Aftermath Hours

On a this week’s (very special) episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by podcasting royalty, Michael Hobbes of If Books Could Kill and Maintenance Phase, to discuss Aftermath’s latest, greatest, possibly dumbest event, Woke Week, as well as Michael’s true passion: video game speedruns. What was Woke 1? What were its true ills versus those centrist pundits have wrongly tried to diagnose? And why are Woke 1 and Woke 2 fighting? Can they stop? There are also multiple shocking—to Michael—reveals throughout the episode, such as Nathan’s role in Gamergate. We fill him in on all the deep gamer lore and some recent drama involving Chris and Bluesky that exemplified the Woke 1 vs 2 divide. Finally, we decide which games constitute the Woke 2 canon, and we pick out a mascot (Kirby).

Credits
- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Gita Jackson, Chris Person, and special guest Michael Hobbes
- 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 Luke are joined by Samantha Kalman, a game developer who’s worked on everything from experimental indies to Apex Legends, to discuss her very cool-looking new game, Verses: Hyper-Kinetic Aerial Joust, and the fraught industry climate surrounding it. What does it mean that even somebody with such a proven track record has been unable to secure funding via traditional channels? And can a Patreon, a podcast, and a dream really keep an inventive idea afloat in such choppy waters? More broadly, what will the games industry—or games industries, considering how many different types of games there are—look like when it rises from the ashes of this increasingly unstable moment? Questions far outnumber answers, but nobody could’ve predicted that games as we know them now would emerge from the industry crash of 1983, so some kind of future awaits us. What it will look like is anyone’s guess. Also, Samantha tells us about a truly wild Mega Man novelization in which the blue bomber becomes a real boy.

Credits
- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Luke Plunkett, and special guest Samantha Kalman
- 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.

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

Credits
- Hosts: Gita Jackson, Chris Person, and special guest Stella Sacco
- Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude
- Subscribe to Aftermath!

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 Luke are joined by Jack Ryan – the investigative journalist, as opposed to the Tom Clancy character – to discuss his months-in-the-making report on Clickout, a secretive company that has taken to buying up once-revered video game websites like The Escapist and filling them with AI and gambling. Why is Clickout so secretive? How is it getting away with this? Why target video game websites, specifically? What does a company get out of burying them in borderline-incoherent garbage? And what goes into reporting out this kind of story when a company has proven more than willing to bare its legal fangs at others in the past? We answer all those questions and more — and then we choose which video game characters we’d like to preside over us in court, should it come to that.

Credits
- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Luke Plunkett, and special guest Jack Ryan
- 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 media luminaries, Polygon editor-at-large Giovanni Colantonio and freelancer/Aftermath columnist Joshua Rivera, to discuss all things Resident Evil: where it’s coming from, where it’s going, and of course, the newly released Resident Evil Requiem. The series has spent its past few installments promising a fresh start; does Requiem actually deliver, or is it lured astray by the siren’s call of Leon Kennedy-flavored nostalgia? And during an era that’s decidedly post-zombie, what makes this series, in particular, so enduring? Also, Giovanni’s review of Requiem, which put the game in conversation with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, drew some pretty vocal criticism online. We discuss whether or not the text of the game actually supports that kind of close thematic read. Finally, we come up with some truly diabolical remake ideas for old-school games and conclude that there’s actually no such thing as a long or short game. Who needs to stick around for 100 hours when you can make your own ending whenever you want to?

Credits
- Hosts: Nathan Grayson, and special guests Joshua Rivera and Giovanni Colantino
- 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.