Better Offline - The State of the Games Industry with Nathan Grayson

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Nathan Grayson of worker-owned games site Aftermath to talk about building an independent media outlet and the state of the game industry writ large. Nathan Grayson: https://aftermath.site/author/nathan-graysonhttps://bsky.app/profile/nathangrayson.bsky.social Celebrate Aftermath’s anniversary by subscribing - just $1 for your first month! https://aftermath.site/11-06-2025-01-12-00-2ndbirthdayoffer  Buy Aftermath’s “Destroy AI” Hoodie: https://aftermath.site/destroy-ai-aftermath-kim-hu-hoodie-shirt/ YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. QuarZone Media Hello and welcome to Better Offline I'm our host Ed Zittron And today I'm joined by the esteemed Nathan Grayson Co-founder of the worker-owned gaming website Aftermath Nathan, thank you for joining me again Yeah, thank you for having me

So you just did two years, what's it been like? What have you learned in the last two years from doing this? Yeah, just nothing, you know, we came in as experts We were, you know, we didn't need to learn anything at all We were perfect. Yeah. No, we have learned so, so, so, so much. You know, we entered it as five people who wrote for a living,

who never really had much experience with the business side of things because that wasn't really our purview. And when you go from being at a major publisher of any sort, whether in our cases that was Geo Media with Kotaku or the Washington Post or vice or whatever else, you know, a lot gets handled for you, whether that is payroll or promotion or, in some cases, social media, things of that nature. We have to do all of that ourselves now, in addition to expanding the business, finding

ways to grow, finding ways to support ourselves and keep it sustainable or even make it sustainable in the first place. So part of the reason we decided to do a relaunch was to kind of plant our flag and say, yeah, you know, we're a real grown-up business now, whereas when we first started, we kind of just were cobbling things together and learning as we went along. So tell me about the relaunch. what you've been doing? You moved to Ghost, right? Yeah, yeah, we moved over to Ghost.

Yeah, so we relaunched the website. We think it looks better and nicer now. There are more design possibilities. And also, like, we can accept more kinds of payment and have more ways to, like, reach readers and let them know, like, hey, your subscription's expiring. All this nitty-gritty stuff. But, yeah, we just decided to move over there because it offers more flexibility. Sites like 404 in Hellgate are on ghosts and have nothing but good things to say. And like, you know, we appreciate a lead, which is what we were using before.

That's what defectors on. But yeah, there are just a few things that we felt like we were not going to be able to get from lead within a semi-reasonable time frame. And Ghost already offered them. So we're like, yeah, makes perfect sense. It's also grown into like a vibrant website. At first you were kind of testing things out, but now you've got a very developed stack of people. You've got freelancers now, right? Yeah, yeah.

We use freelancers. We accept freelance admissions. We also have two regular contributors. Nicole and Isaiah, they are in our Slack. They write for us every week. Yeah, you know, we're going places. We're still a core staff of five. But in the near future, you know, should we accrue enough subscriptions,

we'd like to hire people on full-time and grow our staff. Again, similar to what we've been seeing with, well, I think 404 now has like regular contributors as well. I'm not sure if they have any one new full-time yet. Hellgate, I know has grown. So, yeah, you know, again, we are following in the first. footsteps of, at least relative to ourselves, giants, and we would like to keep doing that. But that requires growing more, making more money, all that stuff. You know, typical challenges of a small business, but mapped on to independent media.

So, and coverage-wise, you're fairly wired now. Like, you cover games, but kind of in the dead spin before the bullshit happened style thing where it's like gaming can mean many different things. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and also, like, I think from the get-go, what we wanted to do was cover games in the way that Defector covers sports, which is to say that, you know, we can cover a lot of things. A lot of things fall under that umbrella.

And on top of that, like, you know, games are relevant to many different areas as well. And so I think that compared to other video game websites, for example, we spend a lot of time covering politics. For a long time, there's this refrain that like, oh, you know, games are escapism and like, you should keep politics out of them, blah, blah, blah, which has always been bullshit, of course. but I think that even relative to our coverage at other places, like before we made Aftermath, you know, all of us have been fairly politically minded in our careers. But Aftermath, like, we really go in on that.

