The State of the Games Industry with Nathan Grayson

Summary

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Better Offline – Episode Summary

Episode Title: The State of the Games Industry with Nathan Grayson
Host: Ed Zitron
Guest: Nathan Grayson (Co-founder, Aftermath)
Date: December 5, 2025
Podcast: Better Offline by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode of Better Offline dives into the turbulent present and uncertain future of the video game industry, with a special focus on labor, digital culture, and the impact of tech and capitalism on both game development and its communities. Ed Zitron interviews Nathan Grayson, co-founder of the worker-owned games publication Aftermath, for a candid discussion about Aftermath’s evolution, the intertwining of politics and gaming, the state of labor, and the existential challenges facing games as both an art form and an industry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Aftermath’s Journey and Relaunch

• Learning Curve of Independent, Worker-Owned Journalism

  • Nathan discusses how moving from big publishers to running a worker-owned cooperative meant learning the ins and outs of business administration, promotion, and sustainability.
  • “We entered it as five people who wrote for a living, who never really had much experience with the business side of things… now we have to do all of that ourselves.” – Nathan Grayson [03:31]

• Website Migration to Ghost & Growth

  • Aftermath relaunched on the Ghost platform for more design flexibility and subscription management.
  • Expanding with freelancers and regular contributors, aiming for long-term growth.

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2. Aftermath’s Editorial Approach: Politics, Labor, and the Culture of Games

• Distinctive Coverage:

  • Aftermath covers games with a broad, culturally critical perspective, akin to how Defector covers sports.
  • “We wanted to cover games in the way that Defector covers sports… games are relevant to many different areas as well.” – Nathan Grayson [06:25]

• Politics Inherent in Games:

  • Rejects the notion that games “shouldn’t be political.”
  • Increased relevance of gaming in mainstream politics (e.g., presidential candidates courting gaming influencers).

• Labor Reporting as a Core Pillar:

  • Games industry labor is often overlooked; Aftermath emphasizes worker perspectives and unionization efforts.
  • “People see game development as this ivory tower job versus a pretty brutal working stiff job at times. And then even more so in things like QA.” – Ed Zitron [17:41]
  • “QA is like a relationship… they get the broadest overview of what a game is like to play in its totality.” – Nathan Grayson [18:48]

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3. Culture Wars, Harassment, and the Enduring Gamergate Legacy

• Weaponization of Gamer Identity:

  • Rise of harassment mobs, especially targeting women and marginalized developers.
  • “Gamergate was the canary in the coal mine for a lot of the modern alt-right.” – Nathan Grayson [10:25]

• Recent Example – Sucker Punch Employee Firing:

  • Aftermath covered a situation where an employee was fired for a joke about Charlie Kirk, which turned into an issue of mob harassment and corp inaction.
  • “As long as the games industry continues to let that happen... these mobs will dictate the pace of conversation around games.” – Nathan Grayson [08:20]

• Failure to Target Real Industry Villains:

  • “I wish they would get angry at the real villains, which is Electronic Arts and the like… Instead, these harassment campaigns are not about video games, but just aggression against women, against any outliers.” – Ed Zitron [11:29]

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4. The State of the Industry: Capitalism, Business Models, and Labor

• Monetization and Worker Exploitation:

  • Chronic brokenness in franchise sports games, increasing monetization, and mass layoffs.
  • Games could theoretically be a site of resistance to capitalist excesses, but “they’ve been misled by various forces, including those in charge.” – Nathan Grayson [13:00]

• Collapse of AAA and Indie Myths:

  • Mass layoffs are sweeping AAA (Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Sony, etc.), but indie studios face their own funding crises.
  • “A lot of indie games are not just a few people in a garage… these can have 30, 40, even 100 people working on them and they all require paychecks.” – Nathan Grayson [21:17]

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5. Industry Technology and Hardware

• Steam Machine Revival:

  • Valve's improved approach vs. Microsoft’s ecosystem scattershot.
  • “PC is… for a lot of normal people, kind of impenetrable from a gaming standpoint. What Valve is basically saying [with Steam Machines] is: okay, we will handle all that for you.” – Nathan Grayson [25:15]

