Games Journalism General

[4chanJanitorDefenseForce]

Is there honestly even still a place where games journalism could exist? Isn't it a dead job like telegraph operator? Nowadays anyone can get a setup to upload their own content with minimal cost. If you want to make video content you can make a youtube page, if you want to write articles you can make a wordpress site. You have minimal overhead and if you're good (and lucky) you can have better working conditions than old gaming journalists had. Production of modern youtubers is as slick as the old vids that only gamespot etc could produce. Exclusive industry access is gone as publishers reach out to streamers, or create their own publisher streams. You're not a special somebody that can go to insider only screenings at E3.
Meanwhile youtube can host many different types of videos. Classic games, some guy that played every game in a series a million times and can compare all of them in autistic detail, newest releases rated by someone that loves the genre, newest releases rated by someone that plays all sorts of games, guy that covers indies, guy that produces a long vid giving commentary as he plays through his favorite games. You can find all of those and of higher quality than polygon or kotaku could ever provide.

And hey, if you want to read/watch some male feminist foam at the mouth how titty jiggles are virtually raping women all across the world and you're a bad person for liking them or even tolerating them, you can probably find that as well.

It can be done, but it's hard to profit off it (or even get viewers). I toyed with the idea of honest videos, but just getting an audience to start would be a chore.

 

[Waffle Iron]

It can be done, but it's hard to profit off it (or even get viewers). I toyed with the idea of honest videos, but just getting an audience to start would be a chore.

The old gaming journalist job wasn't so glamorous either. You had to crank out like 3 reviews per week. At the same time Youtube is difficult too. You have insane competition and visibility is a constant battle. I've seen plenty of good small youtube channels flame out when they can't crank the 5k subscribers even after grinding it for years.
But if you look at it from a consumer's perspective, the current system is superior. If I just want a quick review I have hundreds of potential videos at my fingertips. And if I want anything more in-depth the availability is 100x better. Why would I ever go to a gaming website for anything? Even in an ideal world where the journalists are good at their job, can one guy that only has a few days to play and review a game really compete with a youtuber that takes 2 weeks? You can't compete with the mass of amateur reviewers.

 

[Walter Temple]

Moderately popular streamer PatStaresAt starts game.

Presses button.

Makes a face.

Presses button several more times.

"Ooooooooh, that jump feels BAD!"

Elapsed time is 30 seconds. My need for games journalism has been sated. Pack in boys, the future is now.

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQiGkSCQN7o

Jump to about 3:42 for Jeff Gerstmann talking about Giant Bomb again. 7:30 is for the real interesting stuff, imo.
For the people who would rather read what he said, or throw it into NotebookLM, or whatever AI for a summary...

Spoiler: Giant Bomb talk

I was just going to do choice quotes, but thanks to the captions on Jeff's videos, it was easy to just type a lot of what he said. These are quotes I slightly cleaned up as I listened:

(Fandom) got it in their head that they needed to reign things in a little bit. You can't have people on streams talking about thick thighs in Marvel Rivals. Or whatever the fuck it was. You can't have people here jacking off standees!

At some point it's like, well, what the fuck did you buy, stupid?

What was that website? What were they doing? My perspective is this...as someone who has not worked there for 3-4 years. My feeling is that it was always going to end exactly like this. There was no way where that website was suddenly going to thrive. There was a 0% chance that (Giant Bomb) was going to be rebuilt in a way that recaptured what it was...what I'm talking about is the last 4 years. That's when I knew this thing was never, never going to make the recovery that I was pushing to make. It was basically the same time my son was born. A little over 3 and a half years ago.

I was on paternity leave, or I was supposed to be on paternity leave. This company has a real habit of having a bunch of shit happen right around the time I had a kid, such that I was not able to take my actual paternity leave. CBS did it to me, Red Ventures did it to me. I did it to my self, ultimately, I could have not answered the phone.