And I'm very proud of what we've accomplished on that front in terms of just covering that overlap, especially as it's become more and more relevant to the modern day. You know, like when Trump was running for president, again, he was meeting with gaming influencers. Like, you know, you have all of these things where, now the people who used to be considered just like outcast nerds are in incredible places of prominence. Yeah, and it's weird. I don't like seeing games bleed into politics at all. I think we

really, I think we were good in about 2011 with Homefront, which was the, I think, the only necessary political game where what if North Korea radiated the Mississippi River? Classic game. I'm sure I'm going to get some great emails about the fact that there were political games before that. And you're wrong. But it is interesting where you are, where Aftermath is at in the current milieu of like politics and digital culture. Because it does feel like streaming and gaming have just kind of meshed into everything now. Outside of politics, you've got a bunch of tons of like NBA players and NFL players who game and stream regularly. But you've also got these particularly vile and not vile streamers who do it too.

Yeah. Well, yeah. And I mean, we just recently, this week, in fact, we ran a story about kind of the aftermath of one person in the aftermath, ha-ha, dot say. But anyway, about an employee at a company called Sucker Punch, they made a ghost of Yote recently, getting fired as a result of a joke about Charlie Kirk. They're one of the people who got swept up on all of that.

And so we ran a story about kind of what has happened to them since that occurred. And also just sort of like what that moment actually was versus what you might be able to misconstrue it is. So, you know, at the time, there was all of this furor over anybody saying anything negative about Charlie Kirk and so this person got fired for a relatively innocuous joke that was probably in bad taste but whatever. And so what she's contending now is like, you know, two months down the line, she's like, this wasn't actually about the joke. It was because there was a harassment mob that already existed that decided to weaponize this person's death

to get some people fired and to, you know, basically instill silence in them and anybody else who witnessed that happening. And, you know, just generally taking the game's industry to task for not defending its people better. Because when this occurred, you know, the company in question, at least she says, did not really like come to her or give her a warning or really do anything. They were just like, yeah, you're fired. And, you know, as long as the games industry continues to let that happen, which they've been basically doing since the original Gamergate back in 2014. As you would well know. Right. Then these kinds of things, like that will just continue to let these mobs run rampant and kind of dictate the pace of conversation around.

games and even in some cases how they get made. It is so strange. As a child, I dreamed of the day that gaming would be a normal thing that everybody talked about. Now I feel like that was a monkey's poor situation. Maybe we should have less discussion of it. You know, no, I don't even mean in the mediated sense, in the sense that something happened as games came to prominence that dragged up a ton of stuff within gamers that wasn't anything to do with games at all. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think a few things happened. One of them is that, you know, for a while, games were considered this thing like for nerds and for like outcasts. And so there was always that bit of a chip on people's shoulder. And that like once the mainstream started to care about games, they're like, hey, well, you know, these are ours. And if you do anything to them, if they get altered to fit your tastes and your needs, then we're going to like do an uprising or like get really mad. But also that kind of energy. That kind of like, you know, faux victimhood is very easily, easily weaponized by other forces. And I think that the far right seized upon that quite early, again, with Gamergate.

They noticed that there's this latent kind of resentment running through games seeking audiences, whatever you want to call them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we need to find a way to seize upon that. And Gamergate was the perfect flashpoint. And ever since then, you know, people, much smarter than me have said this, but like Gamergate was the canary and the Coleman. line for a lot of the modern alt-right. And that's sort of just how it all started. And I wish that they would get angry at the real villains, which is electronic arts. Because can you imagine if any, even a iota of this vile poison in their veins was a, like, I know this is somewhat of a tangent, but I swear I'm going somewhere. Playing Madden last night, because I hate myself. And it's just,

this game has been broken in the same way for 15 years. They're a little, you can play a game and without fail, we'll see a bug. A bit you, the menus will hitch, menus won't load. And it's just, like these harassment campaigns, I think, are so, as you've well put. So nakedly not about video games, but just aggression against woman, aggression against any outliers, which is ironic considering game, like, gamers' historic outlier status. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.

