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Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath
- SmoothBrain12 3y agoWhat a time to be alive
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIs this a good or bad thing? I don’t really know much about kotaku. But I do know game journalists don’t exactly produce the greatest content, everything from “the game is too hard 1/10” to IGNs obvious paid for scores to “this game has a male character, therefore it must be sexist”.
- Goronmon 3y agoFrom my experience, "great content" to gamers is just content that confirms their pre-existing opinions and biases. Anything that goes beyond that is labeled "bad journalism".
- xxs 3y agoThis part is true for most people and most topics, including politics. A lot of the gaming audience would be young(er) people that are part of the scene - so the strong feelings part is given.
- smcl 3y agoThis is a pretty hyperbolic take on games reviewers, other than the paid reviews which does exist but is pretty easy to identify and ignore. I've seen games being criticised for being too hard but even Elden Ring, Lies of P et al aren't getting 1/10 for that. I've seen people lamenting the same lazy copy-pasted male character being the protagonist again and again, but never decrying that it's outright sexist that a male character exists in a game (and you're kind of telling on yourself with this one, tbh) There's plenty of great games journalism out there. I'm similarly unsure about Kotaku, but let's not get silly here.
- gurchik 3y agoThe gaming community is often delusional and will rant online about a journalist giving a game a 9/10 instead of a 10/10. Good reviews, where the journalist actually played the game and has experience to compare it to, goes unnoticed. Garbage articles, like "Nintendo used a disability slur in a song" (turns out they're speaking Japanese) get huge attention.
- smcl 3y agoYeah I’ve seen that a few people get very upset over one reviewers’ subjective take on a game to the extent that they’ll hound them online. James Stephanie Sterling’s 7/10 on Tears of the Kingdom springs to mind (though they seem to be a bit of a lightning rod for hate overall). I can’t fathom it myself, I’ll read and watch a few reviews to get an overall feel for the game and see from there. Come to think of it, most of the reviews I encounter don’t give a score.
- notjoemama 3y agoIsn’t there a discussion to be had about journalists (and activists) needing to insert intersectionality into fantasy worlds in a genre for a demographic that didn’t ask for it? I’m detecting an air of elevated ego in your reply. I understand the toxicity that has and does (now to a much lessor degree) exist, but can’t we recognize when social justice jumps sharks? I think we can. It’s ok to admit when activism goes too far, wandering into the territory of enforcing morals onto other people; making the same mistake the religious right has done…
- smcl 3y agoIf you want to have that discussion, feel free to find the people who think the existence of 1 (one) male character indicates sexism, like the GP described, and discuss it with them. Tbh it sounds more like you want to use the GP's hyperbole as a wedge to open up a (ugh) "culture war" debate and frankly I'm not interested.
- Goronmon 3y agoIsn’t there a discussion to be had about journalists (and activists) needing to insert intersectionality into fantasy worlds in a genre for a demographic that didn’t ask for it? Don't we need to have a discussion first to debate whether you should be writing comments on such topics first? I mean, I didn't ask for your opinions, so I think it's a discussion worth having.
- overthemoon 3y agoThere's some lazy, parasitic, and axe-grinding writing in games journalism, as in all kinds of journalism. I am personally annoyed by how often I see Reddit posts and YouTube summarized like they're a story. But the good stuff is good, and this is IMO a good trend. Aftermath itself might suck, but I'd like to see more passionate video game writers get an opportunity to run their own outlet rather than churn out stupid bullshit about Twitter posts to create more surface for ads.
- xxs 3y ago>Aftermath itself might suck, The initial articles are well written.
- overthemoon 3y agoFair enough, I want to give it a chance for sure.
- ameister14 3y agoI do not agree. It's readable, but not well written. ex. "Fortnite saw 3.9 concurrent players on OG’s launch day, besting recent records, and huge subsequent numbers. It was the number one category on Twitch, bolstered by a 24-hour stream by Ninja, who made his name on the game."
