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

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214 points minimaxir | 17 comments | 11 May 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 2.841s | source | bottom
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drumhead ◴[11 May 25 10:15 UTC] No.43952747[source]▶
I dont know how popular Giant Bomb is as a site, but in general video game journalism online is pretty much in the doldrums. Most of the big players from the last 20 years seem to have either disappered or are cutting staff back to the bare minimum. They seem to have become click baity and but dont even get much interaction from viewers.Looking at the Titan of the industry, IGN, they barely get more that 20k views for videos they put out on Youtube, even though they have 19million subscribers. Their audience seems to have moved on from them to individual Youtubers or twitch.

As a business proposition, video gaming sites seem like a money pit with no guarentee of a return. They may have a chance at survival by serving a niche audience that wants a specific type of content, limiting their scope and ambitions. But at the moment I just dont see a comeback for them.

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1. Taikonerd ◴[11 May 25 13:41 UTC] No.43953764[source]▶
> Looking at the Titan of the industry, IGN, they barely get more that 20k views for videos they put out on Youtube

I've noticed the same thing, and it confuses me. There are massive numbers of gamers in the world, and more every day. These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't worth their time.

Sure, as you mentioned, there are individual YouTubers or Twitch streamers... but one streamer doesn't have nearly enough time to review all the games that come out. Not even just the AAA titles!

So, how are gamers making their decisions about what to play next, if they're not reading reviews on a site like IGN?

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2. jitl ◴[11 May 25 14:04 UTC] No.43953905[source]▶
IGN huge, they review/cover a broad amount of stuff but since they’re so big they become known for having average coverage, and the average is not great. So I personally have never looked to them for opinion coverage.

I think most people have some specific things they like, and end up following community opinion, like Reddit or Discord for a game genre, and following a different personalities on YouTube or Twitch.

Personally I’m mostly playing mostly (indie) Metroidvania games which are not well covered by IGN, I hear buzz about new releases on Reddit or from Cannot be Tamed on YouTube. Beyond that I sometimes see cool stuff on Twitter, I picked up Clair Obscure after seeing a few tweets mention its great writing and music. I also end up seeing the front page of the Steam store, which has reasonably good recommendation profile for me given 90% of my game purchases are through there and I’m playing on Steam Deck which focuses the recommendations on titles well supported by Linux and the hardware.

3. CivBase ◴[11 May 25 14:07 UTC] No.43953925[source]▶
I think most gamers use YouTubers and Twitch streamers as tastemakers rather than reviewers. If your favorite personalities are having fun and it looks like you'd have fun too, then you don't need a review.
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4. phillipcarter ◴[11 May 25 14:09 UTC] No.43953941[source]▶
The IGN review video for Doom: The Dark Ages has 637k views at time of writing, which seems pretty good to me. More than the indie youtube outfits.
5. zahlman ◴[11 May 25 14:19 UTC] No.43953999[source]▶
> These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't worth their time.

They seem to care very little about the opinions and taste of the people producing content for sites like IGN.

> one streamer doesn't have nearly enough time to review all the games that come out. Not even just the AAA titles!

They usually specialize in a genre, and a lot of gamers are interested in a fairly narrow range of genres.

But also, you don't have to know about every game available. "The perfect is the enemy of the good", also with respect to information. The goal is really just to find enough games worth the time/money to keep oneself entertained. Life's too short to worry about whether you might have enjoyed something else more than the game you actually played. (If you can even justify spending time on video games at all....)

> how are gamers making their decisions about what to play next

Metacritic, Steam reviews, the aforementioned streamers, word of mouth in their own communities... probably other ways....

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6. sdwr ◴[11 May 25 14:47 UTC] No.43954207[source]▶
Big gaming sites aren't as credible or informative as Reddit, and aren't as entertaining as streamers
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7. Loughla ◴[11 May 25 14:55 UTC] No.43954250{3}[source]▶
Reddit ten or twelve years ago, maybe. That site is so poorly gamed by companies that its usefulness as a review aggregator is almost gone.

At least big gaming sites are pretty straight up with their sponsorships.

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8. TulliusCicero ◴[11 May 25 15:16 UTC] No.43954376{4}[source]▶
Hard disagree. That implies that that 'coverage' of new games on Reddit would just be generally positive without substantial critique, and I haven't found that to be the case.
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9. wookievomit ◴[11 May 25 15:17 UTC] No.43954392[source]▶
They have multiple revenue streams for dollars. Decent to large numbers on multiple platforms.

Check the TikTok numbers for example, and don't forget they still have the website.

IGN doesn't need YouTube

10. viccis ◴[11 May 25 16:12 UTC] No.43954753{5}[source]▶
Yeah my first reaction when I see an interesting new game on Steam or elsewhere is to search r/games (NOT r/gaming lol) for the game's name and look around at what people have to say about it. They're often very detailed and honest.

It's probably a good thing that reddit seems to have been too incompetent to enshittify their site completely yet. There's lots of it that has been, but there's still plenty of very good discussion there if you know where to look.

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11. dragonwriter ◴[11 May 25 17:25 UTC] No.43955302[source]▶
> These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't worth their time.

They want reviews that the can trust to predict their experience, and trust in the games media for that is (for a variety of reasons) very low.

> Sure, as you mentioned, there are individual YouTubers or Twitch streamers... but one streamer doesn't have nearly enough time to review all the games that come out.

So? No one has time to read/watch reviews of every game that comes out, either, or to play all the games that come out; if they can find a stable of trusted streamers that combined give reliable and timely impressions of games so that they can find a sufficient number worth playing and mostly avoid wasting money on duds, they don't need reviews of every game that comes out, and they especially don’t need that at the expense of reliability.

12. smogcutter ◴[11 May 25 18:11 UTC] No.43955694[source]▶
> These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't worth their time.

Judging by online reactions, what gamers want is their own opinion reflected back at them. Anything else brings frothing rage and vitriol.

For some extremely-online types who have made “gamer” their identity, the purpose of gaming media is primarily to have that identity confirmed, not to gather information.

13. j_timberlake ◴[11 May 25 18:17 UTC] No.43955741[source]▶
This. I've bought games after seeing 10 seconds of gameplay from a streamer. And those were some of my best purchases, hidden gems.
14. ragequittah ◴[12 May 25 01:52 UTC] No.43958929{6}[source]▶
I find reddit to be so hypercritical of everything to the point of it not being useful anymore. A very good 9/10 game will get so much criticism you'd think it's the worst game to be released in a decade.
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15. viccis ◴[12 May 25 02:41 UTC] No.43959163{7}[source]▶
That's not my experience at all. Feel free to provide any examples of very good games getting dogpiled in the comments, but I've never seen it.
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16. ragequittah ◴[13 May 25 07:01 UTC] No.43970276{8}[source]▶
I'll admit that I stopped looking at reddit for most game content lately (last year or 2) so my opinion might be outdated. But I do remember the new Assassin's Creed getting quite a lot of hate for gross reasons. It becomes oddly political much like many subs for TV shows and movies. Misogyny and racism are rampant.

That said I suppose if good moderators filter the rabble out there's bound to be some good communities. I just find that if you love a game it's usually best to steer well clear of the subreddit for it.

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17. viccis ◴[13 May 25 21:05 UTC] No.43977724{9}[source]▶
>good moderators filter the rabble out

This is key and one of the reasons that ignoring r/gaming and subbing to r/games instead has been standard wisdom since like 2010 when reddit actually had a guide to which frontpage subs to unsub from (r/pics, r/funny, etc.) and which ones to replace them with.