Games Journalism General

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870EVO said:
I don't even know how gaming journalism lasted as long as it has. People trust youtubers and streamers more than they trust journalists, across the board. Surely the companies know it must be a better cost/benefit just bribing a couple of top youtubers or streamers?

Maybe this whole recession will cause a correction?
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Correction? No. Less trash, probably yes with recent mass lay off.

Thing with gaming journalists or websites is that, they are easier to control, filter and "trustworthy" for game publishers to deliver news. AAA gaming companies don't need to bribe content creators (youtube or twitch) because most of them follow the hype anyway as in checking out the new big thing. At least, that's for all general purpose gaming.

Beside, it's usually easier for normies or someone doesn't know much about new upcoming thing, it's easier to find small quick info about everything in the same place. You don't have to follow multiple sub reddits to check about updates or news. More or less, if you googling something, gaming website will show up first and easier to check out.
 
Hammr2 said:
AAA gaming companies don't need to bribe content creators (youtube or twitch) because most of them follow the hype anyway as in checking out the new big thing.
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Yeah but that hype comes at a cost. I was in a foreign country years ago when Overwatch came out, and saw an entire bus plastered with Overwatch. Banners inside the shopping mall too. This "hype" must've cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
Giant Bomb, which used to be a website about video games, stated that they wouldn't be covering Hogwarts Legacy only for Jeff Grubb to use his morning show to go on a series of bizarre rants about the game, JKR, Ben Shapiro, capitalism (including the phrase "no ethical consumption"!), and a number of other things you'd only be aware of if your entire life revolved around Twitter. Ultimately he arrives at the conclusion that he "doesn't give a fuck" if people are being bullied or harassed for buying the game. Comments on reddit are mostly arguments over "whataboutism" while the YouTube comments are people confused over why the video game website is covering politics. Like any other discussion of Hogwarts Legacy, it's essentially two opposite groups of people arguing while a third sits back and tries to figure out what all the commotion is about.

This is hot off the heels of GB releasing their weekly schedule which only features a tiny fraction of the currently employed staff. Redditors are starting to question what everyone is getting paid to do. Includes a few subtle and not so subtle jabs at game journalists being overpaid.
 
870EVO said:
Yeah but that hype comes at a cost. I was in a foreign country years ago when Overwatch came out, and saw an entire bus plastered with Overwatch. Banners inside the shopping mall too. This "hype" must've cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
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that is for normies. "influencers" jump onto the hype to milk it for views (they gonna stream anyway, so they pick what gets them the most).
 
Am I going crazy or is r/GiantBomb deleting threads I wanted to post here? Fuck.
Anyways, I saw one about Pax East line-up. No Giant Bomb people were on it, and that's why the thread was there. Comments had noted that GB seems to have moved on completely to content that is basically just Zoom calls or individual streams. Big sighs in the responses.

Another one had questioned why a big deal was made about Dan Ryckert coming back - Giant Bomb is pretty clearly a side gig for him now.
I don't feel so good about this, Giant Bomb chads...
Win98SE said:
Giant Bomb, which used to be a website about video games, stated that they wouldn't be covering Hogwarts Legacy only for Jeff Grubb to use his morning show to go on a series of bizarre rants about the game, JKR, Ben Shapiro, capitalism (including the phrase "no ethical consumption"!), and a number of other things you'd only be aware of if your entire life revolved around Twitter. Ultimately he arrives at the conclusion that he "doesn't give a fuck" if people are being bullied or harassed for buying the game. Comments on reddit are mostly arguments over "whataboutism" while the YouTube comments are people confused over why the video game website is covering politics. Like any other discussion of Hogwarts Legacy, it's essentially two opposite groups of people arguing while a third sits back and tries to figure out what all the commotion is about.

This is hot off the heels of GB releasing their weekly schedule which only features a tiny fraction of the currently employed staff. Redditors are starting to question what everyone is getting paid to do. Includes a few subtle and not so subtle jabs at game journalists being overpaid.
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They could play this off easily if they just provided real, alternative content. Here's an example of what I'm thinking:

Jan Ochoa needs to find some weeb games for the sake of providing some...colorful alternative programming to everyone else talking about Hogwarts Legacy.
 
Win98SE said:
Giant Bomb, which used to be a website about video games, stated that they wouldn't be covering Hogwarts Legacy only for Jeff Grubb to use his morning show to go on a series of bizarre rants about the game, JKR, Ben Shapiro, capitalism (including the phrase "no ethical consumption"!), and a number of other things you'd only be aware of if your entire life revolved around Twitter. Ultimately he arrives at the conclusion that he "doesn't give a fuck" if people are being bullied or harassed for buying the game. Comments on reddit are mostly arguments over "whataboutism" while the YouTube comments are people confused over why the video game website is covering politics. Like any other discussion of Hogwarts Legacy, it's essentially two opposite groups of people arguing while a third sits back and tries to figure out what all the commotion is about.