- nottorp 3y agoAs a potential game player, why do I care about that? Is the game any good? What is it about?
- vehemenz 3y ago"We're trying something different, thanks for joining us" A comma splice isn't the end of the world, but if this is the post that's advertising your new enterprise to the rest of the world, then it tells me you have some inexperienced writers.
- 3y ago
- robertlagrant 3y agoIt would be good to know what the "new ownership model" is.
- AmericanChopper 3y agoThe staff were the worst part…
- lloydatkinson 3y agoI wrote a comment above around that topic, looks like my question was answered…
- notjoemama 3y agoAnd you nailed it in that comment btw.
- Herbstluft 3y agoI agree. Made by the people from Kotaku is not exactly a phrase that would make me want to visit a site.
- esotericimpl 3y ago[dead]
- nerdjon 3y agoThat was my first thought, I am sure that there were some incentives from Gawker that contributed to it but Kotaku quickly became one of the gaming sites that I strongly avoided around 2017 when it seemed like they would get a crusade against any game that had some problems and just run it into the ground. (Mass Effect Andromeda was the straw for me)
- brucethemoose2 3y agoYeah, Kotaku was either a firestarter or a SEO chasing dogpiler way too often. > Mass Effect Andromeda was the straw for me Always good to see a fellow Andromeda appreciator/semi-appreciator.
- nerdjon 3y agoHere is my thing about Andromeda, it was a bad Mass Effect game in the same way that Mario Sunshine was a bad Mario game. The bar was incredibly high so in comparison it was a "bad" game. But both were still solid games. now ME:A had its faults (especially at launch), but to this day I blame Kotaku for single handily causing that game to fail and the public perception of it being the way it was and we never got the DLC that was clearly hinted at in the game. Which I am still frustrated about. It seemed like on a daily basis for a couple weeks we got a negative article about ME:A from Kotaku and suddenly everyone talked about how bad it was even though they never played it. Disclaimer: I have a Mass Effect tattoo that I plan on turning into a sleeve so I am not exactly... impartial
- keiferski 3y agoI 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-newsletter https://simonowens.substack.com/p/how-the-gamediscoverco-new... 2. https://newsletter.gamediscover.co https://newsletter.gamediscover.co 3. https://gamediscover.co https://gamediscover.co
- WithinReason 3y agoThanks! There is RSS too: https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/feed https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/feed
- mcphage 3y ago> More broadly, I'm not sure general "journalism" really has a bright future outside of the big names that can field huge advertising budgets. To be fair, it doesn't have a bright history outside of that, either.
- keiferski 3y agoI actually do think there are many great opportunities for journalists to reframe themselves as sources of intelligence for business use cases, in the way that Game Discoverer has. There are a ton of Substacks that have this same basic model. Another great example is the Financial Times, which seems to be doing well financially. The key point here being that these publications are providing businesses with useful information, not just writing reviews and commentary for a mass audience.
- catapart 3y agoI 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).
- ajmurmann 3y agoI would love it if some of the other old-timers could make it back. I assume the people I really liked, Steven, Jason, Kirk, Maddy and of course Fahey, since he no longer is with us, are very unlikely to come back. I also miss their Japan pop-culture reporting from Richard Eisenbeis and Bashcraft. The latter was a big part of what made me visit kotaku instead of Destructoid or Polygon.
- greg_gorrell 3y agoNot 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.
- netbioserror 3y agoFrontpage littered with activism and first-world whining. Looks like it was the worst parts of Kotaku that left.
- fells 3y agoTurns out lots of people play video games!
- netbioserror 3y agoTurns out a lot of people don't care about those people's political hot takes when they just want to read news about video games!
- fells 3y agoThere's lots of places on the internet for those people too. They are also free to find them and share them! Maybe they'll even been upvoted on HackerNews!
