Giant Bomb Mega Thread

[mfnick]

5 hours ago, Maf said:

as I stopped watching any GB stuff years ago

Real shame as the Jan, Jeff, Dan & Mike grouping has been absolutely fantastic. Genuinely a lot of my favourite stuff has been created by these 4 together. People always idolise the OG era which I get as it was amazing but it really shouldn’t diminish the brilliant content these have created. They’re brilliant as a group. 
 

That quote from Snider is so depressing and accurate. Everything seems to be going his way though - why is it bad content is the best money earners. Why is good, valuable shit actually not valuable? It’s like algorithms, why is it the bad shit which gets the engagement required? Everything is fucked. People are shit. 

[DANGERMAN]

I might be the only one who watches their stuff, but Triple Jump has shut down too. They're a British YouTube gaming channel, a lot of list videos which I wasn't a huge fan of, but their podcast was fun as we're things like Worst Games Ever 

[Sly Reflex]

Someone was talking about this in discord last night. Those were former WhatCulture guys. I had no idea. I never really spent any time with them

[DANGERMAN]

yeah. They put out a fairly lengthy video explaining it, and basically their fanbase is loyal, but YouTube just isn't showing the videos to anyone else. They've been trying to work with them to fix it, but they were saying even YouTube don't seem to understand why it's not working for them

 

They're talented enough people, and likable enough, that I hope it works out for them. 

 

I never get shown Eurogamer stuff either any more, I haven't for at least a year or so, so I wonder if they're next, assuming that they're even still doing much video stuff

[mfnick]

I’ve watched Triple jump stuff for a couple of years now. Damn shame.

i really liked their podcast. Although for people who had gaming as their job they didn’t seem very knowledgeable about it at times. But it was fun and the weird and worst games vids wee good. They put more thought into the list than most. 

[DANGERMAN]

Yeah, I've wondered before what happens when it's not people in their 40s and 50s who were around for gamings history, and it was watching them that prompted it 😅 nothing too bad but their knowledge wasn't amazing.

 

They didn't seem to play a ton either, but I get the sense that was because they weren't getting the money their American equivalent would get, so couldn't just buy whatever they wanted 

 

Still, if they'd just set up together again I'd watch it, they worked well together 

[Sly Reflex]

You're saying this about Triple Jump, but watching Giant Bomb play Shadow of the Colossus back when I bothered with them was painful as fuck. They are held in such high regard and they play like a grandmother at a demo pod in Virgin Megastores. I'm not expecting them to be world class speed runners or anything, but at least be competent, especially on a remake of a beloved game.

 

The amount of times they would get things straight up incorrect as well, dates of release, RRP etc were always things they would mess up on. I get that they are inundated with a constant barrage of info all the time, but if it's your job to know this shit, it's your job. You have people that can tell you how many studs Paul Gascoigne had on his boots when he scored for England and who the lines men were at the World Cup final in 1990, all the unimportant shit, surely you can learn the history and ins and outs of the most important shit.

 

That stuff always amazes me, like when football pundits pull some mad stat out. Same with any sort of historian or journalist that just has all this info at their hands. I don't think we've ever had that in the games circle. And it's not like we've no nerd shit flex their stuff, there's wrestling people that can tell you everything right back to the 70's including where people came from, names they went by, injuries they had, notable matches etc. I just don't think we have that in the video gaming space?

[one-armed dwarf]

Both Jeff and NXL have pods out going into the nitty gritty of how GB was during CBS and Red Ventures. Jeff's is pretty interesting wrt how disengaged some of his new bosses where, which is corroborated by the NXL guys who saw where the wind was blowing and knew that it would never get the hires it needed to get the site out of its stagnation

 

Don't have the Nxl link but its easy to Google

 

 

[DANGERMAN]

The Nextlander stuff was interesting. Vinny is clearly still angry about it all. I still find it surprising that they weren't intending to all jump together. 

 

I also never realised Vinny and Brad were so close, I always assumed he'd be closed to Alex 

[mmmark]

I don’t know or care about any of this drama 🥱 but I just saw this posted on discord if it’s of any interest. 

 

[mfnick]

Very weird. Saw someone say they hope this means they have gotten Giantbomb back from Fandom. That would be cool. Doubt it, but would be brilliant news if they did. Struggle to see any way they all would post the same thing though, especially with how sour it all is at the moment and Grubb has left. 
 

 

I’ve listened to the Gerstman and NXL stuff too. Really interesting shit. First time they’ve spoken semi openly about everything what happened. Surprised how stressed and burnt out people like Vinnie were. They hid it really well on camera.
 

I’ve never understood what’s going on behind the scenes with them though. Wish they go into that a bit more. Some creators get multiple videos out everyday with smaller teams whereas GB used to only do 1 a day if you’re lucky. Sometimes they only did a couple a week. What were they made to do all that other time? 

 

[DANGERMAN]

sounds like meetings about numbers. Some of what Vinny was saying reminded me of being an account manager, where I had to report sales numbers and margins etc

 

I find it a bit mad that they had to come up with new shows as seasons, because stuff like Burgle My Bananas and Steal My Sunshine just felt like random shit Dan had come up with and made up as he went along 😂

[mfnick]

2 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

sounds like meetings about numbers. Some of what Vinny was saying reminded me of being an account manager, where I had to report sales numbers and margins etc

That’s definitely a big part of it from what he was saying but I still struggle to see what else? Do they really take up that much time? 

 

You can easily see how he’d get burnt out during E3 season. But the rest of the time there wasn’t a lot of content actually making it to the site when you compare to others. 
 

Not dismissing the work at all BTW. I’ve no doubt they all worked their arses off constantly. It’s just hard to imagine what else was happening when you don’t see or hear about it 

[retroed]

Grubb, Bakalar, Dan, Jan and Minotti have bought Giant Bomb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mfnick]

WOOHOOO!!! Finally some good news. Love these as a group. So glad they’re sticking around. 

[Maf]

It’s great news but also very risky. Have to respect the guts to take it on. Wonder how Gerstmann feels about this lol 

[DANGERMAN]

Yeah, pleased for them. Glad it's all worked out 

 

I did end up turning the podcast off when they got the kid up on stage, because it turns out that I still don't particularly enjoy their stuff, but that's ok, it's nice it still exists 

[mfnick]

35 minutes ago, Maf said:

Wonder how Gerstmann feels about this lol 

I’d take it with a pinch of salt but as he says, he left 4 years ago. It’s not his anymore & hasn’t been for a while. He always thought it’s die. Always sounded like this is how he wanted it to be but got to remember crowd funding is a relatively new income stream for this kind of thing. It must have been a lot cheaper to buy this back now than it was while he was still there too. 
 

I’ve just subbed.  

[one-armed dwarf]

It's cool that they own it now tho I'm really curious what it cost.

 

Unfortunately I'm cutting way back on things like these, all these VG patreons. The one I might resub to in the future is Remap but only if there's stuff behind their paywall that's actually interesting (which right now, not so much)

 

The one thing GB are doing atm I might check out is supereyepatchwolf is making Jeff Bakalar watch all of the 90s version of Berserk. He comes on way too strong about Berserk on other podcasts but I wonder what Jeff would make of how it all ends. Might just kill JeffJeff's Bizarre Adventure entirely