So we were operating in that period where Vinny, Brad and Alex took off, until the sale of the company...the basic idea was "okay, we need some time to fuck around, we need some time to find it again, and we need to hire people" - we haven't hired people in a long time. We were short handed before those guys left, and so it was a feeling of "if this is going to go at all, if this thing is going to have a shot, we need some time to figure it out, but also we need to hire people." With a team this small, as small as it was before those guys left, it was too fucking small to operate like a premium content brand. To be like "oh, we're going to make extra special videos for people who pay us, and we're going to make free stuff for people, that hopefully attract them to sign up and do other things"

There just weren't enough people to cover both of those bases at all. And so, it was stressful, it was fucked, it was a bad situation, but like, everyone knew that, right? Talking to my manager at the time, he's not dumb, he's like "yeah, you need people" - like, we talked about moving Jean-Luc (Seipke) over full-time from Gamespot on to Giant Bomb because we had worked with him and he's awesome. So, it's like, "maybe we could do that, I mean, that's not enough, but Jan (Ochoa) needs some backup." It was a lot of talk like that, it was like "okay, we're going to get to a point where we're going to hire up, but also, we had just been acquired by a company who put a hiring freeze in place, and so it was like alright, we're gonna sit here and fuckin' spin plates for a while, and we'll figure it out."

So, I don't know, you can judge how well it got figured out or not...I have a lot of thoughts on that, but this podcast is only 3 hours long. Right around the time my son was born, I was going to take paternity leave. We set it up so that Ben was going to be on the podcast and Jan was going to host, or whatever...then that ended up not happening, or whatever. I got a phone call, from a coworker who was panicked, saying "Hey, they're looking at the books, and they're saying we're losing a ton of fuckin' money!" It was like, "oh, okay! I should probably get on a phone call and hear about that because what??" Because the whole thing was predicated on us needing some runway, we need to get to a point where we are going to rehire.

My previous manager, I had a conversation with him. This is a little bit before that phone call...I had moved down here, and we talked a little bit about "what if we did a studio in LA, and we hired people down here..." it was loose talk, but the running idea was like, maybe we do a thing in LA if the pandemic lets up, and we put staff down here...he said "what are you up for?"...and I wanted to be like "dude, if I wasn't down to try and fix this fuckin' thing, I would have left the minute I moved because you can't get a home loan without 2 years of employment history." And so I had to move and then quit, which was definitely a thought! ...but if we can fix this thing, that's an interesting challenge. So, maybe fixing this thing and staying here is an option. So, I was up for it...This was in august-september-ish. He said okay, let's plan to hopefully start hiring next year (2021)...I had talked about bringing in Jeff Grubb, who was already doing a show for us...and then on the other end of all this stuff falling apart, I became more of like "hey, does Grubb know this place is fucking fucked? Before you go and hire him, he should know that it's fucking bad." Because this money situation had changed.

Now, the problem with a small company in a big organization (something we ran into with CBS) is that a big company makes you pay for every bit of thing that they do. So every dollar you make gets chopped up a zillion different ways, across a zillion different parts of the company. And so, we're paying some % of money on the CEO's salary, the public relations department, the rent on the building that we're in, the power...all of these central costs come up. And so, we were in a position at CBS, for a lot of years, where we were contributing to the central costs and seeing 0 benefit. It felt like the PR team was going out of their way to not include us on things that would have made sense...I have been on all kinds of TV over the years. They, at one point, got me on satellite radio. I was on Lord Sear's program on Shade 45, which was great fun. And then they kind of just dropped the ball, and stopped following up on it. Like, the PR team just kind of fucking ghosted on it and it all went away...I don't know what it was.

Over time, we're working for this company, but we're seeing 0 benefit from working in a big company. So we had someone running the business side of things, and his name was Stan, and Stan was fantastic. He went to war on the central costs, he went to the general manager of the group, we're part of the games group, so it's like GameFAQs, Gamespot and a handful sites. So, he went to war and said "Hey, this PR team isn't doing anything for us and we shouldn't have to pay for it" or "we're not seeing any benefit from this and we think you should stop charging us for this," and so we stopped having to pay for them...and that helped a lot. That got us to a point where we could hire up a little bit...this is all the way in the CBS days (2012-2020). They decided to lay off Stan while I was on my honeymoon. It was about 10 years ago now, so let's say I've been pissed for about 10 years, because they kept doing shit with me when I was out of the office. It was almost like they were waiting for me to turn my head away, like "oh, he had a kid? Cool, let's fuck this thing over!" It was a really bad run with that stuff specifically. Coincidence or not, who knows. Almost certainly coincidence.

