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.
sylens · 10h ago
Giant Bomb is a bit of a tragic tale because they essentially pioneered the idea of personality driven game streaming at a time when most video game sites were still doing the templated 5 section review. The problem is that they were a bit too ahead of their time, so they had to rely on outside funding which caused them to be sold - first to CBS, then Red Ventures, and now Fandom. If they were launching today, it would be a patreon funded YouTube channel without the overhead of an in person office, rolling your own video streamer, etc
Kudos · 8h ago
I don't think they had issues making money, they had issues hitting unrealistic growth targets being set by their overlords. This was discussed on the most recent Nextlander podcast. Nextlander being 3 of the Giant Bomb OGs.
sylens · 7h ago
No issues making money once they were up and running, but they needed to bootstrap somehow and therefore weren’t just owned by Jeff G from the start
j_timberlake · 2h ago
They pioneered it, but they lost because "gig-economy" streaming is better at finding diamonds in the rough. Giant Bomb couldn't find more Vinny's or Dave's no matter how hard it tried (and it did try).
silversmith · 4h ago
While the monetary overhead of an office is a fact, that couch also built their show. The in-person dynamics of both the podcast and their other shows were a class above the remote-only version that was forced by the east/west split, and later COVID. I miss that couch.
geetee · 9h ago
I think they all lost a little something when Ryan suddenly died.
bigstrat2003 · 4h ago
That was definitely the case in my opinion. I used to listen to the Bombcast religiously, and it just wasn't the same after Ryan died. I kept listening for a while, but eventually tuned out because he really did bring something irreplaceable to the table.
bartread · 9h ago
I can only give a personal perspective but I don’t necessarily trust reviews from large, established mainstream outlets, as opposed to independent creators and reviewers.
My taste in games tend to lag by at least a few years, so I’d often far rather watch a let’s play or an independent review - especially one created some time after the fact - to get a true impression of the game than an overly curated take whose perspective is often overly skewed and coloured by then-current trends and tastes in gaming.
For anything >10 years I still find myself looking for content from CGR and, particularly, CGR Undertow, for example.
Plus it’s not unknown for mainstream reviewers to overhype new games.
The plethora of content, and view counts, suggest I may not be alone in this point of view.
chris12321 · 53m ago
That's certainly not a criticism that could be levelled at Giantbomb, considering it was started when its founder, Jeff Gerstman, was fired from his job at GameSpot for giving a game a low review score while the developer of the game was doing a big marketing campaign on the site.
malfist · 4h ago
I think it's because there's no trust in the big names anymore. Most of their "reviews" seem to be largely written by the game studio. How many times can you see IGN gush about how awesome a game is before launch and then when you get your hands on it, is a buggy boring mess before you stop checking IGN?
techjamie · 1h ago
A lot of it is on the publishers for their early review copy practices. Big media outlets will get early review codes for the games so they can be among the first to get a review out and net the traffic. But the publishers want good publicity in return for the early access codes, and reviewers that don't play ball can find themselves on an industry wide blacklist from receiving them in the future.
So the best, least biased reviews you can find are going to be 2-3 days post release, and not from someone who is large enough to get free review codes. I never trust pre-release reviews.
ethan_smith · 4h ago
Sites like Game Informer, Easy Allies, and MinnMax have shown viability through subscription/Patreon models that focus on dedicated communities rather than mass appeal.
Taikonerd · 7h ago
> 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?
jitl · 7h ago
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.
zahlman · 6h ago
> 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....
sdwr · 6h ago
Big gaming sites aren't as credible or informative as Reddit, and aren't as entertaining as streamers
Loughla · 6h ago
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.
TulliusCicero · 5h ago
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.
viccis · 4h ago
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.
smogcutter · 2h ago
> 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.
phillipcarter · 6h ago
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.
dragonwriter · 3h ago
> 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.
CivBase · 7h ago
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.
j_timberlake · 2h ago
This. I've bought games after seeing 10 seconds of gameplay from a streamer. And those were some of my best purchases, hidden gems.
wookievomit · 5h ago
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
n1b0m · 6h ago
The IGN review of Doom: The Dark Ages from 2 days ago currently has 636K views
jaoane · 5h ago
I'm not a huge gamer myself but game journalism the last decade has been scandal after scandal after politics after scandal after politics, so it's no wonder everybody has moved on. If I want to know what a game is like, literally the last opinion I'm interested in is that of a "game journalist".
gambiting · 1h ago
The problem is that TikTok/Instagram Reels have taken everything. The engineered crack that is the most addictive thing ever takes every second of our attention so it leaves no time to do anything - no "proper" journalism, no books, no films, even YouTube is too long format for someone addicted to TikTok. It's actual catastrophe of attention spans.
jaoane · 11h ago
The best thing Fandom could do for the community is close forever. Talk about a cancerous website. People like to talk shit about Pinterest, but Fandom is tremendously worse, since its SEO efforts drown actually useful websites.