This is hot off the heels of GB releasing their weekly schedule which only features a tiny fraction of the currently employed staff. Redditors are starting to question what everyone is getting paid to do. Includes a few subtle and not so subtle jabs at game journalists being overpaid.
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The layoffs didn't go far enough.
 
I'm glad I bought the wizard game. Enraging dogmatic freaks is one thing, but making games journalists cry really gets me going.
 
Win98SE said:
Giant Bomb, which used to be a website about video games, stated that they wouldn't be covering Hogwarts Legacy only for Jeff Grubb to use his morning show to go on a series of bizarre rants about the game, JKR, Ben Shapiro, capitalism (including the phrase "no ethical consumption"!), and a number of other things you'd only be aware of if your entire life revolved around Twitter. Ultimately he arrives at the conclusion that he "doesn't give a fuck" if people are being bullied or harassed for buying the game. Comments on reddit are mostly arguments over "whataboutism" while the YouTube comments are people confused over why the video game website is covering politics. Like any other discussion of Hogwarts Legacy, it's essentially two opposite groups of people arguing while a third sits back and tries to figure out what all the commotion is about.

This is hot off the heels of GB releasing their weekly schedule which only features a tiny fraction of the currently employed staff. Redditors are starting to question what everyone is getting paid to do. Includes a few subtle and not so subtle jabs at game journalists being overpaid.
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I listened to that Jeff Grubb segment and had a good laugh over it. My favorite bit at roughly 2:30 in:
I'll tell you where I'm at, and then we'll just go from there. On Monday, I was like "Man, boycotts don't work," and that's because it's a, you know, capitalist lie and all this stuff, and since then I've sort of changed my mind a little bit on that based on the reaction to it. Now the game is very successful. It's making a lot of money, and I think the realization came when it's like... no one was ever going to be able to stop that. Really what you could really do is... It's the equivalent of a protest getting in the road and annoying people. Yeah, maybe things can be a little annoying sometimes, and does that fix anything now? No, but I think it does have a long term effect, and I'll just speak for myself. If Warner Bros. ever came to me and was like, "Hey, would you want to take money to advertise something Harry Potter-related on your stuff?" No way. Would never ever do it. You know, I was already leaning in that way, but I can be 100% confident about that because of this whole entire reaction that's happened. To me, that is the needle moving in the right direction slowly over time, and I think that can happen in terms of the estimation of Harry Potter as well. The series and then how that reflects on JK Rowling. If we look at like who is championing this now, yeah, there are some normal people out there, but it's also Ben Shapiro out there taking victory laps, and in my opinion, I think that makes it seem very uncool, and I think that can have a long term effect as well, and if that's the goal here to diminish JK Rowling's stature so that we can diminish the things she says that are transphobic, then I do think things are working.
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So according to Grubb here, "annoying people" is a winning strategy to earn their hearts and minds, giving himself as an example of somebody was convinced in this way even though he was already anti-Rowling. Then he suggests that Ben Shapiro celebrating the success of Hogwarts Legacy despite the efforts of the Rowling antis will also convince people to become anti-Rowling because, in Grubb's mind, everyone thinks that anything the popular conservative commentator likes is "very uncool". A double failure in the art of persuasion.
 
Alter Ego said:
It has to be a former fan, huh?

Lol, at the broader exchange, though.
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It comes off like Gita Jackson really wants to play the game as a secret current Harry Potter fan deep down and is trying to justify it with her judging, puritanical peers by insisting that it's for a scathing review.
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AKA woman of color asks white man for permission to do something banal like playing a vidya.



edit

Jeff Grubb is fat. That is all.
 
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Alcoholism said:
Patric Klepek is incensed that someone would play and review games for fun.

https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/1622637389142171648
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Why does this retarded faggot think people play games at all? It isn't to get preached at by a bunch of child groomers.
Alter Ego said:
I listened to that Jeff Grubb segment and had a good laugh over it. My favorite bit at roughly 2:30 in:

So according to Grubb here, "annoying people" is a winning strategy to earn their hearts and minds, giving himself as an example of somebody was convinced in this way even though he was already anti-Rowling. Then he suggests that Ben Shapiro celebrating the success of Hogwarts Legacy despite the efforts of the Rowling antis will also convince people to become anti-Rowling because, in Grubb's mind, everyone thinks that anything the popular conservative commentator likes is "very uncool". A double failure in the art of persuasion.
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Boycotts work. If people agree with you, i.e. you aren't a complete bunch of freaks nobody wants to deal with.
Win98SE said:
Includes a few subtle and not so subtle jabs at game journalists being overpaid.
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Getting paid at all is overpriced for this absolutely worthless "profession." These are definite B ark material along with telephone sanitizers.
 
