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Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

aftermath.site

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Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#5

Post by lloydatkinson »

SmoothBrain12 wrote: post #2

What a time to be alive

Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t really know much about kotaku.

But I do know game journalists don’t exactly produce the greatest content, everything from “the game is too hard 1/10” to IGNs obvious paid for scores to “this game has a male character, therefore it must be sexist”.

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#7

Post by Goronmon »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #5
SmoothBrain12 wrote: post #2

What a time to be alive

Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t really know much about kotaku. But I do know game journalists don’t exactly produce the greatest content, everything from “the game is too hard 1/10” to IGNs obvious paid for scores to “this game has a male character, therefore it must be sexist”.

From my experience, "great content" to gamers is just content that confirms their pre-existing opinions and biases. Anything that goes beyond that is labeled "bad journalism".

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#8

Post by keiferski »

I recently came across The Game Discoverer Newsletter, which seems to be about 100x more insightful and data rich than boilerplate journalism like Kotaku. They also have some other interesting data tools for game developers.

More broadly, I'm not sure general "journalism" really has a bright future outside of the big names that can field huge advertising budgets. I'm more convinced that niche sites should specialize on a specific topic and figure out a use-case that makes it worth subscribing to from a business perspective, not an ideological one.

Links:

1. A good overview post: https://simonowens.substack.com/p/how-the-gamediscoverco-new...

2. https://newsletter.gamediscover.co

3. https://gamediscover.co

Re: Ex-Kotaku staff go independent and launch Aftermath

#9

Post by catapart »

I enjoyed Kotaku enough to keep reading through all of their Theil/Hogan bullshit, so I'm very happy that there is now a spiritual successor, that ditches the legacy crap and lets those bloggers do what they do best.

I wish there were some more of their more "journalist"-type peer that made the migration over, but Kotaku seems to have done fine without them, so I don't think that's going to be a problem.

I will say that the site design is really bad. I hope they get something less "stock" pretty soon. I don't mind minimalism and clean design but...this isn't that. It looks like the pre-made "blog" template from some site-builder app. A design that highlights what they do best, while keeping news available chronologically, would really make the website comfortable to browse. Though, I do wonder if I'm just the odd man out, still going to a website to read gaming news. If they're delivering it through some kind of feed or whatever, I guess it doesn't really matter what the site looks like. Still; if they care about the site looking good, I hope they change it soon.

Other than that, a quick perusal of the content that's available seems to be very in line with what I would have found on Kotaku, so I'm very happy to just move all of my reading over to aftermath. It's a great plan and I wish them all the best in it! They've at least got one reader (though, not quite a subscriber; at least with what is currently offered).

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