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Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

by netaustin on 11/7/23, 12:33 PM with 171 comments

• by AlexandrB on 11/7/23, 3:17 PM

  I find it funny how many comments here complain about the infusion of politics into games media but not one mentions the fact that games media in general is a prime example of "access journalism". Most gaming media outlets live in fear of losing access to pre-release copies of games because it would mean their reviews will lag behind their competitors. This means they go easy on games (the average review score on any large site is not 5/10). Games consumers then reinforce this dynamic by complaining loudly and angrily when their favourite games get scores they think are "too low". Compare this to movie or music reviews where critics are more than happy to tear popular releases apart.

  This is the same thing that drove me nuts about "gamergate". It's like talking about how bad it is that the paint is peeling while the whole house is on fire.

• by greg_gorrell on 11/7/23, 1:56 PM

  Not that I am much into gaming, but I just checked out the site and the one article I clicked on was literally the writer bitching about how the coffee machines were depicted in Starfield. I miss the gaming sites of the 90s and early 00s, you could expect to read passionate articles from gamers. Just reading the headlines on the main page makes me feel like they have some agenda to push, in a political kind of way, and you won't be finding any good game reviews here.

• by throw3823423 on 11/7/23, 2:25 PM

  It's a turbulent time in games media: See how Yatzhee just quit The Escapist, taking with him most of the video team.

  Either way we slice it, we'll all soon see what is what brings people to certain publications? The brand? Long form, high research articles that just take too much research? The wokeness/andti-wokeness posturing? Is it a matter of just a few extremely talented people, carrying a publication?

  We all can make our guesses, but the market will say who is right.

• by keiferski on 11/7/23, 1:46 PM

  I recently came across The Game Discoverer Newsletter, which seems to be about 100x more insightful and data rich than boilerplate journalism like Kotaku. They also have some other interesting data tools for game developers.

  More broadly, I'm not sure general "journalism" really has a bright future outside of the big names that can field huge advertising budgets. I'm more convinced that niche sites should specialize on a specific topic and figure out a use-case that makes it worth subscribing to from a business perspective, not an ideological one.

  Links:

  1. A good overview post: https://simonowens.substack.com/p/how-the-gamediscoverco-new...

  2. https://newsletter.gamediscover.co

  3. https://gamediscover.co

• by catapart on 11/7/23, 1:47 PM

  I enjoyed Kotaku enough to keep reading through all of their Theil/Hogan bullshit, so I'm very happy that there is now a spiritual successor, that ditches the legacy crap and lets those bloggers do what they do best.

  I wish there were some more of their more "journalist"-type peer that made the migration over, but Kotaku seems to have done fine without them, so I don't think that's going to be a problem.

  I will say that the site design is really bad. I hope they get something less "stock" pretty soon. I don't mind minimalism and clean design but...this isn't that. It looks like the pre-made "blog" template from some site-builder app. A design that highlights what they do best, while keeping news available chronologically, would really make the website comfortable to browse. Though, I do wonder if I'm just the odd man out, still going to a website to read gaming news. If they're delivering it through some kind of feed or whatever, I guess it doesn't really matter what the site looks like. Still; if they care about the site looking good, I hope they change it soon.

  Other than that, a quick perusal of the content that's available seems to be very in line with what I would have found on Kotaku, so I'm very happy to just move all of my reading over to aftermath. It's a great plan and I wish them all the best in it! They've at least got one reader (though, not quite a subscriber; at least with what is currently offered).

• by mcphage on 11/7/23, 2:08 PM

  Interesting timing—a bunch of people from The Escapist either were fired or quit yesterday, including Yahtzee Croshaw.

• by KoftaBob on 11/7/23, 2:32 PM

  What is it about news media, newsletters, etc that makes them so bad at pricing their subscriptions? When you consider the fact that the average reader will want to read a variety of publications/newsletters about topics, charging $7/month for JUST your news site is, I'm sorry to say, delusional.

  This isn't to single out Aftermath specifically, I see this kind of thing all over the place. Lots of substack newsletters are particularly detached from reality when it comes to what they charge.

  Yes, journalists need to be adequately paid of course, but I think this can be done much more effectively by charging a more reasonable monthly rate that will broaden the customer pool.

• by robertlagrant on 11/7/23, 1:38 PM

  It would be good to know what the "new ownership model" is.

• by SmoothBrain12 on 11/7/23, 1:34 PM

  What a time to be alive

• by scudsworth on 11/7/23, 3:28 PM

  i do wonder how many people are willing to pay almost $100 annually for blogging. defector seems to be successful-ish with that model? if you can make it work, the editorial independence is probably amazing. i don't really care for kotaku now or back in the day, but wish them luck nonetheless - funding for journalism in general has been badly broken for a long time.

• by dlbucci on 11/7/23, 3:19 PM

  I always preferred Joystiq (RIP) to Kotaku, but I'm happy to see more sites moving to this model. I'd much rather just pay writers money so that they give me content than have to wade through ads anymore. And I think it's a model that can work: Defector has been a great successor to Deadspin. Now if only they would do that for the AV Club...

• by jerojero on 11/7/23, 2:05 PM

  Good.

  They need a bit better website design though. You shouldn't need to scroll through an editorial column to get to the articles.

• by imwillofficial on 11/7/23, 1:59 PM

  Ah, the folks from the worst example of journalistic integrity in the last 10 years spinning off to do the same thing?

  I think I’ll pass.

• by AmericanChopper on 11/7/23, 1:38 PM

  The staff were the worst part…

• by r113500 on 11/7/23, 2:50 PM

  if you look into the names of the founders, all of them are activists, one of them has a colorful gamergate history, one mentions labour issues in their byline.

  their position statement is in the fourth paragraph, it starts with "widespread labor organizing, industry-changing mergers and acquisitions, sweeping layoffs", and then reads "We need a curious, independent press to hold power to account, to cut through the marketing hype, and to elevate the voices of those affected by the gaming industry’s upheaval." they bring up the issue of labor again, "we’ll keep you up to date on the worlds of video games, board games, comics, movies and tv, nerd culture, tech, streaming, and the labor issues that surround them"

  would it be safe to assume that their goal is to be a kind of jacobin for gaming? jacobin's digital only pricing model is $30/yr, which $3/mo against aftermath's $7/mo, and i'm comparing them here on selective paywalling model. jacobin doesn't have dedicate gaming section, but they do write about video games from a socialist perspective, in their culture and labor sections.

  i would say it's safe to assume that aftermath is going after a niche audience, people who want an indepth coverage of the video game industry from a socialist perspective, is that an attractive enough value proposition? they might also be explicitly trying to build an activist audience to be able to put political pressure on gaming industry. this is another possible reading from "holding power accountable". i'm not sure if that's compatible with their pricing model though.

• by throw4847285 on 11/7/23, 3:40 PM

  It's wild to see the sheer impact of Gamergate on online culture. The fact that this thread is filled with GG talking points baffles me. The level of vitriol for Kotaku specifically made no damn sense, given how diverse the writing staff was.

  I always interacted with Kotaku the way everybody should interact with a publication: there were some writers I liked, some I didn't, and some clickbait. It declined in quality over time until I stopped reading. That's all there is.

  And if you really want to blame somebody, blame Kieron Gillen. Kotaku just merged New Games Journalism with the gossipy Gawker model to create a weird hybrid. Weirdly, a lot of what people complained about wasn't the Gawker stuff but the deep games criticism. The "hipsterdom" of it all. That was the best part! It was the clickbait that was annoying.