Giant Bomb Bomb-All

Thanks for the updates. I had not known that they were sold again or that Jeff gave some background on what happened.

Rambling:

I'm very very minorly worried that Fandom will kill the site and we won't have access to the old stuff. There is just so much there and I still go back and watch miscellaneous stuff, lots which I never saw to begin with. I could be misremembering, but I believe Fandom was the website that got me to install an ad blocker since I left one of their pages open one day and saw it infinite load crap until it used literally all of the free ram on my PC.

FWIW, I find some of the new stuff to be fun and fairly consistent with what they were doing before. I fell off Nextlander and Gerstmann's thing along with much of the Giant Bomb content because it seems to be the streaming kind of program where people jump on a video call and just kind of wing it for a while and then call it a day. For example the talking over video conferences, or playing a video game for the first time together for however long. Lots of people like that and it's always been there to some degree. I'm not sure, I think there was something to the quick look format of playing, hanging out, presenting thoughts that kind of works better for me.

Thanks again for the updates!

Fandom has, and always will, suck.

It doesn't bode well for Giantbomb. Fandom is there to drive annoying ads and pop-ups for revenue. I doubt they give a shit about the content people are actually there for. All Fandom mobile sites are HORRID -- as soon as GB has to inevitably switch over, I wonder what the staff will do.

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

A couple of weeks after Gerstmann left, I stopped listening to the Bombcast and Dumptruck, but I still listen to Jeff Jeff’s Bizarre Adventure. Bakalar’s spiral into anime depravity is glorious.

A very long time ago, there was a Giantbomb Forum poll asking which GB personality would have to leave the site to make you stop visiting. At the time, I would have said Brad (whose taste in games is closest to mine) or Vinny, the consummate professional/madman.

But Jeff has such a unique perspective of, and history with, video games. He also has some serious storytelling chops, which is probably what keeps me coming back to his one-man pod. It’s nice to hear the joy and amazement in his voice when he talks about raising his kids, and their budding connections to his lifelong hobby.

I rarely have time for Nextlander’s video features, but their podcast is always in my feed.

Did GB quietly kill GB.TV or did I miss the memo? For a while it was my background noise.

What was it? Something different from GB Infinite?

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Did GB quietly kill GB.TV or did I miss the memo? For a while it was my background noise.

Kurrelgyre wrote:

What was it? Something different from GB Infinite?

You do you mean Infinite? Because there's also a giant button on the front page for it.

Yeah that's it. Looks like they decided letting Twitch host it was a better idea.

It's always been on Twitch, I've been following it since it went live however many years ago they started it.

I don't know what I'm remembering then.

They had like a set top box app called Giant Bomb TV, maybe that.

No, it used to only be hosted on their native player. They integrated chat into it and the polls would determine the next video. The switch over Twitch was about a year ago, shortly after they pretty much abandoned their own player to focus on Twitch.

No, it's always been on both. The part on GB had the interactive elements, but they've always also streamed it to Twitch. They've always multi-streamed everything on GB's player and twitch.

According to Twitch itself, I've been following giantbomb8 (their GB Infinite twitch channel) for five years now. It's not new to Twitch, it just wasn't heavily advertised because they wanted you to use their site.

The Giant Bomb Infinite twitter, which appears to be defunct now, was created in March 2018, and the twitch channel was created in May 2018, which is earlier than I was following their Twitch, but based on that, it seems GB Infinite went live originally in 2018.

NSMike wrote:

No, it's always been on both. The part on GB had the interactive elements, but they've always also streamed it to Twitch. They've always multi-streamed everything on GB's player and twitch.

According to Twitch itself, I've been following giantbomb8 (their GB Infinite twitch channel) for five years now. It's not new to Twitch, it just wasn't heavily advertised because they wanted you to use their site.

The Giant Bomb Infinite twitter, which appears to be defunct now, was created in March 2018, and the twitch channel was created in May 2018, which is earlier than I was following their Twitch, but based on that, it seems GB Infinite went live originally in 2018.

Ah okay. Seems my long and continued dislike of Twitch made me blind to that.

