The Onion, “America’s Best Information Supply,” has been on a little bit of a scorching streak since escaping the shackles of its former company proprietor, G/O Media, in 2024. Since its buy by World Tetrahedron, an organization established by former Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, the satirical newspaper has taken just a few huge swings to determine this new chapter because the paper’s comeback period.
The primary of those salvos was its relaunch of a print version in August 2024 along with its free digital content material. The paper’s govt editor, Jordan LaFLure, advised to The New York Times that the market can be receptive to its analog providing “for a similar motive that 18-year-old children are shopping for Taylor Swift on vinyl.” Nonetheless, the paper’s most audacious, headline-grabbing, and hilarious play has undoubtedly been its acquisition and hostile takeover of Alex Jones’ conspiracy-peddling website InfoWars after Jones misplaced his Sandy Hook Elementary defamation case to the tune of $1.4 billion in damages.
After years of authorized disputes, the positioning lastly relaunched this summer season as Actual InfoWars, a slate of fever-dream vertical-video skits protecting fictional rage-baiting podcasts and pretend prepper product adverts, with comedian Tim Heidecker stepping in to helm the transition, remodeling right into a pitch-perfect lampoon of Jones himself, all however erasing the conspiracist’s legacy within the course of.
Simply in time for the midterm elections, the sardonic media large has casually gifted the world yet one more unprecedented banger within the type of its very first online game, The Onion Voting Simulator 3D. Available to play without cost in browsers on cell or (those who aren’t Safari) on desktop, the first-person platformer even bought its personal launch trailer, similar to any AAA title would.
“Uninterested in the identical voting routine,” asks the trailer’s narrator, quickly revealed to be none apart from Uncle Sam, who goes on to ask gamers to “discover a photo-realistic center college gymnasium. Keep away from the ballot watchers and assist save democracy. Or simply keep at house in your digital residence and masturbate.”
Having 100-percented the sport myself upfront of this write-up, I can attest that gamers can certainly partake in all these actions and lots of extra. With out spoiling an excessive amount of, I’ll encourage would-be democracy members to take their time exploring the surprisingly expansive world map to seek out all of the collectibles, Easter eggs, and digs at former company homeowners hidden all through. And don’t neglect to strive the “Keep At Dwelling Mode” choice, out there from the title display screen, for a style of the results that include apathetic dereliction of 1’s civic duties. Frankly, this would possibly simply be essentially the most immersive life simulator available on the market till GTA VI drops subsequent month.
In 2024, following The New York Instances’ acquisition of the indie hit, Wordle, for a “low seven figures” charge and the next launch of its NYT Video games app, the legacy paper skilled a large inflow of digital subscribers searching for their each day puzzle repair. This sudden boon bucked all of the traits of layoffs and declining readership plaguing the media ecosystem of the 2020s, and its gaming-based revenue has solely gone up quarter after quarter. This shift in focus led to the astute headline from Robinhood’s media subsidiary Sherwood. Information that “The New York Instances is a video games firm with a newspaper facet hustle.”
One would hope to dwell in a world the place insightful reporting, satirical or straight-laced, might survive by itself deserves, but when that is the world we’re caught in, we should always all be grateful a storied establishment like The Onion is clear-eyed sufficient to see the writing on the wall and is making strikes that may hold it round for the lengthy haul. So, possibly if sufficient of you get on the market and digitally vote, we’re not too far out from an Onion gaming app with content material infinitely extra attention-grabbing than Tiles and Letter Boxed.