Emperor Julian
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2015
I always found it fascinating how much song and dance was made about mainstreme games and my pagan harem never raised an eyebrow.
Games Journalism General
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I always found it fascinating how much song and dance was made about mainstreme games and my pagan harem never raised an eyebrow.
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2018
mostly because the game is hard and no journalist would try to do all kinds of shady shit.
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2017
Another Cuntaku staff member got shown the door this week - this time their video editor.
Pretty much almost all video editor staff under the Gawker media umbrella got shitcanned.
The ship is still sinking. Slowly, but sinking nonetheless.
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2018
Makes sense, how can an old dinosaur publication compete with the thousands of potential viral streamers? Lets look at Slowtaku's Youtube Page and glance at their view counts.
Not embarrassing numbers.... if you were a starting amateur Youtuber. Nothing in the last month has broken 100k views which is very troubling. Especially when you compare it to say an Aussie Youtuber.
This is really not up for debate, if you're a game developer you know that lots of potential buyers will watch videos of your game on Youtube for free. It is way more important for a game publisher like Digital Devolver to get their review codes out to freelance critic like GManLives than it is for them to get Kotaku's attention.
Now initially I wanted to just laugh at Kotaku, but my browsing discovered something far more shocking, Giant Bomb is clearly dying.
GmanLives's review of "Carrion" has over 300k views, GiantBomb's video only has 13k. GiantBomb probably isn't going anywhere because I'm guessing Jeff Gerstmann negotiated a long profitable contract from CBS but it goes to show how media personalities have to keep working hard or they'll wake up washed up before they know it. Having a publication to backup your name no longer matters in the new online landscape. It now fully rides and dies on personality.
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Win98SE
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2019
Giant Bomb's appeal was always the podcast and their paywalled content. Besides a few viral moments, their YT views have always been in the low digits. But you're still right - a personality-based website that spent years mocking streamers and YouTubers is now being forced to compete with them and it's very apparent they can't keep up.
Early GB was a bunch of wreckless people with access to commercial-grade video production equipment, resulting in something just a few notches above public access shows. Now it's old dudes who hate new video games and want you to watch dull, humorless streams of obscure NES titles where technical fuckups are supposed to still be funny despite them having no excuse to not know OBS from the bottom up. I'm being hyperbolic, but close enough.
Early GB was a bunch of wreckless people with access to commercial-grade video production equipment, resulting in something just a few notches above public access shows. Now it's old dudes who hate new video games and want you to watch dull, humorless streams of obscure NES titles where technical fuckups are supposed to still be funny despite them having no excuse to not know OBS from the bottom up. I'm being hyperbolic, but close enough.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2016
The only thing that gets view on Kotaku is the Highlight Reels where they cut together footage from better, non-kotaku, sources.
Polygon is doing something right, they have stellar views compared to Kotaku and GiantBomb. Their views are largely comparable to Gmanlives, who's got 1/3rd the amount of subscribers and isn't paying for 20 employees, and that's not exactly good news, especially when considering all the advantages they have over a rando with a youtube channel.
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2017
Former Kuntaku employee claims the site is in fact, #notwoke. Shocking!
A former coworker joked with me that it’d be fine to share this if I didn’t want to work in the industry anymore. Aside from the fact I don’t believe I have the luxury not to speak up, an industry like this is one I absolutely don’t want to be in and cannot in good conscience invite others into. If I did decide to step back in, things could not be the same. That’s the problem, isn’t it? The people running the industry, the people running the sites that report on the industry, often know each other. They’re often friends. So even people leaving a terrible situation feel they can’t speak out when they’re completely in the right to, let alone the people who aren’t in a position to leave. You can enact a lot of horrifying behavior if you rely on the fact that the industry is small and work is hard to come by, and people often feel forced to stay quiet.
Wait, you're telling me private mailing lists are in fact bad?
"I was warned by multiple coworkers that one person was infamously difficult to work with — from being told he was just hard to deal with to being told that he made the majority of the staff cry at one point or another. I quickly saw what they meant — he was often rude and condescending, and coworkers frequently cited him as a reason they were afraid to pitch or speak up on things. He was constantly protected by minimization of his behavior and outright inaction. I was once thanked for stopping a clearly personal argument between him and another coworker, by my boss, and I couldn’t imagine why my boss didn’t just do it himself. That sort of thing."
