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

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214 points minimaxir | 1 comments | 11 May 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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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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1. 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.