when yeah, you know, again, as with a great many things, obviously the real villain, especially in the case you're describing, is capitalism. And like, you know, if you look at Madden sports games in general, as you're saying, they've been broken in fundamental ways for like decades. But what's changed about them is that they're just more heavily monetized now. Yes. Ultimately. More ways to extract money. Yep. To extract tons of money from them.

And like there is anger at games changing in that way, but not. to this degree where it's like we're going to, you know, harass people. I mean, there are, in some cases, harassment mobs that have gone up to which they shouldn't do to anyone just to be clear. Right. Right. Right. But also a lot of the developers who end up in those crosshairs are also just marginalized and that's the main reason people are going after them. Yeah, it's very odd because you would think that games would be this kind of could be this hotbed for like resistance to the ravages of capitalism in that, you know, so many games present effectively what are supposed to be fair structures, right?

You get out what you put in. Like, you know, you gain experience for all of your work. You gain rewards, things like that. And so in a lot of ways, gamers' brains are tailored to expect a certain degree of fairness and like egalitarianism. And so you would think that gamers would look at like all these structures and say, okay, well, there's a problem with this structure. It's not fair and we should do something about it.

But, you know, again, they've been misled by a bunch of various forces, including the powers that be, including the people who are, like, are in charge of making the games, not the developers, the executives. And so they just never quite get there. But it is kind of funny to think about, like, you know, this could be the place

where it all start. Gamers could start their revolution. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

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Since you guys are middle-aged, uh, one erection. One erection, Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and friends On the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

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But I think the aftermath does a really good job of that, because you have the social stuff you don't. I have the term social justice. It's the correct one, but it's been bounced around too much now. But it's a place where I think you have done, you have done some of the best labor work. I have, like you have a labor section.

And I think that people need to real, I think people need to see games developers as laborers far more. Because I think there are plenty of people who are like, oh, these game, how much the game developers make? 700,000 a year. Like they have these, they see them as this ivory tower job.

versus a pretty brutal working stiff job at times. And then even more so in things like QA, you know, as long as that still exists as an industry. Yeah, right. So it gets replaced by AI in Square Unix's case. Yeah. I could not remember the company.

Thank you for being smart. Yeah, they want to replace 70% of their QA or have 70% of the QA done by AI. I'm sure that they have some like bullshit line about how that won't displace labor, but you just explained. Thinking this out loud, that doesn't make any fucking sense. First of all, QA, from what I understand, is a lot of repetitive tasks.

So I assume that that's why they think AI will work. But is it going to play the games? Because that's a big part of the problem with that whole line of reasoning is that QA is like a relationship, right? Yeah. And that you don't just need QA people to do the job. You also need them to be effective communicators to the rest of the studio in terms of what they should be looking for in terms of how to reprehensible. produce various bugs and other issues.

And another big element of QA that is super underappreciated is that typically, because a game is made in bits and pieces, QA is the part of the studio that earliest and most often gets a full picture of what the game is like to play in its totality as like a complete

product or is like, and so they can most often answer the question early on. Like, is this good? Is it fun? Admittedly, they're playing it in a very specific way, so they're not necessarily playing it to enjoy themselves, but they do have that like broader overview of what it is kind of turning out to be. And they're all of those things that I just mentioned. A.I.

