sustainable or even make it sustainable in the first place.
So part of the reason we decided to do a
relaunch was to kind of plant our flag and say like, yeah,
you know, we're a real grown up business now, whereas
when we first started we kind of just were cobbling
things together and learning as we went along.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So tell me about the relaunch. What you been doing.
You moved to ghost.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Right, Yeah, yeah, we moved over to ghost Yeah, so
we relaunched the website. We think it looks better and
nicer now there are more design possibilities and also like
we can accept more kinds of payment and have more
ways to reach readers and let them know, like, hey,
your subscriptions expiring, all this nitty gritty stuff. But yeah,
we we just decided to move over there because it
(02:06):
offers more flexibility. Sites like four or four in Hellgate
or on Ghosts and have nothing but good things to say,
and like, you know, we appreciated Lead, which is what
we're using before, that's what Defector's on. But yeah, there
are just a few things that we felt like we
were not going to be able to get from Lead
within a semi reasonable timeframe, and Ghosts already offered them.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
So we're like yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It's also grown into like a vibrant website. It was
at first you were kind of testing things out, but
now you've got a very developed stack of people. You've
got free lancers now, right.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah, we use freelancers. We accept freelance admissions. We
also have two regular contributors, Nicole and Isaiah. They they
are in our slack. They write for us, you know,
every week. Yeah, you know, we're going places. We're still
a core staff of five, but in the near future,
you know, should we accrue enough subscriptions, we'd like to
hire people on full time and grow staff again, similar
(03:01):
to what we've been seeing with well, I think four
or four now has like regular contributors as well. I'm
not sure if they have anyone new full time yet. Hellgate,
I know has grown so yeah, you know, again, we
are following in the footsteps of, at least relative to ourselves, giants,
and we would like to keep doing that. But that
requires growing more, making more money, all that stuff, you know,
(03:21):
typical challenges of a small business, but mapped on to
independent media.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So and coverage wise, you're fairly wired now like you
cover games, but kind of in the dead Spin before
the bullshit Happened style thing, where it's like gaming can
mean many different things.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, And also, like I think from
the get go, what we wanted to do was cover
games in the way the Defector covers sports, which is
to say that, you know, we can cover a lot
of things, a lot of things fall under that umbrella.
And on top of that, like, you know, games are
relevant to many different areas as well, like, and so
I think that compared to other video game websites, for example,
(03:59):
we spend a lot of time covering politics. For a
long time, there's this refrain that like, oh, you know,
games are escapism and like you should keep politics out
of and blah blah blah, which has always been bullshit,
of course, But I think that even relative to our
coverage at other places, like before we made Aftermath, you know,
all of us have been fairly politically minded in our careers,
(04:20):
but after Math, like we really go in on that.
And I'm very proud of what we've accomplished on that
front in terms of just covering that overlap, especially as
it's become more and more relevant to the modern day.
You know, like when Trump was running for president again,
he was meeting with gaming influencers, like you know, you
have all of these things where now the people who
(04:41):
used to be considered just like outcast nerds are in
incredible places of prominence.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, and it's weird. I don't like seeing games bleed
into politics at all. I think we really I think
we were good in about twenty eleven with Home From
which was the I think the only necessary political game.
Well what if North Korea radiated the Mississippi River Classic game.
I'm sure I'm going to get some great emails about
the fact that there were political games before that, And
(05:08):
you're wrong. But it is interesting where you are where
aftermath is app in the current milieau of like politics
and digital culture, because it does feel like streaming and
gaming have just kind of meshed into everything now outside
of politics, You've got a bunch of tons of like
NBA players and NFL players who game and stream regularly,
(05:29):
but you've also got these particularly vile and not vile
streamers who.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Do it too. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Well, yeah, and I mean we just recently this week,
in fact, we ran a story about kind of the
aftermath of one person in the aftermath haha, that's say.
But anyway about an employee at a company called Sucker Punch.
They made a ghost of Yota recently getting fired as
a result of a joke about Charlie Kirk. They are
one of the people who got swept up on that,
(05:55):
and so we ran a story about kind of what
has happened to them since that occurred, and also just
sort of like what that moment actually was versus what
you might be able to misconstrue it as. So, you know,
at the time, there was all of this furor over
anybody saying anything negative about Charlie Kirk, and so this
person got fired for a relatively innocuous joke that was
probably in bad taste, but whatever. And so what she's
(06:17):
contending now is like, you know, two months down the line,
she's like, this wasn't actually about the joke. It was
because there was a harassment mob that already existed that
decided to weaponize this person's death to get some people
fired and to you know, basically instill silence in them
and anybody else who witnessed that happening. And you know,
just generally taking the games industry to task for not
(06:38):
defending its people better. Because when this occurred, you know,
the company in question, at least, she says, did not
really like come to her or give her a warning
or really do anything. They were just like, yeah, you're fired.
And you know, as long as the games industry continues
to let that happen, which they've been basically doing since
the original gamer Gate back in twenty fourteen, as you
would well know, then these kinds of things like that
(07:03):
will just continue to let these mobs run rampant and
kind of dictate the pace of conversation around games and
even in some cases how they get made.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It is so strange. As a child, I dreamed of
the day that gaming would be a normal thing that
everybody talked about, And now I feel like that was
a monkey's poor situation. Maybe we should have less discussion
of you know, no, I don't even mean in an
immediate sense, in the sense that something happened as games
came to prominence that dragged up a ton of stuff
(07:34):
within gamers that wasn't anything to do with games at all.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, well, I mean I think a few things happened.
One of them is that, you know, for a while,
games were considered this thing like for nerds and for
like outcasts, and so there was always that bit of
a chip on people's shoulder, and that like, once the
mainstream started to care about games, they're like, hey, well,
you know, these are ours, and if you do anything
to them, if they get altered to fit your taste,
(08:00):
in your needs, then we're going to like do an uprising,
like get really mad. But also that kind of energy,
that kind of like you know, faux victimhood is very
easily easily weaponized by other forces, and I think that
the far right seized upon that quite early. Again with Gamergate.
They noticed that there's this latent kind of resentment running
(08:22):
through games, seeking audiences whatever you want to call them. Yeah,
like yeah, yeah, we need to find a way to
seize upon that, and Gamergate was the perfect flashpoint. And
ever since then, you know, people much smarter than me
have said this, but like Gamergate was the Canarian the
coal mine for a lot of the modern alt right,
and that's sort of just how it all started.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And I wish that they would get angry at the
real villains, which is electronic odds and the actually look
because can you imagine if any even a iota of
this vile poison in their veins was a like I
know this is somewhat of a tangent, but I swear
I'm going someone playing Madden last night because I hate myself.
And it's just this game has been broken in the
(09:04):
same way for fifteen years. They're a little you can
play a game and without fail, we'll see a bug
I beat you, the menus will hitch, menus won't load,
and it's just see like these harassment campaigns, I think
as so as you've well put so nakedly, not about
video games, but just aggression against woman, aggression against any outliers,
(09:28):
which is ironic considering gate like gamers historic outlier status.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Absolutely when yeah, you know, again, as with a great
many things, obviously, the real villain, especially in the case
you're describing, is capitalism. Yes, and like you know, if
you look at Madden sports games in general, as you're saying,
they've been broken in fundamental ways for like decades, but
what's changed about them is that they're just more heavily monetized. Now.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, these companies fatigue.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
More ways to extract money, yep, to extract tons of
money from them, and like they're there is anger at
games changing in that way, but not to this degree
where it's like we're going to you know, harass people.
I mean, there are in some cases harassment mobs that
have gone.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Which they which they shouldn't do to anyone, just to
be clear, right, no one should.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
But also a lot of the developers who end up
in those crosshairs are also just marginalized, and that's the
main reason people are going after them. Yeah, it's very
odd because you would think that games would be this
kind of could be this hotbed for like resistance to
the ravages of capitalism, in that, you know, so many
games present effectively what are supposed to be fair structures. Right,
(10:38):
you get out what you put in, like, you know,
you gain experience for all of your work, you gain rewards,
things like that, and so in a lot of ways, gamers'
brains are tailored to expect a certain degree of fairness
and like egalitarianism. And so you would think that gamers
would look at like all these structures and say, okay,
well there's a problem with the structure. It's not fair
and we should do something about it. But you know, again,
(11:02):
they've been misled by a bunch of various forces, including
the powers that be, including the people who are like
are in charge of making the games, not the developers,
the executives. Yeah, and so they just never quite get there.
