The sale of Polygon to a Canadian pornographer final yr might need felt to some on the well-liked gaming web site like being NPCs in a Hitman degree. A cloak-and-dagger procession of NDAs clued in among the employees to an ominous change in possession coming within the days forward, however nobody knew who else knew, or the complete particulars of what the sale would entail.
“I didn’t know the way many individuals had been beneath NDA,” Polygon‘s former deputy editor Maddy Myers not too long ago 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 beneath NDA wasn’t going to be retained. Nevertheless it did appear suspicious, as a result of I used to be like, I do know not everybody is aware of concerning the sale. I don’t know why some individuals 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 a lot of the employees, together with all of its union workers. The location was utterly uprooted in a single day whereas the brand new house owners rushed in a crew 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 possibility to come back over,” stated Zoë Hannah, Polygon‘s former video games editor. “The way in which I’ve described it since then is that I really feel like each of us had been used as bargaining chips for this sale. They actually needed managers to come back over in order that they might hit the bottom working with these contractors that that they had already lined up, we discovered later.”
Myers and Hannah had been spared whereas over 30 of their colleagues had been laid off, however staying on the web site was untenable. “It was a few 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 through the run-up. “I instructed them this was in dangerous 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 state of affairs, describing her remaining month on the web site as “kicking and screaming.” Each Myers and Hannah ended up leaving Polygon in June.
They might have tried to seek out different jobs in digital video games media or, as has change into more and more widespread for skilled expertise, ditched the sector completely. As an alternative, they determined to make their very own online game web site. It might analyze video games particularly by the lens of gender and identification at a time when these views have been squeezed out of different retailers beneath stress from the all-homogenizing algorithm. It might be self-owned so it might by no means be bought out from beneath them. It might be known as 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 utterly 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 need to 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 write down in 20 minutes?”
Mothership may have podcasts, quick type video, and even a e-newsletter, however it would nonetheless primarily be an internet site, one the place readers go each day to learn good issues from good 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 positioning’s launch concern 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 enroll forward of the January 26 launch) will fund high quality journalism and criticism that doesn’t need to feed a gauntlet of show adverts with limitless clicks.
“There will probably be no programmatic adverts by any means on Mothership, which is badge of honor,” Hannah stated.
“Individuals bear in mind what The Mary Sue was once like when it had a employees of 5 as an alternative of a employees of 1, and so they bear in mind what Teen Vogue was once like and so they additionally consider within the concept, and particularly once 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 usually than I anticipated,” Myers stated.
She continued, “I feel while you give you an concept like this, you’re like, ‘effectively, I’ll simply write for me. I’ll write for the me prior to now that needed an internet site like this and it’s okay if perhaps six folks learn it,’ you already know, like, that’s okay. However there have been so many individuals which are like, ‘no, I really need this,’ that it’s given me and Zoe much more confidence that this is perhaps an actual concept. We should always really do that, we must always cease interviewing for different jobs and put apart all of our different issues that we had been form of excited about doing and take this severely.”
Mothership is the most recent in a sequence of subscription-backed impartial video games media retailers 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 not too long ago went indie like Large 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 Submit Video 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 girls in video games media for the most recent episode. Notably, out of all of those gaming websites, Mothership is likely one of the few not staffed completely and even primarily by straight dudes. At a time when the nationwide paper of document overtly pontificates about whether or not feminism destroyed the trendy office and indignant on-line mobs embrace anti-woke conspiracies, Mothership isn’t shying away from 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 identification have confronted critical backlash prior to now, and the contributors right here at Mothership have confronted it ourselves, too,” the positioning’s announcement reads. “Together with your assist, we’ll construct a sustainable enterprise that may afford rigorous modifying processes, sensitivity readers, and authorized counsel when essential for high-risk investigations of high-profile video games studios and figures.”
“Feminism, I really feel like, has change into a grimy phrase in a variety 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 totally 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 section proper now, however that’s a part of why I’m like, we have to hold doing this. We now have to maintain making an attempt.”
