Former Kotaku writers are launching a new video game site — and they own it this time
Four ex-Kotaku staffers are launching a new subscriber-based video games and culture publication: Aftermath. The website, which is now live, will be co-owned by Nathan Grayson, Gita Jackson, Riley MacLeod, and Luke Plunkett — all Kotaku mainstays who helped shape its incisive voice before leaving the site for one reason or another.
“[Aftermath is] about the internet and everything that comes after,” Jackson says in a recent interview I had with all four founders. Jackson elaborates: “I’m so interested in taking Aftermath and using the site to discuss the way that we live now and the way that capitalism and the internet have really intertwined and changed a lot of the ways that we find self-expression, the way that media is made, and the way that we consume it.”
Grayson adds, “I think video games are at the forefront of that.”
Plunkett says the group wants to bring a combination of skepticism — “so much of video games is filtered through PR marketing bullshit” — but also speak plainly about issues, games, and communities. The hope is that Aftermath is interesting enough that readers bookmark it and visit directly a few times a day to see what’s new, whether that’s things like reported articles, reviews, or even just 500-word posts about stuff the staff sees that they think is stupid. Some of the first stories include posts about video game unions, Alan Wake II, a bike ride MacLeod went on, and Starfield’s coffee situation.
“We really reverse-engineered the idea of blogging,” Grayson jokes. (This may sound like a familiar pitch to Verge readers!)
It’s been a devastating year for video games journalism. The Washington Post shut down Launcher (Grayson was laid off, MacLeod left thePost in October), Vice shut down Waypoint,
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