But it is kind of funny to think about, like,
you know, this could be the place where it all start,
gamers can start their revolution.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
But I think the aftermath does a really good job
of that because you have the social stuff. I had
the term social justice. It's the correct one, but it's
been bounced around too much now, but it's it's a
place where I think you have done. You have done
some of the best labor work, Like you have a
labor section, And I think that people need to realize.
(11:52):
I think people need to see games developers as laborers
far more, because I think there are plenty of people
who are like, oh, these games, how much the game
developers make seven hundred thousand, yet like that they have
these they see them as this ivory tower job versus
a pretty brutal, working, stiff job at times, and then
even more so in things like QA. You know, as
(12:14):
long as that still exists as.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
An industry, Yeah, right, until it gets replaced by AI
and Square Innex's case.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, that I could not remember the company, thank you
for being.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, so they want to replace seventy percent of their QA,
or have seventy percent of the QA done by AI.
I'm sure that they have some like bullshit line about
how that won't displace labor, but it's like, but you
just actually waned.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Thinking this out loud. That doesn't make any fucking sense.
First of all, QA, from what I understand, is a
lot of repetitive tasks. So I assume that that's why
they think AI will work. But is it going to
play the games?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Because that so Another big problem with that whole line
of reasoning is that QA is like a relationship right
in that you don't just need QA people to do
the job. You also need them to be affect of
communicators to the rest of the studio in terms of
what they should be looking for in terms of how
to reproduce various bugs and other issues. And another like
big element of QA that is super underappreciated is that typically,
(13:12):
because the game is made in bits and pieces, QA
is the part of the studio that earliest and most
often gets a full picture of what the game is
like to play and its totality as like a complete
product or is like, and so they can most often
answer the question early on like is this good?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Is it fun?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Admittedly, they're playing it in a very specific way, so
they're not necessarily playing it to enjoy themselves, but they
do have that like broader overview of what it is
kind of turning out to be. And they're all of
those things that I just mentioned.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
AIQA is quality is so quality assurance. I probably should
have led with that, but never but no, you're right,
and it's I think seeing games as a labor thing
is so it's genuinely one of my favorite things about
often off is the if you talk about and now
this is a little bit it copium, hopium, whatever you
call it, but it's if you do want to change things,
(14:05):
you need to educate people about what's going wrong and
why I'm not saying that vile right, people are finding
go after Marth and going, oh, I'm changed. But it's
I feel like you have to build a body of
work to explain the overall problem. And it is a
label one. It is the fact that some paraphrasem mcgolfriend here.
But it's like with movies, it's like there are movies
that are hundred million dollars, there are movies that are
(14:27):
one million dollars, And I feel like games is in
this weird position too, where it's everything has to be
Triple A everything, biggest, most hugest game, and then there
are indie games m and it's I feel like that
like the capitalism probably you've been discussing, is there too,
where it's the way games are made is broken. And
I feel like Aftermath does a good job of explaining
(14:49):
how the breaking has happened, but also the consequences of
that fracturing.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, and then also like I think people just don't
understand the scale of game making in general either, Like
you know, certainly there's Triple A and there's indie, but
there's all sorts of stuff in between a lot of
indie games, you know, because like there's been this larger
thing happening in video games where like it's been hard
for companies to secure investment, a lot of games have
gotten canceled, a lot of studios have had to break
(15:15):
up or go their separate ways, and so for a moment,
there was this refrain of Okay, well, like you know,
as a result of all of that and all these
layoffs happening in the Triple A space, you know, pretty
much every major Triple A game company via Microsoft, Sony,
eaub Soft Square, and it's whatever said major layoffs in
the past couple of years. And so a lot of
people saw that and said, well, you know, Triple A
(15:36):
is collapsing, It's going to go away in five or
ten years. Indies will save us, though, but you know,
indies are facing their own problems again in terms of
securing investment. And also, like a lot of indie games
are not just you know, one person in their garage
or a few people making a game for you know,
pocket change. These are also full scale productions. These can
(15:57):
have thirty, forty, even sometimes one hundred people working on them,
and they all require paychecks, and so quickly the price
for that on a per annual basis goes up to
you know, over a million dollars easily. And so it's like,
you know, indie's can't save us because they're facing a
lot of the same headwinds as everybody else. And recognizing
(16:18):
I think games are made I think allows people to
better get a grip on that and be like, okay, well,
then the games industry is actually facing a very different
challenges than it might seem on the surface.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, even I, in my own ignorance, didn't even think
of the kind of messy middle of what one hundred
people working one hundred people would be an indie game studio.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I guess there can be. It depends on the studio. Man.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Some of them are you know, owned by again Microsoft,
Microsoft owns like half the games industry now, which is
also bad. But others are yeah, doing their own thing
and either working with publishers or securing outside funding. And
you know, for every one Clear Obscure Exhibition thirty three,
you get which studios allegedly around thirty people, but they
had tons of other folks touched the game of the
(17:04):
course of its development. You know, you don't get a
lot of other games. They're like others just get canceled,
they die on the vine. They can secure funding, and
you know, the studios either lay people off or cancel
games or both.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah. I mean even my favorite game of the Dead Zone,
Rogue by Prophecy Games, which I love, even that one
they did Tribes three Rivals and just appears to have
stopped updating it, which it's just it. It almost feels
like we're reaching a breaking point with this.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
And still briefly talk about the number of times that
people have tried to bring back Tribes and it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It's insane how many Tribes get seventeen twenty five, one
hundred of them there. I've been playing Tribes games since
I was like in my teens.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Why in theory Tribes should be able to find an audience?
Like we live in a time now where people are
always for a new multiplayer game. Tribes is really interesting
and different compared to pretty much every multiplayer game. You
can ski around and like you know, figure out your
trajectories and launch blue discs of people.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
It rules.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
It's one of like the best multiplayer ever in my opinion,
and like you know, giant maps, huge landscapes, that's what
like Battlefield is doing now. People love that shit. And
so it's so oddome funny thing that each and every
revival and they've been like relatively well spaced out. It's
not like they're you know, doing these in like staccato rhythm,
but each and every revival has just you know, been
(18:32):
dead on arrival basically.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Like it's it's really sad to see them.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, six of the six of them, it looks like,
my bad, I can't count. It's with that one. Maybe
it's the indie game thing, which is a giant map
is probably not that easy to put together. And if
you look at Try I didn't play Tribes three Rivals,
but if you look at Dead Zone Rogue, which is
FBS Rogue, like it's very I don't want to say small,
but it's condensed. It's like a very focused game. But
(19:00):
I want to change it because I'll just talk about
dates road to the Steam Machine. How are you feeling?
It's the Steam Machine, as you'll know from the episode
before this one with Steve book is the new gaming
console style Steam PC thing. How are you feeling about it?
I'm oddly hopeful.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I mean so Valve tried to release Steam machines a
handful of years ago as well, I think in the
mid twenty games, and they kind of crashed and burned
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
They just never took off.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I think that Valve learned a lot of very important
lessons from that, and I think that also just the
timing is much better now in terms of what people
are looking for. In terms of the prominence of PC gaming.
Back in the mid twenty tens, you know, consoles still
kind of ruled the roost, whereas now, like if we're
talking about higher end video game playing, pretty much everyone
does it or not everyone, but a lot of people
do it on their PCs because that also allows them
(19:51):
to you know, create content, you know, stream things of
that nature. And then Steam itself, which Valve owns and operates,
has also become so much bigger than it was even
back then it was already huge. Now basically is the epicenter,
the mecca of PC gaming. And so then you get
to the Steam machines themselves, and you know, there's long
been this perception that the PC is for a lot
(20:12):
of normal people kind of impenetrable from a gaming standpoint.