MyPasswordSucks · 4h ago
> Fandom is tremendously worse, since its SEO efforts drown actually useful websites.
This cannot be emphasized enough.
A clean, no-cookied, location-off search for "Doom wiki" (no quotes) returns the terrible, low-information, awful-layout, often-outdated/incorrect Fandom Doom Wiki as the first result.
The actual Doom Wiki, better-designed and far more content-filled - which is called "The Doom Wiki", and with a domain that is literally just "doomwiki.org" - comes in second.
jon_richards · 3h ago
Huh. Just checked kagi and it’s the same. At least you can block sites manually.
anton-c · 7h ago
My goodness I clicked a link to Fandom on accident the other day - most external links on tvtropes go to Wikipedia.
A sidebar opens automatically, there's a pop-up at the bottom, tons of distracting design and things showing up asking me to take a poll. What a mess. And I have adblock ofc... can't imagine what it really looks like.
I am saddened whenever an IP I've just discovered has their knowledge hub on fandom.
7jjjjjjj · 3h ago
There's extension called Indie Wiki Buddy that will replace Fandom links in SERPs with links to non-Fandom wikis.
Whiskey Media was top tier back in the day. A group of folks producing really fun content, and having a great time doing it. The community was top notch too. I have no idea where the diaspora ended up, since the forums and wiki are comparatively dead these days.
j_timberlake · 2h ago
FYI to anyone missing the core GB guys, they're on a Twitch channel called NextLander. Vinny, Brad, Alex, Will Smith, Abby.
nubinetwork · 18h ago
Glad to hear, fandom is a horrible website to use
bertil · 9h ago
What are your concerns with Fandom?
aprilnya · 9h ago
For one, when I visit the site on my phone, the bottom 25% of my viewport is taken up by their recommendation algorithm, the top 30% is usually but not always taken up by an autoplaying video completely unrelated to the topic or wiki I’m visiting, and so I’m left with a tiny piece in the middle of my screen actually containing the contents of the wiki page I’m trying to read.
They also hold wikis hostage by not allowing them to move to another platform and redirect/get rid of their Fandom wiki. This means that if any wiki tries to move to be independent, the Fandom wiki will keep existing, and usually will still be the first result on Google for a long while, maybe forever, because of Fandom’s SEO. Of course the entire community of editors will have moved on, so this heavily outdated Fandom wiki full of ads and other elements trying to catch your attention and keep you on the site, will rank above the independent ad-free and active wiki with up-to-date information on Google search.
Why should anyone download extra crap for a crap website? I'll pass.
wizzwizz4 · 3h ago
Because it helps keep you from accidentally visiting that website.
Macha · 9h ago
Fandom would rather I do anything other than what I came to the site to do.
- Autoplaying barely related videos at the top as someone told them video content has better CPM
- "Have you tried looking at this page on another wiki?"
- So many ads
- Others like you viewed
- Would you like to join the discord?
- Fan Central?
GuB-42 · 8h ago
Just go there without an ad-blocker and see for yourself. It is pretty bad even with an ad-blocker.
The worst part is that it wasn't always like that. When it started of as wikicities and then wikia, it was pretty good, very Wikipedia-like, which is to be expected considering its history. But it enshittified quickly as it became Fandom, all while making it hard to move the existing communities out of the platform.
punnerud · 14h ago
In this context, the term “bomb” refers specifically to Giant Bomb, the gaming media brand that has now become independently owned and operated by its creators.
kevingadd · 19h ago
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.
protocolture · 13h ago
>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.
Wololooo · 11h ago
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.
Fripplebubby · 6h ago
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.
laserDinosaur · 4h ago
"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.
Brybry · 11h ago
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.
pier25 · 6h ago
The social aspect is lost though.
dubiousdabbler · 5h ago
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.
pier25 · 5h ago
Online chats don't really compare to IRL interactions though.
There's currently an epidemic of genz who barely interact with their virtual friends.
nottorp · 11h ago
> 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.
natebc · 11h ago
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.
nottorp · 4h ago
> don't seem to have engaged
I don't engage. I read or watch. If it looks like engagement I close.
jasonlotito · 11h ago
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.
nottorp · 7h ago
> 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.
lanthade · 7h ago
> 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.
astrange · 12h ago
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.
iamacyborg · 11h ago
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.
You obviously are not alone. Sorry to break it to you.
jasonlotito · 11h ago
> 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?
