On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita ponder orbs. There used to be so many of them in video games. What happened? Where did they all go? And whose idea was it to replace the smooth, satisfying act of vacuuming up orbs with slow, tedious loot grinds? After that, we discuss Another Crab’s Treasure, a Spongebob-inspired Soulslike that’s surprisingly great (and surprisingly existent, considering that I just typed the phrase “Spongebob-inspired Soulslike”). Then we move on to a subject...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by IGN’s Matt Kim to talk about Stellar Blade, a culture war battleground that, as it turns out, is a perfectly alright video game and nothing more. Seems to happen a lot! Maybe we could all learn something from this. But we probably won’t. Oh well. Then we discuss the impending TikTok ban, which is a load of dumb b******t that doesn’t seem like it will pan out the way the United States government is hoping, but it’s happening anyway, for...

On this week’s episode, Riley and Chris are joined by games journalist Ian Boudreau. We start by talking about Riley’s stressful quest to get internet in a new apartment, before pivoting to the stressful quests of the Fallout TV show and what it does and doesn’t borrow from the games. Then, we discuss the drama around Marques Brownlee’s review of the Humane AI pin and how we can all avoid being conscripted into AI hype, which leads into a brief reminiscence about the ill-fated Juicero. We...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita are joined by New Blood Interactive founder and Fallout expert Dave Oshry to talk about Amazon’s new Fallout TV series, which just premiered. The general consensus: It’s good! But it’s also very Bethesda-era Fallout, heavily reliant on iconography and references (Stimpacks! Nuka Cola! The Junk Jet from Fallout 4!) in a way that can be distracting, bordering on nonsensical. Dave makes the great point, however, that Fallout embarked on this path...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Luke find themselves wandering a news desert, so they decide to discuss games they’ve been playing recently, almost entirely for the purpose of getting Luke to pronounce the title “Doronko Wanko.” It’s a great moment, worth the price of admission on its own. Then Nathan and Chris discuss Content Warning, a new Twitch and YouTube sensation that’s like Lethal Company but you play as incompetent content creators, before spending a long time digging deep...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by writer, podcaster, PR guy, and former games journalist Ed Zitron to talk about, well, a lot of stuff. We begin by talking about “media being destroyed by idiots,” as Ed puts it, before discussing Nvidia’s pivot to AI and how it could crash and burn, taking countless jobs with it. Then we discuss AI NPCs in video games, which Nathan got to try out several different flavors of at GDC. The verdict: They can be fun to mess with, but the...

On this week’s episode, Luke, Chris, and Riley talk about Kotaku's editor-in-chief resigning over guides mandates, our favorite indestructible tech and gadgets, why AI writing in games sucks, and how to get the most out of your local bikeshare program."   Credits - Hosts: Luke Plunkett, 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,...

On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by their former Kotaku colleague, author and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, for a special Inside Baseball Week episode of the show. True to the theme, they spend most of the episode discussing the state of games journalism: Are layoffs and site closures a sign that traditional games journalism is dying? Or is it just evolving into a more sustainable form and, in the meantime, shedding some unneeded flab? How can new websites hope to grow...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley discuss the wild (and wholly inaccurate) conspiracy theory surrounding a small video game narrative studio called Sweet Baby Inc, which has recently taken the internet by storm. It begins with “wokeness” in video games and ends with multi-trillion-dollar investment company Blackrock, so buckle up – and if you feel your brain begin to melt, don’t worry, that’s normal. After that we dig into Chris’ long-awaited piece on Sanrio, the Japanese...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley discuss the auspicious occasion of three different game development studios – Gearbox, Saber, and Toys For Bob – all escaping from beneath the thumbs of layoff-prone owners in one day. Then we soberly reflect on mass layoffs at both Sony and EA – the other side of the coin in a week that seemed determined to sum up exactly where the video game industry is at right now. After that we move on to our impressions of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Gita, and Luke are joined by Lin Codega of the brand new independent, worker-owned tabletop roleplaying outlet Rascal to discuss the grim state of journalism – Vice announced that it plans to shut down its website and lay off hundreds of people seconds before recording began – and the potential of publications like 404, Defector, Rascal, and Aftermath to build some kind of sustainable future. Then we move on to a truly illuminating discussion of the tabletop...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Luke are joined by The Verge’s Ash Parrish to discuss Microsoft’s weird podcast about its plans for a non-exclusive but still mostly exclusive future, which will involve dedicated hardware but will also circumvent the need for it? Look, it’s more weird decision-making from a company that seems to have a blurry notion of the point B it wants to arrive at but no idea how to get there. Elsewhere in the episode, we talk about Helldivers 2 – it’s rules,...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, Luke, and Riley discuss Disney’s $1.5 billion investment into Epic Games for an even bigger slice of the Fortnite pie, as well as all the ways Disney has stumbled into gaming success (and failure) in the past. This gives way to a conversation about the sanitized Disney of the modern day and where, with corporations feeding them slop, kids now go for their necessary doses of weird. Then we talk about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Microsoft’s seeming shift...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley share their thoughts on the new and characteristically over the top Death Stranding 2 trailer, which gets everybody talking about the industry’s favorite auteur: Ken Levine. OK, first they discuss Hideo Kojima and his place in video games as one of the only people who gets to do His Whole Thing at such a massive scale, but then they get to Levine, who also just debuted a trailer for his new game and serves as an example of how maintaining a...

On this week’s episode, Nathan, Gita, Chris, and Luke were planning to talk mostly about Palworld, the new Pokemon-with-guns sensation that’s sweeping several nations, but then gut-wrenchingly massive layoffs happened across Microsoft and the gaming giant it recently acquired, Activision Blizzard. We discussed which parts of the company are most impacted and what it means for the video game industry’s future. Then we talked about our own experiences in a layoff prone-industry (journalism) and...

On the first-ever episode of Aftermath Hours, Aftermath's flagship weekly podcast, Chris, Nathan, Luke, and Riley discuss the recently unveiled Indiana Jones game, Ubisoft's vision of a subscription-based future and whether or not we truly own our video games (hint: we don't), and -- relatedly -- the death of series like Rock Band, which necessitates long-term, third-party game preservation efforts on the part of players whether companies like it or not. Then we move on to lighter topics...