Nathan Grayson

what used to be a grind can now be accomplished in an evening. there is a hilarious juxtaposition between how much the game doesn’t respect your time in places and then SUPER does in others

big fan of warframe’s approach to over a decade of expansions. unlike destiny, which vaulted a bunch of crucial missions over the years, warframe just makes important quests — like building your sick spaceship for cooperative intergalactic battles — go really, really fast

Wikipedia Editors Adopt ‘Speedy Deletion’ Policy for AI Slop Articles “The ability to quickly generate a lot of bogus content is problematic if we don't have a way to delete it just as quickly.”

pay very close attention to Wikipedia to find a way out of the AI slop internet www.404media.co/wikipedia-ed...

Fake Labubus on a shelf, some smiling human-like figures in animal outfits

Labubu to Lafufu: 'See you in court'
aftermath.site/labubu-lafufu-...

you might have at various points found yourself wondering: why are rich people so obsessed with big boats? well...

From the video game "and Roger:" A girl being pushed in at a table by a man, with the words "But this is my house. Who are you?"

And Roger is a short, moving game about family
aftermath.site/and-roger-swit...

I cried this morning because so many of my wonderful colleagues were laid off today, even after the success of IGN Live and Comic-Con.

After today's layoffs, I am now the only social team member left in LA.
How am I supposed to do my job?

I’m sure layoffs keep hitting the union completely randomly, with no specific underlying intent at all

Today, IGN Entertainment announced that it would be laying off eight members of the IGN Creators Guild. This is 12% of our bargaining unit, and comes just days after our sister union, the Ziff Davis Creators Guild, underwent similar layoffs impacting 15% of their members. It also comes just months after our multibillion-dollar parent company, Ziff Davis, instituted a company-wide buyout that shrunk our unit numbers, with the express intent of avoiding future layoffs. And it comes just a little over one year after three of our members were laid off almost immediately after our union went public. The company has told us that the reason for this layoff stems from a Ziff Davis-mandate to cut costs despite several quarters in a row of year-over-year revenue increases, to which IGN Entertainment responded by coming for our members' jobs. This is perplexing to us, as we are told again and again that IGN Entertainment has had a tremendously successful year thus far thanks to their hard work. In just the last few months, our members have been absolutely essential to major events and livestreams, including San Diego ComicCon, Summer of Gaming, and IGN Live. Every single person impacted today was involved in and critical to the success of those events. Meanwhile, IGN Entertainment continues to spend money on costly acquisitions, only to turn around and gut those companies in the same way it is cutting away at IGN itself. For instance, last year, it acquired Gamer Network, and almost immediately laid off a number of staff critical to making those sites successful. The company has not responded to the union's questions about whether its budget for future acquisitions is being reconsidered as a cost-saving measure alongside these other apparently necessary personnel cuts. At a time when it is more necessary than ever to support its creators, IGN Entertainment is choosing to eliminate the individuals who ensure IGN remains competitive as generative AI

threatens our reach. We have been told that expert opinion pieces, original interviews, and work that leverages our staff's deep knowledge of gaming, tech, and entertainment are all essential to combating AI summarization and regurgitation of our work. Management has responded by cutting several individuals who do that exact work, as well as others whose job it is to ensure that these written and video pieces are published in a speedy manner — another component of combating AI we're told is critical. This continued cycle of repeated, aggressive cuts to our staff and being asked to do more with less, only for management to continue to spend on new business it isn't interested in sustaining cannot continue. We will enforce our interim agreement that guarantees better severance and other protections to laid off members, as well as demand additional support for those impacted. We will continue to bargain over our first contract with the aim of enshrining even better protections against further layoffs, working conditions continuously degraded by understaffing, and the encroachment of generative AI. And we won't stop fighting to ensure IGN remains the best destination for trustworthy, original, exciting, and creative work covering video games, entertainment, and tech. While IGN Entertainment management may not value us, we value one another and the incredible work we can do together. Behind the articles, videos, social posts, playlists, and maps of IGN are human beings, not just numbers on a spreadsheet to be pushed around when some number at the top isn't big enough. Without us, there is no IGN.

Today, IGN laid off eight extremely valuable members of our union and workforce via directive from our parent company, Ziff Davis. This, after two incredibly successful live events IGN Live and SDCC, and yet another corporate acquisition.