So we knocked down all those central costs. The phone call (they took a look at the books and what the fuck is going on) was "oh, this company that we have been sold to does not do the books that way, and is going to do the books a completely different way, they're going to look at things completely differently than CBS did. And as such, you are underwater by a massive amount." ...I abandoned my paternity leave, and my wife was super happy about that...by this time, I was reporting to a new guy who was a ghost. I never heard from him, ever, which was bad. And it became clear, this is the way they do the books now, and this is the way they do business. They already didn't view the business super charitably...when people buy Giant Bomb, they make a big deal about it, like it's the cool thing. So...you send T-shirts to the (CEO), and he shows up on the company meeting with the Giant Bomb jersey 'cause he's fuckin' edgy, and he knows what's going on. It's like, fuck you, these fuckin' people, it's just embarrassing. So for a while there, there was interest after the sale of the company, it was like "okay, maybe there's something here..." and there was talk from a guy that worked at satellite radio for a while, he was like "maybe you could start like a satellite radio channel" and I'm like yeah, dude, that'd be fuckin' sick...and then he was moved to a different team and no one ever heard from him again. Like, okay...alright, cool! I guess that's not gonna happen. That was a weird time.

But there was a minute there where you're like okay, CBS clearly doesn't care about anything in this whole division. Maybe this new company that bought it will. And so, I made some pitches about new shows and expensive stuff, and there was guy there that was higher up that they said "oh, he really gets podcasts" - so I'm like awesome...I pitched him on this whole thing, which was actually the thing that I was prepared to leave and go do at the time. This is before a lot of funding situations changed, that kind of prevented me from doing that on my own...I gave them the pitch...and it was the most lackadaisical (response) like "Oh, is that something you think you could do with your existing boss" and I want to say fuckin' no, but I was like "maybe, I don't know," and he's like "okay, cool, bye" and that was that. 0 excitement. But you know, also remember, they had just bought CNET and they had just bought Gamespot, but all they really wanted was CNET. The other stuff kind of gets thrown in. They're buying CNET, and they've done a bang up job with CNET so far.

So, it becomes clear that this company doesn't have any real interest in spending any money, which is what it's going to take to get this thing back on its feet. Then when the management situation changed, and the view of the business changed, it became immediately clear: this is done. This is it. There's not going to be any investment. The thing I needed was 4 people. If you want to get this thing back on its feet, you need to hire 4 editors, and we need to move a producer over from Gamespot. I need people that want to talk about video games. I need people that want to cover video games on this video game site, because right now it's just me. And Jan, you know, every week on the podcast, Jan would have miraculously played multiple games, and I had played multiple games, and I was like okay, cool. At least we got that...so, it was clear that they were not going to give the investment that it needed to go. So, for me to stay here and fix this, I need more money than this...it's like, what am I going to do? Am I going to sit here and fix this thing or is it beyond repair? If I'm going to sit here and fix this thing, you need to make me whole, and also you need to let me hire a bunch of fuckin' people, because what the fuck, dude?

If you want to recover this thing and make premium content, and set it apart from Gamespot, and make it something that makes sense for it to exist in a world where Gamespot also exists, and is also not doing great, then this is what needs to happen. So, I made that pitch to pretty much deaf ears, and it never got brought up again. The guy I was reporting to at the time wouldn't respond to emails, I just didn't hear from the guy. I had two meetings with him. One was my performance review where he said "if you could do one more video a week," and I just started laughing. Then the second one was where him and his boss showed up to fire me. I was like, cool...before that it was group meetings and stuff where nothing got done. It was mostly me explaining why I don't think that getting sponsored chairs is a way forward for this business. I don't think that's a huge opportunity...that's how I look at it. From that moment, it was clear that they were not going to hire anyone. It became obvious, this thing is done. I started exploring external options...and some people I had worked with before were out at other companies doing stuff, had some offers and decided not to go that way, blah blah blah. Then that was that. And I was ready to leave because it was clear that they were never going to invest in it to the degree that made sense.

I can't necessarily fault them for that, you know, like I can make my pitch, but remember that they're managing multiple business. And Gamespot...I don't remember the last time Gamespot was doing well. Like 2006? Like, money-wise...I don't mean content. Keep in mind, at no point am I weighting in on content...it's not about that. There have always been people in those seats doing good work, and trying to make things happen...but from a business perspective, if Gamespot was doing great, CBS would not have bought us in the first place. Their whole pitch originally, which was gross, we were brought in for insane reasons. Maybe that should have been an indicator out of the gate...From their perspective, the management of Gamespot was looking at things and saying "everything has moved in this video direction. This staff we have on Gamespot right now is really dragging their feet on doing anything that on-camera stuff, I don't know that we have the right personalities..." - they had a lot of thoughts on that stuff. I think they hoped that we were going to come in there and rub off on them. That's literally a term that was used, that we would come in and be like "let's have fun about video games on camera" and that people would be excited about it, without realizing that "hey, I don't know, man, the staff has been treated like dogshit for a really long time." Maybe that's why they don't really want to work with you and have a great time right now, because the management in place was not awesome, I dunno...

