Fandom sells gaming media brand Giant Bomb to long-term staff

For those unfamiliar, Giant Bomb was one of the first video games press outlets to focus on premium video content. They offered monthly/yearly paid subscriptions for unlimited streaming/downloads: a mix of livestreams, review/criticism content, and Just Goofing Around pre-recorded content. They typically released a few hours worth of content a week at their peak, if I remember right, and the cost was something like $30-50 a year. This was before long form video was a big thing on YouTube; arguably sites like Giant Bomb were pioneers that showed a path forward (at least temporarily) for lots of creatives.

Their podcast has been running weekly for the entire time the site has operated alongside (intermittently) other podcasts, so they're approaching 890 episodes. Each episode was typically a few hours long as well.

When they were doing good they were a well-oiled content machine operating on a small budget with a small team. A lot of the stuff they put out was really special or unique in games press at the time - for example, one of their staff went to North Korea during a vacation so during one of their weekly live streams they devoted a time slot to him showing his photos and talking about his experiences there.

The history of the site is wild, too. From the origin in the wake of Jeff Gerstmann being fired from GameSpot, the subsequent exodus from that site, to the death of Ryan Davis, to being bought by CBS Interactive and brought right back under the fold next to GameSpot, to being acquired by multiple other companies, to Jeff Gerstmann getting fired AGAIN, and now this. And all the fun times and weirdness and insanity along the way.

And a funny bit of trivia: likely the most widespread impact the site has had outside of gaming is that it was the origin of the "blinking white guy" meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb6BsegPewk

Is it right to say that giant bomb is in social.media terms was equivalent of myspace, vimeo is something like a far smaller linkedin, twitch is the equivalent of twitter, and that YouTube is Facebook?

> to Jeff Gerstmann getting fired AGAIN

Hold up what? I didn't know that. It seems insane to fire the man from the organization he co-founded.

Once the VCs get involved you will soon find the company you founded is no longer the company you work at.

Not really. Giant Bomb is a content creator, not a social media network. They have some social features on their site, but it's all centered around GB and the content they produce.

As an aside, Vimeo isn't a meaningfully social site anymore. They pivoted to commercial video hosting long ago - there's still some commenting features on videos but it's not a significant part of what they do.

It happens. Our CTO "resigned" about 6 years after we started our VC funded startup. He sold his shares to the rest of the investors. It wasn't his choice to leave.

Yeah I suppose. It just is shocking to me, because for me Giant Bomb was Jeff (and Ryan, may he rest in peace). Hard to fathom the site without him, but so it goes I guess.

You're gonna be blown away if you read a bit of Apple's history ;)

>For those unfamiliar, Giant Bomb was one of the first video games press outlets to focus on premium video content. They offered monthly/yearly paid subscriptions for unlimited streaming/downloads: a mix of livestreams, review/criticism content, and Just Goofing Around pre-recorded content. They typically released a few hours worth of content a week at their peak, if I remember right, and the cost was something like $30-50 a year. This was before long form video was a big thing on YouTube; arguably sites like Giant Bomb were pioneers that showed a path forward (at least temporarily) for lots of creatives.

It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege.

It seems I am alone on that front.

Things change, and sometimes require you to change in ways you’re not okay with to stay/have it keep working.

So either change yourself, leave (if you can), or get pushed out (if you’re not majority control). Or everything grinds to a halt.

It isn’t just companies.

Since gamers are a subculture, they want a mirror of any part of real life you can think of, except about games.

There's a sub-subculture in this of video game journalists. There's a further subculture inside this of people who want to be writing for a video game review website (or a sports blog etc) but only ever actually write about their half-baked opinions about American politics.

You obviously are not alone. Sorry to break it to you.

I grew up in the 90s sitting on couches watching friends and family play games while we socialized.

For me, watching other people play games on the internet is basically an extension of that but with the addition that I can also watch some of the best gamers in the world if I want to.

To add some context here, at the time you had Jeff Gerstmann which is a dinosaur in the game journalism sphere and had insights and insider information from many different sources.

He has also an encyclopedic knowledge of weird esoteric games.

Add to this a series of people he had great chemistry with and people that were not familiar with some franchises and introduced by other members lead to funny moments.

Their coverage of E3 was legendary.

It depends how deep people are within subcultures but giant bomb did offer a lot of entertainment (even for free I never paid for the premium stuff) and honest game reviews. I can't speak for the current state because I was watching before the core team left and stopped watching after.

There are some great videos about videogames out there.

This is one of my personal favourites, just for all the background it reveals about how the game was made.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0058A651EB882B48

> It seems I am alone on that front.