QA is quality assurance. I probably should have led with that. But never, but no, you're right. And it's, I think seeing games as a labor thing is so it's genuinely one of my favorite things about aftermath is the, if you talk about, and now this is a little bit copium, hopium, whatever you call it. But if you do want to change things, you need to educate people about what's going wrong and why. I'm not saying that vial, right, people are finding our aftermath and going, oh, I'm changed,

but it's, I feel like you have to build a body of work to explain the overall problem. And it is a label one. It is the fact that, so I'm paraphrasing my girlfriend here, but it's like with movies, it's like there are movies that are $100 million. There are movies that are $1 million. And I feel like Games is in this weird position, too, where it's, everything has to be AAA everything biggest, most hugest game, and then there are indie games. And it's, I feel like that, like the capitalism problem you've been discussing is there too,

where it's the way games are made is broken. And I feel like Aftermath does a good job of explaining how the breaking has happened, but also the consequences of that fracturing. Yeah. And then also, like, I think people just don't understand the scale of game making in general either. Like, you know, certainly there's AAA and there's indie, but there's all sorts of stuff in between. A lot of indie games, you know, because, like, there's been this larger thing happening in video games where, like, it's been hard for companies to secure investment.

A lot of games have gotten canceled. A lot of studios have had to break up or go their separate ways. And so for a moment, there was this refrain of, okay, well, like, you know, as a result of all of that and all these layoffs happening in the AAA space. You know, pretty much every major AAA game company, be it of Microsoft, Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Square, Inix, whatever. It's had major layoffs in the past couple of years. And so a lot of people saw that and said, well, you know, AAA is collapsing. It's going to go away in five or ten years.

Indies will save us, though. But, you know, indies are facing their own problems, again, in terms of securing investment. And also, like, a lot of indie games are not just, you know, one person in their garage or a few people making a game for, you know, pocket change.

These are also full-scale productions. These can have 30, 40, even sometimes 100 people working on them. And they always, require paychecks. And so quickly, the price for that on a per annual basis goes up to, you know, over a million dollars easily. And so it's like, you know, Indies can't save us because they're facing a lot of the same headwinds as everybody else. And recognizing how games are made, I think allows people to better get a grip on that and be like, okay, well, then the games

industry is actually facing very different challenges than it might seem on the surface. Yeah, even I, in my own ignorance, didn't even think of the kind of messy middle of what 100 people working, 100 people would be an indie game studio, I guess. It can be. It depends on the studio. I mean, some of them are, you know, owned by, again, Microsoft. Microsoft owns like half the games industry now, which is also bad. But others are, yeah, doing their own thing and either working with publishers or securing outside funding. And, you know, for every one clear obscure Expedition 33 you get, which is. that studios allegedly around 30 people, but they had tons of other folks touched the game over the course of its development. You know, you don't get a lot of other games. They're like, others just get canceled. They die on the vine. They can't secure funding. And, you know, studios either lay people off or cancel games or both. Yeah, I mean, even my favorite game of the year, Dead Zone Rogue by prophecy games, which I love, even that one, they did Tribe's Three

rivals and just appear to have stopped updating it. Yeah. Which, it's just, it, it almost feels like we're reaching a breaking point with this. And I was just talking. Yeah. We also briefly talk about the number of times that people have tried to bring back tribes and it didn't work. It's insane.

How many tribes get like 17, 25, 100 of them there? I've been playing tribes games since I was like in my teens. Yeah. Why? In theory, tribes should be able to find an audience. Like we live in a time now where people are always looking for a new multiplayer game. Tribes is really interesting and different compared to pretty much every multiplayer game. You can ski around and, like, you know, figure out your trajectories and launch blue discs at people.

It rules. It's one of like the best multiplayer shooters ever, in my opinion. And like, you know, giant maps, huge landscapes. That's what like Battlefield is doing now. People love that shit. And so it's so odd that each and every revival. And they've been like relatively well spaced out. It's not like they're, you know, doing these in like staccato.