Today is Motherf*cking Goddam Rogue f*cking Asshole Warrior f*cking Day. As a companion piece, I'd recommend this remarkable post.

It's also the day after Albummer's final episode before going on indefinite hiatus. There have been assurances that the crew are part of the larger crew and would show up from time to time, but still. I liked the show, it was the last bit of this new era I'd make a point to catch, but many have speculated that it didn't fit the new Fandom owners' vision, such as it is, so their contract was not renewed. But I also think, given that sale, it's pretty apparent that the deluge of new shows that came when Red Ventures took over only to wither away was all likely just to puff up the portfolio before flipping the site. So, sorry, another Down on the Site post, but it's not my fault, I'm pretty Down on the Site.

Happy Rogue Warrior Day! Dasvidanya, Female Doggoes!

I've been wanting to hear Gerstmans take on the appalling Doom music controversy but can't find anything. Also not yet found any hot takes from the GB people. Unless I missed the episode I'm kind of surprised as I was expecting Jeff to have a lot to say on the subject.

strangederby wrote:

I've been wanting to hear Gerstmans take on the appalling Doom music controversy but can't find anything. Also not yet found any hot takes from the GB people. Unless I missed the episode I'm kind of surprised as I was expecting Jeff to have a lot to say on the subject.

He talked about it very briefly in one of the latest podcasts. He didn't say much about it really.

I wonder why. I'm here thinking it's a massive story but maybe I'm wrong?

Nextlander’s AI Images (featuring HUNT showdown) video was exquisite. You can skip the middle and watch the good stuff.

I'm amused by how many people on this thread are willing to defend someone who cheerfully admits to rummaging through trashcans for used popcorn tubs in order to get free refills.

Don't hate the player, hate the game

strangederby wrote:

I'm amused by how many people on this thread are willing to defend someone who cheerfully admits to rummaging through trashcans for used popcorn tubs in order to get free refills.

Let he that is without food-sin among you, cast the first stone.

It was on a doily!

Jason and Jess were laid off today.

I mean what are they thinking? Is Warner Bros in charge of Giant Bomb?

No, just Wakko.

So, Jan's the only video production left at GB?

Maybe Jeff saw the writing on the wall?

-----EDIT----

Just saw this on reddit. Cant say if its accurate or not.

Jeff Gerstmann confirms he was fired from Giant Bomb, 3 weeks before he was set to leave
Trying this again, as the first post was removed due to formatting issues per Rule 6.9 (nice).

This was evident if you watched Gerstmann's Patreon announcement stream or listened to his podcast (which he scheduled to record on Twitch directly opposite the Bombcast every week; it wasn't hard to guess that there were hard feelings in some capacity). But there were a lot of fans in the community in denial about this, so Gerstmann directly confirmed that he was fired on the Oct. 25 edition of his podcast. (The link should go right to the relevant bit, but the timestamp is at 2:30:20.)

Gerstmann describes it as: "I got fired three weeks before I was going to quit," adding that: "I was, like, trying to find a reason to stay at my [then-]current position, and they were basically like...how about instead you just wrap it the **** up." He details that he was having a hard time at Giant Bomb before that, describing his situation in his final days at the job as a "bad ****ing fit". He originally wanted to wait to leave until after E3, but something (Gerstmann doesn't get into what) accelerated that timeline. Then, three weeks before he was going to leave, the axe fell.

Gerstmann also revealed that he had "an offer to go somewhere else" undisclosed but decided it "wasn't the right move." He added: "there are aspects of [the incident] I will be angry about for a very long time."

This puts the celebratory tone of Giant Bomb's handling of his departure (the subsequent video announcing the staff changes; the cold "we're just like SNL; personnel don't matter" announcement that staff defended when it received pushback for being sleazy) in a not-great light.

Giant Bomb was owned by content farm Red Ventures at the time of Gerstmann's firing; it's now owned by Fandom, known for its wikis.

That's true. I listened to that episode. I don't think there's anything negative from Jeff and the people there, however. Gerstmann talked about how he hung out with Bakalar at The Game Awards.

Good grief. I still listen to and enjoy the bombcast. Kinda want it to all just end at this point. If they got rid of Jess, then I'm done.