Hello, it's Riley again, rounding up the past week at Aftermath. Thanks for signing up for our free newsletter. If you'd like to be able to read all our stories, as well as take part in our comments, Discord, or other perks, you can check out our subscription tiers by clicking the button below. We depend on reader support to keep this thing going, so if you like what you see here, we'd love to have you. On to the blogs! | It's Not That Deep
Over the past few days, I've witnessed a stream of unease about how Palworld and Skibidi Toilet and whatever signal that a new video game industry, a new internet, and a new world have arrived – that this revolution crept up on the adults in the room, and they've been caught with their pants down. I just don't see it. I mean yeah, a lot of us are getting old! And the particular shape that echoing trends take shifts from generation to generation, in a way that leads them to grow less recognizable over time.
But Palworld is just a slightly slicker version of something we've seen dozens of times before, built on a foundation of things old heads fear they don't understand.
Read the whole story here |  | X-Wing Is Video Gaming's Greek Fire
There was a balance to X-Wing's marriage of viewpoint, speed, joystick sensitivity and acceleration that, more than any of its Star Wars trappings, cemented its position as a classic. To fly a starfighter in X-Wing--or any of its sequels, since the setup remained largely unchanged--was to take part in an experience that can best be described as lubricated…
Was it realistic? Of course not. Was it fun? Hell yeah.
Read the whole story here |  | The Best Gaming Chair Is A Used Office Chair From Craigslist
You may ask yourself, "Why have you found so many expensive chairs, Chris?" And if I had to guess it's because I live in New York City during a once-in-a-lifetime collapse of the office market. Despite efforts to force workers back into the office, people are still working from home or in a hybrid setting. More than 95 million square feet of office space, or roughly 30 Empire State Buildings' worth, is currently empty, according to 60 Minutes. I'm sure that'll work itself out without disastrous consequences, but the net result is that a record amount of high end office furniture is finding its way into secondhand liquidators and, even worse, landfills, according to The New York Times this summer. A New Jersey liquidator interviewed in that piece said that they have "never seen so many Herman Miller chairs," with another remarking that "the amount of waste in this industry would boggle your mind."
Read the whole story here |  | It Happened To Me: I Was A Daily Video Game Blogger
When I was in college earning my degree in cinema studies (lol), I learned quickly that the best way to be well-versed in the language of cinema is to just watch as many movies as you can. Even bad movies have lessons for you. The same is true for playing video games—working that hard, playing as many games as I did for so long, has given me the language to describe gameplay systems and the tension of playing a game to a greater degree of skill than I had before then. It has also taken the bloom away from the rose a little bit. It's hard to be excited for something when you know that you'll be staring at it in the dark of your apartment at midnight, long after your roommates have gone to bed. It's hard to be excited for something that fundamentally feels like unpaid work.
Read the whole story here | Question of the Week
Palworld continues to take the world by storm in its unholy mashup of Pokemon/Ark/Minecraft/et al. In some ways, "what if every game were just this one game?" is a horrifying vision of the IP-cursed future–but on the other, it's fun to imagine combining everything I like into a niche monstrosity that, given my personal tastes, would surely be a commercial failure. I'm thinking a stealth game like Dishonored with temperature and survival stats a la The Long Dark, as well as immersive sim elements and maybe some building from games like Cities: Skylines or Stardew Valley in there too. Does that exist yet? What's your own personal Palworld? | We (finally) have a new podcast, Aftermath Hours! It'll sound familiar if you've been joining us on our Twitch channel on Thursdays, but if you'd like to hear Aftermath staff and sometimes guests discuss the week's news, now you can do that wherever you get your podcasts! You can find it alongside our other pod, 52 Pickup, on our podcast page. | And that's all for this week! Enjoy your weekend! | | | | |
