Games Journalism General

NerdShamer said:
I thought that Marxism, in general, was already disconnected from reality?
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It is, but in different ways. Postmodernism effectively rejects all theories of value, moral or otherwise, while Marxism is at least connected to previous concepts.

Also even "real" Marxists, whenever they get in charge, chuck the labor theory of value. The value of labor is what value it has to the state. Are you doing something the state wants? It's whatever value they pay you to do it. Does what you're not doing help the state? Then it's not only valueless, it's actively counterrevolutionary, to gulag with you.
Xarpho's Return said:
So, basically, you could be a Marxist and still decide their labor is not worthy not of money or power, but instead getting shot execution-style? Hm. Interesting.
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To put it in capitalist terms, the labor theory of value is the hamburger advertisement and what happens under Soviet-style Communism is the sad, pitiful actual hamburger.
4chanJanitorDefenseForce said:
The only effort streamers have to put in is how to fake outrage and fake a personality, while staying on the safe side of any issue.
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That "safe" side has gotten them all fired and their industry all but nuked from orbit and sold for pennies on the dollar.
Smaug's Smokey Hole 2 said:
I remember that skull and bones E3 stream but I didn't remember Alex bringing up dollars twice. The first time he brought it up was during the trailer where a character said "spanish dollars" and he acted smug because surely there was no such thing.
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Just the ignorance of these morons is infuriating when most of them have some liberal arts degree that you would assume included at least basic history (even if it was probably just doing high school history over again like so many college courses).

These people can't even get basic tard level history right and want to lecture others.

Idiot doesn't even know which dollar the American dollar was directly named after. He's probably abjectly confused by the idea of pieces of eight or what "two bits" means.
Waffle Iron said:
Is there honestly even still a place where games journalism could exist? Isn't it a dead job like telegraph operator?
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Whatever these clowns do is dead, or at least in its death throes. People who actually do anything like "real" journalism but about games are simply not going to use the word "journalist" because it has been disgraced by these losers and their audience hates "journalists."
 
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Vapid_Idiot said:
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.
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Beyond that it's ghoulishly shitty to gravedance on some guy and blame him for shit that is your fault. The last resort of the absolute faggot.
 
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AnOminous said:
Beyond that it's ghoulishly shitty to gravedance on some guy and blame him for shit that is your fault. The last resort of the absolute faggot.
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I listened to the podcast in full. Jeff Gerstmann is such a finger pointing faggot and contradicts himself so many times. “They wouldn’t hire anyone” “so I got them to hire Jeff Grubb” “I found out they hired Dan back, and that was whatever” “Giant Bomb was NEVER going to be fixed” “I was going to quit anyways but they fired me before I could”. I’m really getting a sense he was the one who destroyed the brand.
 
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What the fuck just happened at PAX east?
what.webp
Lmao. Did the bullying actually work on Fandom?
 
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Lucas Silva #4903141 said:
What the fuck just happened at PAX east?
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Lmao. Did the bullying actually work on Fandom?
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Probably not, but Jeff Gerstmann had mentioned that Giantbomb was losing money (and Gamespot was bleeding money) and the Giantbomb brand is pretty toxic to Fandom so this was probably an easy move for them. Also - a property isn't worth money if there isn't anyone who wants to buy it. CollegeHumor ran into the same issue in 2020, where it's owners allegedly sold it for $0 and a minor ownership stake - so I imagine this was an easy way for Fandom to get GB off of it's books.

Alternatively - it was a ploy by Dan to drum up interest (like they do in wrestling) and this was planned from the beginning but honestly I don't think anyone over there has the skills to "turn it around" and actually fix Giantbomb. I'm sure they'll get a big initial surge of support but GB hasn't produced "premium" content in a very long time and there's no indication they're ever going to again.

The Fandom Press Release (https://about.fandom.com/news/fandom-sells-giant-bomb-to-independent-creators) indicates that Jeffs Bakalar and Grubb are the owners, unclear if Dan and Jan kicked in/have equity.
 
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Lol now they get to manage everything on their own without corporate backing or guaranteed paychecks. And yeah, I’m thinking the entire thing was a work by Dan.
 
NerdShamer said:
So about GB, one of the hosts might have been cooming to Marvel Rivals during one of their shows. And it's been over a week without another statement from Fandom
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They're complaining about it as if Fandom were watching the stream and shut it down
No, Giant Bomb has spent a decade or more catering to trannies and creepy male feminists and shitting on anyone who wanted anything but hideous fishfaced niggers in their games. Some of that audience saw you comment on a videogame characte rsexually and reported you to your superiors because that's the kind of people they are and the kind of thing you helped make a mortal crime
You get what you fucking deserve episode 10256
 
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The entire Giant Bomb fiasco is now very suspect, So the chain of events was they pulled a podcast for being brand friendly, the Giant bomb team then mocked fandom on the next podcast, then fandom ceased all streaming. Following this, Dan Ryckert publicly quit, Jeff Grubb was fired, and that other fat bald guy publicly quit. Then there was silence for about a week, and when PAX East came around they miraculously purchased the brand and will resume operations as an independent company? What amazing timing to be able to have scheduled a panel with almost zero prep time for PAX. If it ever becomes revealed that this was all a work to drum up interest in the brand post-sale by fandom and Giant Bomb, there will be a big backlash because it happened in sync with the actually terminations at Polygon. Not only that but if it was all just a ploy, they intentionally mislead their subscribers to cancel their subs, only to basically demand they resub a mere week after to support the site. There should be a lot of questions about this with the new owners, but that will likely never happen since the entire “games journalist” industry is disgustingly incestuous and will always protect each other regardless of how slimy their actions are.
 