You know, you got to install the game and install
these patches, and then like you know, maybe it won't
work with your particular hardware configuration.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Blah blah blah blah blahlah blah.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
And so what Valve is basically saying is, okay, well
we will handle all that for you, as you might
expect with a video game console. And then you know,
you just click on a game and it'll work. And
they have a couple of things working in their favor
on that front. One is that they have since made
steam Os. Steam Os is a great little operating system
(20:43):
for video games. That's the whole point. Again, it's super
plug and play, it's really easy. And then also the
entire model they're going to play in Steam machines they
have already successfully deployed with steam Deck, which is they're handheld.
Steam Deck is an incredible piece of hardware. It is
deceptively powerful, it feels really nice in your hands, and
(21:06):
it's all entirely steam Os based, and so you can
just install a game on it. Steam OUs will let
you know if it's going to run well or not.
Valve has this entire system where like they basically like
will play games to see if they're Deck verified or
if they're like you know, sort of edge cases where
they'll work but they're not optimized, or if they're just
like going to be a mess. They let you know
(21:27):
that up front, so you can go in with a
good idea of how it's all going to function, and
then you just do it. It's great, it's super smart. And
then you have your saves across like steam Deck and
every other place that you can install steam so you
could theoretically be playing on your steam Deck in one
room and decide you want to play on your TV,
your monitor, just your Steam machine. Yeah, yeah, you can do. Yeah,
(21:47):
it's so, it's so nice. It's it's I mean sayable
about Valve. They are like a libertarian kind of nightmare company,
but they do still make cool stuff. Unlike every their
video game working trying to cut their weight to profitability
by laying everyone off.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
M I'm I want it, and I want this to
kill the I don't know if it will. It's going
to come down heavily to if it's six hundred dollars
versus twelve hundred dollars, and if it's sold in retailers,
but it's I wanted to smash Microsoft. I also think,
and this is a somewhat I know people aren't going
(22:25):
to like this. I don't think game pass is good
for the games industry.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
No, no, And I think a lot of people would
agree with you, at least in the games industry.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, it's I don't think I think it creates I
don't know. I have a weird thing with streaming services
in general. I think that they create a race to
the bottom and actually make things way more unfair. But
I like that Steam charges per game. I think it's
good to do that, and I think variety of games
is good and a variety of.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Prices as well.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I don't know. I know they're deeply imperfect company, but
I genuinely think Microsoft might be walking away from the
Xbox or Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure why they
have it anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, well, I mean they have their whole campaign now
where they're basically saying like anything can be an Xbox.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
That's their marketing line.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
So the basic concept is, like you know, now Xbox
is more of an ecosystem, an app based ecosystem that
lives on not just the gaming platform that you have,
you know, in your living room, Like it could be
on your smart TV, it could be on your phone,
it could even like be in your car, and like
it just seems in general that they don't really know
what the brand is anymore. And that also goes back
(23:39):
to like the game selection, like what is the last
major first party Xbox game that came out or that
like became the face of the platform. So, you know,
question the fact that everyone still associates Microsoft with like
Halo is on one handed testament to the enduring power
or nature I guess of like the Master chief. But
on the other hand, like that game came out in
the early two thousand and still it's the main thing
(24:02):
that people are like, Oh, yeah, that's Halo or that's Xbox.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So I actually just had to look this up for
the first party games Doom the Dark Ages.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, yeah, because that Microsoft bought in Software and Bethesda
a while ago, so they own those companies now. That's
the other thing is in order to have more recognizable
IP they just bought a bunch of studios, and then
in recent years, because of the Activision Blizzard purchase and
how expensive that was, and also just you know, trends
in gaming, Microsoft has been laying everyone the fuck off.
(24:33):
They've laid off over four thousand people in the past
two years in games alone, and that's like a significant
chunk of you know, workers at those studios. It's like
a really bad situation over there. I mean, on the upside,
due to other stuff that takes a while to explain,
they did let a lot of people unionize, but then
also the most recent layoffs cut into the union's pretty
(24:55):
badly too.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I don't think Microsoft knows what the fuck they're doing.
Because you talk about you're correct and saying Yeah, they
want to build the ecosystem, but the ecosystem fucking sucks.
I remember it used to be a while ago that
I use what like a couple of years ago, I'd
say I'd use the Xbox to be like, oh, this
is kind of clean and functional. It's got a few
(25:32):
dodads to it. Now, every time I load it up,
it feels like I'm on the fucking Las Vegas strips.
I can add for a movie, right, but it's trying
to make me download a kids like it. It's fucking bizarre.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
It's about to get a way worse because you know Microsoft,
as you well know, Microsoft is now obsessed with that
in AI to every potential product and feature they can
possibly get their hands on. And so yeah, they're going
to load you know, the Xbox ecosystem down with AI
products as well.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, it's just like and.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Then on top of that, I guess like the best
example here is again to go back to Valve and Steam.
I think that if Microsoft had been building the kind
of platform that Steam has been for the past, you know,
well over a decade, then they'd be in a good
position to do what they're hoping to do with the
Xbox now, which is to put it to to ensure
(26:25):
that it's basically everywhere. But you know, so like the
Microsoft recently put out their own version of the Asis
rog Ally, which is a handheld.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I like my rog Ally, but like, yeah, everything I've
heard about the new one, I thought they were going
to do something special with it.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
No, they just put like a fucking shitty version of
Windows on it where you still have to like, you know,
because again, you want that to be like a plug
and play product out in the box, you're ready to go,
and instead, I guess, like when you first open it up,
you've got to install all this stuff and do all
these updates, and it's just like tedious and horrible and
all for an interface that still peels. And comparison to
(27:01):
Steam in terms of just usability and versatility and like cleanness.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
It's so weird, Like compared to the Steam Deck is
what I'm talking about. The rock Laxa before the Xbox One.
It's it's just front tends on frontends. It's just how
we've got an a Zeus layer We've got, but we've
got another fucking layer here, and now you can load
up an Xbox thing, which is a different layer and
if you hit the wrong button, it will load a
completely separate menu. And it really seems to be that
(27:30):
no one sat down and went what if this worked?
Like what if this just because the Steam deck I
bought one of those early on? It is. It's chunky,
it's too chunky. In fact, it's a little bit too big. However,
it just fucking works. He just did the button that
did load the game login by gameplay game fucking do
(27:53):
algebra to make it. It's not gonna I'm not gonna
brush a button with my hand and have it kick
back to the wind those desktop. It's just it feels
almost loathing for the customer at this.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Point, right right, I mean it's a mix of loathing
for the customer and then like if we're talking about
Microsoft and like, yeah, just maximal you know, at least
attempted profit extraction. But as you're saying, they didn't really
think all the way down to the level of what
will the end user experience be like and how does
it compare to this other thing that's already out there,
and it's already setting the standard for what people expect,
(28:26):
and like, if that's where you're coming from, then you
will forever. And I think this is also part of
Microsoft's problem in general. If that is the way that
you were thinking and approaching the creation of your video
game devices and services, you will always be at least
in second place, if not third. And Microsoft has always
been in third in the gaming space.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, and they're like, I don't even know how the
economics of buying these studios even works out for them,
because didn't they lose money when they bought Activision? Oh yeah,
people weren't buying Like who is mister Bean running Microsoft Gaming?
It just feels insane to every time I see them
do something.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah, yeah, And I mean like again, you know, the
question now is what is the strategy, because I think, yeah,
for a while, the strategy was very much all in
on game pass. That's why they bought so many studios.
