We live in a time when it’s not exactly uncommon to have your routine shattered by the sudden, resounding death knell of a publication that taught you your whole worldview, but two in one day? Come on. That’s exactly what happened this week when both Polygon and Giant Bomb, beloved games media institutions, got gutted within hours of one another. The internet is descending into a sea of slop, and this is how it happens: one sacrifice to the almighty Line at a time. On this week’s Aftermath Hours, we mourn what was.
None of this was, strictly speaking, necessary, with Polygon an unqualified success in terms of traffic while Giant Bomb boasted a dedicated audience drawn to its unique mix of personalities. But of course, parasitic execs decided to suck the marrow from the bones of both, and now we’re left wondering what comes next. Independent, worker-owned sites like ours hope to pave a path toward a better future, but that will take a lot of time, and many excellent writers are out of work right now. In the short term, nobody benefits from this. Even influencers who claim to dislike journalists rely on them for content, and due to vastly different incentive structures, content creation is doing a poor job of taking journalism’s place.
Then, in less soul-crushing news, we discuss this year’s latest surprise hit, extremely French J’RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which we do our best to celebrate despite the dour mood. Finally, we wrap up with the longest mailbag in the show’s history, so get comfortable.
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can someday afford to hire everybody who’s been laid off and let them do whatever their hearts desire. In other words, absolute freak shit.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Nathan: You definitely have a lot of executives who obviously don’t understand media in general. That’s the “Adults In The Room” post, talking about people who on one hand ostensibly are the leaders of these websites, but on the other hand do not trust the people who are writing things – who are creating what basically is the appeal of the website – to understand what would be best for the website.
But then there’s another layer to it with games in that execs don’t even have a frame of reference for the subject matter. Like if you’re an exec at G/O Media back in the day with Deadspin, you’re like “Well, I know sports vaguely. I grew up with sports. They’re all around me. I know how to play some of them because I went to school.” Whereas a lot of these executives with video games are like “Well yeah, I’ve heard of Mario and Fruit Ninja” – or something else incredibly basic that’s not really indicative at all of the breadth and scope of video games in the year 2025.
So from this very narrow point of view, they imagine that people who read about games just want reviews and guides. There’s probably nothing else happening in the games industry; it’s not like it’s bigger than Hollywood or anything. Because their imagination is so limited and their understanding is so incurious, this is where you end up. They’re like “Oh yeah, I’m sure you can just get rid of all these people who are intrinsic to the site’s identity and slap the same label on some different guides.” Because it’s all interchangeable to them. It’s all the same slop.
Luke: This is every industry, though, right? Enough generations of business leaders have had their brains so commodified by business school “number go up” [rationale] that numbers going up is the only thing that matters. The fact that those numbers are actually representative of the actions and the work of people was lost a long time ago.
And so, they will look at the numbers and think the guides are this, they’re worth this much money, or they’re going to be worth this much money. Valnet look at Polygon’s guides and think they’re worth X amount of money, and they will now have that money. And it’s like, well, no you won’t, because the people who wrote those guides, which made them good, which provided those numbers are gone, you fucking idiots. You’re not getting what you paid for, because you’re only looking at numbers. You’re not looking at people.
Chris: The thing that’s so frustrating about today is that you have two tragedies stacked on top of each other, and it makes the more recent one – the bigger one, honestly – take priority, but it is the same dynamic with Giant Bomb. In that case, it’s like, brand safety? They got mad at them for brand safety. They’re Giant Bomb! Why would you buy them if you don’t like them cursing and shit?
Nathan: While we’ve been recording this, Giant Bomb, the brand, put out a statement – a very short one that basically elucidates nothing. They said, “We understand your frustration and appreciate your patience — we're actively exploring creative directions for the future of GB and look forward to sharing more with you soon.” After a week of internal upheaval and clear unrest, that’s the best they could come up with.
Chris: That sounds just like their voice, too. When I think of Giant Bomb, I think of shit like that. And replies have been disabled.
Nathan: The whole thing is especially weird to me in Giant Bomb’s case, because it points to this tension between a wider shift in the media landscape and what the owners of these sites seem to want. Media has moved, for better and for worse, in a very personality driven direction, which is why so many people get their news from influencers in video games and outside of video games. Meanwhile, a lot of people who are buying up these sites are like “No, we’ve gotta strip away as much personality as possible,” whether it’s this brand safety thing for Giant Bomb, or Kotaku, for example, not letting writers do personal game-of-the-year lists anymore. Because that gives them too much of a face and a name, I guess.
One of these things is proven to work, which is personalities; that’s what people are into now. But personalities are hard to control, and they can become bigger than the site in question and gain more power. The people in charge are so afraid of individuals gaining power that they’re like “I will shoot myself in the foot just to make sure that you can’t carve out a space for yourself.” It is deranged and again goes back to this idea that these people do not know what they’re doing and are not even good at running a business. Because the thing that would help them is clear as day, but they’re too afraid to do it, because they’re too afraid of losing power. It’s all about power.
