PODCAST · leisure
Aftermath Hours
by Aftermath
The flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info.
Episodes
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The X In Xbox Stands For Expensive
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Chris Kerr, formerly of Game Developer—the publication, not the concept—who’s now heading up newly launched site Vertical Slice. We discuss why he decided to leave a relatively stable gig of nearly a decade for the choppy waters of...
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Live From New York, It’s Aftermath Hours Live!
On this week’s very special episode, we come to you live—or at least, in-person—from Town Hall in NYC, alongside two NYC-based gaming luminaries: NYU Game Center director Naomi Clark and Half-Mermaid (Her Story, Immortality) director Sam Barlow. As part of the inaugural New York Games Week, we...
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Control Resonant’s Dylan Faden Did Nothing Wrong, Except For Everything He Did Wrong
Chris, Luke and Gita sit down to talk about Control Resonant, a game they're all thoroughly enjoying (with reservations). Come for the thoughtful discussion of why Remedy games just hit different, stay for Luke’s monologue about the power of architecture. Credits - Hosts: Chris Person, Luke...
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Bobby Kotick's Been Sending Legal Threats To Games Journalists
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Nathan’s former Washington Post colleague, Mikhail Klimentov, to discuss the latter’s years-in-the-making report on former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s pattern of legal threats against publications who’ve reported on him in ways that he...
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A Framework For VR
This week, Chris and Luke talk to The Verge’s Sean Hollister about the Steam Frame, Valve’s latest foray into the VR space. Both Chris and Sean reviewed it, and we get into the current state of VR, if it can be salvaged, the Beta test nature of reviewing Valve’s hardware and more. We also talk...
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Zero Company Left If You Furlough Everyone (with Stephen Totilo)
On this week’s episode, Chris and Luke are joined by Stephen Totilo, formerly everybody’s boss at Kotaku and currently breaking stories at GameFile. The latest scoop is about Bit Reactor, developers of the latest inheritor of the “XCOM-like” crown, Star Wars Zero Company – and how most of the...
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The One Billion Dollar Video Game
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley recap the highs (read: mids) and lows of Geoff Keighley’s least consequential annual advertisement fest, Gamescom Opening Night Live. The new expansion for Witcher 3—yes, the one that originally came out in 2015—looks cool, as does an arguably even...
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Nothing About GTA VI's Launch Can Be Normal
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Luke of Aftermath convene to discuss the pre-math of Grand Theft Auto VI’s impending, insanely anticipated release. With a Netflix preview of the game—itself pretty unprecedented—a week away, fired Rockstar workers are asking fans not to boycott the game...
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Alex Jones Popped Like A Balloon (With The Onion CEO Ben Collins)
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Ben Collins of The Onion, because, against all odds, he and his comedic cohort have managed to transform Infowars—until recently one of the internet’s deepest, darkest toilets—into something funny and good. We discuss how the new Infowars came...
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Balkanize The Video Game Industry (With Rami Ismail)
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by game developer, consultant, and general industry luminary Rami Ismail to discuss his new Levelling The Playing Field series of courses aimed at making “the critical less-spoken parts of indie gamedev accessible away from expensive visa-locked...
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The Hater’s Guide To Hating (With Ed Zitron)
On this week’s very special Hater Week episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley are joined by the crown prince of hating himself, Ed Zitron. We talk to Ed about what it means to be an effective hater in his wheelhouse—going after the companies that are taking everyone for a ride (to hell) on the AI...
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FromSoft Sicko Sh*t
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Tyler Colp of PC Gamer to discuss an extremely pressing business matter: Chris wrote almost 9,000 words about his favorite FromSoftware farming spots, and somehow, he still has more to say about them. Tyler, a fellow FromSoft sicko, happily...
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Chudbox Series X (With Reb Valentine)
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Kotaku’s Reb Valentine to discuss that which has long been prophesied (derogatory): The Xbox layoffs finally happened, and they’ve somehow proven even worse than expected. Thousands of jobs lost, seemingly with little regard for institutional...
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Farewell Physical Media, We Hardly Knew Ye
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Wes Fenlon of PC Gamer to discuss his new project: Warp Point, a web 1.0-style webring of video game blogs for the modern era. We discuss how the current internet is dying while a new one struggles to be born and whether or not newer...
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Full Steam (Machine) Ahead
On this week’s episode, Chris, Gita and Luke discuss the recent price announcement for Valve's console-competitor, the Steam Machine - it's $1,049 USD, but unfortunately that's kind of just what computers cost now. All that said, Chris does make it sound like a pretty cool little PC. Then we'll...
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GOTY Season Came Early
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by a second Chris, this one of the Plante variety, to discuss the latter’s Earliest Game Of The Year awards. Why now? Because games that release near the beginning of the year often get ignored or forgotten by the time GOTY season rolls around....