• User Experience – Valve vs. Microsoft:

  • Steam Deck/Steam OS praised for plug-and-play ease, while Microsoft’s Xbox and handheld initiatives are hindered by confusing layers and lack of focus.
  • “Every time I load it up, it feels like I’m on the fucking Las Vegas strip.” – Ed Zitron [34:31]
  • “If that is the way you are thinking and approaching… you will always be at least in second place, if not third. And Microsoft has always been in third in the gaming space.” – Nathan Grayson [37:14]

• Game Pass Critique:

  • Skepticism toward subscription-based models (Game Pass), questioning their sustainability and effect on creators.
  • “I don’t think Game Pass is good for the games industry… streaming services create a race to the bottom.” – Ed Zitron [28:33]
  • “They just are slowly and shitifying everything… to make up for the fact that this gamble is not paying off.” – Nathan Grayson [39:15]

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6. Positive Notes & Personal Recommendations

• Games Enjoyed in 2025:

  • Hades II: Praised for its addictive gameplay loop, even if the narrative isn’t as strong as the original.
    • “Every time you finish a run, you’re like ‘well, I could do one more’ and suddenly 45 minutes have disappeared.” – Nathan Grayson [42:39]
  • Eternal Strand: Noted as an innovative indie blending Monster Hunter and Dragon’s Dogma elements.
    • “It’s just really cool… gigantic enemies, destructible environments, and such.” – Nathan Grayson [43:16]

• Celebration of Supergiant’s Workplace Culture:

  • “Supergiant is really well run… they have things like mandatory vacation… if you don’t take your vacation, you have to just take time off.” – Nathan Grayson [45:25]
  • Importance of workers’ well-being and its visible impact on game quality.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Gamergate was the canary in the coal mine for a lot of the modern alt-right.”
  — Nathan Grayson [10:25]

• “I wish they would get angry at the real villains, which is Electronic Arts and the like…”
  — Ed Zitron [11:29]

• “You would think that games would be this hotbed for resistance to the ravages of capitalism… but again, they’ve been misled by various forces.”
  — Nathan Grayson [13:00]

• “Steam Deck is an incredible piece of hardware… you can just install a game on it, and it works.”
  — Nathan Grayson [25:15]

• “Every time I load it up, it feels like I’m on the fucking Las Vegas strip.”
  — Ed Zitron (on the current Xbox experience) [34:31]

• “Supergiant has mandatory vacation… let people have their free time and their space.”
  — Nathan Grayson [45:25]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:07] – Nathan Grayson on launching Aftermath and learning business operations
• [06:25] – Aftermath’s editorial focus: games and politics
• [08:20] – Covering harassment campaigns in the games industry
• [10:25] – The legacy of Gamergate and the alt-right
• [17:41] – Labor coverage in games and the reality of developer livelihoods
• [18:48] – Role of QA and the pitfalls of automating it with AI
• [21:17] – Collapse of AAA studios and struggles for indies
• [25:15] – Steam Machine’s second act: hardware, accessibility, and ecosystem
• [28:33] – Critiquing Game Pass and subscription models
• [34:31] – Ed’s rant about the messiness of modern Xbox UI
• [42:34] – Personal favorite games of the year: Hades II and Eternal Strand
• [45:25] – Supergiant’s positive workplace practices

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Closing Thoughts

This episode offers both a broad and granular look at how the games industry sits at the crossroads of technology, labor, and culture—torn between wild corporate profit strategies and the lived reality of both players and workers. By spotlighting Aftermath’s journey, broader labor issues, the impacts of toxic internet culture, and new technological frontiers, Ed and Nathan provide an essential snapshot of where gaming stands—and where it needs to fight to go.

“Ultimately, when it comes to art, commercial art especially, that's what you want… you want people to get paid, but you also want them to enjoy themselves. If we're going to be locked into jobs for our whole lives, then we may as well enjoy the process.”
— Nathan Grayson [45:55]

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For more, check out Aftermath’s recent labor reporting and subscribe for independent, politically engaged games coverage.

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Transcript

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[Ed Zitron]

Call Zone Media.

Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

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.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, thank you for having me.

