Games Journalism General

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Fancy_Robot said:
I don't find any of these layoffs to be shocking for Giant Bomb, the fact that Giant Bomb still keeps getting bought is the most surprising thing. They're basically nothing more than low end follower twitch/youtubers accounts that you have to pay 100k+ a year for each, including a bunch of overhead. Who's looking at a spreadsheet and chomping at the bit for that? Voidburger was a twitter hire for its epic comeback tweets, surprisingly twitter is not real life? Jason had a moment when Dan was there at first but he's so broken down and Dan isn't the charmer he once was so not much left there. No idea what he can do for a living
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Primarily it just pieces for building a larger brand to try and package up and diversify with. Usually some larger firm trying to diversify income.

That said - Giantbomb up until the last exodus was unique in that it was somewhat respected as a Game Journalism outlet because of the people who worked there (Gerstmann, Caravella and company).

Voidburger (I would assume) was a 'decent' hire for Jeff - he wanted video editors to edit video content (that he wanted to shoot in a real studio and at real locations) and then he left when that didn't happen. Now that GB is firmly never going back into a studio again - no need to keep paying people to edit videos. It made sense in a studio (4+ high quality video feeds, multiple captures, several high quality audio channels, etc) but now they just need one editor to throw a shitty overlay on a twitch stream and call it a day.
 
Dan Ryckert as creative director was their last shot at keeping the old vibe alive when gerstmann left.

Dan’s schtick is beyond old at this point he is pushing 40, married and still pretending to be a man child who doesn’t understand basic facts about the world. I thought he was ok when he originally joined but he has run this gimmick into the ground. He also doesn’t appear on 70% of the sites content and moonlights with his own podcast on the side.
 
wholetthegodsout said:
Dan Ryckert as creative director was their last shot at keeping the old vibe alive when gerstmann left.

Dan’s schtick is beyond old at this point he is pushing 40, married and still pretending to be a man child who doesn’t understand basic facts about the world. I thought he was ok when he originally joined but he has run this gimmick into the ground. He also doesn’t appear on 70% of the sites content and moonlights with his own podcast on the side.
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Rykert as creative director wasn't ever going to work.

Gerstmann worked because he could be serious when he needed to be, but funny when he needed to be - a vibe that would be the "core' of Giantbomb (Brad, Alex, and Vinny were decent at it too. Rykert can be funny and excels in making other people participate in his fun - but he was never going to be a good fit for a professional journalist. Without the venner of journalism, Giantbomb is literally just a twitch channel.
 
Tanner Glass said:
(Gerstmann, Caravella and company)
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Drew Scanlon leaving was the beginning of the end, IMO. Long slow decline. Abby and Ben were the last decent personalities. Key word there is personality. Where as Vinny, Gerstmann, Brad, etc were "journalists" the rest were just color. Maybe give Alex a bit more credit.

But after Brianna Wu publicly harassed them they hired absolute lumps of mud who offered nothing interesting: Walker, Jan, Bakalar, Jess, etc.

> veneer of journalism

Grub was supposed to fill that void but since he's been lying his ass off about rumors/sources/etc lately, that's out the window.
 
Tanner Glass said:
Primarily it just pieces for building a larger brand to try and package up and diversify with. Usually some larger firm trying to diversify income.
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This has been the selling point basically since CBS acquired it over a decade ago and since has been bought and sold multiple times. They're downsizing on staff and overhead to even try to keep this going, which makes no sense to me when there's so many better gaming communities worth investing in. Games journalism likely won't be a thing in any serious way 5 years from now.

Tanner Glass said:
That said - Giantbomb up until the last exodus was unique in that it was somewhat respected as a Game Journalism outlet because of the people who worked there (Gerstmann, Caravella and company).
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Really don't think that means much from a financial standpoint, like bragging about being the most well respected VCR maker today. GB is a property with name value because of it's popularity but it's inability to sustain itself is why people keep dumping it. It will likely be nothing more than a podcast in a popular podcast network in a few years
 
Giant Bomb was trending on twitter and of course it was about layoffs.
I didn't really get much out of VoidBurger other than amusement at finding her sharing a thread with other people here. In fact, I genuinely stopped paying attention to GB for much of 2022. Jeff Gerstmann was the only reason to keep watching.
Ryckert is trying for sure, but without Vinny's wheezing laughter or Alex Navarro being baffled at what he doesn't know, it's just not the same.

Remember the Beastcast? That was a thing that didn't need to happen, but man, I paid a bit more attention to that than the Bombcast these days. Shit just needs more life to it.

EDIT: Just for the hell of it, here's the r/games thread reacting to the news

r/Games - Giant Bomb experiences layoffs

1,456 votes and 506 comments so far on Reddit
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
 
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Fancy_Robot said:
Really don't think that means much from a financial standpoint, like bragging about being the most well respected VCR maker today. GB is a property with name value because of it's popularity but it's inability to sustain itself is why people keep dumping it. It will likely be nothing more than a podcast in a popular podcast network in a few years
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It did mean a fair bit from a financial standpoint though - it was a unique product.

There are millions of video game streams and youtubers and of those there is a very small handful of "popular and professional" video game journalists (think YongYea, Belluar, etc). However Giantbomb wasn't really "reporting" on the industry - they were part of it and were treated as such. Most other "just a Youtube Channels" couldn't dream of getting the access that Giantbomb did (they got early access to Atlus and Fromsoft games, interviewed the presidents of every major video game company basically every year, on site tours wherever the wanted, etc). For a while they were the absolute pinnacle of games journalism.

