@Lucas Silva #4903141 You're the first post Ryan Davis / post CBS buyout GB fan I've seen, so it's interesting to see your opinions on the site continuing to go down hill. I peaced out shortly after Austin joined. Back in the day the biggest complaint was that Brad sometimes sucked at games or that someone didn't like a review score they gave.
I have to ask, what brought you to GiantBomb?
At the time I was a fan they were the site that had strong principles, refusing to bend to corporate paychecks or going with popular opinion. They were also ahead of the curve when it came to the let's play format. That was long gone by the time you found them.
Every now and then, I would see them come up on /v/, namely during E3. Then I saw the "Best of Giant Bomb" videos and I thought "okay, I gotta subscribe, these dudes are funny" - and over time, I saw clips of the premium content, which made me like them even more. I would say 2017 is when I started following them...or very late 2016, it was definitely after Austin and Patrick Klepek fucked off. Some of the quick looks were fun, too. I went back and saw the Sonic Boom quick look and man, it reminded me of retsupurae's Mortal Kombat Sub Par Mythologies video. They were just riffing on a shit game and it was a good time watching them do it. The camaraderie among members of GB is what made their content for me.
Over time, though, cracks began to show. I heard about them defending Alison Rapp (the Beascast was apparently really bad about this, but I never checked), some quick looks were misfires, and eventually, I limited the Giant Bomb content I watch to: Quick Looks of bad games, the bombcast (after someone posts the timestamps), and...that's about it. Their hitman videos are always a hit, but they don't do them often. But even then, the bombcast had its downfall. Ben just doesn't have a great voice, and a few takes of his were dumb as fuck, like in some game he compared controlling orcs to real life slavery...Jeff wasn't having it, luckily he was there to be the voice of reason on that one - and then there was the Jessica Price talk
This week Jeff returns from Anime Expo with a travelogue you won't want to miss, plus Pocket Rumble, Jan's NJPW experience, the ArenaNet controversy, BioWare...
www.youtube.com
My god, this was definitely a low point. I still kept up with them looking for humor in their videos, but even that was mostly a losing battle. If I wanted some kind of satisfaction from people agreeing with my vidya takes, I could just look at other youtubers, I don't necessarily need Giant Bomb for that. Looking back at it, though, I didn't care that much about Drew leaving, but Dan leaving Giant Bomb was a big loss. As much as he was a dumbfuck, he had a lot of funny moments in him, and was one of the few reasons I tried the Beastcast at all. The rest of the crew is mostly lackluster these days, tbh. I'll give Jeff his due, he still has his moments of wisdom, humor, still a threat, etc. but that's about it.
tl;dr - the camaraderie is what makes Giant Bomb worth giving a try at all - you can see that the fandom doesn't care to see them play games alone on the channel today. The videos where it's just one of them playing during the quarantine don't get many views.