That's why they bought Activision, Blizzard and everything else, because
they're like, well, we have this service that is going
to be the backbone of everything else we do, and
we need to populate it with content. We need regular
(29:25):
new games to be coming out. So if we buy
a third of the fucking video game industry and have
them pump out new content, then we'll be set. But
the problem with game Pass is that the economics of
it just aren't great. Like, I mean, for one, Yeah,
like Microsoft will repeatedly insist the game Pass is profitable,
but that's only if you like don't pay attention to
(29:47):
the upfront costs of the studios under Microsoft's umbrella making
the games, or the costs of the studios themselves. Once
you like get past Microsoft's you know, fake math, it's like,
oh no, this thing is not profitable at all. And
so Microsoft billion Activision Blizzard alone. Yeah, but no, once
(30:07):
you realize that, and I think Microsoft did, then they're like, ah, okay,
we gotta you know, diversify this further.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
We got to figure out something else to do.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
And so they started saying, okay, well, then we're going
to have our big, you know, first party games on
other platforms. We're gonna sell them on PlayStation and other
places as well, because that'll help us recoup some costs.
We got to crank up the price of game Pass
because that might help absorb some of the costs. And
so like they just start slowly and shitifying everything, like
(30:34):
you know, as with every other company, to make up
for the fact that they this gamble is not paying off.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Well, I I am hoping that Valve can overtake the
entire exp I want them to take Xbox down because
I also want I'm weirdly getting onto like death to streaming,
death to game Pass and all this. I think it's
bad for everyone, but also they make good user interfaces.
(31:02):
It feels nothing. I don't feel like I'm being smacked
in the face when I use the products. I mean,
I like my Sony PlayStation. I sound one hundred million
years on my Saturny painstation. But even then my switch
to as well, partly because I load them.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
When they work, yeah, they turn out like it's it's
a very low bar to clear, but in this day
and age, it is a necessary one to like clarify. Well,
it's a product, or like it's a piece of hardware,
and it functions. It's just like you can it does
what it says on the ten. Yeah, yeah, it's I
(31:39):
have hope for it. And I mean I want I
want a Steam machine. I want to Steam frame.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And ovis pro truther.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah, although I will say, like I don't know if
these Steam machines will necessarily compete directly with something like
the Xbox Valves already said that they don't plan to
subsidize the hardware in a way that would bring the
price down so that it's comparable necessarily to a PlayStation
or an Xbox. A lot of people are guessing more
we will be in the territory of like the PlayStation
(32:07):
five pro just a little bit price here my personal guess,
because they've said that it will be comparable to if
you were to buy all of the components for a
PC of similar power and a symbol at yourself, which
that does bring the price down in the world of
PC gaming a lot, right. You know, you buy a
midrange PC pre built, that's going to be fifteen hundred
(32:28):
dollars and more. If you assemble it yourself, you could
be looking at you know, eight hundred one thousand dollars.
My guess is that that's where it lands, probably somewhere
in the eight hundred and two thousand range that would be.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That's about the price of the rug achs Ally and.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So yeah, and like again, you know, we're still in
a time of tariffs and things of that nature. So
you know, I don't think steam machines are necessarily going
to be at least price wise as accessible as an Xbox,
at least out the gate. You know, maybe Valwful will
evolve their strategy over time. Have certainly done that with
a lot of other products. But you know, we'll see
(33:04):
they Valve is something of a black box, so they
only tell you as much as they want to it
any given moment, and the rest you either divine through
their actions or they eventually come out and say, okay,
well that was kind of a miss.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
We're going to change things up now, all right.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So to wrap us up, let's go positive. What are
you playing at the moment? What games are you enjoying?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
What? What have you enjoyed this year? Let's get to them.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Okay, okay, let's see what if I enjoyed this year.
Let's see I mean Haities two. Although I feel like
narratively it's narratively, I feel like it's a lot weaker
than the first game, but gameplay wise it is so
much better. It is one of those games where you know,
every time that you finish a run, you're like, well,
I could do one more, and then suddenly forty five
minutes or an hour or three hours have disappeared, you know,
(33:49):
so obviously front Runner for game of the year for me.
Let's see, I was thinking about this game the other night.
Eternal Strand. It's this game that I played earlier this
year from a bunch of x BI were people. It's
kind of like an indie take on I would say,
a mixture of like Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma. It's
on PC, and I think it might be on other
(34:10):
platforms too. I played it on PC. Yeah, it's just
really cool. It's one of those games where you're taking
down gigantic enemies all the time, and you're doing it
by like climbing on them and having these like battles
that span these huge maps where like everything things are destructible,
so like you know, you're fighting a dragon, you're like
leaping on its back. It's flying away with you on
it and trying to shake you off. It's burning everything.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
It's like three D third person situational.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's it came out at the very beginning of the year,
and so I was like, what, what games have I
really liked that sort of you know, maybe I have
forgotten about. It's like, oh yeah, Eternal Strand, that game rocks.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
That's so cool. I'm so glad there's still make because
I and I'm not saying you're being negative, there's a
lot of negativity out there. It's nice they're still making funny,
fun games like Hades two. Really I played that all
through early access and then in the full one, and
you can just see the love. I like the ending.
I'm not gonna say with this, I like what they did.
I think it was strange. But you know what, the
(35:09):
amount of the amount of game I got out of
that game?
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Oh yeah, I mean there's no doubt that there is
tons of game crammed in that game.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
The best value.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Yeah, it's kind of like slaps hood. There's so much
game in this game. This game can fit so much games.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
So it's so weird to play a game like that
and be like, Wow, you really love making get You
really thought about this, because when I first played it,
I got kind of pissed off because the systems were
so different. Cool, but you can see that they've thought
for hours about the intricacies of different meta or different combinations.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
It's just love super So you know, if we want
a happy kind of like games industry labor story, at
least as far as I understand it, Like the last
time I talked to them, and it has been a minute.
Like super Giant has really well run on that front.
Like I don't think they have had much employee attrition
at all since they started. Everyone who ends up at
super Giant just stays at super Giant. And like when
(36:06):
I interviewed them about this years ago, they mentioned, you know,
like they have things like mandatory vacation, like if you
don't take your vacation by the end of the year,
you have to just take time off, like you know,
people are just oh yeah. They also have policies around
like emails, like if it's Friday at five pm, you're
not allowed to email people anymore, even because they're like,
(36:26):
you might be really excited about something you're working on.
If you want to keep working on something, that's fine,
but like, don't drag other people into it, Like let
people have their free time and their space to you know,
not be embroiled in this process.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, whoa because the game is so tight and good
and perfect, you don't have to hurt people to do
this right.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Well, Also, you can, just as you were saying, you
can tell the people who made it care. And I
think more than that, you can tell they were having
fun when they're making it. They were enjoying the process
of creating this thing they cared a lot about. And ultimately,
when it comes to art, commercial art, that's what you want,
is you know, on one hand, you want people to
get paid, you want them to be compensated well for
their labor. But on the other hand, like in an
(37:08):
ideal world, you want them to be enjoying themselves. If
we're going to be locked into jobs for our whole lives,
then we may as well enjoy the process.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Well, I couldn't agree more. And I must say Aftermath
gets the better of Flying thumbs up. And we will
have a link to everything in the get in the
episode notes. Now.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
We are also having a We're having a sale on
subscriptions right now, one dollar for your first month. It's
a great deal if you want to come, you know,
check out the sites you we're about. Yeah, you should
absolutely take advantage of that. That'll be going until the
end of well middle of December, basically yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Cool, which and this will be out by then. And
I have subscribed to Aftermath since the beginning and I
will continue to do so. Please support independent medium myself included,
but really give give give them a look. The new
redesign is awesome. Nathan, Thank you so much for joining
us US.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah again, thank you for having me. It's always wonderful
to come on. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T
T O S O W s ki dot com. You
can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com,
or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend
(38:35):
you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at to
visit the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline
to check out our reddit.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm our host ed
Zetron and today I'm joined by the esteem Nathan Grayson,
co founder of the work owned gaming website Aftermath. Nathan,
(00:27):
Thank you for joining me again.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So you just did two years. What's it been like.
