Aftermath Hours Live

Please note this event takes place in the Patron Lounge

Join Nathan Grayson, Gita Jackson, and Chris Person of Aftermath for the first-ever live edition of the site’s weekly podcast, Aftermath Hours! To celebrate New York Games Week, they’ll be joined by two special guests—NYU Game Center director Naomi Clark and Half Mermaid (Her Story, Immortality) director Sam Barlow—for a wide-ranging discussion of NYC’s games scene.

How does NYC’s culture influence the games people make here? What makes its video game scene unique compared to perceived hotspots like Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and why doesn’t it get as much recognition for producing great games as those cities? What are local entities like the Mayor’s Office doing to facilitate game creation—already an expensive and time-consuming endeavor—in a city where prices are sky high? And is Zohran Mamdani the city’s first gamer mayor? Is he really? They’ll answer all these questions and more!

Aftermath is a worker-owned, reader-supported website about video games, the internet, and everything that comes after, founded by former staff of Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Inspired by the likes of Defector and 404 Media, we seek to publish unflinching coverage that is beholden neither to companies nor SEO. In a time of rampant video game industry upheaval—layoffs and studio closures abound as executives force AI down everyone’s throats—we do our best to center the people who create games first and foremost. Other video game websites, increasingly hollowed out by corporate interests, can't always tell the whole truth. We can, and we do. (Also, if games aren't your thing, Chris regularly writes about tech and gadgets at incredible length, Gita loves da movies, and Riley is better at conveying his regrets than anyone who's ever lived. Truly, Aftermath contains multitudes.)