I hope it's Schreier just because my sides would never recover.
"When I and others demanded accountability for egregious mistakes made at the site — illustrated child pornography in a published story, a racist clip in an episode of Highlight Reel — white male coworkers were asked to apologize and essentially assumed their former duties uninterrupted. It’s possible the issue was elevated and they got a slap on the wrist — I don’t know. I doubt it. Despite it being clear to me that these things counted as the kind of editorial misconduct that should at LEAST come under review, these people quietly continued their jobs. Meanwhile, women and POC grew more and more uncomfortable about their safety at a site where they could be viciously insulted for not getting a story up fast enough but these things could go virtually unpunished. "
Complaining about how it was the white guys who got away with everything while bringing up the animated cheese pizza article written by a woman is only slightly absurd.
Also brings up the incident where a lady told Kuntaku about the time she was sexually assaulted and they exploited it for clickbait in case you forgot that was a thing. The lady made a newer post documenting all the receipts about a week ago it seems: https://archive.is/jPbzX
A former coworker joked with me that it’d be fine to share this if I didn’t want to work in the industry anymore. Aside from the fact I don’t believe I have the luxury not to speak up, an industry like this is one I absolutely don’t want to be in and cannot in good conscience invite others into. If I did decide to step back in, things could not be the same. That’s the problem, isn’t it? The people running the industry, the people running the sites that report on the industry, often know each other. They’re often friends. So even people leaving a terrible situation feel they can’t speak out when they’re completely in the right to, let alone the people who aren’t in a position to leave. You can enact a lot of horrifying behavior if you rely on the fact that the industry is small and work is hard to come by, and people often feel forced to stay quiet.
Wait, you're telling me private mailing lists are in fact bad?
"I was warned by multiple coworkers that one person was infamously difficult to work with — from being told he was just hard to deal with to being told that he made the majority of the staff cry at one point or another. I quickly saw what they meant — he was often rude and condescending, and coworkers frequently cited him as a reason they were afraid to pitch or speak up on things. He was constantly protected by minimization of his behavior and outright inaction. I was once thanked for stopping a clearly personal argument between him and another coworker, by my boss, and I couldn’t imagine why my boss didn’t just do it himself. That sort of thing."
I hope it's Schreier just because my sides would never recover.
"When I and others demanded accountability for egregious mistakes made at the site — illustrated child pornography in a published story, a racist clip in an episode of Highlight Reel — white male coworkers were asked to apologize and essentially assumed their former duties uninterrupted. It’s possible the issue was elevated and they got a slap on the wrist — I don’t know. I doubt it. Despite it being clear to me that these things counted as the kind of editorial misconduct that should at LEAST come under review, these people quietly continued their jobs. Meanwhile, women and POC grew more and more uncomfortable about their safety at a site where they could be viciously insulted for not getting a story up fast enough but these things could go virtually unpunished. "
Complaining about how it was the white guys who got away with everything while bringing up the animated cheese pizza article written by a woman is only slightly absurd.
Also brings up the incident where a lady told Kuntaku about the time she was sexually assaulted and they exploited it for clickbait in case you forgot that was a thing. The lady made a newer post documenting all the receipts about a week ago it seems: https://archive.is/jPbzX
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
Me too although this sounds like a complete SJW cunt. Seriously, this whore opens with complaining that a site for nerd shit like anime would use a pun on the word "otaku?" Lunacy.
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2017
It'll just be ignored and buried, like most things that make them look bad
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
I've considered doing this, but never done it until now. Let’s talk about Giant Bomb.
Origin Story
Years before GamerGate, trust in games journalism was in the shitter. Razorfists “Downfall of Games Journalism” series is the de facto series that sums up the general feeling at the time. One of the biggest scandals at the time was Gerstmanngate.
Jeff Gerstmann was lead editor at GameSpot. GameSpot had a huge, site wide advertisement deal that reskinned the entire site to be Kane and Lynch themed. Then Jeff published a 6 out of 10 review for the game. This resulted in Jeff being fired. The story is a little more complicated than that, but there’s a whole interview about it if you want the specifics.