[Ed Zitron]

So you just did two years. What's it been like? What, what's, what have you learned in the last two years from doing this?

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, just nothing. You know, we came in as experts. We were, you know, we didn't need to learn anything at all.

[Ed Zitron]

We were perfect.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, no, we have learned so, 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 like, yeah, you know, we're, 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.

[Ed Zitron]

So tell me about the relaunch, what you've been doing. You moved to Ghost, right?

[Nathan Grayson]

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 and Hellgate are on Ghosts and have nothing but good things to say. And like, you know, we, we appreciated 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 timeframe and Ghost already offered them, so we're like, yeah, makes perfect sense.

[Ed Zitron]

It's also grown into like a vibrant website. It was a 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?

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, yeah, we use freelancers or we accept freelance admissions. We also have two regular contributors, Nicole and Isaiah. They, they are in our slack. They write for us, you know, 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 anyone new full time yet. Hellgate I know has grown. So yeah, you know, again we are following in the 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.

[Ed Zitron]

So. And coverage wise, you're fairly wired now. Like you cover games but kind of in the Deadspin before the bullshit happened style thing where it's like gaming can mean many different things.

[Nathan Grayson]

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. Like, 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.

[Ed Zitron]

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 Home from, 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 gonna get some great emails about the fact that there are political games before that. And you're wrong. But it is, 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.

[Nathan Grayson]

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. The aftermath, haha say, but anyway, about a. 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 and 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 as. 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 games 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.

[Ed Zitron]

It is so strange. As a child, I dreamed of the day that gaming would be a normal thing that everybody talked about. And now I feel like that was a monkey's paw situation. Maybe we should have less discussion of it. You know, 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.

[Nathan Grayson]

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 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, like, 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 in the coal mine for a lot of the modern alt. Right. And that's sort of just how it all started.

[Ed Zitron]

And I wish that they would get angry at the real villains, which is Electronic Arts and the like, because can you imagine if any, even a iota of this vile poison in their veins was a. Like, I. I know this is somewhat of a tangent, but I swear I'm going somewhere playing Madden last night. Cause I ha. And it's just this game has been broken in the same way for 15 years. There are little you can play a game and without fail, we'll See a bug, a bit, 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 women, aggression against any outliers, which is ironic considering gate like gamers historic outlier status.

[Nathan Grayson]

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.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Nathan Grayson]

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.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Nathan Grayson]

These companies have found 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, which.

[Ed Zitron]

They shouldn't do to anyone, just to be clear.

[Nathan Grayson]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

No one should.

[Nathan Grayson]

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 resistance to the ravages of capitalism in that so many games present effectively what are supposed to be fair structures. Right. You get out what you put in, 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 egalitarianism. And so you would think that gamers would look at 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 again, they've been misled by a bunch of various forces, including the powers that be, including the people who 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 this could be the place where it all start. Gamers could start the revolution.

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[Bowen Yang]

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[Matt Rogers]

Hey Bowen, it's gift season. Ugh.

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[Ed Zitron]

But I think the aftermath does a really good job of that because you have the social stuff. You the term social justice. It's the correct one, but it's been bounced around too much now. But it's. 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 do 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.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah. Right. Till it gets replaced by AI in Square Enix's case.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Nathan Grayson]

That you.

[Ed Zitron]

I could not remember the company. Thank you for being smart.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, they, 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 it's like.

[Ed Zitron]

But you just actually want 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?

[Nathan Grayson]

So another big problem with that whole line of reasoning is that QA is like a relationship, right?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Nathan Grayson]

In 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 reproduce 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. 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 broader overview of what is kind of turning out to be. And they're all of those things that I just mentioned.

[Ed Zitron]

Quality 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 it's. If you do want to change things, you need to educate people about what's going wrong and why. I'm not saying that vile alt right people are finding 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 some 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 triple A, 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.

[Nathan Grayson]

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 Triple A 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 Microsoft, Sony, ea, Ubisoft, Square Enix, whatever, it's had major layoffs in the past couple 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 10 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 all require paychecks. And so quickly the price for that on a per annual basis goes up to over a million dollars easily. And so it's like 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.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, even I in my own ignorance didn't even think of the kind of messy middle of what a hundred people working, 100 people would be. An indie game studio.