The two people that were mostly responsible for us coming to CBS were gone in like, the first year. That's kind of the other thing that's the long-term story of that website, under other ownership, is you need to have people who know why it's there. Otherwise, if you're a face that's coming into that group, you look at it and go like "why do we have two of these? Why is there two websites producing contents about video games, why does that exist?" So the pitch became more like "Giant Bomb is goign to make high-end premium content, and then Gamespot will be like ESPN. It'll be like Showtime and ESPN, does that make sense?" And that was kind of the internal concept for a long time...new managers would come in, and would basically understand it but that doesn't mean that they would invest in it. Because, again, Gamespot was perpetually losing money, so if you had 5 dollars, you would spend like $4.75 on that, because if you could fix Gamespot, it was a much bigger potential windfall. If you could find a way for Gamespot to make money again, it's a much larger base to go off of. Whereas like, at the time, back under CBS, Giant Bomb was profitable, and we couldn't even get the type of investment in us...instead it was like, okay, Gamespot is still on fire, so we're going to keep dumping money onto that problem and see how it goes. And so, that's how it always was, and I'm sure it's still that way, right? Whatever's happening over there...and I don't necessarily have more information that you do...I'm pretty sure I know which way they're gonna go...Fandom bought Gamespot. Giant Bomb was probably the thing that got thrown in literally for free. Like, oh well, if you're buying the group, you get all the websites. And they had to sit there for a long time, and go "what do we even have here?" - The thing I said to Dan (Ryckert), and I think Dan agreed with me when he was going in, because he and I had a conversation. Basically, the day after they told me I was out. They were like, by the way, we're talking to Dan Ryckert, and I was like okay, alright...by the time I talked to him, he already accepted...but it was this idea that maybe this thing should be folded into Gamespot at this point. At some point, the brand has been beat up for so long, for so many years. Like, if you're not going to try to sell subscriptions, if that's no longer part of the business, it probably shouldn't exist anymore...it just doesn't make sense. And that's been true for a few years now. They didn't go in that direction, because you know, things are brand new, and no one wants to make any drastic changes to the thing they just bought, until they feel like they understand it...maybe it's a situation where they feel like they understood it and whatever happened (leading to recent firings).

So hopefully this gives you the historical context for what I feel is like a years-long thing. It's easy to look at this moment as such, but I look at it and go yeah, this was something that could have happened 3 years ago, 4 years ago. And you would have been like "yeah..." - I mean, I don't know if I would have gone and worked for Gamespot...I don't know that I would have been comfortable doing that. I talked about the website being a failure, and I think a lot of people misconstrued what I mean by that. And I think the thing you have to remember is that we founded that website specifically as a thing that is extremely not Gamespot. We were sick of Gamespot. Gamespot fucked people over...when I was upstairs with engineers...all of us were in agreement, fuck that place. Like, fuck that shit. What the fuck? So it was very much designed to be the exact opposite of that thing. So when you have to take that thing, and sell it to the thing that you were supposed to rage against, it's failure. The other thing I would say in a similar vein is that I always really believed in the wiki, that was something that never really got a ton of attention. I think a lot of the people that worked on the content side of it didn't really have an interest one way or the other. I certainly did, I love that thing. Part of it for me, was like let's have a really great Wiki.