In response, some of GameSpots staff quit on principle, including Ryan Davis (remember that name, it will be important later). Now without a job and no real transferable skills, Jeff drifted around the industry a while, occasionally recording a podcast with Ryan Davis at his house. Eventually, they decided to start their own games site with blackjack and hookers, building on the same principles that GameSpot was founded on years prior.
While the site featured written articles, it wasn’t the usual copy pasted press releases common at the time. The gang also leaned heavily into what was then the fairly new medium of online video. They had dabbled with it during their time at GameSpot, but now they were all in on this being the future. For context, this was the same year that YouTube was launched, and long before the streaming and let’s play format was mainstream.
The Good Times
Giant Bomb released quality content during this time, and built up a huge fanbase. There’s too many great moments to count spread across many videos and podcasts. Just google best of giant bomb or best of bombcast and you’ll get no shortage of clips and compilations.
The compilations are great, but sometimes even those don’t capture the magic as the jokes are often far funnier in context than when isolated. The Celebrity Poker Quick Look is way funnier in whole than seeing the final minute or two without context, nor do the compilations include the follow up where Jonathon Frakes sent a screenshot with a signed apology.
Imagine any of your favourite YouTubers or streamers, at their peak, and have them share a single site, each bringing their strengths to the table along with unique chemistry. And again, this was before streamers and YouTubers carved out that niche and perfected it.
There was so much to love, from Jeff’s passion for windjammers, Ryan’s reviews of films based on video games, the discussion of thermos flasks, reviews of energy drinks, and interviews that felt more like a group of friends hanging out and swapping stories than the usual disinterested presenter getting a PR rep to repeat the corporate spiel. Even the community had things like the weird Jeff sketch or the Giant Bomb community song.
It’s hard to praise GB during this time without going into hyperbole, but there was a reason I’d watch the videos at home, and listen to the podcast when leaving the house or playing games.
The Fall
Giant Bomb’s fall from grace wasn’t sudden or spectacular, but happened slowly over time, with the exact cause being something that’s up for debate. Generally speaking, I see three main causes blamed.
Other possible reasons.
Even during their fall from grace, Giant Bomb did occasionally put out great content. The Contradiction: Spot the Liar Quick Look is as good as any content from the glory days, and their VR stream was the source of a viral Crowbcat video.
Why Do I Care?
Giant Bomb was different from other game review sites. It wasn’t a soulless PR machine like Game Trailers or Game Informer. Watching their decline has been more like watching a favourite YouTuber devolve into ranting about Trump on Twitter all day occasionally doing a shitty livestream that lacks all the qualities you used to like.
Edit: Typos fixed
Origin Story
Years before GamerGate, trust in games journalism was in the shitter. Razorfists “Downfall of Games Journalism” series is the de facto series that sums up the general feeling at the time. One of the biggest scandals at the time was Gerstmanngate.
Jeff Gerstmann was lead editor at GameSpot. GameSpot had a huge, site wide advertisement deal that reskinned the entire site to be Kane and Lynch themed. Then Jeff published a 6 out of 10 review for the game. This resulted in Jeff being fired. The story is a little more complicated than that, but there’s a whole interview about it if you want the specifics.
In response, some of GameSpots staff quit on principle, including Ryan Davis (remember that name, it will be important later). Now without a job and no real transferable skills, Jeff drifted around the industry a while, occasionally recording a podcast with Ryan Davis at his house. Eventually, they decided to start their own games site with blackjack and hookers, building on the same principles that GameSpot was founded on years prior.
While the site featured written articles, it wasn’t the usual copy pasted press releases common at the time. The gang also leaned heavily into what was then the fairly new medium of online video. They had dabbled with it during their time at GameSpot, but now they were all in on this being the future. For context, this was the same year that YouTube was launched, and long before the streaming and let’s play format was mainstream.
The Good Times
Giant Bomb released quality content during this time, and built up a huge fanbase. There’s too many great moments to count spread across many videos and podcasts. Just google best of giant bomb or best of bombcast and you’ll get no shortage of clips and compilations.
The compilations are great, but sometimes even those don’t capture the magic as the jokes are often far funnier in context than when isolated. The Celebrity Poker Quick Look is way funnier in whole than seeing the final minute or two without context, nor do the compilations include the follow up where Jonathon Frakes sent a screenshot with a signed apology.