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Bummer Game Fest
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Ethan Gach of noted Aftermath origin story Kotaku dot com to discuss… well, originally we were gonna talk about Summer Game Fest, but then—moments before we began recording—news broke that Xbox is on the verge of yet another devastating round…
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Lost In The Backrooms
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by musician, writer, and game developer Liz Ryerson hot on the heels of counterprogramming Summer Game Fest with the second annual Unearthed Treasure Room showcase. The basic idea? SGF is made up of nearly 20 showcases of games yet to come—too...
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Zero Steam Decks: For People Who Aren’t Rich
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita bid farewell to the Aftermath Twitch channel—at least, in terms of using it to record the podcast—and turn their sights toward a pre-recorded, more-thoroughly-edited future (coming soon!). We also discuss Valve’s decision to massively increase the...
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A New (Forza) Horizon
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Jordan Hoffstetter of the incredibly-named Tran Girlismo podcast, a show about car culture and living during the decline of empire. We use Forza Horizon 6, the latest in Microsoft’s long-running open-world racing series, as a jumping off point...
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Remembering Being A Teenager
On this week's pod, Luke, Gita and Chris got together to talk about the game that people inexplicably cannot stop talking about: Mixtape. We talk about the way that it's portrayal of teen nostalgia hits, and more frequently, doesn't hit, as well as the bizarre series of conversations that are...
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Fantastic Mr Star Fox (With Alanah Pearce)
On this week’s episode, Nathan is outnumbered by Australians when Alanah Pearce—games writer, voice actor, YouTuber, and filmmaker extraordinaire—joins the show (and also Luke is there). We discuss Alanah’s new production company, Charred Pictures, and its goal of involving indie developers in…
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Suddenly, Saudi (Investment Money Is Drying Up)
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Luke have a merry old time discussing cheery news from a normal week. For example: A video game CEO casually said the quiet part out loud by opining during a routine interview that “We've been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have...
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Pragmata Is Uncle-Core (With Rebekah Valentine)
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley are joined by games reporter extraordinaire Rebekah Valentine, formerly of IGN and now (very) newly of Kotaku—which of course none of us have ever heard of. We ask her about the whys and hows of her big move to a site that—fingers crossed—seems to…
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Dosa Divas: Nightreign
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Chandana Ekanayake, director of Dosa Divas, a new turn-based RPG about cooking, culture, and reconciling with loved ones. Also, mechs. We discuss the game’s inspirations, as well as the way food and other elements of culture are often stripped...
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Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Leftist Twitch Streamer (With Kat Abughazaleh)
On a this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by journalist-turned-politician Kat Abughazaleh, who recently managed to nearly win the Democratic congressional primary in Illinois despite odds being stacked against her. We discuss what she learned from her narrow defeat, both in terms of...
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The Woke Week Special (With Michael Hobbes)
On a this week’s (very special) episode, Nathan and Gita are 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…
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WipeJoust
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Samantha Kalman, a game developer who’s worked on everything from experimental indies to Apex Legends, to discuss her very cool-looking new game, Verses: Hyper-Kinetic Aerial Joust, and the fraught industry climate surrounding it. What does it...
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Pokopia Is A Viva Piñatalike
Today Gita and Chris are joined by our good friend Stella to talk about job precarity in the Game Dev world and her own recent troubles getting screwed over. Then we discuss Pokopia, the best game on the Nintendo Switch 2, which manages to fuse what we enjoyed about both Viva Piñata, NieR, and...
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The Sordid Saga Of Clickout
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Jack Ryan – the investigative journalist, as opposed to the Tom Clancy character – to discuss his months-in-the-making report on Clickout, a secretive company that has taken to buying up once-revered video game websites like The Escapist and...
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Leon Kennedy Is Italian American
On this week’s episode, Nathan is joined by two media luminaries, Polygon editor-at-large Giovanni Colantonio and freelancer/Aftermath columnist Joshua Rivera, to discuss all things Resident Evil: where it’s coming from, where it’s going, and of course, the newly released Resident Evil Requiem.…
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Open AI-owa
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley find themselves tangled in a rat king of interrelated AI stories: leftists apparently hate technology because they’re rejecting AI (and the mass exploitation that comes with it), the computer – a theoretically magical device hijacked by tech…
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The Top Of The Jank Pile
On this week’s episode, Gita and Luke welcome special guest Brendan Caldwell of the newly-launched website jank.cool, which is all about PC gaming. Brendan is quickly learning how owning a website can be both exciting (you’re your own boss, no one else can tell you what to do or what to write...
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No Ethical Consumption Under Jetpack Cat-pitalism
On this week’s episode, Nathan is joined by two very special guests – former (until, you guessed it, layoffs) Verge reporter Ash Parrish and prolific freelancer Joshua Rivera – for a special announcement: both will soon be regularly contributing to Aftermath! Ash will be blogging a day per week,...
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ICE OUT (With Ben Hanson)
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Riley are joined by Ben Hanson of worker-owned media outlet MinnMax to talk about what it’s been like covering games – and just generally existing – amid ICE’s violent occupation of Minnesota. Ben tells us about the strange juxtaposition of tragedy (abandoned...
