Welcome back to the Aftermath newsletter, your roundup of everything that happened at the site this week by me, Riley. We hope you've been enjoying our Back to School Week, which is part of our big goals for 2024. If you'd like to help us reach those goals, and get access to cool stuff like our comments and Discord, please consider becoming a subscriber. |
Video Game Developers Are Leaving The Industry And Doing Something, Anything Else
Luke talks to developers who've been laid off or quit about life after video games and what they've learned leaving the field they love.
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You Should Try A Chinese Fountain Pen
Chris is back with another deep dive into a world you might not be familiar with: affordable alternatives to fancy pens.
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A Year Of Hard Lessons For Twitch And Its CEO
Nathan looks at how Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has tried to turn things around, and his struggle to serve streamers, viewers, and Twitch employees.
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From Chris' article about the PS5 Pro: |
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What?
Last night, Jason Schreier at Bloomberg reported that the entire staff of Annapurna Interactive had resigned. The video game arm of a film company, Interactive was responsible for a ton of excellent and popular games, including Stray, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, and Neon White, and also has a ton of games in the pipeline whose fates now feel uncertain, though some developers have rushed to reassure fans.
This happened following the reported breakdown of negotiations to spin Interactive off into its own company. A conversation going from that to literally everyone quitting is such a shock that when the news broke last night, I rushed to write it up, only to stare at a blank Google doc not knowing what to type beyond "What?" (If you have any insight into what happened there, or anything else you want to talk about, please let us know!)
It's a positively wild development, especially from a publisher that seemed to have so much goodwill around it. And coming the same day as yet more Microsoft layoffs, it felt like one more example of the chaos in games these days. When held against July's mass layoffs at Humble Games, and the generally tough climate for indie game funding, it feels like bad news for players, developers, and employees of these companies alike.
I don't think I'm the only one hoping for the ex-Annapurna staff to launch their own company, but that kind of thing would require the funding we know is in short supply in games and tech these days. I hope that ultimately some good comes of this, and not just more of the contraction and cancelled projects we've seen far too much of lately, but time will tell. |
Here's some good stuff from around the internet this week:
- This lovely New York Times article about the few remaining Shakers, a utopian movement I dream of running away to join (if you've never heard Shaker hymns, they rule; did you know Shakers have their own music notation?)
- This Anil Dash blog about being in New York on 9/11 brought back a lot of memories for me. It's easy to be cynical given the war the attacks were used to justify, but I'd forgotten how much kindness people showed each other in those first days.
- Ethan Gach at Kotaku covered what a disaster Game Pass' weird new tiers are already turning out to be.
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Aftermath has two podcasts: Aftermath Hours, where we discuss the week's biggest gaming news, and 52 Pickup, where Gita Jackson and Alex Jaffe take you through the world of the greatest DC Comics series you've never heard of. Check them out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
And there you have it. There is apparently a dog fashion show in my neighborhood this weekend, so I hope your plans are as cool as mine. |
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