Imagine any of your favourite YouTubers or streamers, at their peak, and have them share a single site, each bringing their strengths to the table along with unique chemistry. And again, this was before streamers and YouTubers carved out that niche and perfected it.
There was so much to love, from Jeff’s passion for windjammers, Ryan’s reviews of films based on video games, the discussion of thermos flasks, reviews of energy drinks, and interviews that felt more like a group of friends hanging out and swapping stories than the usual disinterested presenter getting a PR rep to repeat the corporate spiel. Even the community had things like the weird Jeff sketch or the Giant Bomb community song.
It’s hard to praise GB during this time without going into hyperbole, but there was a reason I’d watch the videos at home, and listen to the podcast when leaving the house or playing games.
The Fall
Giant Bomb’s fall from grace wasn’t sudden or spectacular, but happened slowly over time, with the exact cause being something that’s up for debate. Generally speaking, I see three main causes blamed.
- Patrick Klepeck was hired to be the Giant Bomb. Before then, Giant Bomb usually stayed away from the “up to the minute video game news exclusive first look!” rat race because it was (and still is) stupid in the age of the internet. Patrick was brought on board to do that, and he brought with him an insufferable attitude and political beliefs that would later be known as “SJW”.
- CBSi (the owners of GameSpot) bought Giant Bomb. I forget why the previous owners (Whiskey Media) sold the site. The crew moved back into the GameSpot building.
- Ryan’s death. Ryan was there from the beginning, and him dying left a void in the team that could never be replaced. Given the site's descent into mediocrity since then, it’s possible that Ryan was the voice of reason, or even was the brains keeping the site afloat.
Other possible reasons.
- The East-West split. For family reasons, Vinny wanted to move from San Francisco to New York. The team has a policy of no Skype podcasts due to it lacking the spark of face-to-face podcasts. So there were two Giant Bombs, each less than the sum of their parts.
- Business model. Giant Bomb always struggled to make money. It had a premium membership with a few minor perks long before Patreon would make the model mainstream. They once said the most popular thing on the site, the podcast, was impossible to monetize effectively. At the time, videos were hosted by GB themselves, and the move to HD likely didn’t help the server and bandwidth costs. I don’t know how much money they made overall.
- Expanding. I assume the Giant Bomb model proved successful because a bootleg version of the site called Game Bomb.ru appeared, putting out it’s own content but stealing GBs site design. It wasn’t just the knock offs. Whiskey Media created several sister sites like Tested and Comics Vine. I don’t know how popular these were since only Tested seemed to have any meaningful crossover with GB, and was later turned into a vehicle for the Mythbusters.
- Tech. I never thought of this until @Win98SE mentioned it, but despite having a large crew, the backing of an international media empire, and more than 12 years experience, GB still operates like some amateurs who just bought some cameras and microphones from Walmart and are winging it.
- Politics. As was to be expected of a journalist site based in California, the GB crew drank the kool-aid of social justice, refusing to cover games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance and A Hat in Time. Oddly enough, despite being close friends with some devs and game journalists, they largely avoided incrimination during GamerGate, likely because of their previously mentioned refusal to get into the game news clickbait scene, their personality driven approach to the games they covered meant that any bias was worn on their sleeves, and the origin story of the site being created because they refused to take a bribe. The only one that caught any serious flak during GamerGate was Patrick Klepeck.
- Age. Simply put, Giant Bomb crew have become cynical, jaded, and grumpy with age.
Even during their fall from grace, Giant Bomb did occasionally put out great content. The Contradiction: Spot the Liar Quick Look is as good as any content from the glory days, and their VR stream was the source of a viral Crowbcat video.
Why Do I Care?
Giant Bomb was different from other game review sites. It wasn’t a soulless PR machine like Game Trailers or Game Informer. Watching their decline has been more like watching a favourite YouTuber devolve into ranting about Trump on Twitter all day occasionally doing a shitty livestream that lacks all the qualities you used to like.
