Hi, everyone, welcome back to another installment rem Remap's new podcast series, Worth Reading.

Years ago, Worth Reading was a long-running feature at Sleming by previous homes, including Giant Bomb and Kataku, which would be a notable point for this podcast in particular, where I try to highlight interesting writing, reporting, and criticism in the world of video games.

I'd be looking for an excuse to bring back Worth Reading in a new format, and so I figured, hey, why not do it as a podcast? So, welcome back to Worth Reading, a short-form podcast, at least by Remap's standards. Anyway, we're at Remap chats with people who are doing interesting writing, reporting, and criticism in the world of video games. I am happy you're here, and I'm especially happy to welcome Aftermath co-founder, Chris

Person, a colleague of mine for my Kataku days.

Yeah.

And author for the purposes of this podcast, The Excellent Essay, Baby Steps Manbreaker,

did not break me.

Talking with Chris, right now feels especially fitting and poignant because at least god damn it

as of this recording i am still in the midst of trying to finish said manbreaker i can only pray

by the time this publishes i have put it behind me but until then chris welcome to worth reading

hey i mean thank you for having me on i listen to the pod and. And yeah, we've been, we've been like even before Kotaku, we were on like the same forum. Like that's how we're we're both one-up spawn. We have, we have been online for too long and now we just convince ourselves we're making a career out of it. And so like do it this long, you know, might as well, might as well keep going. Yeah, why not? Well, thank you for having me on.

Yeah, no, the manbreaker is

great. I love it so much. I think it's so cool. It's so cool. So for people, if they haven't

played baby steps, if they haven't read your piece, we'll get into that over the course of

conversation. But for you, how would you describe the appeal of baby steps? And how did it get

its hooks in you? And how would you describe those hooks? I mean, I've been a big thoughty head for a very

long time. I know, like I've, you know, even outside of quap, uh, then it's

always been sort of adjacent if you are in the New York City area. And like, so the whole

sports friends continuum, um, was, was always present. And, and, and I've always appreciated

his work. And like this, um, for people who haven't seen it, I would highly recommend, I think it's archived, the Game Center talk he gave fairly recently on the topic.

Because it's sort of, it does a better job than I ever will at sort of laying out what his career trajectory was, what he was trying.

And it's very much like starting at quop and then like returning back to it in a weird

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