Because...at the time, it was different companies, but it was very much like a lot of the Wiki companies out there, companies that are trying to be trying to be commercial Wiki companies, are fucking trash. They're fucking terrible, like the eHows...there are a zillion different ads, like it's not helpful, they're having restrictive licenses on people's content, like, let's try to not do that. So that was the whole pitch, like when they were building Comic Vine and when they were building Boompa, the car site, and all this other stuff, and Anime Vice and whatever...it was that idea of "let's make some cool, really great Wiki software and data..." and so now, for it to have been purchased by a company responsible for the worst Wikis of the world, some of the ugliest Wiki software you ever used...that's a failure, point-blank, of the state goals when we founded this thing being this idea of...I don't know, rebelling is a weird word...this was ECW and then it lived long enough to become WWE's version of ECW. It became the corporate clean version of ECW in a weird way. That's not an amazing metaphor, but in a general sense, I might subscribe to a piece of that...so I take the long view on this stuff. This was the most slow motion car crash I've seen in a long time. This makes a ton of sense. Like, nothing about this is specially surprising. The specifics about it being a content thing is surprising, cause that's super dumb. But whatever, it's not about me. I've been out of there for 4 years. People ask me a lot about it. There have been people who come to me over the last days like "oh man, how you doing?" - like, I'm fine. I don't work there anymore man. My complicated feelings about that brand have been complicated for a very long time. Maybe this will eventually provide some closure to those feelings, or something, but it's not about me. I didn't work there. This is about Jan, this is about Dan, and Grubb, you know. This is about the people who were working there and making content...so all it's really done, it's brought the frustrating conversations that I've had over the years, that you look at in retrospect and go like, this was another sign that this thing was done.

That 3-4 year period there, I could walk back, clearly this is where there was 0% chance of turning around...a few years after we got bought by CBS and we spent a bunch of time trying to get them to understand why they should sponsor podcasts, and why they should let us sign a deal with a podcast ad network. Because it would bring in money, and their reluctance to do that, combined with the head of engineering telling us that "the podcast was really draining a lot of bandwidth and we should consider stopping it" or making it shorter...it was this insane moment of "dude, I make popular content. That's supposed to be my job. It's up to other people to figure out how to sell it." But like, that's a clear indicator that this company isn't set up to take advantage of what we're doing, and make it make money for everybody. Which would have been bittersweet at a certain point, because when you don't own it anymore, all that money goes to CBS, but it would have helped us grow, it would have helped us achieve bigger things...but like, a big company like CBS, like the future owners were never going to do that...the whole CNET thing was cursed.

When CBS bought CNET, Wall Street decided that they paid too much for it, and they never let them forget it. So any time CNET came up in the news, or came up in any financial context, even when it was doing great, a lot of the financial reporting around it was a reminder of "CBS really overpaid for this internet asset" - and so CBS was always really gun-shy to tout any of the successes that came out of that division, until the TV thing came along, I think...I always got the impression that they were like "oh, we fucked up by buying this thing and Wall Street hates us now, and we're never going to pay attention to it..." - so you trickle that down to that being them talking about CNET! What makes you think they're ever going to care about GameSpot, and now take that another layer down after they acquire us like, why would anyone care about about this thing? If that company had been able to stay small and independent for a few more years...there would have been a better ecosystem in place for a company the size of Giant Bomb to be successful...what I don't mean is "eh, we were ahead of our time" - I think people that fund shit get really dumb about that...like, when we started, Youtube was barely a thing, so we had to go negotiate a hosting deal for videos. It was just a different environment in 2007-2008. That, I think is the groundwork...all the things that lead up to this moment. That's the environment that those guys found themselves in all these years later, was working for a company that bought it from a company, that bought it from a company, that bought it from the company that founded it...like if you put any middle manager in any kind of position there and sit them down in front of this group...the first thing they're going to say is "oh, man, why are there two of these?" And for a long time, we had the type of content that made for a differentiator and at least could explain the case. But they don't really have that anymore. They didn't have enough people, even when I was there, we didn't have enough people to continue to keep that wall up...I think that regardless of the situation, I think that those three (Jan, Grubb and Dan) are very talented individuals that will find something. Jan most of all! Jan knows how to operate a camera and work gear. He does more than just smile into a camera...I think the three of them will figure something out, even in a tough environment such as this.

 

[4chanJanitorDefenseForce]

The old gaming journalist job wasn't so glamorous either. You had to crank out like 3 reviews per week. At the same time Youtube is difficult too. You have insane competition and visibility is a constant battle. I've seen plenty of good small youtube channels flame out when they can't crank the 5k subscribers even after grinding it for years.
But if you look at it from a consumer's perspective, the current system is superior. If I just want a quick review I have hundreds of potential videos at my fingertips. And if I want anything more in-depth the availability is 100x better. Why would I ever go to a gaming website for anything? Even in an ideal world where the journalists are good at their job, can one guy that only has a few days to play and review a game really compete with a youtuber that takes 2 weeks? You can't compete with the mass of amateur reviewers.