What have you learned in the last two years from
doing this?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah? Just nothing.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You know.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
We came in as experts. We were you know, we
didn't need to learn anything at all. We were perfect. Yeah. No,
we have learned so so, so so so much. You know,
we entered it as five people who wrote for a living,
who never really had much experience with the business side
of things because that wasn't really our purview. And when
you go from being at a major public sure of
(01:00):
any sort, whether in our cases that was Geomedia with
Kataku with the Washington Post or Vice or whatever else,
you know, a lot gets handled for you, whether that
is payroll or promotion or in some cases social media
things of that nature. We have to do all of
that ourselves now, in addition to expanding the business, finding
ways to grow, finding ways to support ourselves and keep
(01:21):
it sustainable or even make it sustainable in the first place.
So part of the reason we decided to do a
relaunch was to kind of plant our flag and say like, yeah,
you know, we're a real grown up business now, whereas
when we first started we kind of just were cobbling
things together and learning as we went along.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So tell me about the relaunch. What you been doing.
You moved to ghost.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Right, Yeah, yeah, we moved over to ghost Yeah, so
we relaunched the website. We think it looks better and
nicer now there are more design possibilities and also like
we can accept more kinds of payment and have more
ways to reach readers and let them know, like, hey,
your subscriptions expiring, all this nitty gritty stuff. But yeah,
we we just decided to move over there because it
(02:06):
offers more flexibility. Sites like four or four in Hellgate
or on Ghosts and have nothing but good things to say,
and like, you know, we appreciated Lead, which is what
we're using before, that's what Defector's on. But yeah, there
are just a few things that we felt like we
were not going to be able to get from Lead
within a semi reasonable timeframe, and Ghosts already offered them.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
So we're like yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It's also grown into like a vibrant website. It was
at first you were kind of testing things out, but
now you've got a very developed stack of people. You've
got free lancers now, right.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah, we use freelancers. We accept freelance admissions. We
also have two regular contributors, Nicole and Isaiah. They they
are in our slack. They write for us, you know,
every week. Yeah, you know, we're going places. We're still
a core staff of five, but in the near future,
you know, should we accrue enough subscriptions, we'd like to
hire people on full time and grow staff again, similar
(03:01):
to what we've been seeing with well, I think four
or four now has like regular contributors as well. I'm
not sure if they have anyone new full time yet. Hellgate,
I know has grown so yeah, you know, again, we
are following in the footsteps of, at least relative to ourselves, giants,
and we would like to keep doing that. But that
requires growing more, making more money, all that stuff, you know,
(03:21):
typical challenges of a small business, but mapped on to
independent media.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So and coverage wise, you're fairly wired now like you
cover games, but kind of in the dead Spin before
the bullshit Happened style thing, where it's like gaming can
mean many different things.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, And also, like I think from
the get go, what we wanted to do was cover
games in the way the Defector covers sports, which is
to say that, you know, we can cover a lot
of things, a lot of things fall under that umbrella.
And on top of that, like, you know, games are
relevant to many different areas as well, like, and so
I think that compared to other video game websites, for example,
(03:59):
we spend a lot of time covering politics. For a
long time, there's this refrain that like, oh, you know,
games are escapism and like you should keep politics out
of and blah blah blah, which has always been bullshit,
of course, But I think that even relative to our
coverage at other places, like before we made Aftermath, you know,
all of us have been fairly politically minded in our careers,
(04:20):
but after Math, like we really go in on that.
And I'm very proud of what we've accomplished on that
front in terms of just covering that overlap, especially as
it's become more and more relevant to the modern day.
You know, like when Trump was running for president again,
he was meeting with gaming influencers, like you know, you
have all of these things where now the people who
(04:41):
used to be considered just like outcast nerds are in
incredible places of prominence.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, and it's weird. I don't like seeing games bleed
into politics at all. I think we really I think
we were good in about twenty eleven with Home From
which was the I think the only necessary political game.
Well what if North Korea radiated the Mississippi River Classic game.
I'm sure I'm going to get some great emails about
the fact that there were political games before that, And
(05:08):
you're wrong. But it is interesting where you are where
aftermath is app in the current milieau of like politics
and digital culture, because it does feel like streaming and
gaming have just kind of meshed into everything now outside
of politics, You've got a bunch of tons of like
NBA players and NFL players who game and stream regularly,
(05:29):
but you've also got these particularly vile and not vile
streamers who.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Do it too. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Well, yeah, and I mean we just recently this week,
in fact, we ran a story about kind of the
aftermath of one person in the aftermath haha, that's say.
But anyway about an employee at a company called Sucker Punch.
They made a ghost of Yota recently getting fired as
a result of a joke about Charlie Kirk. They are
one of the people who got swept up on that,
(05:55):
and so we ran a story about kind of what
has happened to them since that occurred, and also just
sort of like what that moment actually was versus what
you might be able to misconstrue it as. So, you know,
at the time, there was all of this furor over
anybody saying anything negative about Charlie Kirk, and so this
person got fired for a relatively innocuous joke that was
probably in bad taste, but whatever. And so what she's
(06:17):
contending now is like, you know, two months down the line,
she's like, this wasn't actually about the joke. It was
because there was a harassment mob that already existed that
decided to weaponize this person's death to get some people
fired and to you know, basically instill silence in them
and anybody else who witnessed that happening. And you know,
just generally taking the games industry to task for not
(06:38):
defending its people better. Because when this occurred, you know,
the company in question, at least, she says, did not
really like come to her or give her a warning
or really do anything. They were just like, yeah, you're fired.
And you know, as long as the games industry continues
to let that happen, which they've been basically doing since
the original gamer Gate back in twenty fourteen, as you
would well know, then these kinds of things like that
(07:03):
will just continue to let these mobs run rampant and
kind of dictate the pace of conversation around games and
even in some cases how they get made.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It is so strange. As a child, I dreamed of
the day that gaming would be a normal thing that
everybody talked about, And now I feel like that was
a monkey's poor situation. Maybe we should have less discussion
of you know, no, I don't even mean in an
immediate sense, in the sense that something happened as games
came to prominence that dragged up a ton of stuff
(07:34):
within gamers that wasn't anything to do with games at all.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, well, I mean I think a few things happened.
One of them is that, you know, for a while,
games were considered this thing like for nerds and for
like outcasts, and so there was always that bit of
a chip on people's shoulder, and that like, once the
mainstream started to care about games, they're like, hey, well,
you know, these are ours, and if you do anything
to them, if they get altered to fit your taste,
(08:00):
in your needs, then we're going to like do an uprising,
like get really mad. But also that kind of energy,
that kind of like you know, faux victimhood is very
easily easily weaponized by other forces, and I think that
the far right seized upon that quite early. Again with Gamergate.
They noticed that there's this latent kind of resentment running
(08:22):
through games, seeking audiences whatever you want to call them. Yeah,
like yeah, yeah, we need to find a way to
seize upon that, and Gamergate was the perfect flashpoint. And
ever since then, you know, people much smarter than me
have said this, but like Gamergate was the Canarian the
coal mine for a lot of the modern alt right,
and that's sort of just how it all started.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And I wish that they would get angry at the
real villains, which is electronic odds and the actually look
because can you imagine if any even a iota of
this vile poison in their veins was a like I
know this is somewhat of a tangent, but I swear
I'm going someone playing Madden last night because I hate myself.
And it's just this game has been broken in the
(09:04):
same way for fifteen years. They're a little you can
play a game and without fail, we'll see a bug
I beat you, the menus will hitch, menus won't load,
and it's just see like these harassment campaigns, I think
as so as you've well put so nakedly, not about
video games, but just aggression against woman, aggression against any outliers,
(09:28):
which is ironic considering gate like gamers historic outlier status.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Absolutely when yeah, you know, again, as with a great
many things, obviously, the real villain, especially in the case
you're describing, is capitalism. Yes, and like you know, if
you look at Madden sports games in general, as you're saying,
they've been broken in fundamental ways for like decades, but
what's changed about them is that they're just more heavily monetized. Now.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, these companies fatigue.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
More ways to extract money, yep, to extract tons of
money from them, and like they're there is anger at
games changing in that way, but not to this degree
where it's like we're going to you know, harass people.
