This has been burning a whole in my bookmark collection to write about. Last month, Ian Walker wrote about Aftermath and their decision to seemingly sidestep their commitment to the BDS movement targetting Microsoft and Xbox by publishing an article about Forza Horizon 6. Following that, co-founder Luke Plunkett wrote about that post on Bluesky.
From there, Ian gave his personal perspectives on why regardless of the intent, the article served to remind potential customers of the game’s existence and thus benefits microsoft
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whether or not aftermath received a code from the publishers — and it’s my understanding they did not — doesn’t matter. xbox absolutely considers negative reviews part of its marketing campaign because, these days, keywords are more important than content. it’s something every journalist in what is objectively a less serious and more enthusiast-focused media ecosystem has to examine and extrapolate for themselves.
same goes for the idea aftermath isn’t part of “a marketing machine” which, sorry, they absolutely are. we all are. everyone. the world we live in is a marketing machine. even this blog has the potential to advertise forza horizon 6 to someone. but aftermath, in this small, brief moment, was given an opportunity many never see: the ability to opt out of a system that both exploits us and conscripts us into the exploitation of others. extricating oneself from the machine takes more than a few semi-sympathetic words before diving into what you liked and disliked about a game.
There’s a lot to dig into and ultimately, I agree with Ian’s points. The responses from Aftermath felt very hand wavy and not as principled as the BDS requirements had outlined. Like the article of Ian’s blog says, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.