The sale of Polygon to a Canadian pornographer final yr might need felt to some on the standard gaming web site like being NPCs in a Hitman stage. A cloak-and-dagger procession of NDAs clued in a few of the employees to an ominous change in possession coming within the days forward, however nobody knew who else knew, or the total particulars of what the sale would entail.
“I didn’t know the way many individuals have been underneath NDA,” Polygon‘s former deputy editor Maddy Myers just lately instructed me (full disclosure: Myers was additionally beforehand the deputy editor of Kotaku). “I didn’t know who knew and who didn’t, and I didn’t know that everybody who wasn’t underneath NDA wasn’t going to be retained. But it surely did appear suspicious, as a result of I used to be like, I do know not everybody is aware of in regards to the sale. I don’t know why some persons are being instructed forward of time. This appears fishy to me, and it was a fishy, bizarre time interval.”
Valnet, the clicking farm that ended up buying Polygon from Jim Bankoff’s Vox Media for an undisclosed sum, ended up shedding many of the employees, together with all of its union workers. The location was fully uprooted in a single day whereas the brand new homeowners rushed in a group of underpaid freelancers to start out instantly churning out new articles.
“They basically instructed us simply sufficient to make us really feel prefer it was our solely choice to come back over,” stated Zoë Hannah, Polygon‘s former games editor. “The best way I’ve described it since then is that I really feel like each of us have been used as bargaining chips for this sale. They actually needed managers to come back over in order that they may hit the bottom operating with these contractors that that they had already lined up, we discovered later.”
Myers and Hannah have been spared whereas over 30 of their colleagues have been laid off, however staying on the web site was untenable. “It was a couple of week and a half in the place I noticed, like, okay, yeah, this, this isn’t going to work for me,” Myers stated. “I’m actually personally depressed about how many individuals are gone. I don’t be ok with changing them. It really was like my very own private emotional state at the moment, I used to be like, I would like a reset.”
Hannah confronted Vox HR after the sale about feeling misled in the course of the run-up. “I instructed them this was in unhealthy religion, I really feel like I used to be not given any choices right here.” She stated the weeks that adopted led to extra disillusionment with the scenario, describing her remaining month on the web site as “kicking and screaming.” Each Myers and Hannah ended up leaving Polygon in June.
They may have tried to seek out different jobs in digital video games media or, as has turn out to be more and more widespread for skilled expertise, ditched the sphere solely. As a substitute, they determined to make their very own online game web site. It could analyze video games particularly by the lens of gender and id at a time when these views have been squeezed out of different shops underneath strain from the all-homogenizing algorithm. It could be self-owned so it might by no means be bought out from underneath them. It could be called Mothership.
Mothership = Teen Vogue however for video video games
“It’s Teen Vogue, however for video video games, a little bit of a bittersweet pitch now that Teen Vogue has been completely gutted,” Myers stated. “I really feel like that’s a part of the pitch as effectively. It’s like what The Mary Sue was once, however what if it didn’t must publish dozens and dozens of tales a day, and it had fewer tales a day and it had extra reporting and extra criticism that you simply didn’t have to put in writing in 20 minutes?”
Mothership may have podcasts, quick kind video, and even a publication, however it is going to nonetheless primarily be a web site, one the place readers go each day to learn sensible issues from sensible folks and that embraces identities and views which are nonetheless radically underrepresented throughout the remainder of the video games media house. What the pair is referring to as the location’s launch problem will embrace the work of Mary Sue cofounder Susana Polo and different former Polygon colleagues like Nicole Clark and Nicole Carpenter. Subscriptions beginning at $7 a month (there’s a lifetime low cost for individuals who join forward of the January 26 launch) will fund high quality journalism and criticism that doesn’t must feed a gauntlet of show advertisements with countless clicks.
“There will probably be no programmatic advertisements in anyway on Mothership, which is badge of honor,” Hannah stated.
“Folks keep in mind what The Mary Sue was once like when it had a employees of 5 as a substitute of a employees of 1, and so they keep in mind what Teen Vogue was once like and so they additionally consider within the concept, and particularly after I speak to ladies I do know who play video games, and queer folks I do know who play video games, I simply see the sunshine of their eyes after they hear this, and so they’re like, ‘I simply need this so badly, and I consider in it a lot,’ and that’s occurred a lot extra typically than I anticipated,” Myers stated.
She continued, “I feel once you provide you with an concept like this, you’re like, ‘effectively, I’ll simply write for me. I’ll write for the me up to now that needed a web site like this and it’s okay if perhaps six folks learn it,’ you recognize, like, that’s okay. However there have been so many individuals which are like, ‘no, I actually need this,’ that it’s given me and Zoe much more confidence that this is likely to be an actual concept. We must always truly do that, we should always cease interviewing for different jobs and put apart all of our different issues that we have been sort of interested by doing and take this critically.”
Mothership is the most recent in a sequence of subscription-backed unbiased video games media shops which are blazing an alternate path by the present collapse of the web because of social media monopolies, altering media consumption habits, and the proliferation of AI slop. These embrace new ventures like Aftermath and Second Wind in addition to long-standing manufacturers that just lately went indie like Giant Bomb and Digital Foundry. It’s additionally the fourth to come back out of Polygon sale, with former employees additionally founding the web sites Rogue, Design Room, and Post Games.
That final one is {a magazine} podcast sequence by former Polygon EIC Chris Plante, who interviewed Myers and Hannah about their new web site and the historical past of ladies in video games media for the latest episode. Notably, out of all of those gaming websites, Mothership is among the few not staffed solely and even primarily by straight dudes. At a time when the nationwide paper of report openly pontificates about whether or not feminism destroyed the fashionable office and indignant on-line mobs embrace anti-woke conspiracies, Mothership isn’t shying away from taking a look at gaming inside an identity-first framework.
“We all know that video games journalists and critics who’ve coated the intersection between gaming and gender, our bodies, and id have confronted severe backlash up to now, and the contributors right here at Mothership have confronted it ourselves, too,” the location’s announcement reads. “Together with your assist, we’ll construct a sustainable enterprise that may afford rigorous enhancing processes, sensitivity readers, and authorized counsel when mandatory for high-risk investigations of high-profile video games studios and figures.”
“Feminism, I really feel like, has turn out to be a unclean phrase in loads of circles,” Myers instructed me. “It’s [considered] cringe and I do really feel like we’re in a extremely, actually bizarre place with it proper now, and it’s unusual to me as a author who’s been doing all of it alongside and has watched all of these completely different phases occur, some progress, after which some blowback, after which some progress, after which some blowback. I really feel like I’ve seen that all through my profession, and I very a lot really feel like we’re in a blowback part proper now, however that’s a part of why I’m like, we have to hold doing this. Now we have to maintain making an attempt.”
