Nathan Grayson
Appearances
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And as for why I write about video games, I grew up playing them and knew that I loved them and always wanted to get into doing something with them. And then when I was in middle school and high school, I just read video game magazines all the time. That's all I did between classes and when I finished my homework and stuff. And so eventually I was just like, how do I do this?
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah. I mean, it's super weird for one. I mean, just to, to start like Marvel rivals is one of the biggest breakout hits that we have seen in video games in like a hot minute, especially if you consider that, like there's this sort of live service firewall we've seen where like, if you try to enter that space, you're probably not going to succeed.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
You're probably just going to bounce off of it and fail pretty hard. I mean, the games like Concord, um, But Marvel Rivals broke through and became this like phenomenon or phenomenon. And so it's weird to lay off anyone at this stage when you would expect them to be like, OK, we have this game that's a bigger success than we expected.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
We need to be growing to, you know, add more content to this game to keep it moving so that people don't so it doesn't like grow stale and, you know, people move on in that whole cycle. Yeah. And I guess it's especially weird because, like, this was, you know, a North America-focused team. And, like, Marvel and that whole brand is kind of focused. Like, NetEase is a Chinese company, but...
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
you would kind of expect them to keep a fairly large North American team around just because that's where Marvel's from. But at the same time, it does seem like the main development team is safe. I think that initially when this news broke, people were like, wait, they laid off the whole Marvel Rivals team? That's insane. It's like, no, they laid off like six people.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
That's not a huge portion of the team. It's just like those satellite teams do help with, you know, important areas of game development. It's not like they can just cut them without there being an effect. So we'll see what happens down the line.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
It will be interesting to see. There was also a note from Daniel Ahmad, who's an analyst, and he was saying that this is also part of a broader reconsideration of NetEase's overseas investments in studios.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
So they've been pulling support from a number of overseas teams over the past year, meaning that they maybe had been planning this the whole time, that they sort of have this broader system or this broader plan in motion, and this is just part of that. So it doesn't look good, but it's also one of those things where it's like,
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
the endless machinations of business that we don't really see until they suddenly affect people and we're like what's going on but you know while i don't want to give people in charge too much credit because they often make very bad decisions um it does seem like there's a method to the madness here at least in their minds again we'll see how it plays out we'll see how it plays out have you been playing some marvel rivals what do you think of the game so far
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
um i have not played a ton of it unfortunately if only because i was a big time overwatch person back in the day okay and i burnt out on that pretty hard and so any game that looks even kind of like overwatch because i know i know that marvel rivals is a is a different game um and it definitely has its own personality and it seems really cool um but i'm like do i want to go back to that place do i want to return to that headspace
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Um, and then one thing led to another and I, I did it.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Maybe not yet, but I'm going to check it out eventually. Right now I'm playing a fuck ton of Avowed, and I just can't stop playing that. There you go.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, so the way that I describe it is it's kind of the story of Twitch as viewed through the lens of nine different streamers. Some of them are really big names that you might have heard of, like Ahsan Piker, Amaranth, Dream... And then some of them are much smaller.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, I agree with most people in chat. It's garbage. It's not... I mean, half the stuff that he talked about is... Or like that Phil Spencer talked about, it's totally hypothetical. And like, how will this aid in game preservation? I mean, for one, if you want to preserve a game, you need to actually like... There's so much to a game's original platform and original code and all of this stuff.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And replicating it in this really half-baked way where AI gets all this stuff wrong, because it always gets things wrong, is a terrible way to approach preservation. That's not preservation. It's making a new, worse version of something. And then beyond that...
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
You know, what makes games interesting and good is that they're made by people, not by machines that are analyzing games that already exist to, again, make something that's, like, new and worse and doesn't even understand the point of the original thing that it's copying because, A, I can't understand anything. It just copies. I just, like...