The problem is that the streamers and YouTubers are liars, for the most part. They want what gets clicks, and the truth rarely factors into it. Look at how many "anti-woke" faggots there are who were on the other side of the fence a year or two ago. They don't have beliefs or convictions. They just want money. I can't trust someone like that to give me an accurate review, and I don't want to watch the actual gameplay spoiling the shit out of everything beforehand.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Is there honestly even still a place where games journalism could exist? Isn't it a dead job like telegraph operator? Nowadays anyone can get a setup to upload their own content with minimal cost. If you want to make video content you can make a youtube page, if you want to write articles you can make a wordpress site. You have minimal overhead and if you're good (and lucky) you can have better working conditions than old gaming journalists had. Production of modern youtubers is as slick as the old vids that only gamespot etc could produce. Exclusive industry access is gone as publishers reach out to streamers, or create their own publisher streams. You're not a special somebody that can go to insider only screenings at E3.
Meanwhile youtube can host many different types of videos. Classic games, some guy that played every game in a series a million times and can compare all of them in autistic detail, newest releases rated by someone that loves the genre, newest releases rated by someone that plays all sorts of games, guy that covers indies, guy that produces a long vid giving commentary as he plays through his favorite games. You can find all of those and of higher quality than polygon or kotaku could ever provide.

And hey, if you want to read/watch some male feminist foam at the mouth how titty jiggles are virtually raping women all across the world and you're a bad person for liking them or even tolerating them, you can probably find that as well.

I think it's less that it's unprofitable and more to the fact that there's no infrastructure for it. I brought up the physical retail stores analogy, there's a market for it but most of the examples do a bad job at it. It can be extended further that there would need an infrastructure to be built up for it. A 300,000 square feet store stocked with something similar to Amazon would be except with reliable brands and not dubious chinkshit and third party sellers could be a big success but rent is expensive and you'd need a staff to buyers and marketers to make the whole thing work, manage fixed costs, and so on, but those systems don't really exist anymore. Even surviving "big" stores like Macy's or JCPenney have completely gutted a lot of their buyers and their logistics system is antiquated.

The same thing can be applied to games journalism. If you got a bunch of people together and ran a "good" games journalism site it would probably lose money for several years, most people can't run a money-loser for years, and current investors probably aren't going to be willing to lend you money if you run something that explicitly avoids DEI principles. On the other hand, if you have an established name and replaced their screechy hacks with people who cared about the medium and were competent enough to write fun and informative reviews, they could turn things around.

 

[Vapid_Idiot]

I don’t think Jeff is being very honest. There was a period where they had two fully staffed teams, and they were actively cutting content, admittedly by themselves on their own streams. The biggest complaint by the fans was the lack of content. Every time they would get momentum on a new video series, Jeff would bitch about it and stop doing it. It wasn’t very difficult to see what people wanted. A Persona 5 Endurance run? Nope, Jeff doesn’t want to do it. Video game reviews? Jeff doesn’t want to do them anymore. By 2017-2018 people were openly saying they were dropping the premium subs because there was no point to it. I’m thinking when Ben and Abby came around the website starting having a downturn. Vinny openly admitted to having confrontation with Dan because Dan was always coming up with ideas that Vinny didn’t want to pursue, but Vinny also said he couldn’t come up with any ideas.
. The reason Giant Bomb failed was because of Jeff and Vinny. They are the ones who gutted the content, or tried to prevent new content being made, and vomited their burnout everytime they had a chance.

 

[Garjeena]

I don’t think Jeff is being very honest. There was a period where they had two fully staffed teams, and they were actively cutting content, admittedly by themselves on their own streams. The biggest complaint by the fans was the lack of content. Every time they would get momentum on a new video series, Jeff would bitch about it and stop doing it. It wasn’t very difficult to see what people wanted. A Persona 5 Endurance run? Nope, Jeff doesn’t want to do it. Video game reviews? Jeff doesn’t want to do them anymore. By 2017-2018 people were openly saying they were dropping the premium subs because there was no point to it. I’m thinking when Ben and Abby came around the website starting having a downturn. Vinny openly admitted to having confrontation with Dan because Dan was always coming up with ideas that Vinny didn’t want to pursue, but Vinny also said he couldn’t come up with anything ideas
. The reason Giant Bomb failed was because of Jeff and Vinny. They are the ones who gutted the content, or tried to prevent new content being made, and vomited their burnout everytime they had a chance.

