As Woke Week draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the journey we’ve been on together. We’ve defined our terms, we’ve spoken to DEI specialists, we’ve recounted the trials and triumphs of gaming’s wokest communities (in exhaustive detail), we’ve written with rainbow pencils, and of course, we’ve cooked. Truly, woke 2 was the friends we made along the way. But, shockingly, we haven’t talked about specific woke games. Today we remedy that.
This time around, we’re joined by podcasting royalty, Michael Hobbes of If Books Could Kill and Maintenance Phase, to discuss Aftermath’s latest, greatest, possibly dumbest event, Woke Week, as well as Michael’s true passion: video game speedruns. What was Woke 1? What were its true ills versus those centrist pundits have wrongly tried to diagnose? And why are Woke 1 and Woke 2 fighting? Can they stop?
There are also multiple shocking—to Michael—reveals throughout the episode, such as my role in Gamergate. We fill him in on all the deep gamer lore and some recent drama involving Chris and Bluesky that exemplified the Woke 1 vs 2 divide. Finally, we decide which games constitute the Woke 2 canon, and we pick out a mascot (Kirby).
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 extend Woke Week until the end of time.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Gita: What video games are woke 2? I feel like Persona 3, specifically, is woke 2. I don’t know if Persona 4 or 5 are woke 2.
Nathan: Persona 5 definitely isn’t, with its transphobia.
Gita: Persona 3, though, really is just about “Hey, everyone’s gonna die; go make some friends.”
Michael: I would say Street Fighter 6, because it has representation for cousin fuckers, and that’s a really important part of woke 2: We’re all fucking our cousins.
Nathan: #JusticeForCousinFuckers
Gita: I think also original Hades is woke 2.
Nathan: That’s what I was thinking! Original, yes; sequel, woke 1.
Gita: Yeah, original because it was like “Hey, your dad’s a jerk, but remember that he’s a person too,” essentially. “And maybe you’ll get over it someday, but maybe you won’t.”
Nathan: We ran an article about how Hades 2 embraces a kind of status quo. Despite playing as someone who is ostensibly an agent of change, you don’t really meaningfully impact the lives of a lot of the side characters. But in Hades 1, you did. Characters’ ended in different places than they started out [instead of simply learning to accept unjust circumstances]. I think that’s also maybe the difference between woke 1 and 2 in general: saying the systemic status quo is something we should be trying to shift in a way that goes beyond simple matters of representation, like a woman CEO or what have you.
Michael: I think in the same way right-wingers use “woke” to mean anything they think is bad, we’re using “woke 2” to mean anything we think is good. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich? That’s woke 2, baby.
Nathan: And it is. That’s the official food of woke 2, to be clear.
Gita: Yeah, if you have a peanut allergy, you’re not woke anymore. Sorry.
Nathan: You’ve been demoted. You’re right wing. You don’t have a choice.
Gita: I think every Dark Souls game, every FromSoft game is woke 2. I know this is more saying games I like are woke 2, but at least Dark Souls 1 is about doing something other than sustaining the status quo. To link the fire in Dark Souls 1, you are perpetuating a status quo that is clearly dying—on its way out—and does not need to be perpetuated. If you allow for the time of man to arise—the time of dark, the dark soul—then you are saying goodbye to the old world, because its time is done.
Michael: I will trust you on that. I refuse to learn what those games are about. I’m not reading item descriptions. I’m not sitting there fucking reading when I’m trying to play my video game. Absolutely not.
Nathan: Oh! You know what game is woke 2? More woke 2 than any other game and also the most game that has ever existed? Warframe. It’s obviously Warframe. For one, in ways that are subtle it’s a very queer game. Frames themselves play with ideas of gender and stuff, but they don’t necessarily try to be in your face about it. Also, the game’s politics have been generally good. The company supports good causes. They seem to give a shit.
Also, I thought of the game that is the standard bearer for woke 2: It’s gotta be Fallout: New Vegas, right?
Gita: Oh! Oh yeah. Fallout: New Vegas is really good, but when I got a copy, I couldn’t play it the first night because I spent two hours following a modding guide to make the game stable enough to play on PC. It is still so broken.
Nathan: The only real problem with Fallout: New Vegas is that if you play it, it does turn you trans.
Michael: That’s woke 2, though. That’s the most woke 2 thing imaginable.
Gita: Whatever they put in the water to make the frogs gay, they also put it in Fallout: New Vegas. I don’t know what it is.
Michael: In the code. That’s why it’s buggy: because of the gender-affirming code they have in there.
Everybody: [laughs really loudly]
Gita: But Fallout: New Vegas is also a game about saying goodbye to the old world. It’s the closest Fallout has gotten to saying “America is done. It’s over. There will never be another America. The people who are trying to bring back America are all fools. It’s not going to work in the long run.”
Michael: Burn it down-ass video game.
Gita: It really is.
This week on Aftermath, we’re celebrating Woke 2. What does that mean? Pieces that dig into the origins of woke—not the empty, sanitized version peddled by companies, but actual culture created by people—as well as communities that are already charting a course to a bolder, better future where we can all just be chill to one another.