rhythm. But each and every revival has just, you know, been dead on arrival, basically. Like, it's, it's really sad to see. Yeah. Six of the six of them. It looks like my bad. I can't count. It's, but with that one, maybe it's the indie game thing, which is a giant map is probably not that easy to put together. And if you look at, I didn't play tribes through rivals, but if you look at Dead Zone Rogue, which is an FBS Rogue like, it's very, I don't want to say small, but it's condensed. It's like a very, a very, very focused game. But I want to change it because I'll just talk about Dead Sun Road for a hell to the Steam Machine. How are you feeling? So, Steam Machine, as you'll know from the episode

before this one with Steve Burke, it's the new gaming console style Steam PC thing. How are you feeling about it? I'm oddly hopeful. Yeah, I mean, so Valve tried to release Steam Machines a handful of years ago as well, I think in the mid-20s. And they kind of crashed and burned, or rather they just never took off. I think that Valve learned a lot of very important lessons from that. And I think that also just the timing is much better now in terms of what people are looking for, in terms of the prominence of PC gaming. Back in the mid-2010s, you know, consoles still kind of ruled the roost.

Whereas now, like, if we're talking about higher-end video game playing, pretty much everyone does it. Or not everyone. But a lot of people do it on their PCs because that also allows them to, you know, create content, you know, stream, things of that nature. And then Steam itself, which Valve, owns and operates has also become so much bigger than it was even back then. It was already huge. Now it basically is the epicenter, the mecca of PC gaming.

And so then you get to the steam machines themselves. And, you know, there's long been this perception that the PC is for a lot of normal people kind of impenetrable from a gaming standpoint. You know, you got to install the game and install these patches. And then, like, you know, maybe it won't work with your particular hardware configuration, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so what Valve is basically saying is, okay, well, we will handle all that for you as you might expect with a video game console.

And then, you know, you just click on a game and it'll work. And they have a couple of things working in their favor on that front. One is that they have since made Steam OS. Steam OS is a great little operating system for video games. That's the whole point. And again, it's super plug and play. It's really easy. And then also the entire model they're going to deploy on Steam machines, they've already

successfully deployed with Steam Deck, which is their, hand held. The Steam deck is an incredible piece of hardware. It is deceptively powerful. It feels really nice in your hands. And it's all entirely SteamOS based. And so you can just install a game on it. SteamOS will let you know if it's going to run well or not. VALP has this entire system where they basically will play games to see if they're deck verified or if they're like, you know, sort of edge cases where they'll work, but they're not optimized or if they're just like going to be a mess. They let you know that up front. So you can go in with a good idea of how it's all going to function.

And then you just do it. It's great. It's super smart. And then you have your saves across like Steam Deck and every other place that you can install Steam. So you could theoretically be playing on your Steam deck in one room and decide you want to play on your TV, your monitor. Just go play on your Steam machine. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You can do. Yeah. It's so nice. It's, I mean, say we all about Valve. They are like a libertarian kind of nightmare company. But. they do still make cool stuff, unlike every other video game company that's not trying to

cut their way to profitability by laying everyone off. I want it, I was talking to Steve, I want this to kill the, I don't know if it will, it's going to come down heavily to, if it's $600 versus $1,200 and if it's sold in retailers, but it's, I want it to smash Microsoft. I also think, and this is a somewhat, I know, people aren't going to like this, Um, I don't think game pass is good for the games industry. No, no. I think a lot of people would agree with you, at least in the games industry.

Yeah. It's, I don't think, I think it creates, I don't know, I have a weird thing with streaming services in general. I think that they create a race to the bottom and actually make things way more unfair. But I like that steam charges per game. I think it's good to do that. And I think a variety of games is good. and a variety of prices as well.

I don't know. I know they're a deeply imperfect company, but I genuinely think Microsoft might be walking away from the Xbox. Or at least they're not sure why they have it anymore. Yeah. Well, I mean, they have their whole campaign now where they're basically saying,

like, anything can be an Xbox. That's their marketing line. So the basic concept is like, you know, now Xbox is more of an ecosystem, an app-based ecosystem that lives on not just the gaming platform that you have in your living room, but it could be on your smart TV, it could be on your phone,

it could even be in your car, and it just seems in general that they don't really know what the brand is anymore. And that also goes back to the game selection, what is the last major first-party Xbox game that came out or that became the face of the platform? That's a good question. The fact that everyone still associates Microsoft with, like, Halo, is on one hand a testament to the enduring,