It really gets reinforced that when given full freedom from giant bomb. All Jeff does is a podcast once a week by himself where he reiterates points he has made on the state of gaming media for almost a decade now. And he ranks nes games on a stream. That is the extent of his content production which says more than anything how the issues were less their parent companies and more the lack of passion from the crew.

 

[Vapid_Idiot]

It really gets reinforced that when given full freedom from giant bomb. All Jeff does is a podcast once a week by himself where he reiterates points he has made on the state of gaming media for almost a decade now. And he ranks nes games on a stream. That is the extent of his content production which says more than anything how the issues was less their parent companies and more the lack of passion from the crew.

it’s ridiculous for him to say half the shit he says. “If Ryan had not passed away Giant Bomb would have been shut down within 9 months.” That’s complete bullshit. To complain that they couldn’t make content because they were short handed is absolute nonsense too. They were able to put out twice as much content with 4-5 people for years, but suddenly when Jeff’s feet were held to the fire, suddenly there’s all these logistical issues they never had before. I think the Giant Bomb fiasco has shown the truth about “video game journalists”: they are lazy, entitled, and vindictive when dealt with any sort of scrutiny or accountability.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I don’t think Jeff is being very honest. There was a period where they had two fully staffed teams, and they were actively cutting content, admittedly by themselves on their own streams. The biggest complaint by the fans was the lack of content. Every time they would get momentum on a new video series, Jeff would bitch about it and stop doing it. It wasn’t very difficult to see what people wanted. A Persona 5 Endurance run? Nope, Jeff doesn’t want to do it. Video game reviews? Jeff doesn’t want to do them anymore. By 2017-2018 people were openly saying they were dropping the premium subs because there was no point to it. I’m thinking when Ben and Abby came around the website starting having a downturn. Vinny openly admitted to having confrontation with Dan because Dan was always coming up with ideas that Vinny didn’t want to pursue, but Vinny also said he couldn’t come up with any ideas.
. The reason Giant Bomb failed was because of Jeff and Vinny. They are the ones who gutted the content, or tried to prevent new content being made, and vomited their burnout everytime they had a chance.

I think more than anything it highlights that Jeff was probably done with Giantbomb at some point and was "riding it out till the end" and was shocked at how much momentum it had and how long it took to actually die.

It's like he quiet quit in 2008 and was able to minimum effort unti 2023.

 

[blackface enthusiast]

Is there honestly even still a place where games journalism could exist?

What is "games journalism" to you? I think that's a better question. Reviews? Previews of new titles? In-depth coverage on the industry (market data, interviews with developers)? Essays about gaming in a broader sense, like how youtubers do 16 hour videos to review games? All of the above with slick production value and skits inbetween?

A lot of this has already been taken over and covered by new things like streaming. We're even beyond longform content like Youtube and Twitch and in the era of TikTok and shorts. I could see it existing as a niche, but beyond that? Back in the day these outlets served a purpose as magazines and G4 were a good way to get information out to consumers on your products, but nowadays all major publishers and developers have their own Youtube and Twitch channels, and worse comes to worse they can just hire content creators to make shit for them.

It doesn't help that the industry is so massive and vapid now. Most of the people I'd be interested in hearing from are pushing 50 or 60, probably haven't worked on anything in the last decade plus because they're probably retired. Do I really care what faceless h1b1 coder #345234 has to say about Call of Assassin's Slop 16? Do I care about some Hollywood burnout's Cinematic Slop? And there's only money to be made covering the normie stuff, no one is going to be profitable in that space only covering indie stuff which IMO is the only stuff worth covering.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

What is "games journalism" to you? I think that's a better question. Reviews? Previews of new titles? In-depth coverage on the industry (market data, interviews with developers)? Essays about gaming in a broader sense, like how youtubers do 16 hour videos to review games? All of the above with slick production value and skits inbetween?

A lot of this has already been taken over and covered by new things like streaming. We're even beyond longform content like Youtube and Twitch and in the era of TikTok and shorts. I could see it existing as a niche, but beyond that? Back in the day these outlets served a purpose as magazines and G4 were a good way to get information out to consumers on your products, but nowadays all major publishers and developers have their own Youtube and Twitch channels, and worse comes to worse they can just hire content creators to make shit for them.

It doesn't help that the industry is so massive and vapid now. Most of the people I'd be interested in hearing from are pushing 50 or 60, probably haven't worked on anything in the last decade plus because they're probably retired. Do I really care what faceless h1b1 coder #345234 has to say about Call of Assassin's Slop 16? Do I care about some Hollywood burnout's Cinematic Slop? And there's only money to be made covering the normie stuff, no one is going to be profitable in that space only covering indie stuff which IMO is the only stuff worth covering.