- netbioserror 3y agoBe careful what you wish for. Sites like these aren't lasting long in an era when people are exhausted of being 24/7 assaulted by the political hot takes of random nobodies.
- mplewis 3y ago
- imwillofficial 3y agoAh, 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.
- zztop44 3y agoKotaku is the worst example of journalistic integrity in the last 10 years?
- kevingadd 3y agoKotaku is one of the only game outlets that actually got blacklisted by publishers for negative coverage. What's the integrity violation you're so upset about? I hope it's not a completely made up one like gamergate
- almatabata 3y agoFor reference this is why people have a low opinion of kotaku, they publish clickbait stuff without double checking properly before publishing: * https://www.keengamer.com/articles/news/kotaku-uk-apologizes-for-publishing-joker-slur-article/ https://www.keengamer.com/articles/news/kotaku-uk-apologizes...
- imwillofficial 3y agoRight. I don't know anything about gamergate. My comment is sole based on their low quality output.
- klausa 3y agoThis is about Kotaku UK, for all intents and purposes a different website.
- jerojero 3y agoGood. They need a bit better website design though. You shouldn't need to scroll through an editorial column to get to the articles.
- mcphage 3y agoInteresting timing—a bunch of people from The Escapist either were fired or quit yesterday, including Yahtzee Croshaw.
- throw3823423 3y agoIt'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.
- falcor84 3y agoOh wow, I didn't know about Yatzhee. I really need my Zero Punctuation dose, and turns out he doesn't own it https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-escapist-staff-resign-following-termination-of-editor-in-chief-nick-calandra https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-escapist-staff-resign-foll...
- marklar423 3y agoThat's crazy, I didn't know either.
- loganfrederick 3y agoI worked as a contract writer for The Escapist from 2005-2009 and consider Yahtzee's resignation the end of the publication. Zero Punctuation was most likely the primary revenue driver as I know how he had an outsized impact even back in the heyday when all of the content was getting accolades.
- KoftaBob 3y agoWhat 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.
- zztop44 3y agoI think the logic is that getting anyone to get out their credit card and pay anything at all for content is a tough barrier, and the difficulty of crossing it doesn’t scale linearly with the asking price. That and micropayments remain an unsolved problem.
- KoftaBob 3y agoNow that Apple Pay and Google Pay are a thing, it’s become incredibly easy for someone to just tap a button, their face unlock does its thing, and payment goes through. Unless you mean a psychological barrier?
- mvdtnz 3y agoGoogle and Apple instantly eat a third of your revenue.
- KoftaBob 3y agoThat's for in app purchases. If you use Apple pay on your website, they don't charge any fee actually, only the payment processor does. Scroll to the bottom to see more detail: https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/ https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/
- klausa 3y ago
- r113500 3y agoif 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.
- kevingadd 3y agoHow could someone who worked for Kotaku not have a "colorful gamergate history"? What does that mean, exactly, when Gamergate was a hate campaign originally targeting Kotaku writers based entirely on false allegations? Or were they one of the organizers of gamergate somehow? You're perfectly entitled to dislike their work but it's weird to see people use language like this. Also, what's wrong with being an activist? Is it bad to care about things now? What is their activism for? Are they an activist for something bad? If you specify what it is about their activism that's harmful it's much easier for people to understand the concern. Labour issues, for example, are extremely relevant in video games since labour conditions at game studios frequently contribute to games shipping unfinished or in a bad state, and players actively dislike that. Games press cannot avoid covering labour conditions with how frequently crunch and layoffs harm the quality of shipped games.
- AlexandrB 3y agoI 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.
- loveparade 3y agoPlayer reviews for games aren't much better, unfortunately. So many games get review bombed for political reasons. It's the Amazon equivalent of "this book sucks because my package was late" but orders of magnitude more frequent. It's nearly impossible to find high quality game reviews.
