Giant Bomb Mega Thread

[one-armed dwarf]

Waypoint shutting down, and on the day the Armored Core trailer drops (Austin being a big fan)

 

 

That's a rough one, if unsurprising (surprising they held on this long given their niche within a niche audience). No future in this line of work it seems.

[DANGERMAN]

that's a shame, I've been dipping in to their stuff more recently

[retroed]

This just feels wrong, man.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I didn't watch a whole lot of this, but the bit I did see I think he did a decent enough job if not as good as Jeff G with some obvious nerves about filing those shoes

[one-armed dwarf]

They interviewed the voice actor for Clive in FFXVI on this as well, it's pretty fun listening I thought

 

I've started to pay a bit more attention to giantbomb recently. For whatever reason now that they aren't doing as much shows I find myself clicking on the subscription more often

 

 

[retroed]

Post from Jess on SA forums, grabbed this from the Giant Bomb Facebook group.

 

 

"[ADMIN] Context: Someone had posted that when Gerstmann got fired from GS, people quit in solidarity and was bummed to see zero support here."

 

 

[DANGERMAN]

Jess seemed alright. That sounds like she doesn't have a lot of time for GB now, but maybe that's because it's removed from the conversation they were having 

[retroed]

[HandsomeDead]

Jeff Gerstmann is going viral because of an engagement bait shit site 

 

 

I've not listened to his podcast in a while but I know the format and I think the "calling out" was just an anecdote.

 

I just think it's funny he's now "dad".

[mfnick]

😂 I heard that one and he barely mentions it. 

[retroed]

Jeff is still a threat. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Apparently GB's bosses at fandom have said they aren't doing live streams for the time being, or something. It's very strange but Jeff Grubb talks about it here

 

 

 

I don't watch GB that much or anything but I do have a sub on youtube and sometimes click on their livestreams, ideally ones which don't have Dan on them. Sorta seems like the main way they would get traffic

[mfnick]

Another case of a new manager coming who knows nothing anbout what’s they’re managing and just starts doing shit. 
 

Basically 2 or 3 managers above him a new one has come in and just told them to stop live streaming - which is their main business now. Stopping that for even a few days can stop momentum and drop your engagement massively. 
 

They’ve just updated stuff the last month or so to join

with Gamespot so they effectively stream all day too. They’ve literally only just started this and had the rug pulled from them. 
 

I like GB. They’re who I watch and listen to most. I’ll be genuinely gutted if they get shuttered. Blight Club is so good. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Giantbomb is super dead now. Grubb, Minotti and Dan are gone (laid off presumably in the case of Grubb cause he was a bit more ambivalent about things on his gamemess the other day but who knows)

 

The 'brand safety manager' or whoever was on the forums trying to play the whole thing down, these guys can't make a statement without the word 'brand' or 'brands' in it.

https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/official-giantbomb-staff-statement-on-livestream-p-1937031/

 

Quote

As you know, Giant Bomb live streaming is temporarily paused. We understand this programming pause isn’t ideal for our audience, but it's part of a strategic reset and realignment of our media brands.

 

We appreciate your patience as we build the next phase of exciting gaming and entertainment content for fans everywhere. Out of privacy for our team, we will not comment on any staffing changes.

 

We know you still have questions and want answers. Our promise to you: we’ll update you in real time as soon as we have more information. So stay tuned for more updates and we will be keeping this thread open as a place for you to discuss these changes.

 

Also polygon got sold to an SEO content farm, game journalism is getting cooked, all the more reason to keep the EDGE subscription rolling (also bsky embeds now, looks like we got some cool updates from Jim)

 

[retroed]

 

 

 

[DANGERMAN]

I've found Giant Bomb pretty much unwatchable since the East Coast left, but it's still a shame to see it end like this for them. Grub had been pushing his own channel more, so I think they probably knew something was up, or suspected that they might need to jump, but I can see him and Dan landing on their feet 

 

I half suspect they'll do something together 

 

It's mad though, why buy a site like Giant Bomb then try to change what it is? 

[Sly Reflex]

Because people in suits think they know better when in fact they know absolutely fuck all.

[retroed]

 

 

 

[Maf]

I haven’t really followed this story at all as I stopped watching any GB stuff years ago. But this podcast posted above is excellent^ maybe it’s the drama or the meat of the conversation of the laughs mixed in but it’s a great listen 

[one-armed dwarf]

Reading back through this thread, I found this old link on the previous page with a comment by Dave Snider which is interesting to re-read, with how much he got right about the current shape of things (not just at Giantbomb)

 

Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic | Hacker News

 

Quote

OG founder of Giant Bomb / Comicvine / Whiskey Media here. I was also at CNET during the acquisition of Metacritic and helped build large portions of Gamespot and TV.com. I'm 10-years removed from these properties so I feel OK talking about them.

 

The sad reality is the Internet publishing is dead and as a business that business is nearly impossible to operate if you have any moral compass. In its place we have various traffic to ad scams and a creator economy built on the backs of a couple large platforms like Twitch, Reddit and YouTube. While the later option seems freeing for some creators, the reality is that soon those too will become hard to make a living from as those large platforms start slowly squeezing their creator class outside of a couple few who play nice. It's only slightly better than the journalism field because at least some of the personalities can shoot over to Patreon and work directly with their audience (albeit still tied to another large platforms).

 

I love this space, and it's where I grew up as a kid in the late 90s. I love community websites where I can engage with some experts. With video though, it's extremely hard to run independently. Hosting video for Giant Bomb in 2008-2012 meant home rolling our own streaming service, chat service and edge-based video platform. We had an all-star engineering team. We had one of the largest podcasts in the world and the hosting bills were killing us. Getting an audience with good content was easy. Monetizing it was very difficult. That's only continued over the years as I've seen various companies buy Giant Bomb (CBS, then RV, now Fandom) looking to pick up a premium brand that they could use to mask the giant volume of dead, but trafficked content they had in the background. The shill back then was was to sell Giant Bomb or GameSpot ads, but serve it on GameFaqs or Comic Vine (which had huge traffic at low cost). Various SEO tricks were pulled to hide traffic. For example, Comic Vine moved to a Gamespot subdomain to make this seem more legitimate. I anticipate similar dark patterns every time these sites are resold to cheaper owners. Likely, these brands will be used to promote a mountain of google-driven traffic in other properties.

 

The question I haven't been able to solve:

 

How can good content be monetized in a way that allows it to remain independent and not succumb to warping its content to feed that monetization? How can it be audience driven instead? Is such a thing even possible? Right now good monetization strategies beget bad content. There's got to be a better way than cobbling together five platforms under a Patreon account, giving all of them 10-50% along the way.

 

This quote is basically a translation of the 'brand-strategy' gibberish that the Fandom rep posted earlier I'd say