power or nature, I guess, of like the master chief. But on the other hand, like, that game came out in the early 2000s. And still, it is the main thing that people are like, oh, yeah, that's that's, that's Xbox. So I actually just had to look this up for the first party games. Doom the Dark Ages? Yeah, yeah, because Microsoft bought ID software in Bethesda a while ago, so they own those companies now. That's the other thing is in order to like have more recognizable IP, they just bought a bunch of studios. And then in recent years, because of the Activision Blizzard purchase and how expensive that was, and also just, you know, trends in gaming, Microsoft has been laying everyone the fuck off. They've laid off over 4,000 people in the past two years

in games alone. And that's like a significant chunk of, you know, workers at those studios. It's like a really bad situation over there. I mean, on the upside, due to other stuff that Takes so well to explain. They did let a lot of people unionize, but then also the most recent layoffs cut into the unions pretty badly, too. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk,

to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Who's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged.

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and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WMBA standout, Kate Martin, and rising hockey star Laila Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see what. girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel on. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale,

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Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all. embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't think Microsoft knows what the fuck they're doing, because you talk about, you're correct

and saying, yeah, they want to build the ecosystem, but the ecosystem fucking sucks. I remember it used to be a while ago that, I, like, a couple years ago, I'd say, I'd use the Xbox to be like, oh, this is kind of clean and functional, it's got a few doodads to it. Now every time I load it up, it feels like I'm on the fucking Las Vegas strip. It's like an ad for a movie. Right. It's trying to make me download a kid's, like it, it's fucking bizarre. Well, and it's about to get way worse because, you know, Microsoft is now obsessed with adding AI to every potential product and feature they can possibly get their hands on.

And so, yeah, they're going to load, you know, the Xbox ecosystem down with AI products as well. Yeah, it's just like, and then on top of that, I guess like the best example here is, again, to go back to Valve and Steam, I think that if Microsoft had been building the kind of platform that Steam has been for the past, you know, well over a decade, then they'd be in a good position to do what they're hoping to do with the Xbox now, which is to put it to, to, you know, to ensure that it's basically everywhere. But, you know, so like the Microsoft recently put out their own version of the AISS Rog ally, which is a handheld.

I like my rogue ally, but like everything I've heard about the new one, I thought they were going to do something special with it. No, they just put like a fucking shitty version of Windows on it where you still have to like, you know, because again, you want that to be like a plug and play product out of the box, you're ready to go. And instead, I guess like when you first open it up, you've got to install. this stuff and do all these updates and it's just like tedious and horrible and all for an interface that still pales in comparison to steam in terms of just usability and versatility and like cleanness

um it is so weird like compared to the steam deck as well i'm talking about the rog l a x so before the xbox one it's it's just front ends on front ends it's just hey we've got an a zeus layer we've got we got another fucking layer here oh and now you can load up an xbox thing which is a different layer and if you hit the wrong button, it will load a completely separate menu. And it really seems to be that no one sat down and went, what if this worked? Like, what if this just, because the, the steam deck, I bought one of those early on, it is, it's chunky. It's too chunky, in fact. I think it's a little bit too big. However, it just fucking works. You just did the button, load the game, log in by game, play game. I don't have to fucking do algebra to make it, it's not going to, I'm not going

to brush a button with my hand and have it kick back to the Windows desktop. It's just, it feels almost loathing for the customer at this point. Right. Right. I mean, it's a mix of loathing for the customer. And then like, hey, if we're talking about Microsoft and like, yeah, just maximal, you know, at least attempted profit extraction. But as you're saying, they didn't really think all the way down to the level of what will the end user experience be like and how does it compare to this other thing that's already out there and is already setting the standard for what people expect. And like if that's where you're coming from, then you will forever. And I think this is also part of Microsoft's problem in general.

