“I won’t cry if you leave.”

I left.

She cried.

Détante.

Reset tomorrow.

Those words stung. Not because I’d never heard them before. Because she’s now in preschool.

For the past week, I’ve been baffled by my emotions. Confused. Heightened. Anxious. Excited. Scared.

“I won’t cry if you leave.”

This is one of my biggest fears. In context, it’s a bedtime fit. I’m upset because she seems to have regressed into several potty accidents per day. I raise my voice. I take away books and toys. I’m disappointed and frustrated. She doubles-back with threats of her own.

“I won’t cry if you leave [my room at bedtime].”

It feels like a clear jab at the fact that she does not cry for us when she enters preschool each day. Something I’m proud of.

It’s a few hours a day, but it’s clear: this is the beginning of leaving her exposed to a world that is not overseen by me. She is not aided by me. She is not guided by me. She is not protected by me.

Today, at an older girl’s birthday party, I guard her spot in line from bigger kids; shielded her from bigger kids during a piñata rush; encouraged her to sit with the bigger kids during cupcakes. I’m cognizant of her hearing aides. Is she she’s overwhelmed? Can she hear the kids around her? Is she spatially aware of what’s going on? I’m proud when she leans into her independence, hurriedly leaving the crowds for scaling playgrounds bigger than she ought to for new and exciting slides. Maybe I should let her fend for herself more often. But then there’s the accidents. Maybe she still needs me.

“I won’t cry if you leave.”

It’s all too real when she tells me this when she’s upset with me. When she wants to prove her independence. And it’s all too real when she doesn’t cry when she leaves me for preschool — for a world that is not mine to oversee.

Brendon Bigley and Stephen Hilger, Into the Aether Podcast: S7E48 - “BB’s Romhack Shack”:

Brendon Bigley: I just want more portrait mode games on my iPhone.

Stephen Hilger: Yeah, that’s the dream.

BB: That’s the dream. That’s what we’re always saying on this podcast. The whole reason we started the podcast.

Hello and welcome to Into the Aether.

SH: Jean d’Arc definitive edition in portrait mode.

BB: Honestly, it’s amazing. Just thinking about that, it’s amazing that all of the Dragon Quest games are available in portrait mode on iOS.

SH: That’s for you.

BB: And it’s so wild that they did that. Yeah, even VII. Like they have a port.

It’s so wild.

Couldn’t agree more. Single-handed portrait-mode games, if I may add.

Are you missing Polygon as much as I am? Do you appreciate in-depth journalism about niche topics with your hobby of choice? Do you like tightly edited podcasts with clear structure? Are you a fan of personality, interviews, and well-crafted story? Are you addicted to gaming podcasts because you have very little time to play yourself and/or you might just love the conversation around games more than the games themselves? Then you’re in luck.

Post Games, the new podcast from former Polygon Editor-in-Chief Chris Plante, feels like the canonical audio form of Polygon. Everything I loved about Polygon from its clean yet charming design to its niche stories to its rich journalism with personality is woven into Post Games.

I had the pleasure of providing early feedback on the first episode, which details an under appreciated game award that is damn near prophetic of seminal indie game success and stories and developers I’ve never heard of, but now can’t help but keep my eye fixed upon. Episode 0, an interview with Platformer’s Casey Newton, lends great insight into what a career in independent journalism looks like — a world Plante now finds himself in.

While you can find the show for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and any other podcast app via RSS, I encourage you to check out the show’s Patreon to both support and receive a bevy of bonus perks.

It’s inspiring to see former Polygon folks make haste with a poor situation. Seeing Nicole Carpenter’s byline appear on Game File, Aftermath, and 404 Media is thrilling. And now the Post Games podcast from Chris Plante, one of my favorite voices in video game journalism, is leveraging his decades of experience and insight (and a deep Rolodex to boot) to deliver some of the most unique stories in gaming in a wonderfully produced format.

It seems the Polygon legacy lives on.

Aftermath’s Luke Plunkett posted a brutal comparison of Polygon’s masthead from last week vs today on Bluesky. Eviscerated. A tragic, gross visual of the human cost of senseless layoffs.

Brendon Bigley, Wavelengths:

I’ve been reading Polygon since the day in launched in 2012. I was an avid fan because of its focus on people — at the time most sites were primarily focused on their own branding which led to sites as monolithic entities. Reviews weren’t by any specific writer, they were by [BRAND DOT COM] and discussed on early social media and in forums as such. Polygon broke the mold by being staunchly supportive of the individuals who made its ongoing success a reality, story by story and brick by brick until it became an institution in the space. They made videos about funny bullshit (complimentary) and reported on troubling labor practices in the game development space in equal measure because different people are good at different things, and all of that is what boiled up to being the brand. It’s why so many freelancers and ex-employees are online today speaking highly of their time working with Polygon. The boots-on-the-ground team that allowed the site to function cared about these people in a meaningful way and there was a tangibility to that care that permeated into the readership.

I can’t help but walk away from this news feeling like the very thing that inspired me to spend my time considering games and the industry around them has died a very permanent death. While I’m glad to see independent outlets like MinnMax and Aftermath continue to pave a new path forward and inspire future generations to think critically about the medium, there’s a real sense of loss here that reaches all the way backwards to Facebook’s disastrous “pivot to video” era. What we’re left with is Patreon and Memberful and influencers and IGN. That’s games media now.

And what’s left of the sites I used to love and find community within in Polygon and Waypoint and Giant Bomb and so many more is just an AI grind house serving Google of all companies. Google, who are well on their way to speedrunning destroying their own business model at the cost of everyone else’s. It’s an implosion supervised by idiots who have been grifted by other idiots who have been grifted by actual grifters.