Win98SE said:
Giant Bomb, which used to be a website about video games, stated that they wouldn't be covering Hogwarts Legacy only for Jeff Grubb to use his morning show to go on a series of bizarre rants about the game, JKR, Ben Shapiro, capitalism (including the phrase "no ethical consumption"!), and a number of other things you'd only be aware of if your entire life revolved around Twitter. Ultimately he arrives at the conclusion that he "doesn't give a fuck" if people are being bullied or harassed for buying the game. Comments on reddit are mostly arguments over "whataboutism" while the YouTube comments are people confused over why the video game website is covering politics. Like any other discussion of Hogwarts Legacy, it's essentially two opposite groups of people arguing while a third sits back and tries to figure out what all the commotion is about.
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A good stance to take when being entrusted to oversee a failing website is to dive deep into contentious political views and further divide your dwindling audience. Excellent move.
Win98SE said:
This is hot off the heels of GB releasing their weekly schedule which only features a tiny fraction of the currently employed staff. Redditors are starting to question what everyone is getting paid to do. Includes a few subtle and not so subtle jabs at game journalists being overpaid.
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The GB reddit is just full of doom and gloom, it's hilarious.

From the most recent Giant Bombcast Video
We had it so good back in the beastcast days
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Why is it that even after doing this for years they can't figure out the sound cues? It's pretty embarrassing.
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I haven't fully stopped, but it's become last in my podcast priority at this point. At this point I listen just because I feel like I should, because I've been listening for so long.
I’ve been in the same position for a while. This episode is the one that made me realize I’m fully alright moving on and not keeping this podcast in my weekly rotation.
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This, it was super cringy. All of their Rowling protesting is purely virtue signalling. They could’ve just ignored the game and not talk about it, but they just had to get some good boy points by telling us how much they are ignoring the game.
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A game based on an IP created decades ago by someone who sucks should be boycotted and anyone buying said game is a transphobe, but they're 100% going to cover big releases from notoriously awful developers. It doesn't make sense and it's virtue signaling at its worst.
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I don't know why I keep listening. Another episode without Dan, Lucy or Tam. Would be nice if The Giant Bombcast actually had Giant Bomb staff on it.
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GB itself just feels depressing to listen to, the energy has felt forced for a long time now.
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I think I may have hit my last leg with this one, it just bums me out at this point to listen to a bunch of randoms from week to week after everything that’s happened.
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There are the ones that the mods left up, there's next to no praise to be found here - the bastion of Giantbomb praise and bootlicking. The deleted comments I'm sure were more hostile and hilarious.

Voidburger's VODs get posted there to the raging sound of 1-4 pity comments as well.
 
Tanner Glass said:
The deleted comments I'm sure were more hostile and hilarious.
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Those are the best ones, from the Bombcast thread for this week.

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Dan not showing up on the Bombcast for months but then is on Nextlander this week is also hilarious. Guy is just cashing paychecks at this point, and who can blame him?
 
Tanner Glass said:
A good stance to take when being entrusted to oversee a failing website is to dive deep into contentious political views and further divide your dwindling audience. Excellent move.

The GB reddit is just full of doom and gloom, it's hilarious.
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More amusing than all that is the fact that the Semi-Active Giant Bomb Archiver (a fan account on Youtube) has totally given up on archiving their stuff.
No uploads in 5 months. Prior to him, there was this guy who hasn't uploaded in years:
That's more powerful than the doom and gloom. When clearly loyal fans who archive content have thrown the towel, something's wrong.

I do take a bit of issue with the "We had it so good back in the beastcast days" comment - it had its moments for sure, but I feel like splitting people up like that was a step in the wrong direction.
 
We-Wuz-Kangz said:
I wonder if game journos will keep the same "social activist" energy next week when Atomic Hearts launches.
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It seems they never run out. They'll do anything if they think it can get them out of the games industry and writing at the Times. Or at least have them viewed the same way as "real journalists."
 
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lol
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Amazing that people are still paying for GB. What the hell are you even paying for at this point? Must just be pure brainless consoomer inertia.
 
Absolute massacre in the comments of Giant Bomb's Atomic Heart QL with over 50% of the comments deleted. If you enjoy watching groups of people probably in the late 30s or 40s arguing about which video game is more problematic, check it out.
 
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