Luke Plunket interview
Luke Plunket from Aftermath / Kotaku on the evolution of Australian video game websites
Luke Plunket spent almost two decades writing for the US edition of Kotaku. But he was actually based in Australia the whole time. That gives him a unique perspective on the local industry and the websites that covered it. These days he’s one of the co-founders behind Aftermath, a worker-owned, reader-supported news site covering video games, the internet, and the cultures that surround them.
I want to start with 2006 when you landed a gig with Kotaku. I believe you were based locally and the night-shift editor for the US. What are your recollections of the internet back in those days, especially with regards to video game websites. I assume that expectations around content, schedules, and page views were a lot more ad-hoc and relaxed?
“It was a very 'Wild West' time, much looser than it would become in the 2010s; games sites were just starting to come into their own and trying to find their own voice distinct from the magazines that most of us had grown up reading, one better suited to the always-online nature of the internet. Expectations were all over the place because we were all over the place; we were trying to do serious news while also remaining irreverent, covering everything in case we missed anything, so the only thing that really mattered was whether your page views were going up every month or not.”
Working for Kotaku US while based in Australia, you would have a unique perspective on the local scene. Did you find that Australian media had a different take on the video game industry and the way news was reported vs US and other overseas outlets.
“Australian media was mostly a bit more deferential to the industry than we were. It was a much smaller scene here and one much more reliant on access with publishers and PR for stuff like review codes, so for the most part Australian news remained much more traditional in its scope than some of the more offbeat and confrontational coverage we were trying at an American site.”
Broadband was quite late to arrive in Australia, what sort of impact did that have on the establishment of a local online media presence for video games?
“Not sure it had much of an impact on us as news sites, I remember it being more of an issue simply for downloading torrents and digital copies of games.”
Social media didn’t start to really emerge locally until the end of the 00s, what sort of impact did that have on websites and what they offered readers. Did publishers like Gawker Media see the value in this new medium and try to cultivate it? I remember Gawker was all about their in-house comments platform back in the day.
“The advent of social media, but Twitter in particular, really helped bring a wall down between writers and readers, for better and worse. For me, it let me get to know my peers in ways I'd never have been able to otherwise, seeing as I was working on the other side of the world to most of them, and for our readers it was a way for them to get to know us better as writers and people as well. On the downside, it also made it much easier to have abuse--mostly harmless, some of it not--hurled at us.”
When did the industry start to get real serious about analytics and accountants running the joint. I assume that Kotaku became much more numbers driven at some point. Was it a gradual process, or did you wake up one morning with a list of KPIs and analytics dashboards?
“Oh the numbers were always there for us, even when I started in 2006. Gawker used to have a ‘Big Board’ up on the wall of our NY office, where the network's biggest stories would be highlighted. We'd be paid bonuses according to traffic, and sometimes even stuff like layoffs were determined according to how many page views were coming in. As for serious analytics, I'd say things started getting closer to the kind of focus we have today--analysing traffic sources, locations, reading habits, etc--around 2012-13.”
The internet is all very temporary. A decade's work can be wiped from the servers when a site is sold or shut down. You’ve worked online for almost two decades now, has that ever bothered you, and what can you do to mitigate that?
“It's absolutely bothered me. We lost most of Kotaku's earliest archives (up until 2004-09) years ago, lost all images from 2019 and earlier after a legal decision from G/O Media (which rendered a lot of my art and cosplay posts meaningless), and the closure of Kotaku Australia wiped a lot more. That's in many ways my life's work, and while I've made measures to protect it--I've started republishing my favourite pieces on my personal website--it still saddens me to think I can spend a whole adult career on something that was read by millions one day and then be gone the next.”
What has Aftermath taught you about running a website that you didn’t know (or appreciate) beforehand?
“All those people at real websites who handle accounts and travel and HR and tech and customer support? You really need them, because when you don't have them, you've got to do all that yourself, and it keeps you from doing the things you actually started the website to do in the first place.”
Is there a future for the clicks and banners approach to video game websites we’ve seen over the last couple of decades?
“I don't see one. I think the whole sector is on borrowed time. The ad market is gone, Google's SEO is entirely unreliable and corporate owners are becoming increasingly ruthless in their efforts to cut costs and drive traffic at the same time. There are just too many outside forces working against the interests of both writers and readers at the moment for the current model to survive long-term.”
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