No :)

In a third of the time you spend watching one "content creator" "goofing around" you can go through 3-4 text reviews and figure out if the game is for you already.

FYI Since you two don't seem to have engaged with Giant Bomb previously. This is exactly what Giant Bomb did NOT do. Most of their new games video coverage was their Quick Look series that was typically 10-20 minutes from maybe a few different points in the game.

> It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege.

Wait till you find out about American Football, or Soccer, or any of the racing events.

But seriously, we talk about programming. And people pay to talk about programming. Why wouldn’t people interested in gaming or other things do the same?

I don’t know why you would watch videos where people are goofing around. That seems like a you problem. Instead of picking random reviewers, stick to a few that like the games you like.

And honestly, one of the best reviewers I know does video reviews and puts the recommendation in the title. I still like to listen to the reviews because I can do it while doing other things, unlike reading.

> Instead of picking random reviewers, stick to a few

I do. In text mode.

> that like the games you like.

But this way I'll never get to play anything new to me. Best to check varied reviewers even if i don't always agree with them.

> I can do it while doing other things, unlike reading.

Reading is much faster than even listening to a talking head though.

> It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege.

You must have missed all of professional sports, pay per view, etc.

A lot of it is just fun and silly, but for me it was also an interesting way to develop my taste in something - to hear other people who are real heavy connoisseurs of something discuss it, and learning from them. Of course, you can get this from your friends and the people who are really around you in your life (or, just don't develop your taste at all because you just like what you like), and there's nothing wrong with that, I get why some people find it odd to watch people play video games.

You have to understand as well that Giant Bomb was the first of its kind in a lot of ways, this was an era where video game journalism began to loosen up from the corporate, PR-friendly, very stiff and consumer-focused era it had been in during the dominance of print media, and Giant Bomb was this novel thing where people who had been deeply involved in that era began to find their own voices. If you followed video games at the time online, Giant Bomb was this total breath of fresh air.

Jeff chats about some recent history on his podcast from a few days ago.

https://youtu.be/bQiGkSCQN7o?t=165

The social aspect is lost though.

Not totally. For smaller streamers, it's easy to interact with the streamer. And many people make friends in the chat and that's even why they keep coming back for - the community in the chat.

Online chats don't really compare to IRL interactions though.

There's currently an epidemic of genz who barely interact with their virtual friends.

> don't seem to have engaged

I don't engage. I read or watch. If it looks like engagement I close.

"It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege"

I think that's specifically what made GiantBomb so different in the first place - people were tuning in for the personalities, more so than the game news. There were already a lot of places you could just go for game news and updates (like IGN and Gamespot), but GB had decades of industry stories that were worth tuning in for. All sorts of 'behind the scenes' stories and faces would show up, Jeff finding out about the Dreamcast being cancelled in a conference call while on the toilet with food poisoning, Drew going to a Starcraft tournament in South Korea when they were still fairly new, the crew getting blind drunk at a birthday where they duct taped whisky bottles to their hands, stories of the sheer nightmare of lugging equipment and setting up for E3 every year with Drew and Vinnys video diaries. It was a peek behind the curtain into how the industry works with a group of very likeable people that made it different - more than just a place to go and watch people play games.

I apologize. It doesn't seem like you two have watched or read anything from the folks at Giant Bomb.

Have a nice day.

Well I haven't. And with the deluge of "video content" these days I'm afraid I'm not tempted.

Yeah my read on things is that "contentification" is just the more permissible branch of "enshittification".

If theres no article and I have to watch some clown in a video to get at the information I want I usually turn off.

Yes.

>But seriously, we talk about programming. And people pay to talk about programming. Why wouldn’t people interested in gaming or other things do the same?

I dont watch people talking about programming and I dont pay for the privilege of watching people talk about programming.

Yeah, Quick Look’s are what brought me to Giant Bomb initially. They aren’t reviews and they take pains to not spoil too much of the game. They give a good feel of what the actual gameplay looks like, which is almost never available from the game trailers, and which I find is hard to get a good mental picture of from written reviews (especially short ones).

Just watching their quick looks introduced me to so many different game genres that I’d never tried before. It’s a shame they stopped doing those a couple years ago.

> I do. In text mode.

So, I don't get it. You have a problem with reviewers, but you stick to a few? Seems like a self-imposed problem.

> But this way I'll never get to play anything new to me.

The reviewers review new games.

> Reading is much faster than even listening to a talking head though.

Sure, but a thumbs up or thumbs down is MUCH faster, and therefore better rather than reading someone talking about stuff.

You might want to learn about society. And other people. And culture. Get outside, meet people.

I used to spend a lot of time reading old Gamasutra post mortems.

I dont see the relevance?