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
I think that a lot of these companies are doing this right now because investors like the word AI. And so then they'll put more money into various companies. But AI is just not really proven to be useful in these contexts beyond like very narrow applications behind the scenes in game development.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And even then more for organizational purposes than like generating a world so that you can then build on that.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
to create a larger game um it just i mean if you want like a demonstration of this by the way of other companies trying to do something similar to what microsoft is talking about here um ea put out a tech demo like last year where they were using their own version of an engine like this and it's in this setting full of like boxes like cardboard boxes make up their proposed game world
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And then they like, you know, make the box level more complex. They're like, make it bigger, bigger. And I'm like, anyway, it looks very bad. I just, I think this is a dead end for companies and I think they'll realize it in a few years. But until then, we just have to ride this out.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And I definitely wanted to have both ends of that spectrum because I think that content creation and streaming are very different experiences depending on how big you are. And so, yeah, I didn't want to just tell the story of the platform itself because I think that a lot of people do that. There are books about YouTube and TikTok and things like that.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
They're showing their hands too, because a lot of these companies will use that language of, don't worry, we're not going to replace people with this. And it's like, okay, but you probably are, you wouldn't need to say that if you weren't thinking about it for one thing.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And for two, invariably, if you're creating a tool that you suggest will allow people to do less work to achieve like this big thing, a big portion of a game, you know, creating an entire level or an entire tech demo or whatever.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
then you will look at your balance books and say okay then we don't need people x y and z because that's always what it comes down to in the games industry and so of course you're going to use it to replace people even if it's not like one to one even if you don't say oh yeah we laid off these people because of ai ai as you're suggesting you plan to use it will play a role in future layoffs like it's just going to be one of the considerations you're just not going to talk about it
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And they tend to focus on the companies and the people who brought the platform itself to life. But while there's an audience for that and while like some people definitely want to know the business side of things, I think that especially if we're talking about Twitch, people care more about the creators and the community because that's what has always made Twitch, I think, special and different.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And so I wanted to focus mostly on that.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because, like, we think about the Souls games now, and they're this, like, phenomenon. You know, they have reshaped a lot of video games in general. Like, it's an entire genre. Yes. That's what Souls is like. And even games that aren't Souls-like incorporate Souls-adjacent mechanics. But there was a time when that wasn't the case.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
When, like, you know, I mean, Demon's Souls was a fairly niche game, and, like...
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
there's that time i think that before it came out around the time that it came out like a lot of triple a games were moving this direction of being very on rails and very like you know as easy to complete as possible essentially like they were in some cases glorified i don't want to say movies but like they were very set piece oriented they were very much like you know the challenge wasn't the point the point was to see a bunch of cool stuff and then be done um
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
So I can kind of understand why a company like Sony, which is big and risk-averse, naturally, would be like, I don't know about this, guys. It seems like it might put off audiences, and so we're going to wash our hands of this for now. Was that the correct decision? Obviously not, because the Souls games are huge, and I'm sure that whichever Sony executives made that call
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
have been kicking themselves ever since, which probably led to Bloodborne. But, you know, you got to consider the time and place where these things happen.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
mend that or fix that and make it right in the way to get that sequel and keep it going with the exclusivity yeah you also like never know how these things might have turned out you know if they went differently but i mean consider what might have happened to demon souls if it was more of a sony production like would sony have sanded some of the rougher edges off of it would sony have said like hey a few of these mechanics that ended up making the game so special would
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
just like they're too much you got to like dial those back a little bit you got to make the game a little less weird from more mainstream audience like would from software been able to grow and do their own thing in the ways they have that have made these games so special if Sony was initially sort of more in charge of everything like we may have gotten the best outcome possible and just not known about it
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
I mean, broadly speaking, with anything involving Saudi Arabia, you kind of hate to see it. In part because, like, you know, Saudi Arabia is a place accused of numerous human rights abuses.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And all of this, in conjunction with everything else that their wealth fund has been doing, a lot of sports initiatives and boxing, MMA, I think even other sports that I don't follow as closely, are all, you know, an attempt to rehabilitate its image while not necessarily changing much of how it actually operates and, you know, the values that it holds.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
and so this is just another part of that like i mean they've been trying to get into games and esports for a minute they have the esports world cup which has not been very successful in terms of viewership but they've definitely put a lot of money into it um and so yeah i mean something as big as pokemon go like i don't think that you want to see that particular country be in charge of it um but you know money talks unfortunately especially like in our current hyper capitalistic setting like
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