I mean, there are in some cases harassment mobs that
have gone.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Which they which they shouldn't do to anyone, just to
be clear, right, no one should.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
But also a lot of the developers who end up
in those crosshairs are also just marginalized, and that's the
main reason people are going after them. Yeah, it's very
odd because you would think that games would be this
kind of could be this hotbed for like resistance to
the ravages of capitalism, in that, you know, so many
games present effectively what are supposed to be fair structures. Right,
(10:38):
you get out what you put in, like, you know,
you gain experience for all of your work, you gain rewards,
things like that, and so in a lot of ways, gamers'
brains are tailored to expect a certain degree of fairness
and like egalitarianism. And so you would think that gamers
would look at like all these structures and say, okay,
well there's a problem with the structure. It's not fair
and we should do something about it. But you know, again,
(11:02):
they've been misled by a bunch of various forces, including
the powers that be, including the people who are like
are in charge of making the games, not the developers,
the executives. Yeah, and so they just never quite get there.
But it is kind of funny to think about, like,
you know, this could be the place where it all start,
gamers can start their revolution.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
But I think the aftermath does a really good job
of that because you have the social stuff. I had
the term social justice. It's the correct one, but it's
been bounced around too much now, but it's it's a
place where I think you have done. You have done
some of the best labor work, Like you have a
labor section, And I think that people need to realize.
(11:52):
I think people need to see games developers as laborers
far more, because I think there are plenty of people
who are like, oh, these games, how much the game
developers make seven hundred thousand, yet like that they have
these they see them as this ivory tower job versus
a pretty brutal, working, stiff job at times, and then
even more so in things like QA. You know, as
(12:14):
long as that still exists as.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
An industry, Yeah, right, until it gets replaced by AI
and Square Innex's case.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, that I could not remember the company, thank you
for being.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, so they want to replace seventy percent of their QA,
or have seventy percent of the QA done by AI.
I'm sure that they have some like bullshit line about
how that won't displace labor, but it's like, but you
just actually waned.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Thinking this out loud. That doesn't make any fucking sense.
First of all, QA, from what I understand, is a
lot of repetitive tasks. So I assume that that's why
they think AI will work. But is it going to
play the games?
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Because that so Another big problem with that whole line
of reasoning is that QA is like a relationship right
in that you don't just need QA people to do
the job. You also need them to be affect of
communicators to the rest of the studio in terms of
what they should be looking for in terms of how
to reproduce various bugs and other issues. And another like
big element of QA that is super underappreciated is that typically,
(13:12):
because the game is made in bits and pieces, QA
is the part of the studio that earliest and most
often gets a full picture of what the game is
like to play and its totality as like a complete
product or is like, and so they can most often
answer the question early on like is this good?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Is it fun?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Admittedly, they're playing it in a very specific way, so
they're not necessarily playing it to enjoy themselves, but they
do have that like broader overview of what it is
kind of turning out to be. And they're all of
those things that I just mentioned.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
AIQA is quality is so quality assurance. I probably should
have led with that, but never but no, you're right,
and it's I think seeing games as a labor thing
is so it's genuinely one of my favorite things about
often off is the if you talk about and now
this is a little bit it copium, hopium, whatever you
call it, but it's if you do want to change things,
(14:05):
you need to educate people about what's going wrong and
why I'm not saying that vile right, people are finding
go after Marth and going, oh, I'm changed. But it's
I feel like you have to build a body of
work to explain the overall problem. And it is a
label one. It is the fact that some paraphrasem mcgolfriend here.
But it's like with movies, it's like there are movies
that are hundred million dollars, there are movies that are
(14:27):
one million dollars, And I feel like games is in
this weird position too, where it's everything has to be
Triple A everything, biggest, most hugest game, and then there
are indie games m and it's I feel like that
like the capitalism probably you've been discussing, is there too,
where it's the way games are made is broken. And
I feel like Aftermath does a good job of explaining
(14:49):
how the breaking has happened, but also the consequences of
that fracturing.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, and then also like I think people just don't
understand the scale of game making in general either, Like
you know, certainly there's Triple A and there's indie, but
there's all sorts of stuff in between a lot of
indie games, you know, because like there's been this larger
thing happening in video games where like it's been hard
for companies to secure investment, a lot of games have
gotten canceled, a lot of studios have had to break
(15:15):
up or go their separate ways, and so for a moment,
there was this refrain of Okay, well, like you know,
as a result of all of that and all these
layoffs happening in the Triple A space, you know, pretty
much every major Triple A game company via Microsoft, Sony,
eaub Soft Square, and it's whatever said major layoffs in
the past couple of years. And so a lot of
people saw that and said, well, you know, Triple A
(15:36):
is collapsing, It's going to go away in five or
ten years. Indies will save us, though, but you know,
indies are facing their own problems again in terms of
securing investment. And also, like a lot of indie games
are not just you know, one person in their garage
or a few people making a game for you know,
pocket change. These are also full scale productions. These can
(15:57):
have thirty, forty, even sometimes one hundred people working on them,
and they all require paychecks, and so quickly the price
for that on a per annual basis goes up to
you know, over a million dollars easily. And so it's like,
you know, indie's can't save us because they're facing a
lot of the same headwinds as everybody else. And recognizing
(16:18):
I think games are made I think allows people to
better get a grip on that and be like, okay, well,
then the games industry is actually facing a very different
challenges than it might seem on the surface.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, even I, in my own ignorance, didn't even think
of the kind of messy middle of what one hundred
people working one hundred people would be an indie game studio.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I guess there can be. It depends on the studio. Man.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Some of them are you know, owned by again Microsoft,
Microsoft owns like half the games industry now, which is
also bad. But others are yeah, doing their own thing
and either working with publishers or securing outside funding. And
you know, for every one Clear Obscure Exhibition thirty three,
you get which studios allegedly around thirty people, but they
had tons of other folks touched the game of the
(17:04):
course of its development. You know, you don't get a
lot of other games. They're like others just get canceled,
they die on the vine. They can secure funding, and
you know, the studios either lay people off or cancel
games or both.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah. I mean even my favorite game of the Dead Zone,
Rogue by Prophecy Games, which I love, even that one
they did Tribes three Rivals and just appears to have
stopped updating it, which it's just it. It almost feels
like we're reaching a breaking point with this.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
And still briefly talk about the number of times that
people have tried to bring back Tribes and it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It's insane how many Tribes get seventeen twenty five, one
hundred of them there. I've been playing Tribes games since
I was like in my teens.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Why in theory Tribes should be able to find an audience?
Like we live in a time now where people are
always for a new multiplayer game. Tribes is really interesting
and different compared to pretty much every multiplayer game. You
can ski around and like you know, figure out your
trajectories and launch blue discs of people.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
It rules.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
It's one of like the best multiplayer ever in my opinion,
and like you know, giant maps, huge landscapes, that's what
like Battlefield is doing now. People love that shit. And
so it's so oddome funny thing that each and every
revival and they've been like relatively well spaced out. It's
not like they're you know, doing these in like staccato rhythm,
but each and every revival has just you know, been
(18:32):
dead on arrival basically.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Like it's it's really sad to see them.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, six of the six of them, it looks like,
my bad, I can't count. It's with that one. Maybe
it's the indie game thing, which is a giant map
is probably not that easy to put together. And if
you look at Try I didn't play Tribes three Rivals,
but if you look at Dead Zone Rogue, which is
FBS Rogue, like it's very I don't want to say small,
but it's condensed. It's like a very focused game. But
(19:00):
I want to change it because I'll just talk about
dates road to the Steam Machine. How are you feeling?
It's the Steam Machine, as you'll know from the episode
before this one with Steve book is the new gaming
console style Steam PC thing. How are you feeling about it?
I'm oddly hopeful.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I mean so Valve tried to release Steam machines a
handful of years ago as well, I think in the
mid twenty games, and they kind of crashed and burned
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
They just never took off.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I think that Valve learned a lot of very important
lessons from that, and I think that also just the
timing is much better now in terms of what people
are looking for. In terms of the prominence of PC gaming.
