As of this week, Aftermath is three years old. Wow!
Back when we first launched the site in 2023, we were all surprised at how quickly it began to feel like we’d never worked anywhere else—like the various routines and rituals of Aftermath’s daily upkeep had been in our DNA all along. Now it really feels that way. We’ve been so in the thick of it this year, especially, that we nearly forgot about this anniversary. Between planning and execution, Inside Baseball Week III devoured our attention for well over a month, and now here we are. Thus the lack of a second party (though we did manage a live podcast recording) or a big, star-studded celebratory post (instead you get… this).
Three years is a long time when you’re running a fledgling publication and trying to grow it into a sustainable business that can achieve a long list of reasonable (and unreasonable) goals. But it’s also not all that auspicious of an occasion compared to, say, five years or ten or twenty. It’s just another year, which is kind of the goal at this point: to stick around and keep at it, to demonstrate that we’re not disappearing anytime soon, or hopefully ever.
That’s not to say we haven’t taken some big swings this year. I’d argue that despite the general economic state of things resulting in slower subscriber percentage growth for us than previous years, we still managed to be more ambitious than ever, bringing on a regular columnist in addition to our small but mighty roster of contributors, cutting some business deals that will prove important for our continued survival, and debuting two new theme weeks—Hater Week and the incredibly prescient Woke Week—to great success.
All that in mind, here are our 15 highest trafficking posts of the year:
Nintendo Suing U.S. Government Over Tariffs
Your Heroes Will Always Let You Down
Big Walk Used AI In 'The Final Stretch' Of Development, Kicking Off Intense Awards Debate
A Digital Audio Player Renewed My Love Of Music
Blizzard Sues To Take Down Another Private World of Warcraft Server, Project Ascension
You Gotta Love It When A Good Game Takes The Time To Get Even Better
Markiplier: 'I Did Not Pump. I Did Not Dump'
Bless The BC250, The Budget E-waste Steam Machine
Genshin Impact Maker Suing To Take Down Fan Wiki
I Can Say Goodbye To Star Trek Because Star Trek Raised Me
Some learnings:
- Scoops and original news stories go far (especially when they involve lawsuits).
- So do trenchant and timely pieces of criticism—for example, Chris’ clear-eyed evaluation of Horses, which whipped Steam and the internet into a frenzy despite its relatively tame subject matter. He was one of the few, at least at a visible publication, to just say this.
- Criticism doesn’t have to center around games, specifically, to be relevant to gaming audiences (see: Gita’s piece about the real meaning of the word “unc”).
- People love weird but reliable tech, often as a crafted counterpoint to widespread cynicism and planned obsolescence.
- Headlines can be however long you want. Follow your heart.
- Everybody hates Palmer Luckey.
But for a primarily subscriber-driven site like Aftermath, traffic isn’t everything! While the two often correlate, sometimes a piece that doesn’t perform as well will really speak to certain people, who’ll then decide to pony up on the spot. You will note, for example, that zero Woke Week, Hater Week, or Inside Baseball Week posts made the above list. This despite the fact that theme weeks are far and away our biggest source of subscribers. In general, we’ve found that people are more inspired to subscribe when they can feel what we’re really about—regardless of individual posts’ traffic—and that often happens during theme weeks, which we intend as cohesive expressions of what makes Aftermath special (accompanying sales help too, of course).
This has led to a predictable albeit not entirely comforting rhythm: We do a theme week, the number shoots up by a couple hundred, the theme week ends, and then the number slowly ticks down for a couple months. Rinse, repeat. On the whole, our total subscriber count has trended upward rather than downward, but it’s very slow growth, which means goals like hiring a new staff member full-time (or even freeing Luke from his other job) remain further out than we’d like.
It continues to be frustratingly true that if even a small fraction of the people who follow us on social media or who have signed up as free members subscribed today, it would completely change our fortunes and massively overhaul what we can do. But convincing those people to take the plunge is slow, difficult work—a task you chip away at rather than solve in a single, glorious “eureka” moment. We’re still figuring out how best to do so, even after three years. We’re also attempting to broaden our reach via platforms like Instagram and YouTube, but there are only five of us working at the site full-time, none of whom are trained social media managers (if you’ve got any advice, email me, Nathan, the guy who handles most of it).
In short, we’re doing what we can with limited resources. That in mind, we’ve actually come incredibly far! Aftermath punches well above its weight, reaching hundreds of thousands of people every month (millions if you count social media and not just the site itself), regularly breaking news, and serving as an influential alternative voice in an industry that often prioritizes products and consumerism over people. We couldn’t have imagined the site succeeding to this degree when we first launched it, and we are incredibly appreciative of your continued support. We don’t take any of this for granted even for a moment.
But we hunger to go further, and we know we’re on the cusp of being able to take major steps in that direction. We’re still planning what exactly next year will look like, but suffice it to say, we’re determined to keep evolving. We never want to rest on our laurels or let the site grow stale. The mediums we cover are constantly changing and innovating. So will we.
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Nathan Grayson