yeah um twitch i i chose to cover it in part or i chose to write a book about it in part because i'd already been covering it for a while um and i started covering it like gosh i don't know in like 2015 2016 um in part because there just wasn't really there weren't really that many people covering it seriously like if you talk about
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And I was thinking about it last night, actually, like what the Saudi Arabian government has done is kind of, you know, to borrow the title of their development studio, savvy. Like it worked really well in boxing to the point where when they first started bankrolling all of these really big fights, like a lot of articles talked about it. They were like, you know, Saudi Arabia is doing this.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
The reason why is clear. They're doing it in order to, again, kind of, you know,
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
distract or sports wash away from these human rights abuses and like we should be skeptical of this now years down the line it's just accepted everyone's like yep saudi arabia's doing it cool we can we get another big fight um amazing wonderful and like that's how it works they just keep doing it until it's normalized and then people just turn a blind eye like and i i imagine this will just be more of that
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
It's a fun little art project. Yeah, exactly.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, speaking of the data stuff, just a couple headlines from the past handful of months. Pokemon Go players have unwittingly trained AI to navigate the world. And, let's see, Pokemon Go data adding amplitude to war is obviously an issue, Niantic executive says. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, that's not amazing. The AI just wants to know what the world looks like.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, no militaries or governments would ever use that data. That would be crazy.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
twitch from a journalistic standpoint you know people would write articles about it from time to time but way back then it was mostly just the basics it was like whoa people are playing video games live for money that's crazy um and then beyond that it was just like look at this thing that somebody did in a game or like look at this ridiculous thing that happened to some guy um and you know i i felt like people were missing what actually made twitch interesting which was all of the community building stuff and like all the ways that
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
You'd go to our last story, the We News Channel, where we cover all the small news items you need to know about. Hit the music.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
I mean, so to be clear, are these like, are they bringing back cartridges of older games? Or are these, oh, also I wanted to stay at the We News desk for a moment, because I have something that ties in perfectly with that. Oh yeah, bring back the We News desk. Yeah, bring it back for just a second. Heck yeah. Because I have a very small copy.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, it even has a back cover and everything. It's crazy.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, so it's about Twitch, but it's viewed through the lens of nine...
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
nine creators on the platform, nine streamers, some of whom were bigger, some of whom were smaller as a way to sort of understand how Twitch as a platform impacts the people on it and how those people in turn are able to shape that platform via, you know, their words and their actions and also just platforms, you know, needing to cater to the people on them to succeed.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And so, yeah, it's about, you know, it's very community and creator focused. It's about how I think the sort of what I'm going, what I try to say in it is that Twitch has obviously over the years changed a lot.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
It's gone from being this little kind of up-and-coming thing to an Amazon-owned platform that has millions and millions of users and that has made some pretty unpopular decisions in the past handful of years. But that Twitch will always be first and foremost the people who are on it. If those people left tomorrow, Twitch would be nothing.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And so it will always be a platform by the creators, even if it's not one for them.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, you can read pieces of it at Polygon and Aftermath.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, first and foremost, you can find me at aftermath.site. That is the video game news site that me and some other folks run together. It's just aftermath.site. We're fully subscription-based, and so if you like what you see, like what you read, please consider subscribing, because that's our entire lifeblood. We have no ads. We have no anything else. We have no sponsors.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
We want to be completely free of all of those, like, potential conflicts of interest. So we're only subscriber-based. um and then beyond that i'm on blue sky at nathan grayson and i'm on twitter at vahn16
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And I agree, Chad. It is a cool lighthouse.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
this generation of creators was like reaching these new audiences and either getting them interested in games or other pursuits. And so, and then also just like the ways that Twitch itself as a platform and increasingly Amazon was sort of, you know, finding ways to make money off of these creators, not always such that they were taking good care of them. You know, there was, I think that,
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Later.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
There was a lot of talk of burnout even pretty early on, just given how much people were working and how long they were streaming, but not a ton of coverage of that until, you know, more recently. And so I wanted to, you know, I wanted to cover the kind of human side of all of this way back in the day. And that just sort of grew over time into me eventually writing a book.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
yeah i mean we can start with the dj wheat stuff um because yeah so dj wheat is kind of one of the earliest employees of twitch and before that he was a very early kind of like live streamer esports commentator um he exists in those communities and without those communities i don't think twitch would exist
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
I'm doing well.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And so, yeah, as you're saying, he like ended up going into kind of more traditional broadcast television because there's this period of time where all of these like or where a few major like TV networks really wanted to get in on the ground floor of like e-sports and gaming and competitive gaming. And so they tried really hard to like pump money into e-sports competitions and whatnot.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And they brought on people like DJ wheat to help with that. Um, but it just, it didn't really work out. And so he ended up kind of having to go back to square one. He went from like,