If that is the way that you are thinking and approaching the creation of your video game devices and services, you will always be at least in second place, if not third. And Microsoft has always been in third in the gaming space. Yeah, and they're like, I don't even know how the economics of buying these studios even works out for them, because didn't they lose money when they bought Activision? Oh, yeah. People weren't buying. Like, who is Mr. Bean running Microsoft gaming? It just feels insane to every time I see them do something.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, again, you know, the question now is what is the strategy? Because I think for a while, the strategy was very much all in on Game Pass. That's why they bought so many students. That's where they bought Activision Blizzard and everything else. Because they're like, well, we have this service that it's going to be the backbone of everything else we do. And we need to populate it with content.

We need regular new games to be coming out. So if we buy a third of the fucking video game industry and have them pump out new content, then we'll be set. But the problem with GamePass is that the economics of it just aren't great. Yeah. Like, I mean, for one. How could they ever? Yeah. Like Microsoft will repeatedly insist the GamePass is profitable.

But that's only if. if you don't pay attention to the upfront costs of the studios under Microsoft's umbrella making the games, or the costs of the studios themselves, once you, like, get past Microsoft's, you know, fake math, it's like, oh, no, this thing is not profitable at all. And so Microsoft, I think, for Activision Blizzard alone. Insane. Yeah, but no, once you realize that, and I think Microsoft did, then they're like, ah, okay, we got to, you know, diversify this further. We got to figure out something else to do.

And so they started saying, okay, well, then we're going to have our big, you know, first-party games on other platforms. We're going to sell them on PlayStation and other places as well because that'll help us recoup some costs. We got to crank up the price of game pass because that might help absorb some of the cost. And so, like, they just start slowly and shittifying everything, like, you know, as with every other company, to make up for the fact that they, this gamble is not paying off. well i i am hoping that valve can overtake the entire x i want them to take xbox down because i i also want i'm weirdly getting on to like death to streaming death to game pass and all this i think it's bad for everyone but also they make good user interfaces it feels not i don't feel like i'm being smacked in the face when i use the products i mean i like my sony playstation

I sound 100 million years on my serenipa PlayStation. But even then my Switch 2 as well, partly because I load them and they work. Yeah. They turn up, like, it's a very low bar to clear, but in this day and age, it is a necessary one to like clarify, well, it's a product or like, it's a piece of hardware and it functions. It's just like you can, it does what it says on the 10. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I, I have hope for it.

And I mean, I want, I want a steam machine. I want a Steam frame. Yeah. I'm a Vision Pro, truth. Yeah. Although I will say, like, I don't know if the steam machines will necessarily compete directly of something like the Xbox. Valve has already said that they don't plan to subsidize the hardware in a way that

would bring the price down so that it's comparable necessarily to a PlayStation or an Xbox. A lot of people are guessing more we'll be in the territory of like the PlayStation 5 pro just a little bit of price here my personal guess because they've said that it will be comparable to if you were to buy all of the components for a PC of similar power and assemble it yourself which that does bring the price down in the world of PC gaming a lot right you know you buy a mid-range PC pre-built that's going to be $1,500 and more if you assemble it yourself you could be looking at you know $800,000. My guess is that that's where it lands probably somewhere in the 800 to a thousand range.

That would make sense. That's about the price of the Rogg X ally and such. Yeah. And like again, you know, we're still in a time of tariffs and things of that nature. So, you know,

I don't think steam machines are necessarily going to be at least price-wise as accessible as an Xbox, at least out the gate. You know, maybe Valve will evolve their strategy over time. They've certainly done that with a lot of other products. But, you know, we'll see.

They, Valve is something of a black box. so they only tell you as much as they want to at any given moment. And the rest, you either divine through their actions, or they eventually come out and say, okay, well, that was kind of a miss. We're going to change things up now. All right. So to wrap us up, let's go positive.

What are you playing at the moment? What games are you enjoying? What have you enjoyed this year? Let's get to the good stuff. Okay, okay. Let's see. What have I enjoyed this year? Let's see.

