Mothership Is A New Website About Gender And Games Which Feels Like A Radical Thing To Launch In 2026 But Shouldn’t Be

The sale of Polygon to a Canadian pornographer final 12 months might need felt to some on the widespread gaming web site like being NPCs in a Hitman degree. A cloak-and-dagger procession of NDAs clued in a few of the workers 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 had been underneath NDA,” Polygon‘s former deputy editor Maddy Myers 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. 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 press farm that ended up buying Polygon from Jim Bankoff’s Vox Media for an undisclosed sum, ended up shedding a lot of the workers, together with all of its union workers. The positioning was utterly uprooted in a single day whereas the brand new house owners rushed in a staff of underpaid freelancers to begin instantly churning out new articles.

“They primarily instructed us simply sufficient to make us really feel prefer it was our solely possibility to come back over,” mentioned Zoë Hannah, Polygon‘s former 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 came upon later.”

Myers and Hannah had been spared whereas over 30 of their colleagues had been laid off, however staying on the website 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 mentioned. “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 mentioned the weeks that adopted led to extra disillusionment with the scenario, describing her last month on the website 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 change into more and more widespread for knowledgeable expertise, ditched the sphere solely. As an alternative, they determined to make their very own online game web site. It will analyze video games particularly by way of the lens of gender and id at a time when these views have been squeezed out of different retailers underneath strain from the all-homogenizing algorithm. It will be self-owned so it might by no means be offered out from underneath them. It will 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 mentioned. “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 just didn’t have to write down in 20 minutes?”

Mothership could have podcasts, brief kind video, and even a publication, however it’s going to nonetheless primarily be a web site, one the place readers go every day to learn good issues from good individuals and that embraces identities and views which are nonetheless radically underrepresented throughout the remainder of the video games media area. What the pair is referring to as the positioning’s launch challenge 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 countless clicks.

“There might be no programmatic adverts by any means on Mothership, which is badge of honor,” Hannah mentioned.

“Folks bear in mind what The Mary Sue was once like when it had a workers of 5 as a substitute of a workers of 1, and so they bear in mind what Teen Vogue was once like and so they additionally consider within the thought, and particularly after I discuss to ladies I do know who play video games, and queer individuals 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 mentioned.

She continued, “I believe while you give you an thought 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 possibly six individuals learn it,’ you understand, 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 thought. We should always truly do that, we should always cease interviewing for different jobs and put apart all of our different issues that we had been sort of eager about doing and take this severely.”

Mothership is the newest in a collection of subscription-backed unbiased video games media retailers which are blazing an alternate path by way of the present collapse of the web due to 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 lately went indie like Giant Bomb and Digital Foundry. It’s additionally the fourth to come back out of Polygon sale, with former workers additionally founding the web sites Rogue, Design Room, and Post Games.

That final one is {a magazine} podcast collection by former Polygon EIC Chris Plante, who interviewed Myers and Hannah about their new website and the historical past of ladies in video games media for the latest episode. Notably, out of all of those gaming websites, Mothership is likely one of 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 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 positioning’s announcement reads. “Along with your assist, we’ll construct a sustainable enterprise that may afford rigorous enhancing processes, sensitivity readers, and authorized counsel when crucial for high-risk investigations of high-profile video games studios and figures.”

“Feminism, I really feel like, has change into a grimy phrase in lots 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 part proper now, however that’s a part of why I’m like, we have to preserve doing this. We’ve to maintain attempting.”