When Ryan died it became very clear that Giantbomb had no idea how to find/hire/train the "right' people to keep the site going - with most of them having minimal impact (Rykert), no impact (Abby, Ben, Jess, Jan, Jason), or being a huge embarrassing detraction (Walker, Keplek). Jeff really needed to find a "heir apparent" for the site but he never seemed to care all that much/know what to do after Ryan died. It seems like he was content to just let it die out when the OG crew fell apart but the company that owned GB seemed to have a different idea.

It had the same problem that a lot of sites had - it just became an incubator for other people to explore their projects/grow their audience and then just leave. Walker started Waypoint, Scanlon did Clothmap, Dan got his WWE contract, Danny did NoClip, and so on - people not investing these ideas into the sites for whatever reasons. Vinny/Brad/Alex doing Nextlander was the final nail - without them investing into GB it may as well have died that instant.
 
Gerstmann hasn't mentioned anything about it as far as I know.

There has been 0 overlap of his new solo channel with GB, Nextlanders, etc. Nextlanders not regularly but often enough will have previous GB crew on their conference calls but not Gerstmann.

Starting to wonder if there really was some personal drama there.

> Walker started Waypoint, Scanlon did Clothmap, Dan got his WWE contract, Danny did NoClip

Wasn't Waypoint one of the first sites to get culled a long while back? All of these opportunities are kaput, GB still limping along.
 
r/giantbomb is a little annoyed:

www.reddit.com

r/giantbomb - What the f*** is the point of Premium subs if folks get laid off by the company?

169 votes and 108 comments so far on Reddit
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com

r/giantbomb - Anyone else feel especially hopeless following this one?

110 votes and 72 comments so far on Reddit
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com

I don't feel so good, GiantBomb chads.
From the first thread:
As tough as it is to admit, I don't think GB is as self sustaining as we think anymore. Every day there's a new thread here about someone cancelling their sub. The sub count probably fell off a cliff between Jeff and NXL leaving. Their views are also the lowest they've been. I'm willing to bet the subs don't offset the costs anymore. Vinny has long talked about the costs for hosting the content alone is ridiculous.
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"While the layoffs come at a time when companies from Microsoft to Amazon are reducing staff and advertisers are slashing budgets ahead of a recession manufactured by the Federal Reserve, not everyone is feeling pain." - kotaku
We're not in a recession, just keep printing more money!!!
 
Alcoholism said:
Wasn't Waypoint one of the first sites to get culled a long while back? All of these opportunities are kaput, GB still limping along.
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Waypoint still exists - the same "we're kind of a youtube channel" thing that Giantbomb is doing. They've got a twitch channel and all that.

Austin Walker left quietly (as all of the news segments got combined and Vice didn't need 15 different "Editor in Chiefs") in 2021 but the site still exists. Its weird they're basically both doing the same shitty business model that isn't going to be remotely sustainable.

Also LOL at
slashing budgets ahead of a recession manufactured by the Federal Reserve
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Getting ahead of the recession we've already been in for half a year at least.
 
Tanner Glass said:
When Ryan died it became very clear that Giantbomb had no idea how to find/hire/train the "right' people to keep the site going - with most of them having minimal impact (Rykert), no impact (Abby, Ben, Jess, Jan, Jason), or being a huge embarrassing detraction (Walker, Keplek). Jeff really needed to find a "heir apparent" for the site but he never seemed to care all that much/know what to do after Ryan died. It seems like he was content to just let it die out when the OG crew fell apart but the company that owned GB seemed to have a different idea.
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Interesting you mention this - Jeff said that Giant Bomb would have ceased to exist in 9 to 12 months if Ryan hadn't died. Apparently the attention brought upon by his death boosted interest in GB as a brand which allowed them to hire on new people. This isn't from his podcast BTW, just a random stream. If you want to hear more you can watch the VOD from this point on (approx. 3hrs in.)
 
Win98SE said:
Interesting you mention this - Jeff said that Giant Bomb would have ceased to exist in 9 to 12 months if Ryan hadn't died. Apparently the attention brought upon by his death boosted interest in GB as a brand which allowed them to hire on new people. This isn't from his podcast BTW, just a random stream. If you want to hear more you can watch the VOD from this point on (approx. 3hrs in.)
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I disagree with his assessment. The big, gigantic outpouring of support for Ryan's death would have just been expressed had he lived but the site died in 6 to 12 months. It's not like the people who really like Giantbomb only liked it because Ryan died and would have been cool/OK with it dying.
 
I don't understand the appeal of the Gerstmann show. Tuned in for my second episode yesterday and it was just 30 minutes of him drinking grape soda and talking about how much he likes grape soda and misses 4 loko.

Who the fuck is paying for this?
 
Alcoholism said:
I don't understand the appeal of the Gerstmann show. Tuned in for my second episode yesterday and it was just 30 minutes of him drinking grape soda and talking about how much he likes grape soda and misses 4 loko.

Who the fuck is paying for this?
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My guess is that the audience is filed with 30+ year old men that still want to re-live their youth as high school kids that suffered arrested development because they did not curse out their parents enough.
 
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