Hypergiant stars
burning to ash
south of nowhere
The internet has a new black hole and Australia’s gaming word-workers are frantically tap-tap-tapping on their Cherry MX reds and browns. On their 5G Samsungs, and 10th generation iPad Airs. On their Surface Pro 11s and superlight ultrabooks. Tapping out, “Pedestrian group shutters Kotaku”. Tapping, “Kotaku AU is gone”.
Tapping, “Kotaku Australia is dead!”
Nukah is on the couch, legs akimbo, watching TV. Oversized Circus Charlie tee and pyjama shorts. Watching Miller’s Girl on Binge; now Love Lies Bleeding on Prime. And on blog posts and social feeds, Mark Serrels is writing, “Devastating.” Posting up, “I loved it so much.” Adding, “I can’t overstate how much I learned and grew working on the site. No job ever meant more to me.”
Chloe is glitching out again on the bedroom speaker, announcing the time in Cologne; in Tokyo; in Los Angeles. Shuffle playing songs by Lana Del Rey, now Billie Eilish, now Lana.
And on Twitter—now X—Phros is posting, “I’m really missing Kotaku AU. It was always one of my first visited sites in the morning with a cup of coffee.” Emily Spindler adding, “Woke up from birthday leave to the sad news that my, and so many of my gorgeous talented colleagues’ time, is done writing for Kotaku, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Vice and Refinery29. Gutted doesn’t even come close to describing the feeling.”
From the bedroom, Lana is singing, “Kiss me hard before you go”. And on X, Isha Bassi is tapping out, “heartbroken”; Ruby Innes text-screaming: “I’m tired of this heartless corpo bullshit” and: “Fuck these dogs!”
David Wildgoose now, on Aftermath. Tapping, “Perhaps, as we survey the wreckage of the games media landscape of the past five years, the surprise is that Kotaku AU survived as long as it did.”
This is what outside-inside, mid-Winter, whisky doom-scrolling looks like—feels like. Post GameSpot AU. Post Edge. Post GamePro. Post OPSM. Post Hyper. Post Atomic and PC PowerPlay. Post Game Informer.
Now: Kotaku AU.
On TV, Kristen Stewart is lady-fucking Katy O’Brien, heart and soul, and on LinkedIn, Morgan Jaffit is writing: “As games press became extraordinary, there was nowhere that it was as consistently and excitingly extraordinary as Kotaku Australia.”
Over on X, Alex Blakie is tap-tap-tapping, “Kotaku AU has always been an important space for championing the local games industry”. While David Smith is calling out colleagues and ex-comrades, gushing, “I love you. I have never worked with better or more talented souls in all my life”. “To the readers, thank you for showing up every single day, even the whingers in the comments.”
This? This is collective open casket eulogising for games beat journalism. Truth. Sans the waging of an identity war on its own community. Sans renumeration dissonance for 40 plus hour game reviews. Sans cult of self. Sans back-scratching junkets and pedantic game score debates. Sans personal and professional quivering; disconsolate fears of mediocracy and illegitamacy.
Chloe—volume at seven, now eight—is announcing the weather in Cupertino; in Mountain View; in Menlo Park. And on Media Week, Jackson Ryan is being quoted and paraphrased; saying that games journalism is looked down on. Saying, “This is somewhat related to the ‘respect’, for lack of a better word, that tech journalism commands in comparison to games and the way that tech influences daily life.”
Nukah is calling out to the bedroom, “Hey Chloe. Stop.” And on the 65-inch Hisense—in close-up—a man’s face is repeatedly being smashed into a coffee table, jaw hanging off; blood and teeth and bone spilling onto the carpet in full HDR colour.
Later, the man’s grieving wife is sob-whispering to her sister, “You… don’t know anything about love.” And on no-longer-Twitter-now-X, Amy Potter is posting broken heart emojis; writing, “It’s fucking devastating watching so much of our fantastic local media disappear”. Soon adding, “not to make it all about me lol, but I can’t believe Kotaku AU is gonna go down and the only thing I was ever mentioned on there for was breaking the news about PUMA’s gaming socks”.
Tegan Jones now, on Aftermath, writing, “Looking at the toxic flames engulfing the local tech media landscape, I honestly don’t see a way forward. Perhaps that’s the sadness of the day speaking, but considering the dire state even mainstream journalism is in, I’m afraid I may be the right amount of jaded.”
Switching back to X, Royce Wilson is tap-tap-tapping away. Posting, “Kotaku AU being suddenly shut down was (understandably) greeted with shock, disappointment, and sympathy from gaming media folks on Twitter. Elsewhere though? Crickets.”
On the TV, Kristen Stewart’s torturing her sister, screaming, “Love you sis!” And beyond the local media takes, Skelebro—and a hundred others like him—are speed-thumbing their phones, posting up, “Kotaku AU just shut down, a small win, but a win nonetheless”. Saying they wish that Kotaku US would follow. Stab-tapping, “Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of horrible people”; hashtag “EndKotaku”.
This is what it means to not-quite-almost have a point regarding the pendulum swings of cultural and social correction, but get lost in Cairo Sweet-levels of vituperation and ideological intractibility. Burnt flower words in headstone grey; unrequited love, dismembered and cruel as the grave, without consequence.
Stop.
Breathe before responding.
1…
2…
3…
“You okay?” Nukah asks.
In the bedroom, Billie is gently singing, “I used to float, now I just fall down” and the prolonged lack of response to Nukah from burnt-together-lips-pressed-tight becomes a kind of metaphor, a biography.
On LinkedIn and Substack, Harrison Polites is posting, “The once vibrant sector with more magazines to its name than I can remember is gradually dying before our eyes”. Adding, “Not only has the number of journalists covering gaming in Australia trended backwards, but articles regarding it in the mainstream have too.”
Fergus Halliday now writing, “I’m tired of watching the industry around me get smaller and smaller.” Conceding: “I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know how to solve this very dire situation that seems to get worse with each passing month.”
“In my view,” offers Simon Thomsen, “the biggest problem is [that] we, as a society, are uncertain about what we value anymore when it comes to media and storytelling.” Adding, “We don’t know where to put our trust. Or money. And we don’t want to think about it.”
This? This is what it means to be last-lights and dream-bearers, staring into the void of career games journalism: Hypergiant stars burning to ash south of nowhere.
In the bedroom, Billie is singing, “When did it end? All the enjoyment?” Lilting, “I’m sad again. Don’t tell my boyfriend.”
Asking, “What was I made for?”
All of us now, asking;
wondering:
what was I made for.
Chloe is shifting from the bedroom speaker, to the lounge, to the kitchen. Playing Lana’s experimental Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass album. And, on TV, at the gym, Katy is in montage, shooting ‘roids beneath signs that read, “Hard work pays off” and “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”.
Power-skipping beneath, “The body achieves what the mind believes”.
Psycho-crunching beneath the words, “Destiny is a decision”.
Jones and Innes and Wildgoose and Thomsen: they’re not wrong. Each of them: shards and fragments of a broken bathroom mirror. But the space belongs to the rule breakers now. To the play makers. To those who find a way. To those who still believe that the repositories of good games writing are not servers and screens, but the hearts and minds of those who read it.
Lana is reciting, “Perfect petals punctuate the fabrics yellow blue”. And on TV, Kristen is in the back of a pick-up, choking the life out of a young woman with blood-caked lips to Martin Rev’s synth-punk Whisper.
Killing.
For love.