Vapid_Idiot said:
I listened to the podcast in full. Jeff Gerstmann is such a finger pointing faggot and contradicts himself so many times. “They wouldn’t hire anyone” “so I got them to hire Jeff Grubb” “I found out they hired Dan back, and that was whatever” “Giant Bomb was NEVER going to be fixed” “I was going to quit anyways but they fired me before I could”. I’m really getting a sense he was the one who destroyed the brand.
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He's probably referring to the period where Vinny, Brad, Alex, Abby and Ben had all just quit or had gotten fired within a short period of time, and the only replacements were Jeff Bakalar and later, Voidburger (Does she count as a net positive?). I don't think it's much of a contradiction as he specifically said that he needed editors. They didn't have a single one left when he got the boot.
His point about Giant Bomb never working out corporate seemed to be that it'd never make enough money for a huge corporation to pay attention to it.
 
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psycho motor retard said:
His point about Giant Bomb never working out corporate seemed to be that it'd never make enough money for a huge corporation to pay attention to it.
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Even that is incorrect though, there are massive corporations around video content and podcasts. It's why they (and various other media companies) get purchased by corporations to begin with. Disney famously spent nearly a billion dollars for a Youtube network (which is 25% of what they paid for fucking Star Wars). This content is huge money. Amazon is invested heavily into it, Google is invested heavily into it, etc.

The issue that he didn't address or solve was how to stop GB from just becoming a revolving door once people took what they needed from it. Patrick, Austin, Abby, Ben, Drew (to an extent), Dan - all got in, got popular, leveraged that popularity somewhere else and the question of "What happens if Brad/Vinny/Alex leave for greener pastures" got answered real fast and the site never recovered. There were two full offices producing two full suites of content and if they couldn't make that profitable - then they really need to figure out how/why. The idea that the employees apparently expected a paycheck and a cut of premium was fucking wild and highlights that the issue was more likely around "how to run a business" then "how to make content".
 
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Tanner Glass said:
Even that is incorrect though, there are massive corporations around video content and podcasts. It's why they (and various other media companies) get purchased by corporations to begin with. Disney famously spent nearly a billion dollars for a Youtube network (which is 25% of what they paid for fucking Star Wars). This content is huge money. Amazon is invested heavily into it, Google is invested heavily into it, etc.

The issue that he didn't address or solve was how to stop GB from just becoming a revolving door once people took what they needed from it. Patrick, Austin, Abby, Ben, Drew (to an extent), Dan - all got in, got popular, leveraged that popularity somewhere else and the question of "What happens if Brad/Vinny/Alex leave for greener pastures" got answered real fast and the site never recovered. There were two full offices producing two full suites of content and if they couldn't make that profitable - then they really need to figure out how/why. The idea that the employees apparently expected a paycheck and a cut of premium was fucking wild and highlights that the issue was more likely around "how to run a business" then "how to make content".
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Sure, and it's telling that the podcast was always touted as the biggest draw. If you use their YouTube channel as a metric, their content gets fuck all views. I don't think the issue of people leaving is necessarily solvable in current day and age for keeping salaried employees on a personality-driven website.
 
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Vapid_Idiot said:
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.
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Dude, what are you talking about! They just moved into their new offices, they need time to settle! And then it will be E3 which takes considerable time! And in a few months it will be GOTY content which takes lots of effort. And after GOTY they will have to move offices again. Cut them some slack!

To this day I have no idea what they were doing at their offices. On the rare behind-the-scenes footage you could tell nothing was getting done. In truth all they needed to do was sit on a couch and play videogames to a stream and they would have racked in the cash, but they couldn't even do that consistently. Such wasted opportunity.
 
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psycho motor retard said:
If you use their YouTube channel as a metric, their content gets fuck all views.
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That's a bit tough as they self-hosted a lot of their content - so the views aren't going to be public for most of their viewerbase. They absolutely have the metrics though.

psycho motor retard said:
I don't think the issue of people leaving is necessarily solvable in current day and age for keeping salaried employees on a personality-driven website.
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They had it solved for Alex/Vinny/Brad/Drew - probably a mix of creative freedom, decent pay, and equity/bonus options. But having people roll in, capture part of the audience, then roll out to their next gig/podcast/patreon, then to roll more people in was complete dogshit. It's how you get Voidburger on staff, just through milling people.
 
Tanner Glass said:
That's a bit tough as they self-hosted a lot of their content - so the views aren't going to be public for most of their viewerbase. They absolutely have the metrics though.


They had it solved for Alex/Vinny/Brad/Drew - probably a mix of creative freedom, decent pay, and equity/bonus options. But having people roll in, capture part of the audience, then roll out to their next gig/podcast/patreon, then to roll more people in was complete dogshit. It's how you get Voidburger on staff, just through milling people.
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For the YouTube views, I'd use it as a metric for how much or often their video content would reach anyone outside the existing fanbase and bring people in. If you sort by most viewed, you have to go really far to find something from even the last five years. To be fair, the algorithm likely isn't kind to such varied content all on the same channel, but the trend is still downward. I'm not sure if any of the relatively newer hires made out like bandits.
As for what kept the old guard there for so long, I always imagined it was the relatively comfy job with long-time friends, along with it being in a crumbling industry that wouldn't be kind to them trying to land a similar job.
 
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