Aftermath Hours

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley find themselves tangled in a rat king of interrelated AI stories: leftists apparently hate technology because they’re rejecting AI (and the mass exploitation that comes with it), the computer – a theoretically magical device hijacked by tech industry perverts – has become massively more expensive as a result of AI, and a former indie games luminary has dived into the deep end of AI psychosis and given agents free reign to blow $10,000 on the stock market. Keeping in mind that AI is nothing but stringing together sentences by predicting words at mass scale, we maintain a theme by moving along to prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, which also had a big week with the former announcing Substack integration. How is “data” that arises from what is functionally just gambling useful to writers, news organizations, or anyone? Beats us! But here we are. Finally, we answer an all-timer of a mailbag question: “How many owls would you have to see in a day before you thought something weird was going on?” Credits - Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, and Riley MacLeod - Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude - Subscribe to Aftermath! About The Show Aftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this week’s episode, Gita and Luke welcome special guest Brendan Caldwell of the newly-launched website jank.cool, which is all about PC gaming. Brendan is quickly learning how owning a website can be both exciting (you’re your own boss, no one else can tell you what to do or what to write about) and very scary (how even do websites work?). But if it gives you a place to publish your weird trauma about getting attacked by Australian magpies under the guise of reviewing video games, the rest of it is worth it. Then in video game land - aside from the usual layoffs updates, a horrifically normal thing - Luke gives us his impressions of Romeo Is A Dead Man, Gita’s got strong feelings about the romance options in Cyberpunk 2077, Brendan’s trolling his friends in co-op auto mechanic sim Car Service Together, and Overwatch is back in all of our lives (much to Luke’s ire & dissociation). And in the Mailbag we’ll reveal the ratio of dead-body cleanup requests to demo mixtapes we receive on behalf of other businesses also named Aftermath, and recruit other orphaned video game mascot characters to send to the Olympics. Credits - Hosts: Gita Jackson, Luke Plunkett, and special guest Brendan Caldwell - Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude - Subscribe to Aftermath! About The Show Aftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this week’s episode, Nathan is joined by two very special guests – former (until, you guessed it, layoffs) Verge reporter Ash Parrish and prolific freelancer Joshua Rivera – for a special announcement: both will soon be regularly contributing to Aftermath! Ash will be blogging a day per week, and Joshua is the monthly columnist prophesied in our subscriber goals. We discuss our shared histories at Kotaku, as well as current beats and interests (ask Ash about monster fucking). Then we delve into the media landscape at large, where we can’t even go a week without, for example, The Washington Post laying off hundreds of people. Next our light and breezy conversation takes us to Epstein Island thanks to former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s involvement with the convicted sex criminal. Oh, we also talk about this week’s Nintendo Direct and Overwatch, which is no longer Overwatch 2, but is also not Overwatch 1. Credits - Hosts: Nathan Grayson, and special guests Ash Parrish & Joshua Rivera - Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude - Subscribe to Aftermath! About The Show Aftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Ben Hanson of worker-owned media outlet MinnMax to talk about what it’s been like covering games – and just generally existing – amid ICE’s violent occupation of Minnesota. Ben tells us about the strange juxtaposition of tragedy (abandoned cars, large portions of the population terrified to leave their homes) and triumph (ordinary people working together to protect their neighbors on a previously unprecedented scale, the generally good vibes of any given protest) that characterizes Minnesotans’ daily existence. He also explains his decision to publish a video demonstrating what ICE is doing to people in Minnesota on the YouTube channel of MinnMax, which, again, typically focuses on video games. Keep politics out of games? Kinda hard to do when politics are literally banging down your door. Credits - Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Riley MacLeod, and special guest Ben Hanson - Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude - Subscribe to Aftermath! About The Show Aftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Keza MacDonald – currently of The Guardian and formerly of Kotaku UK way back in the day – to talk about her new book, Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. We discuss Nintendo’s vast history, dating all the way back to 1889, as well as how its innovative past gave way to the Switch 2 era, perhaps its most iterative yet. Keza also tells us all sorts of stories about legendary figures like Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who despite his sunny exterior, is actually a very intense boss. Also, that famous “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad” quote? He didn’t say it! Finally, we talk about our favorite journalism rabbit holes, of which we have many. Credits - Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, and special guest Keza MacDonald - Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude - Subscribe to Aftermath! About The Show Aftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.