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
you know appearing on television like direct tv and companies like that to being like okay well i guess this isn't gonna work this is just like it was a pipe dream it failed um and so he started streaming on his own and then eventually these companies like you stream got involved um and started like courting
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
these very early streamers because while on one hand some of these companies were trying to attract big names like snoop dogg people like that um what they realized is that when you bring over an audience using like a celebrity then that audience definitely shows up. You get numbers. But those people stick around for the duration that celebrity is on screen. And then they leave forever.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Or maybe a few of them stick around longer than that, but you're barely gaining an audience from it. But what they found is that people who like video games and who like creators associated with games
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
do stick around they show up regularly and those creators also like you know maintain regular schedules they're around all the time and so you can build an actual audience with that and that happened time and time again that's why justin tv which was the early iteration of twitch um ultimately became twitch um ultimately ultimately became gaming focused it always goes back to the creators in the community and that's where you that without that
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
you wouldn't have a platform like Twitch or any of the other ones. You wouldn't have, you know, YouTube and TikTok and whatever either. But I think that Twitch especially is like, you know, it's all about, it's often about like bigger name streamers collaborating with each other. It's about the collaboration between a streamer and their chat. Like that's what it always goes back to.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
yeah so that was a particularly interesting experience because um so basically i for for every chapter of the book for the main interview i was very intent on doing it in person like going to where they were wow kind of seeing what their life looks like both on and off camera because i think that it's very easy to watch a streamer see them on screen for potentially like you know several hours per day or more depending on how much time you spend doing that and think okay
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
I know this person. Like, how could I not? I watch this person for more time than I spend with most people in my own life. And so I wanted to be able to really go behind the scenes to show, like, no, you kind of don't. Like, these people are still putting on a show for you. They're still only demonstrating one part of their personality. And, like...
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, I very much did. Also, I like that you have two of them for like symmetry. Yeah.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
the really, the boring parts of the hard parts of their life, you're often not seeing. And so for Amaranth, I went to like her offices. She has a, an agency called real work. Um, and like met her employees, talked to them, interviewed her for a really long time, all this stuff. Um, it went well. I learned a lot about how our business works. And then like,
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
three weeks after that trip, the, she, she basically accused her then husband of abuse of like pretty serious, you know, verbal and financial abuse. And they like had it out on stream. Like she had him on the phone and they just like, you know, it was, it was really ugly and nasty and terrible. And it was just like a very sad thing to witness.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And also, because of the extent to which it seemed like her husband was involved in kind of the business side of things, of her streaming enterprise and of her larger business enterprise, it completely reframed the interview that I had with her. And so I had to then... For one, I had to interview her again months later to kind of clarify some things.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
And for two, like, I ended up going through the police records for, like... Because they ended up, like, getting the cops involved when they were having their big argument on, like, the day of that stream. I ended up talking to other people, like, in her life who kind of knew about some of this and had maybe, you know, not talked about it publicly prior to then. All of this stuff.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
It completely recontextualized, like... her whole story um and i think it would be tempting to say like in this way where you know oh actually it wasn't this woman being a business mogul there was a man behind her and he knew what he was doing it's like no that's not really true that that wasn't really the case exactly um i think that the story there is more that
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
if you are a big streamer like you cannot do it alone there there are no actual solo acts at that level of twitch just because you're juggling so many things um both in terms of being live for tons of hours every day especially the time amaranth is streaming like crazy like putting in 10 plus hour days regularly
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Um, but also in terms of running a business and like reaching out to people and, you know, doing deals to get sponsorships and expanding your business into other areas and all of this stuff. Um, it's simply as much as people are tempted to look at a streamer on camera and be like, yeah, that's them. And this is their whole thing. And they're doing it on their own. Amazing.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
It's like, no, they, they almost certainly aren't. If they're pulling like, you know, thousands of viewers per day, uh, they're, they're probably not.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, yeah. So it's called Stream Big, the triumphs and turmoils of Twitch and the stars behind the screen. It is out now. It came out yesterday. And you can buy it pretty much wherever books are sold. So Amazon, places like that. Let's see. Do y'all have a link in chat? If not, I can drop it.
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
There we go. Okay. Y'all dropped it in. Good. um yeah yeah and then uh yeah go ahead and check it out if you want to um if not actually there there are a few excerpts up on various sites there's one on polygon and there's one on my own site aftermath if you want to read some of it uh for free and make up your own mind
Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Marvel Rivals’ Shocking Layoffs, Netease Responds - Kinda Funny Games Daily 02.19.25
Yeah, so currently I write for a site called Aftermath. It's reader-supported and worker-owned. Me and a few other people founded it. But before that, I've been all over the place. I was at Kotaku for a long time. And then after that, I was at the Washington Post.