Please take a moment to read and share our full statement:

Hello! You may have seen it, but I am one of the employees that have been impacted by layoffs at IGN.

It's been a great six years, but this now means I am looking to apply my talents to something new and exciting.

Raven Software Workers Secure First Contract at Microsoft The contract builds on the recent organizing momentum by Microsoft video game workers organizing with CWA to raise standards across the video game industry.

In 2022, Raven Software workers became the first unit at Activision Blizzard to form a union.

Now, they've secured a first contract ensuring wage increases and the elimination of mandatory crunch. #unionstrong 💪

please do it and tell me how it goes

if you appreciate boats (today) and video games (on all other days), subscribe to @aftermath.site! being reader-supported allows us to write frankly about the systems that undergird society and, occasionally, go on voyages

aftermath.site/products

Oh so THAT'S why rich people love yachts! It's because like everything else it's all about getting more money!

aftermath's front page with two headlines: "With A Boat And Some Help, You Can Read Moby Dick In A Day" and "Gabe Newell Bought A Yacht Company"

btw it's boat day on @aftermath.site

you might have at various points found yourself wondering: why are rich people so obsessed with big boats? well...

[bunch of guys who haven't read a piece of fiction in 20 years] my feeling is the kids don't read anymore

The Anti-Porn Crusade That Censored Steam and Itch.io Started 30 Years Ago Keywords and tags have never been a useful metric for distilling nuance. Pushing for regulations based on them is repeating a 30-year history of porn panic online.

The Anti-Porn Crusade That Censored Steam and Itch.io Started 30 Years Ago

🔗 www.404media.co/steam-itchio...

My “why” is because I’m a sucker for anything that requires endurance. It’s because I used to go to the Mystic Seaport Museum as a kid and couldn’t pass up the chance to spend a night in its recreated historic village. It’s because Mystic’s marathon takes place on a tall ship called the Charles W. Morgan, America’s oldest still-floating commercial vessel and the last survivor of a 19th century American whaling fleet. I also went because, for much the same reasons Ishmael says he goes to sea in the book’s opening lines–"whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet"--the marathon sounded like the opposite of the way I spend most of my days camped out in front of my computer, pinned between the despairing onslaught of the news and the relentless pressure of running a business. I wanted to be with strangers I didn’t know from online, with a paper book before me; I wanted ropes and wood and water; I wanted to do something weird and silly and most likely miserable that was about as far from my daily life as I could get.

This weekend I attended the Mystic Seaport's Moby Dick marathon. I spent the night on a tall ship. I talked about Assassin's Creed. I had a panic attack. I healed two decades of queer childhood trauma. I read one of the densest classic books in 25 hours. Gift link: aftermath.site/moby-dick-ma...

if something is good and interesting, then who gives a shit how much of a game it is or isn’t? and who’s defining what a game is, in this case? none of this matters! trying to label works of art — or anything, for that matter — is the basest, least useful form of criticism

here’s a thought: what if this sentence ended at “disco elysium is a great work of art” and then we appreciated/criticized it on its own terms. wouldn’t that be fun

Subscribe to @aftermath.site if you want to read 5000 words about the Mystic Seaport's Moby Dick marathon on Monday, because I own the website and no one can stop me from giving them to you with questions like "what does this have to do with video games"

Challenges to an existing paradigm require more than a tiktok can capture. It requires doing! Demonstrating the radical New. Whether through language, shame, support, violence, care - and so on - and showing the power of your ideological commitments and what they can do for you and those around you.

It is obviously bad that when you look for dating advice you are largely fed into streams of cis-hetero-sexist content, but the reason that rises to the top is it's actually not challenging any norms! What Tate and his ilk are arguing for is the horrifying Real of actually existing patriarchy!

I basically don't believe that the production of a particular kind of "leftist content" will ever be a meaningful counter-weight to "reactionary content."

warframe’s in-game client downloading 9 gigs of update data, which will apparently take 1.5 hours

ah, well. nevertheless

warframe miraculously downloaded to my iphone

apologies airport wifi, I was not familiar with your game

warframe downloading — I use the term loosely — to my iphone

got bored in the tsa line, decided to test the limits of airport wifi

a spotify page displaying hosts: nathan “chris” grayson, chris person, and chris plante

by the way, I wasn’t kidding about changing my name to chris for the purposes of this episode

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