- jhchabran 3y agoWhile I'm not sure I see as much games being review bombed for political reasons in my sources for video game reviews, I strongly agree with you that it's really hard nowadays to find high quality reviews. It's always been bad in mainstream video games medias though, but underdogs that are more open to criticise game tend to not last very long. The best approach I've found is to become aware of who are writing the reviews I perceive as high quality and simply follow them when they change medias and pay attention to what they communicate about their current position. Ultimately, the best reviews are almost always coming from sources that have a business model that doesn't rely on ads.
- jchw 3y agoI do agree, the bickering about politics is a little silly when you consider just how terrible the actual "journalism" part is. I think there's a general feeling that all journalism has faltered a little bit in the face of the Internet and a 24 hour news cycle, but I'm not even sure video game journalism was ever good. I'm not sure it was ever really 'journalism'. I'll admit I do miss the older generation of video game 'journalism' nonetheless. Had its problems, but the thing is, it did feel like people were sharing their genuine and honest opinions as a capital-G "Gamer" more often. It became mostly known for the stereotypical attitudes that people have since come to dislike, which you can see manifested sometimes e.g. in old Penny Arcade comics. The only irony is that it feels like somehow, people's more progressive attitudes manage to have even less nuance than the older "unrefined" opinions that have since been walked back on by many. You can see this especially in the bizarro way that people have become regressive about sexuality in video games-I'm not really sure how a bunch of people were convinced to go all the way from 90's style "toxic masculinity" to a totally puritanical anti-sexuality stance in such a short period, but I'll be damned, they really managed to do it. What happened in this time period, though, is interesting. There's really no such concept as a "capital-G Gamer" in a society where pretty much any kind of person plays video games to at least some degree. There's still a spectrum of different kinds and different levels of dedication, but the lines are firmly blurred. Gaming is just another thing that people do, on computers, phones, whatever, wherever. To me, the modern era though, won't actually be colored by how gaming went mainstream, or by any event involving gaming at all. It'll be about how everyone became phony and full of shit with pandering to trends and moral grandstanding. I'd be willing to place a wager on that one. Unfortunately, that isn't specific to gaming, gaming journalism, or any kind of journalism.
- dlbucci 3y agoI 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...
- starkparker 3y agoI can't afford to subscribe to every site starting up. None of them have day/week pass options or the ability to pay to read one story out of their archives, so it's $7/month or nothing. My budget for this isn't going to grow just because subscription sites proliferate. I know we love decentralization here but I'd love if all these co-op sites shared an umbrella subscription, MaxFun style, where you could direct most of your subscription fee to the sites, or even the individual writers, that you want to support. Shared infrastructure, focused support.
- scudsworth 3y agoi 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.
- roughly 3y agoThe Autopian's been doing pretty well with it, too. I think there's two things interacting here that make this more tractable than first impressions - first is that the cost of running one of these sites as a sustainable business is a hell of a lot lower than whatever crazy shit the PE & hedge funders were pushing for. I also think people's willingness to pay for quality content is higher than has been assumed, and I think part of that is a lot of us have seen what the cost of free content is over the last couple years. I think you're right that these sites will never be more than niche by subscriber count, but I think there's more appetite now than before and I think it's entirely possible to make a sustainable business here. I'm also generally in favor of a world where writers and creators get paid a decent wage to write and create things I find valuable or interesting, so I'm biased here.
- throw4847285 3y agoIt'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.
- klausa 3y ago> The level of vitriol for Kotaku specifically made no damn sense, given how diverse the writing staff was. I think you got the cause and effect backwards here, unfortunately.
- throw4847285 3y agoI meant in terms of perspective and writing style, but fair point.
- unsubstantiated 3y ago[flagged]
- kevingadd 3y agoIf you're going to carry on some old grudge against a website you should at least try to explain to the rest of us what you're mad about
- klausa 3y agoI think I’m good on explanations from someone being so mad about video game websites that they’re calling for “war” and “genocide”, actually.
- Maken 3y agoPolitics were always there.