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The Queen’s Golden Wii (With Keza MacDonald)
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Chris are joined by Keza MacDonald – currently of The Guardian and formerly of Kotaku UK way back in the day – to talk about her new book, Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. We discuss Nintendo’s vast history, dating all…
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Board The Mothership (With Maddy Myers and Zoë Hannah)
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Gita are joined by Maddy Myers and Zoë Hannah, both formerly of Polygon – you know, before all the bad stuff happened – and now of the newly announced Mothership, a site at the intersection of gender and games. Maddy and Zoë tell us about their plans for the…
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Grand Theft Auto 2026
On our first episode of 2026, Nathan, Chris, and Riley start the year off with a bang, or at least the next best thing: a discussion about video games. We begin by reflecting on Nathan’s time attending Awesome Games Done Quick, the annual speedrunning marathon that raises money for charity and…
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Can’t Spell Larian Without A And I
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley convene one last time to close out 2025, a notably horrible year for the world but a pretty solid one for Aftermath. We begin by talking about a controversy that was unexpected, to say the least: Larian, riding a wave of goodwill by making perhaps...
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A Lot Of Great Games Will Never Win Game Awards
This week, Gita, Riley, and Chris talk about many games that came out recently that will never win a Game Award, and what our attitudes about the event are. First, the enigmatic Ys-alike Angeline Era, a beautiful game with thoughtful design. Second, the toe tapping Rhythm Doctor which feels like…
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No More Horses Around (With Eyepatch Wolf)
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Gita, and Chris are joined by the one and only John “Super Eyepatch Wolf” Walsh, YouTuber extraordinaire and, now, author of The Bizarre World Of Fake Games, a book about exactly what it says it’s about: meticulously crafted settings and rule sets for games that...
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MrBeast Dreams Of Elon (With Kat Tenbarge And Steven Asarch)
On this week’s episode, we’re joined by two of the finest internet culture reporters to ever lace up their boots and wade into the muck, Kat Tenbarge and Steven Asarch, to discuss why MrBeast’s new theme park, Beast Land, is so bad – and why quality was never the point in the first place. Spoiler...
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It Came From Outer Space
This week, Chris, Riley, and Gita raise our heads above the water of Aftermath’s relaunched website to talk, excitingly, about things that aren’t relaunching a website. To start, Chris and Gita talk about the movie Bugonia, a remake of 2003’s Save the Green Planet. We talk about how it’s…
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Aftermath’s Two-Year Anniversary Spectacular
On this week’s episode, the WHOLE gang – Nathan, Gita, Chris, Riley, Luke, Isaiah, and Nicole – gather to celebrate Aftermath’s two-year anniversary. We begin by announcing that we’re relaunching the site next week, but not with all the bullshit bells and whistles you’d typically expect from this...
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Master Commander-In-Chief
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Gita, and Chris bathe in the afterglow of Aftermath’s first-ever in-person party before hinting at big changes to come (the good kind) as a result of the site’s upcoming second anniversary. Then we discuss the United States government’s sudden gaming fixation,...
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(Profit) Margin For Error
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Riley discuss the recent revelation (via Bloomberg) that Microsoft has been seeking a 30 percent profit margin from its gaming division since 2023. This borders on ludicrous compared to what the rest of the industry typically achieves and fully clears…
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A History Of Histories
On this week’s episode, Gita and Luke are joined by Matt Leone, formerly of Polygon and now of Design Room, a site dedicated to sharing the oral histories behind some of the biggest and most important video games of all time. We chat about Matt’s work detailing the stories behind the creation of...
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Just Creed Things
On this week’s episode, Nathan and Luke are joined by Cameron Kunzelman of the Ranged Touch podcast network who has a book about Assassin’s Creed, Everything Is Permitted, coming out next month. We discuss how the series has evolved over the years, with each sequel and spinoff essentially...
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SaudEA Arabia
On this week’s episode, Nathan, Chris, and Gita talk about the two latest signs that the video game industry is being chopped up and sold for parts: EA’s $55 billion sale to a consortium that includes Saudi Arabia and Microsoft’s decision to up Game Pass’ price by 50 percent – the latter of which...
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Remasters of the Universe
On this week’s episode, Chris and Riley are joined by Aftermath contributor Isaiah. First, Chris can’t resist talking more Silksong, and then he tells us a bit about Silent Hill f. Then we move on to Sony’s State of Play presentation this week: Does Insomniac’s Wolverine need all that blood? Do…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that’s too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris’ frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don’t know what else to tell you; it’s a great time. Simply by reading this description, you’re already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info.
HOSTED BY
Aftermath
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Aftermath Hours have?
Aftermath Hours currently has 134 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Aftermath Hours about?
The flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson,...
How often does Aftermath Hours release new episodes?
Aftermath Hours publishes regularly with 134 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Aftermath Hours?
You can listen to Aftermath Hours on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Aftermath Hours?
Aftermath Hours is created and hosted by Aftermath.
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