Edit: Typos fixed
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- Joined
- Sep 1, 2019
pretty sure the whiskey media thing imploded because they weren't making money. Tested was sold to adam of the mythbusters (where it became gay) giantbomb and comic vine went to CBS and screened a few other stuff were sold off to someone else.
ryan was indeed the voice of reason, he'd move the discussion along if got close to veering into politics. i remember he yelled at someone in one of the early e3 streams when they was whining about some sjw shit. it was in the kitchen of some house. something like that.
ryan was indeed the voice of reason, he'd move the discussion along if got close to veering into politics. i remember he yelled at someone in one of the early e3 streams when they was whining about some sjw shit. it was in the kitchen of some house. something like that.
Anchors-Away
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 9, 2019
So is Abby the final nail in the coffin or a fashionable accessory to it?
Super Hans
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2020
For me, that heavily depends on if she was really the reason Dan left. But I'll give her the benefit of the doubt since Dan has been doing a side thing with the WWE for a while.
For now, I'd compare her to somebody who has to take over a plane with both engines blown, and instead of even attempting to make a landing she just fucking plows the bitch into the mountainside. The writing was already on the wall, but instead of trying making a good faith effort to improve the site Abby sees it as a way to further her improv comedy career.
The only reason I can think of her getting hired is that Vinny's cheating on his wife with her. Everybody else has their appeal and niche of games, even if they aren't popular. She has no charisma and no games she's interested in other than Sims and those $5 Nancy Drew games you find at Walmart, and everybody knows drunk stay at home catmoms don't pay video game streamers.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
If she is the final nail, that's only because the site was declared dead, embalmed, and the family collected the insurance long before the funeral date.
One thing to remember about Abby (and possibly Austin) is that when GB hired Dan, GB was raked over the coals by other games journalists because a womyn of colour didn't get the job and complained about it on social media. It later turned out the brave POC in question never actually applied for the job, but I wouldn't be surprised if it shaped their hiring decisions.
Sounds reasonable. I mentioned in OP that Leigh Alexander was somewhat notorious among GB fans after she made a fool of herself twice during GB E3 shows. I wouldn't be surprised if others were also drunk or said stupid shit.
For anyone not familiar with early GB. Instead of trying to get an expensive booth at E3, they rented a house nearby where they could store their equipment, stream, and I assume sleep. I don't know how long they kept this practice. At some point they decided flying out to see trailers was a waste of time and money and switched to a reaction format.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2016
In the past I have tried to guesstimate how many paying members they had and it didn't seem like a whole lot. Some diehards padded their subscriptions with many, many extra months. Merch seems to have been very important to their income, it seemed to sell out fast. Can't imagine they made a profit with the number of paid employees they had combined with being based in San Fransisco. Klepek said he got 65K while at GiantBomb.
Sites like Eurogamer is a mystery as well, they seem to have employees yet puts out original written content three times a week including fascinating articles like "I used to play Tetris at work sometimes, idk, not really interested in games".
Leigh Alexander's 775 million dollar CoD launch party showed how drunk and dumb she is.
Sites like Eurogamer is a mystery as well, they seem to have employees yet puts out original written content three times a week including fascinating articles like "I used to play Tetris at work sometimes, idk, not really interested in games".
Leigh Alexander's 775 million dollar CoD launch party showed how drunk and dumb she is.
Super Hans
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2020
Giant Bomb is probably doing alright financially. Even if only 10k get a sub, that's still a half million a year. Their production costs are cheap as hell, and it isn't like getting rid of the site is going to save CBS any money on their skyscrapers or tech people that get whored around. CBS probably paid more to buy the damn site than everything since then.
Win98SE
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2019
For GB, E3 was a big part of their programming and made up a bulk of the content they'd put out in the summer (several podcasts leading up to E3, tons of content while there, then "aftermath" stuff.) This year would have been even crazier given the new consoles and the games that were supposed to arrive with them. Their E3 streams were the best. Jeff interviewing industry vets and grilling the head of Xbox made for riveting content.
Stasi
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2019
This might be a weird complaint considering I would listen to every bombcast and watched all of the endurance runs but around the time or just after Ryan died the video content seemed to become more and more quantity over quality.
Instead of focused videos like the endurance runs or quick looks or shorter edited videos I remember i started seeing more and more 2 or 3 hour videos of them just farting around in front of the camera not doing much of anything and I started to check out at that point.
Instead of focused videos like the endurance runs or quick looks or shorter edited videos I remember i started seeing more and more 2 or 3 hour videos of them just farting around in front of the camera not doing much of anything and I started to check out at that point.