Back in the mid twenty tens, you know, consoles still
kind of ruled the roost, whereas now, like if we're
talking about higher end video game playing, pretty much everyone
does it or not everyone, but a lot of people
do it on their PCs because that also allows them
(19:51):
to you know, create content, you know, stream things of
that nature. And then Steam itself, which Valve owns and operates,
has also become so much bigger than it was even
back then it was already huge. Now basically is the epicenter,
the mecca of PC gaming. And so then you get
to the Steam machines themselves, and you know, there's long
been this perception that the PC is for a lot
(20:12):
of normal people kind of impenetrable from a gaming standpoint.
You know, you got to install the game and install
these patches, and then like you know, maybe it won't
work with your particular hardware configuration.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Blah blah blah blah blahlah blah.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
And so what Valve is basically saying is, okay, well
we will handle all that for you, as you might
expect with a video game console. And then you know,
you just click on a game and it'll work. And
they have a couple of things working in their favor
on that front. One is that they have since made
steam Os. Steam Os is a great little operating system
(20:43):
for video games. That's the whole point. Again, it's super
plug and play, it's really easy. And then also the
entire model they're going to play in Steam machines they
have already successfully deployed with steam Deck, which is they're handheld.
Steam Deck is an incredible piece of hardware. It is
deceptively powerful, it feels really nice in your hands, and
(21:06):
it's all entirely steam Os based, and so you can
just install a game on it. Steam OUs will let
you know if it's going to run well or not.
Valve has this entire system where like they basically like
will play games to see if they're Deck verified or
if they're like you know, sort of edge cases where
they'll work but they're not optimized, or if they're just
like going to be a mess. They let you know
(21:27):
that up front, so you can go in with a
good idea of how it's all going to function, and
then you just do it. It's great, it's super smart. And
then you have your saves across like steam Deck and
every other place that you can install steam so you
could theoretically be playing on your steam Deck in one
room and decide you want to play on your TV,
your monitor, just your Steam machine. Yeah, yeah, you can do. Yeah,
(21:47):
it's so, it's so nice. It's it's I mean sayable
about Valve. They are like a libertarian kind of nightmare company,
but they do still make cool stuff. Unlike every their
video game working trying to cut their weight to profitability
by laying everyone off.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
M I'm I want it, and I want this to
kill the I don't know if it will. It's going
to come down heavily to if it's six hundred dollars
versus twelve hundred dollars, and if it's sold in retailers,
but it's I wanted to smash Microsoft. I also think,
and this is a somewhat I know people aren't going
(22:25):
to like this. I don't think game pass is good
for the games industry.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
No, no, And I think a lot of people would
agree with you, at least in the games industry.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, it's I don't think I think it creates I
don't know. I have a weird thing with streaming services
in general. I think that they create a race to
the bottom and actually make things way more unfair. But
I like that Steam charges per game. I think it's
good to do that, and I think variety of games
is good and a variety of.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Prices as well.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I don't know. I know they're deeply imperfect company, but
I genuinely think Microsoft might be walking away from the
Xbox or Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure why they
have it anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, well, I mean they have their whole campaign now
where they're basically saying like anything can be an Xbox.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
That's their marketing line.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
So the basic concept is, like you know, now Xbox
is more of an ecosystem, an app based ecosystem that
lives on not just the gaming platform that you have,
you know, in your living room, Like it could be
on your smart TV, it could be on your phone,
it could even like be in your car, and like
it just seems in general that they don't really know
what the brand is anymore. And that also goes back
(23:39):
to like the game selection, like what is the last
major first party Xbox game that came out or that
like became the face of the platform. So, you know,
question the fact that everyone still associates Microsoft with like
Halo is on one handed testament to the enduring power
or nature I guess of like the Master chief. But
on the other hand, like that game came out in
the early two thousand and still it's the main thing
(24:02):
that people are like, Oh, yeah, that's Halo or that's Xbox.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So I actually just had to look this up for
the first party games Doom the Dark Ages.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, yeah, because that Microsoft bought in Software and Bethesda
a while ago, so they own those companies now. That's
the other thing is in order to have more recognizable
IP they just bought a bunch of studios, and then
in recent years, because of the Activision Blizzard purchase and
how expensive that was, and also just you know, trends
in gaming, Microsoft has been laying everyone the fuck off.
(24:33):
They've laid off over four thousand people in the past
two years in games alone, and that's like a significant
chunk of you know, workers at those studios. It's like
a really bad situation over there. I mean, on the upside,
due to other stuff that takes a while to explain,
they did let a lot of people unionize, but then
also the most recent layoffs cut into the union's pretty
(24:55):
badly too.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I don't think Microsoft knows what the fuck they're doing.
Because you talk about you're correct and saying Yeah, they
want to build the ecosystem, but the ecosystem fucking sucks.
I remember it used to be a while ago that
I use what like a couple of years ago, I'd
say I'd use the Xbox to be like, oh, this
is kind of clean and functional. It's got a few
(25:32):
dodads to it. Now, every time I load it up,
it feels like I'm on the fucking Las Vegas strips.
I can add for a movie, right, but it's trying
to make me download a kids like it. It's fucking bizarre.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
It's about to get a way worse because you know Microsoft,
as you well know, Microsoft is now obsessed with that
in AI to every potential product and feature they can
possibly get their hands on. And so yeah, they're going
to load you know, the Xbox ecosystem down with AI
products as well.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, it's just like and.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Then on top of that, I guess like the best
example here is again to go back to Valve and Steam.
I think that if Microsoft had been building the kind
of platform that Steam has been for the past, you know,
well over a decade, then they'd be in a good
position to do what they're hoping to do with the
Xbox now, which is to put it to to ensure
(26:25):
that it's basically everywhere. But you know, so like the
Microsoft recently put out their own version of the Asis
rog Ally, which is a handheld.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I like my rog Ally, but like, yeah, everything I've
heard about the new one, I thought they were going
to do something special with it.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
No, they just put like a fucking shitty version of
Windows on it where you still have to like, you know,
because again, you want that to be like a plug
and play product out in the box, you're ready to go,
and instead, I guess, like when you first open it up,
you've got to install all this stuff and do all
these updates, and it's just like tedious and horrible and
all for an interface that still peels. And comparison to
(27:01):
Steam in terms of just usability and versatility and like cleanness.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
It's so weird, Like compared to the Steam Deck is
what I'm talking about. The rock Laxa before the Xbox One.
It's it's just front tends on frontends. It's just how
we've got an a Zeus layer We've got, but we've
got another fucking layer here, and now you can load
up an Xbox thing, which is a different layer and
if you hit the wrong button, it will load a
completely separate menu. And it really seems to be that
(27:30):
no one sat down and went what if this worked?
Like what if this just because the Steam deck I
bought one of those early on? It is. It's chunky,
it's too chunky. In fact, it's a little bit too big. However,
it just fucking works. He just did the button that
did load the game login by gameplay game fucking do
(27:53):
algebra to make it. It's not gonna I'm not gonna
brush a button with my hand and have it kick
back to the wind those desktop. It's just it feels
almost loathing for the customer at this.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Point, right right, I mean it's a mix of loathing
for the customer and then like if we're talking about
Microsoft and like, yeah, just maximal you know, at least
attempted profit extraction. But as you're saying, they didn't really
think all the way down to the level of what
will the end user experience be like and how does
it compare to this other thing that's already out there,
and it's already setting the standard for what people expect,
(28:26):
and like, if that's where you're coming from, then you
will forever. And I think this is also part of
Microsoft's problem in general. If that is the way that
you were thinking and approaching the creation of your video
game devices and services, you will always be at least
in second place, if not third. And Microsoft has always
been in third in the gaming space.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, and they're like, I don't even know how the
economics of buying these studios even works out for them,
because didn't they lose money when they bought Activision? Oh yeah,
people weren't buying Like who is mister Bean running Microsoft Gaming?
It just feels insane to every time I see them
do something.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah, yeah, And I mean like again, you know, the
question now is what is the strategy, because I think, yeah,
for a while, the strategy was very much all in
on game pass. That's why they bought so many studios.