[Nathan Grayson]

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 Claire obscure Expedition 33 you get, which that studio is allegedly around 30 people, but they had tons of other folks touch 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.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I mean even my favorite game of the year, Dead Zone, Rogue by Prophecy, Prophecy games, which I love, even that one, they did Tribes three Rivals and just appear to have stopped updating it, which it's just.

Almost feels like we're reaching a breaking point with this.

[Nathan Grayson]

And I was briefly, briefly talk about the number of times that people have tried to bring back tribes and it didn't work.

[Ed Zitron]

It's insane. How many tribes get 17, 25, 100 of them there. I've been playing Tribes games since I was like in my teens.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, why like 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 money thing 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.

[Ed Zitron]

Six of them it looks like. My bad, I can't count. It's 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 3 Rivals, but if you look at Dead Zone Rogue, which is an FPS roguelike, it's very, I don't want to say small, but it's condensed. It's like a very focused game. But I want to change because I'll just talk about Dead some rogue.

To the Steam machine. How are you feeling? So Steam Machine, as you'll know from the episode before this one with Steve Burke, is the new gaming console style Steam PC thing. How are you feeling about it? I'm oddly, hopefully.

[Nathan Grayson]

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 rooster. 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 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, that the PC is for a lot of normal people, kind of impenetrable from a gaming standpoint. You know, you gotta 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. 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 things working in their favor on that front. One is that they have since made SteamOS. SteamOS is a great little operating system for video games. That's the whole point. And it's unlimited 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 handheld. Steam Deck is an incredible piece of hardware. It is deceptively powerful. It feels really nice in your hands and it's all entirely Steam OS 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. Valve has this entire system where like they basically like 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 or your monitor so you can flip between. Yeah, yeah, you can do. Yeah, it's so. It's so nice. It's, it's, I mean, say. Well, about Valve. They are like a libertarian kind of nightmare company, but they do still make cool, cool stuff. Unlike every other video game that's not trying to like cut their way to profitability by laying everyone off.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm, 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 $1200 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. I don't think Game Pass is good for the games industry.

[Nathan Grayson]

No, no. And I think a lot of people would agree with you, at least in the games industry.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's. I don't think, I think it create. 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, I know that deeply imperfect company, but I genuinely think Microsoft might be walking away from the Xbox or I mean they're not sure why they have it anymore.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, well, I mean they, they have their whole like 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, you know, in your living room. Like it could be on your smart tv, it could be on your phone, it could even like be in your car. And like it just seems in general that they don't really know what the brand is anymore. That also goes back to like the game selection. Like what is the last major first party Xbox game that came out or that like became the face of the platform. You know, 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 Halo or that's, that's Xbox.

[Ed Zitron]

So I actually just had to look this up for the first party games. Doom, the Dark Ages.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, yeah. Because Microsoft bought ID Software and 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 a while to explain, they did let a lot of people unionize, but then also the most recent layoffs cut into the unions pretty badly too.

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[Ed Zitron]

I don't think Microsoft knows what the fuck they're doing because you talk about they. You're correct in saying, yeah, they want to build the ecosystem, but ecosystem fucking sucks.

[Nathan Grayson]

Mm.

[Ed Zitron]

I remember it used to be a while ago that I, you went 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's fucking bizarre.

[Nathan Grayson]

It's about to get way worse. Because you know, Microsoft, as you well 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, 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 ensure that it's basically everywhere. But, you know, so like the. Microsoft recently put out their own version of the Asus Rog Ally, which is a handheld.

[Ed Zitron]

I like my Rog Ally, but like everything I've heard about the new one, I thought they were going to do something special with it.

[Nathan Grayson]

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 the box, you're ready to go. And instead I guess like when you first open it up, you've got to install all 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.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so weird, like, compared to the Steam deck as well. I'm talking about the Rog Ally X before the Xbox One. It's just front ends on front ends. It's just a. We've got an ASUS layer. 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, 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.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ed Zitron]

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.

[Nathan Grayson]

Right, right. I mean it's a mix of loathing for the customer and then like, 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.