I want everything from the last month to be compressed into a single print magazine, full of color and life, covering stuff that I wouldn't do myself (like see if any Steam game released last month was worth looking into), op-eds on games and industry that I can read in five minutes instead of an hour long slog, a sizable section on retro games and how to play them, and so on. Throw in some cheesecake waifus and I'm sold.

It would probably require some fine-tuning to see what sections work and which ones don't and will always probably have a niche audience but it could 100% exist.

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

Sam Woods of TheGamer is triggered over gamers "whitewashing" certain characters from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. But when it's blackwashing, it's okay to him and calls it "stunning and brave".
(Archived Article)


Sam Woods literally looks like a soy-hipster beta male feminist cuckold. Acts like one too. And a bonus, he likes to retweet that Antifa terrorist of a schizo-lolcow Airbagged, before he got permanently banned for telling pregnant women to kill themselves while ban evading.

 

[4chanJanitorDefenseForce]

What is "games journalism" to you?

It used to be what we relied on for news and real opinions of a game's pros and cons. You could read about games and not worry about what person was problematic and le heckin' toxic.

 

[p1138]

It used to be what we relied on for news and real opinions of a game's pros and cons. You could read about games and not worry about what person was problematic and le heckin' toxic.
View attachment 7334724

Sure, but that's also a dead medium for the topic. Also, let's just be honest here, the shit from the 90s and 2000s wasn't "journalism" either, it was mostly marketing slop and everyone knew it. It's just that the marketing slop was the only way to get any information at all. It hasn't been necessary for ages, and the modern day game journos are the ones who assigned so much self importance to it because they wanted to use it as a stepping stone into a better career because they knew it was slop which is also why they decided to just post opinion pieces and try to call it journalism. The writing was on the wall back in 2014 and it should have ended then. Instead we got another 10 years of companies allowing their writers to post whatever because they could hope to try and get hate clicks, while the video game publishers themselves have only realized in the past few years that they don't need these people(stupid covid pandemic also seems to have sped that up by way of not having a big unnecessary trade show).

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

John Walker of Kotaku made this clickbait article shilling for Sweet Baby Inc's South of Midnight and begs for skipping bosses. And a bonus, he talks about GamerGate. This is why Kotaku is next in line to go down like PolyGONE and Giant BOMBED.
(Archived Article)


His posts about it on Bluesky, more like Bluecry.


Some misc reminders of John Walker's delusional attitude towards criticism, and his beta cuckold energy, including simping for Alyssa Mercante.


Here's what John Walker looks like in case you're wondering.

 

[Darth Insanius]

View attachment 7333493

Nobody tell this egg-headed fag what the only two explicitly gay characters in Elden Ring are like.

 

[Borax Bozo]

John Walker is basically a guy who is permanently stuck in the old PC games era where Point and ClickAdventure Games were going great. If you read any of his reviews it comes through that he's just awful at any games that require dexterity above turn based selection or PnC games picking things at your leisure. This goes with his old magazine jobs - he was the guy they assigned PnC games to in mags a lot of the time.

As an example, here's a limited preview of his impressions with The Iconoclasts, a pixel art platformer. In it he mentions his difficulties with playing it and the fights, and also says he has 10 hours of play and is 1/3 of the way through.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/iconoclasts-second-opinion

However when I played it (through PSN freebies) it took me around 11 hours or so to beat the entire game. Similarly another of their writers on that site got through the game in 12 hours.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/iconoclasts-review-2

So that shows you the level of skill Walker has at his disposal.

 

[Coolio55]

As an example, here's a limited preview of his impressions with The Iconoclasts, a pixel art platformer. In it he mentions his difficulties with playing it and the fights, and also says he has 10 hours of play and is 1/3 of the way through.

Konjak is a huge swedish faggot so he gets what he fucking deserves.
Here's your cool people reviewing your game. LOL!

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

Lan Pitts, a soyboy beta cuck that shills for Neil Cuckmann's The Last of Us Season 2, wrote a clickbait article for GameSpot, attacking the fans by calling everyone "homophobes" who dares criticizes it for being shit.
(Archived Article)


Here's what Lan Pitts look like by the way. When I said he's a soyboy beta cuck, he literally looks like, and acts like, a soyboy beta cuck.