That's why they bought Activision, Blizzard and everything else, because
they're like, well, we have this service that is going
to be the backbone of everything else we do, and
we need to populate it with content. We need regular
(29:25):
new games to be coming out. So if we buy
a third of the fucking video game industry and have
them pump out new content, then we'll be set. But
the problem with game Pass is that the economics of
it just aren't great. Like, I mean, for one, Yeah,
like Microsoft will repeatedly insist the game Pass is profitable,
but that's only if you like don't pay attention to
(29:47):
the upfront costs of the studios under Microsoft's umbrella making
the games, or the costs of the studios themselves. Once
you like get past Microsoft's you know, fake math, it's like,
oh no, this thing is not profitable at all. And
so Microsoft billion Activision Blizzard alone. Yeah, but no, once
(30:07):
you realize that, and I think Microsoft did, then they're like, ah, okay,
we gotta you know, diversify this further.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
We got to figure out something else to do.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
And so they started saying, okay, well, then we're going
to have our big, you know, first party games on
other platforms. We're gonna sell them on PlayStation and other
places as well, because that'll help us recoup some costs.
We got to crank up the price of game Pass
because that might help absorb some of the costs. And
so like they just start slowly and shitifying everything, like
(30:34):
you know, as with every other company, to make up
for the fact that they this gamble is not paying off.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Well, I I am hoping that Valve can overtake the
entire exp I want them to take Xbox down because
I also want I'm weirdly getting onto like death to streaming,
death to game Pass and all this. I think it's
bad for everyone, but also they make good user interfaces.
(31:02):
It feels nothing. I don't feel like I'm being smacked
in the face when I use the products. I mean,
I like my Sony PlayStation. I sound one hundred million
years on my Saturny painstation. But even then my switch
to as well, partly because I load them.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
When they work, yeah, they turn out like it's it's
a very low bar to clear, but in this day
and age, it is a necessary one to like clarify. Well,
it's a product, or like it's a piece of hardware,
and it functions. It's just like you can it does
what it says on the ten. Yeah, yeah, it's I
(31:39):
have hope for it. And I mean I want I
want a Steam machine. I want to Steam frame.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And ovis pro truther.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah, although I will say, like I don't know if
these Steam machines will necessarily compete directly with something like
the Xbox Valves already said that they don't plan to
subsidize the hardware in a way that would bring the
price down so that it's comparable necessarily to a PlayStation
or an Xbox. A lot of people are guessing more
we will be in the territory of like the PlayStation
(32:07):
five pro just a little bit price here my personal guess,
because they've said that it will be comparable to if
you were to buy all of the components for a
PC of similar power and a symbol at yourself, which
that does bring the price down in the world of
PC gaming a lot, right. You know, you buy a
midrange PC pre built, that's going to be fifteen hundred
(32:28):
dollars and more. If you assemble it yourself, you could
be looking at you know, eight hundred one thousand dollars.
My guess is that that's where it lands, probably somewhere
in the eight hundred and two thousand range that would be.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
That's about the price of the rug achs Ally and.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So yeah, and like again, you know, we're still in
a time of tariffs and things of that nature. So
you know, I don't think steam machines are necessarily going
to be at least price wise as accessible as an Xbox,
at least out the gate. You know, maybe Valwful will
evolve their strategy over time. Have certainly done that with
a lot of other products. But you know, we'll see
(33:04):
they Valve is something of a black box, so they
only tell you as much as they want to it
any given moment, and the rest you either divine through
their actions or they eventually come out and say, okay,
well that was kind of a miss.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
We're going to change things up now, all right.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So to wrap us up, let's go positive. What are
you playing at the moment? What games are you enjoying?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
What? What have you enjoyed this year? Let's get to them.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Okay, okay, let's see what if I enjoyed this year.
Let's see I mean Haities two. Although I feel like
narratively it's narratively, I feel like it's a lot weaker
than the first game, but gameplay wise it is so
much better. It is one of those games where you know,
every time that you finish a run, you're like, well,
I could do one more, and then suddenly forty five
minutes or an hour or three hours have disappeared, you know,
(33:49):
so obviously front Runner for game of the year for me.
Let's see, I was thinking about this game the other night.
Eternal Strand. It's this game that I played earlier this
year from a bunch of x BI were people. It's
kind of like an indie take on I would say,
a mixture of like Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma. It's
on PC, and I think it might be on other
(34:10):
platforms too. I played it on PC. Yeah, it's just
really cool. It's one of those games where you're taking
down gigantic enemies all the time, and you're doing it
by like climbing on them and having these like battles
that span these huge maps where like everything things are destructible,
so like you know, you're fighting a dragon, you're like
leaping on its back. It's flying away with you on
it and trying to shake you off. It's burning everything.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
It's like three D third person situational.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's it came out at the very beginning of the year,
and so I was like, what, what games have I
really liked that sort of you know, maybe I have
forgotten about. It's like, oh yeah, Eternal Strand, that game rocks.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
That's so cool. I'm so glad there's still make because
I and I'm not saying you're being negative, there's a
lot of negativity out there. It's nice they're still making funny,
fun games like Hades two. Really I played that all
through early access and then in the full one, and
you can just see the love. I like the ending.
I'm not gonna say with this, I like what they did.
I think it was strange. But you know what, the
(35:09):
amount of the amount of game I got out of
that game?
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Oh yeah, I mean there's no doubt that there is
tons of game crammed in that game.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
The best value.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Yeah, it's kind of like slaps hood. There's so much
game in this game. This game can fit so much games.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
So it's so weird to play a game like that
and be like, Wow, you really love making get You
really thought about this, because when I first played it,
I got kind of pissed off because the systems were
so different. Cool, but you can see that they've thought
for hours about the intricacies of different meta or different combinations.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
It's just love super So you know, if we want
a happy kind of like games industry labor story, at
least as far as I understand it, Like the last
time I talked to them, and it has been a minute.
Like super Giant has really well run on that front.
Like I don't think they have had much employee attrition
at all since they started. Everyone who ends up at
super Giant just stays at super Giant. And like when
(36:06):
I interviewed them about this years ago, they mentioned, you know,
like they have things like mandatory vacation, like if you
don't take your vacation by the end of the year,
you have to just take time off, like you know,
people are just oh yeah. They also have policies around
like emails, like if it's Friday at five pm, you're
not allowed to email people anymore, even because they're like,
(36:26):
you might be really excited about something you're working on.
If you want to keep working on something, that's fine,
but like, don't drag other people into it, Like let
people have their free time and their space to you know,
not be embroiled in this process.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, whoa because the game is so tight and good
and perfect, you don't have to hurt people to do
this right.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Well, Also, you can, just as you were saying, you
can tell the people who made it care. And I
think more than that, you can tell they were having
fun when they're making it. They were enjoying the process
of creating this thing they cared a lot about. And ultimately,
when it comes to art, commercial art, that's what you want,
is you know, on one hand, you want people to
get paid, you want them to be compensated well for
their labor. But on the other hand, like in an
(37:08):
ideal world, you want them to be enjoying themselves. If
we're going to be locked into jobs for our whole lives,
then we may as well enjoy the process.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Well, I couldn't agree more. And I must say Aftermath
gets the better of Flying thumbs up. And we will
have a link to everything in the get in the
episode notes. Now.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
We are also having a We're having a sale on
subscriptions right now, one dollar for your first month. It's
a great deal if you want to come, you know,
check out the sites you we're about. Yeah, you should
absolutely take advantage of that. That'll be going until the
end of well middle of December, basically yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Cool, which and this will be out by then. And
I have subscribed to Aftermath since the beginning and I
will continue to do so. Please support independent medium myself included,
but really give give give them a look. The new
redesign is awesome. Nathan, Thank you so much for joining
us US.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah again, thank you for having me. It's always wonderful
to come on. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T
T O S O W s ki dot com. You
can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com,
or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend
(38:35):
you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at to
visit the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline
to check out our reddit.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Ed Zitron
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