I mean, Hades do. Although I feel like narratively, it's narratively, I feel like it's a lot weaker than the first game. But gameplay wise, it is so much better. It is one of those games where, you know, every time that you finish a run, you're like, well, I could do one more. And then suddenly 45 minutes or an hour or three hours have disappeared. You know, so obviously front runner for Game of the Year for me. Let's see.

I was thinking about this game the other night. Eternal Strand. It's this game that I played earlier this year from a bunch of ex-BioWer people. It's kind of like an indie take on, I would say, a mixture of like monster hunter and dragons dogma. Oh, what's on? It's on PC. And I think it might be on other platforms, too. I played it on PC.

Yeah, it's just really cool. It's one of those games where you're taking down gigantic enemies all the time, and you're doing it by, like, climbing on them and having these, like, battles that span these huge maps where, like, everything, lots of things are destructible. So, like, you know, you're fighting a dragon, you're, like, leaping on its back. It's flying away with you on it and trying to shake you off. It's burning everything down and freaking out. 3D 3D third person situation or?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. it came out at the very beginning of the year and so I was like, what games have I really liked that sort of, you know, maybe I have forgotten about it. It's like,

oh yeah, General Strand, that game rocks. That's so cool. I'm so glad they're still, because I, and I'm not saying you're being negative. There's a lot of negativity out there.

It's nice they're still making funny, fun games. Like, Hades 2 really, I played that all through early access and then in the full one. And you can just see the love. I like the ending.

I'm not going to say, with this. I like what they did. I think it was strange, but you know what? The amount of the amount of game I got out of that game. Oh yeah. I mean, there's no doubt that there is tons of game crammed in that game. The best value. Yeah, it's kind of like slaps hood. There's so much game in this game. This game can fit so much game. It's so weird to play a game like that and be like, wow, you really love making get. You really thought about this. Because when I first played it, I got kind of pissed off because the systems were so different. goal, but you can see that they've thought for hours about the intricacies of different

meta or different combinations. It's just love super. And also, um, you know, if we want a happy kind of like games industry labor story, at least as far as I understand it, like the last time I talked to them and it has been a minute, like super giant is really well run on that front. Um, like, I don't think they have had much employee attrition at all since they started. Everyone who ends up at super giant just stays at super giant. Um, and like, when I interviewed them about this years ago, they mentioned, you know, like, they have things like mandatory vacation.

Like, if you don't take your vacation by the end of the year, you have to just take time off. Like, you know, people are general. Oh, yeah, they also have policies around, like, emails. Like, if it's Friday at 5 p.m., you're not allowed to email people anymore. Even because they're like, you might be really excited about something you're working on.

If you want to keep working on something, that's fine. But, like, don't drag other people into it. Like, let people have their free time and their space. to, you know, not be embroiled in this process. I love that as well. Because the game is so tight and good and perfect. You don't have to hurt people to do this. Right.

And also, you can just, as you were saying, you can tell the people who made it care. And I think more than that, you can tell they were having fun when they were making it. They were enjoying the process of creating this thing that they cared a lot about. And ultimately, when it comes to art, commercial art, especially,

that's what you want, is, you know, on one hand, you want people to get paid. You want them to be compensated well for their labor. But on the other hand, like in an ideal world, you want them to be enjoying themselves. If we're going to be locked into jobs for our whole lives, then we may as well enjoy the process. Well, I couldn't agree more. And I must say, Aftermath gets the better offline thumbs up. We will have a link to everything in the episode notes.

No. We are also having a sale on subscriptions right now. $1 for your first month. It's a great deal if you want to come, you know, check out the site, see what we're about. Yeah, you should absolutely take advantage of that. That'll be going until the end of, well, middle of December, basically. Yeah.

Cool, and this will be out by then. And I have subscribed to Aftermath since the beginning, and I will continue to do so. Please support independent media, myself included. But really, give them a look. The new redesign is awesome. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah.

Again, thank you for having me. It's always wonderful to come on. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Rosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattersowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I.com. You can email me at E-Z at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's your ed.

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