[Ed Zitron]

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.

[Nathan Grayson]

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 studios. That's why they bought Activision Blizzard and everything else. Because they're like, well, we have this service that is 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 Game Pass 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 that Game Pass is profitable, but that's only if you, like, 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 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, yeah, for Activision Blizzard alone.

[Ed Zitron]

Insane.

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Yeah.

[Nathan Grayson]

But no, once you realize that, and I think Microsoft did, then they're like, ah, okay, we gotta, you know, diversify this further. We gotta figure out something else to do. And so they started saying, okay, well then we're gonna have our big, you know, first party games on other platforms. We're gonna sell them on PlayStation and other places as well because that'll help us recoup some costs. We gotta crank up the price of Game Pass because that might help absorb some of the cost. And so like, they just are slowly and shitifying everything like, you know, as with every other company, to make up for the fact that they, this gamble is not paying off.

[Ed Zitron]

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, 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 old, my Sony PlayStation but even then my Switch 2 as well. Partly because I load them and they work. Yeah, they turn like it's a very.

[Nathan Grayson]

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.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

I have hope for it and I mean I want a Steam machine, I want a Steam Frame Vision Pro Truther.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah. Although I will say like I don't know if these Steam machines will necessarily compete directly with 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 pricier. 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 1500 dollars or 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 1000 range. That would make sense.

[Ed Zitron]

That's about the price of the Rog Rog X Ally and so yeah, and.

[Nathan Grayson]

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, 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.

[Ed Zitron]

All right, so to wrap us up, let's go positive. What are you playing at the moment? What games are you enjoying? What. What have you enjoyed this year?

[Nathan Grayson]

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 bioware people. It's kind of like an indie take on, I would say, a mixture of Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma.

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, that sounds. 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.

[Ed Zitron]

Is this like a 3D, 3D, third person situation or.

[Nathan Grayson]

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

[Ed Zitron]

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.

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[Ed Zitron]

They're still making funny, fun games like Hades 2.

[Nathan Grayson]

Really?

[Ed Zitron]

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 gonna say what it is. 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.

[Nathan Grayson]

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no doubt that there is tons of game crammed in that game.

[Ed Zitron]

The best value.

[Nathan Grayson]

It's kind of like slaps hood. There's so much game in this game. This game can fit so much game.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so, it's so weird to play a game like that and be like, wow, you really love making it. 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.

[Nathan Grayson]

And also, 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. 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. And like when I interviewed them about this years ago, they mentioned, you know, like they, 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. Oh yeah. They also have policies around like emails. Like if it's Friday at 5pm 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. But like don't drag other people into it. Like let people have their free time and their space to, you know, I love be embroiled in this process.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, because the game is so tight and good and perfect. You don't have to hurt people to do this.

[Nathan Grayson]

Right? Well and also you can just as you were saying, you can tell that 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 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.

[Ed Zitron]

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 get in the episode Notes.

[Nathan Grayson]

We are also having a, we're 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.

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[Ed Zitron]

Which, 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, give, give them a look. The new redesign is awesome. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us.

[Nathan Grayson]

Yeah, again, thank you for having me. It's always wonderful to come on.

[Ed Zitron]

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] matt o s o w s k-I.com you can email me at ezeteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat where's your ed to visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

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[Nathan Grayson]

For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out.

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On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Are measurably weaker than men 30 years ago. Grip strength, bone density, muscle mass all declining. We don't move like we used to. Your grandfather lifted and carried all day long. You sit at a desk then try to make up for it with a 45 minute workout. But here's what military trainers have used for decades. Load bearing during normal activity. Research shows it can burn an extra 400 calories daily. The Wolf Tactical Weighted Vest True fit engineering means it locks to your core without flopping around and risking injury. Turn your morning walk, your chores, your entire day into functional strength training. Go to wolftactical.com to see more.

[Sophie Cunningham]

That's wolftactical.com this is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or osa, in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snore loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive, and when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that, because all Odoo software is connected on a single, affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting. All linked and talking to each other. Check out Odoo at o d o o dot com. That's o d o o dot com.

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Odoo Advertiser]

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