Trasmatta · 18h ago
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
bigstrat2003 · 17h ago
> 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.
RevEng · 16h ago
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.
riffraff · 14h ago
You're gonna be blown away if you read a bit of Apple's history ;)
phatfish · 6h ago
Jeff chats about some recent history on his podcast from a few days ago.
Once the VCs get involved you will soon find the company you founded is no longer the company you work at.
bigstrat2003 · 16h ago
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.
lazide · 13h ago
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.
IG_Semmelweiss · 17h ago
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?
duskwuff · 17h ago
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.
dustbunny · 7h ago
Anyone remember 1up.com before giant bomb? 1up was how I got into podcasts. The computer gaming magazine podcast was hilarious. I loved those guys. I should try to download the archive.
randall · 17h ago
JEFF BAKALAR?!?!? THE 404 JEFF BAKALAR!!?!?!?!?
Insane. How times have changed.
c-hendricks · 16h ago
His arc at Giant Bomb is pretty great. From guest to co-owner.
randall · 16h ago
i worked with him at cnet all those days ago. super weird.
Trasmatta · 19h ago
Great news. Giant Bomb is in some ways one of the few remaining relics of the older / weirder internet. I thought it was done for after the past week.
RistrettoMike · 18h ago
YOOOOO! Still a threat!
natebc · 11h ago
Wrong Jeffs!
That Jeff is still a threat but he's not these Jeffs.
<>
bitwize · 13h ago
I'm still waiting for a gaming site that could rival what TheGIA was back in the day. But unfortunately, the web that gave rise to TheGIA is long gone...
stevage · 17h ago
Boy that was a confusing headline. I did not realise that fandom or giant bomb were proper nouns.
bromuro · 13h ago
These uppercase titles need to stop, why is that?
pindab0ter · 13h ago
It's called title case and for as far as I'm aware this is a uniquely American thing.
k__ · 10h ago
German capitalizes all nouns, not just then proper ones, so missing title case doesn't change much.
rantallion · 9h ago
But surely it'll help in this case, where an article is being published in English and being shared on an English language forum.
k__ · 6h ago
Fair.
lazide · 13h ago
It’s from newspaper headlines - using lower case starts to words looks really weird when the word is an inch plus tall on the paper.
throw-the-towel · 13h ago
That's just because you're not used to that, many European languages don't have title case and newspapers still look perfectly okay.
alephnan · 13h ago
So UI designers prioritize form over function as always
Talk about a typesetters nightmare. Still, better than India where a lot of signage is still done by hand.
jaoane · 11h ago
The last two images you linked to are fake, and clearly designed by someone who doesn’t know Spanish and has never been to either Chile or Spain. No signs look like that in either country.
Nobody would dare capitalise “de” in Santiago de Chile for instance.
thih9 · 11h ago
Confirming, the image linked by grandparent is tagged as 3d illustration on shutterstock[1]. A similar illustration with lowercase “de” spelling exists too[2]. Actual road signs in Chile have lowercase “de”[3].
Clear and easy to read is the one that you expect to read, which depends on your previous experience.
suddenlybananas · 10h ago
It's like when Americans insist that fahrenheit is more "intuitive" since it's what they have experience with.
nkrisc · 9h ago
Well the one thing I do like about Fahrenheit is that it puts the average range of temperatures I experience on nice and tidy 0-100 scale.
thih9 · 7h ago
I could say the same about Celsius as a person who enjoys tea, hot showers and looking at CPU temperature every now and then.
debugnik · 7h ago
Your last two links are fake. And you can check on your own Wikipedia link that for Spain's direction signs, only proper nouns are capitalized: full uppercase on conventional roads for historical reasons, otherwise the usual capitalization rules such as on highways or town roads. Whereas full lowercase is reserved for service directions (e.g. service road, airport, hospital, beach). The exceptional capitalized service directions are really old town signs.
bertil · 9h ago
It would be fairly easy to add minor elements fo add context and help: Fandom·com sells creator-led brand "Giant Bomb" back to its key personalities.
riffraff · 14h ago
I even misread it as "sends" and thought this was a stunt of some kind
fhd2 · 13h ago
Also independent creators.
fhd2 · 8h ago
Ah, that's fixed now. And here I thought Independent Creators was a company. What a delightful puzzle.
maratc · 9h ago
In English, there's this:
Fandom Sells Giant Bomb to Independent Creators
In other languages:
ֹֹ»Fandom« Sells »Giant Bomb« to »Independent Creators«
nilslindemann · 16h ago
Everyone who clicked the link is not on CIA's observation list.
thaumasiotes · 16h ago
Well, I didn't know about Giant Bomb, but the fact that the domain for the headline was fandom.com was a big clue for Fandom.
archagon · 16h ago
I want to live in your reality.
