Aftermath Hours

We’re off this week because of Juneteenth, but back in February, Nathan released a book! About Twitch! As part of that, he hosted a launch event at Wonderville in Brooklyn, NY with a panel featuring Chris and Gita, as well Polygon’s Simone de Rochefort. It was basically a live episode of Aftermafh Hours, so here it is now, as an episode of Aftermath Hours. Enjoy!

Credits

- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Gita Jackso...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley reflect on the latest installment of Geoff Keighley’s mid-year video game advertisement carnival, Summer Game Fest. It was a weird one! High-profile announcements were few and far between, leaving relative no-names shaped kinda like the industry’s heaviest hitters to fill in the gaps. But at least Stranger Than Heaven, which is basically noir Yakuza in the 1940s, looks cool....

On this week’s episode, we are joined by Xalavier Nelson Jr. of Strange Scaffold to talk about the Switch 2 (because neither of us bought one at launch.) We discuss the satisfying click of the magnetic controllers, the strange emptiness of Mario Kart World, and the idea of trying to return to a yesteryear that can never be recaptured.

Then, we discuss the State of Play, Luke’s piece about vibes, Sony’s entry into fight ...

On this week’s episode, Riley, Luke, and Isaiah intend to talk about a lot of topics, but mostly can’t keep themselves from talking about Clair Obscur. We start by talking about two stories Aftermath ran this week: one in favor of parrying in video games, and one against. Those stories kicked off a flurry of discourse on social media, which we found mostly to be in good fun, and we talk about how those kinds of conversatio...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Aftermath’s newest regular contributor, former Polygon senior reporter Nicole Carpenter to discuss her tenure at the freshly gutted games media institution, as well as how she got into journalism in the first place. She also tells us about the time she got to speak to the voice of Barbie for a story, and she started speaking in character without even being asked. You lo...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Jeff Grubb of the newly independent Giant Bomb, an incredible turnaround from just a few weeks ago when it seemed like corporate meddling had blown the whole operation sky high. We discuss how Jeff and the rest of the Giant Bomb crew managed to buy their freedom and what the future holds now that the shackles are off (a lot more, as Jeff puts it, “bullshit”). Then we m...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita engage in a savvy act of brand synergy by bringing on extremely vocal AI critic and friend of the show Ed Zitron to celebrate the release of Aftermath’s new “Destroy AI” shirt, which we made in conjunction with Kim Hu, an incredible (human) artist, and are very proud of. We eventually get around to talking about the extra-shimmery AI bubble, but first: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Ed go...

On a very special (for bad reasons) episode of Aftermath Hours, Nathan, Riley, Chris, and Luke convene to mourn the apparent – and horrifyingly sudden – passing of two games media institutions: Polygon and Giant Bomb. None of this was, strictly speaking, necessary, with the former an unqualified success in terms of traffic and regard while the latter boasted a dedicated audience drawn to its unique mix of personalities. Bu...

This week Nathan and Chris are joined by Aftermath’s first-ever regular contributor, Isaiah Colbert, to talk about the latter’s speciality: anime. It does not take long for this to spiral into a fittingly multi-part conversation about JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, but we also manage to at least briefly tackle issues pertaining to labor in the anime and manga industries and fans’ reaction (or lack thereof) to pervasive crunch a...

To celebrate the return of Inside Baseball Week – during which we publish a barrage of stories about the lesser-known parts of game dev, the ins and outs of games journalism, and other topics so specific no other website would ever touch them – we put together a roundtable about worker-owned media featuring Aftermath’s Nathan Grayson and Riley MacLeod, Defector’s David Roth, 404 Media’s Emanuel Maiberg, and Hell Gate’s Max...

This week Nathan and Chris are joined by special guest Mike Drucker, comedian and writer on shows like Adam Ruins Everything, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and  Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, to talk about his new book, Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games. We discuss how games and people’s relationship to them have changed over the years – and also the time Mike got shot in the dick with a pai...

This week Nathan, Gita, and Riley briefly talk about their true passion, shirts, before elegantly segueing into a conversation about Ubisoft’s extremely eventful week: The embattled publisher announced that it’s spinning off its most successful series, including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, into a separate subsidiary thanks to a $1.25 billion investment from Chinese conglomerate Tencent. What does this mean ...

This week Chris is holding down the fort with Luke and is joined by writer Yussef Cole (@youmeyou.bsky.social) who reviewed Assassin’s Creed Shadows for The New York Times. We get into Assassin’s Creed generally and Shadows specifically, what we like and dislike about the game and if it makes good its narrative promise. Is it simply enough for a game to be the ultimate Japan simulator, particularly when it works so well wi...

This week Nathan and Chris are joined by freelance writer Aidan Moher to discuss his upcoming book about Suikoden I and II, a pair of sneakily influential JRPGs from the PS1 era that, yes, are very much worth writing an entire book about. Then we discuss news from the eye of the pre-GDC storm: Next week thousands of game developers will convene in San Francisco to network and exchange knowledge, but a growing number of non...

This week Nathan, Chris, and Riley overcome a slew of technical issues to bring you the latest news about guys who suck. First we discuss two Twitch dramas that broke containment and produced consequences that reverberated into the wider world: Several female streamers, Valkyrae, Cinna, Emiru, and Amouranth, found themselves in severe mortal peril during the same night and Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker was briefly banned for su...

This week Nathan and Gita accidentally burst the dam on another wellspring of Riley Lore – perhaps the wildest yet – before we all move on to a discussion of more sobering matters: WB recently closed three video game studios, including Monolith, the makers of quietly revolutionary games like No One Lives Forever, F.E.A.R., and Shadow of Mordor, as well as the upcoming (now-canceled) Wonder Woman game. WB, of course, has ...

This week Nathan, Chris, and Luke find themselves champing at the bit to talk about Avowed, which they can’t stop playing, but first, The News: NetEase shocked the game-playing public by laying off members of the team behind Marvel Rivals, the biggest breakout success story to come out of the live service sector in years. What happened? Well, decaying relations between the United States and China, for one, but also a sei...

This week Nathan, Chris, and Luke find themselves champing at the bit to talk about Avowed, which they can’t stop playing, but first, The News: NetEase shocked the game-playing public by laying off members of the team behind Marvel Rivals, the biggest breakout success story to come out of the live service sector in years. What happened? Well, decaying relations between the United States and China, for one, but also a seism...