(Edit for clarity: because the literal headline is hilarious.)
DevKoala · 15h ago
Hahahaha. Upvote.
Fandom is a pit of the internet that you never want to find yourself in. Giantbomb probably should have never happened, it never hit the heights of Gamespot.
pinkmuffinere · 7h ago
What the hell, this new title is worse than the original, which was already quite confusing! Can I propose something like the following?
“Giant Bomb (video game media company) purchased by its staff”
“Giant Bomb (video game media company) splits off from parent company”
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.
My taste in games tend to lag by at least a few years, so I’d often far rather watch a let’s play or an independent review - especially one created some time after the fact - to get a true impression of the game than an overly curated take whose perspective is often overly skewed and coloured by then-current trends and tastes in gaming.
For anything >10 years I still find myself looking for content from CGR and, particularly, CGR Undertow, for example.
Plus it’s not unknown for mainstream reviewers to overhype new games.
The plethora of content, and view counts, suggest I may not be alone in this point of view.
So the best, least biased reviews you can find are going to be 2-3 days post release, and not from someone who is large enough to get free review codes. I never trust pre-release reviews.
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?
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.
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....
At least big gaming sites are pretty straight up with their sponsorships.
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.
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.
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.
Check the TikTok numbers for example, and don't forget they still have the website.
IGN doesn't need YouTube
This cannot be emphasized enough.
A clean, no-cookied, location-off search for "Doom wiki" (no quotes) returns the terrible, low-information, awful-layout, often-outdated/incorrect Fandom Doom Wiki as the first result.
The actual Doom Wiki, better-designed and far more content-filled - which is called "The Doom Wiki", and with a domain that is literally just "doomwiki.org" - comes in second.
A sidebar opens automatically, there's a pop-up at the bottom, tons of distracting design and things showing up asking me to take a poll. What a mess. And I have adblock ofc... can't imagine what it really looks like.
I am saddened whenever an IP I've just discovered has their knowledge hub on fandom.
They also hold wikis hostage by not allowing them to move to another platform and redirect/get rid of their Fandom wiki. This means that if any wiki tries to move to be independent, the Fandom wiki will keep existing, and usually will still be the first result on Google for a long while, maybe forever, because of Fandom’s SEO. Of course the entire community of editors will have moved on, so this heavily outdated Fandom wiki full of ads and other elements trying to catch your attention and keep you on the site, will rank above the independent ad-free and active wiki with up-to-date information on Google search.
- Autoplaying barely related videos at the top as someone told them video content has better CPM
- "Have you tried looking at this page on another wiki?"
- So many ads
- Others like you viewed
- Would you like to join the discord?
- Fan Central?
The worst part is that it wasn't always like that. When it started of as wikicities and then wikia, it was pretty good, very Wikipedia-like, which is to be expected considering its history. But it enshittified quickly as it became Fandom, all while making it hard to move the existing communities out of the platform.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's currently an epidemic of genz who barely interact with their virtual friends.
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.
I don't engage. I read or watch. If it looks like engagement I close.
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.
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.
You must have missed all of professional sports, pay per view, etc.
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.
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
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?
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
Hold up what? I didn't know that. It seems insane to fire the man from the organization he co-founded.
https://youtu.be/bQiGkSCQN7o?t=165
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.
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.
Insane. How times have changed.
That Jeff is still a threat but he's not these Jeffs.
<>
After all, which is clearer and easier to read - aeropuerto (road sign in spain) [https://images.app.goo.gl/iRcmkxvYX3hxLG59A] or Aeropuerto (road sign in Chile) [https://images.app.goo.gl/xcME6HEb4r1AnGS16].
Even more fun when for instance Spain doesn’t follow that consistently![https://images.app.goo.gl/P7cpegHC2unMsfJy7].
Talk about a typesetters nightmare. Still, better than India where a lot of signage is still done by hand.
Nobody would dare capitalise “de” in Santiago de Chile for instance.
[1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/santiago-chi...
[2]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/santiago-de-...
[3]: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CARRETERA_COSTERA_...
Clear and easy to read is the one that you expect to read, which depends on your previous experience.
Fandom Sells Giant Bomb to Independent Creators
In other languages:
ֹֹ»Fandom« Sells »Giant Bomb« to »Independent Creators«
(Edit for clarity: because the literal headline is hilarious.)
Fandom is a pit of the internet that you never want to find yourself in. Giantbomb probably should have never happened, it never hit the heights of Gamespot.
“Giant Bomb (video game media company) purchased by its staff”
“Giant Bomb (video game media company) splits off from parent company”