Giant Bomb Bomb-All

Pages

This is the catch-all for discussion around Giant Bomb, it's content, personalities etc. It started as a thread to talk about Whiskey Media introducing premium memberships way back in the day but now it's just for talking about Giant Bomb.

---

Original post

So, what most people thought was going to happen has happened. Whiskey Media (owners of Giant Bomb, Screened, Tested, Comic Vine and Anime Vice) are implementing a paid membership program. This kind of makes me sad, not so much because it's happening so much as it's pretty clear from what they were saying between the lines on the preview podcast that this is because their business model hasn't been working out and they need the money. It's $5/month or $45/year but I don't know if you really get all that much for it:

- No ads for yearly members only (there's very few if any now anyway.)
- HD Flash videos (which are a myth, they're never true HD) and the ability to download any videos (maybe useful to some but useless to me.)
- Access to their new HTML5 mobile site.
- Site avatar award.
- T-shirt for yearly subscribers.
- Access to a live show they're thinking about doing and other added features, none of which were defined or have a timeline.
- Full Bombcast access. The show is being split into two one hour segments. Only subscribers get it all on release week, others will get the first hour the week of release and the rest the following week.

I really love Giant Bomb and what those guys do over there but if I'm honest, this doesn't sound like a great value for someone on the tight budget I am. I think splitting up the Bombcast is a colossal mistake that will severely splinter their audience and I'm not much on the idea of paying for stuff that may come but no one knows what it is or when. This kind of sounds like it was written by a marketing executive. On the other hand, I really want to support the content I like and if it's either this or have them start to have to take on obnoxious advertising like you see on GameTrailers and the like, it might be worth at least trying the monthly one. What are other Giant Bomb fans thinking?

Yeah, I haven't decided 100% yet, but I'm far more likely not to. I love the Bombcast but don't use their website for much other than the occasional quicklook.

Plus, as it is now I almost always end up waiting until Saturday or as late as the following monday to listen to the Bombcast anyway so the delay for the second half probably won't effect me at all.

I'm still waiting for the updated sites to go live. The cross-website login stuff might end up being useful, especially since I have so many more wiki points on Screened than anywhere else. I'm on something like 17 with GiantBomb and everything I do over there gets moderated, which is annoying. At Screened I can do whatever I want. Muaaahaahaaahaaa!

Splitting up the Bombcast is absurd.

I'm all for higher quality video, regardless of whether it is true HD or not.

I'm all for supporting sites I like (a la the Escapist), but I too don't know if there's enough in my budget to warrant $45 a year ...

Definitely not interested in paying for this when there are already hundreds of alternatives out there, many of whom have considerably better content (I'm looking at you Conference Call, wink). GiantBomb's E3 coverage was practically unlistenable due to their selection of guests (that girl in particular) being completely annoying/uninteresting to listen to.

I like the GiantBomb members, the podcast is decent but I've watched maybe 5 videos on their website in the past year and I have no interest in their forums, features and other Whiskey Media properties. If they are cash strapped, then maybe they should consider adding ads to the podcasts OR selling out/partnering with either Leo Laporte's TWiT network or Jason Calacanis's This Week In site. I am pretty sure that Jeff Gerstman has been on TWiT before and it was implied that they knew each other. Seems like a good opportunity for both companies to expand into established audiences.

I feel for guys like Whiskey Media. It's so tough to monetise on the internet, especially in a podcast, these things cost time and money and always never recoup the costs.

They actually talked about why they haven't had ads on the Bombcast and the reason is, they either couldn't get any advertisers or the ones they could get wouldn't pay squat. I've heard that problem from other podcasts. The problem that every podcast has is that the only metric you can measure is number of downloads. Your podcast can be downloaded a million times a week but that's no indication of who is listening or how long they're listening to each episode. It's why what few podcasts do have ads (and I include Revision3's video shows in this) all have the same 5 sponsors and are the ones with massive traffic. Even on TWiT, Leo uses a tip jar for his salary because the company couldn't afford to pay him and the staff on the ad revenue. Simply put, there's no money in podcasting. However, I think the reason Whiskey Media puts a podcast on all their sites is that they're how you drive user engagement to your site (and thereby its ads) and I bet that was their plan all along which hasn't worked out. It's tough because it appears as though their choices were either this or kill the Bombcast.

Whiskey said if they get 5k members by at some point on friday they won't spilt up the bombcast.

This displeases me. I'm a big fan of the bombcast, but I don't really make use of any of the other Whiskey Media offerings. Because of that, there's not much chance I'm going to pay $5/month just for the bombcast. I hate the idea of it being split up, though.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

However, I think the reason Whiskey Media puts a podcast on all their sites is that they're how you drive user engagement to your site (and thereby its ads) and I bet that was their plan all along which hasn't worked out.

The biggest problem with that plan is iTunes and I assume whatever the Zune equivalent is. You can get the content without even going to the site, so the podcast doesn't even drive traffic, and most switched on web surfers have ads blocked anyway.

And I've also heard that advertising on podcasts just doesn't work either.

This is why most long running 'casts are attached to some commercial entity.

Crockpot wrote:

Whiskey said if they get 5k members by at some point on friday they won't spilt up the bombcast.

Well, I'm not big on the hostage situation but that's still a big improvement. I'm still not sure if their value proposition is worth it though. I might sign up for a month and see if it's worth it. I can part with $5 to try it. Where are they saying this? On their forums somewhere?

Look, I like these guys a lot, but l'll wait and be a week behind just fine.

Meh, £3 a month wont kill me (I pay double that for Xbox Live Gold each month, which I never use).

Think I'll probably pay it for the high quality video and just to support them I think.

If that 5000 subscriber thing is for real, I'll happily toss in $5 to keep things united.

I'm of two minds on this issue. (from here on out, GB = Giant Bomb, WM = Whiskey Media, GWJ = GamersWithJobs.com)

While I do love what the WM guys do and GB in particular, I do agree that this method of monetization isn't really giving me any value for my money, other than a warm fuzzy feeling.

At the same time, while I was thinking about this, how is GWJ any different? I gladly donate to GWJ at Donation Drive time, and get nothing out of it other than a thankyou and an emblem on the site. The only thing I get out of GWJ is given to me by the community, the self-moderation of the people here as well as the occasional heavy-hand-of-God Certis provides when things get out of hand. This has a lot to do with volume, though.

I don't have any clue what the traffic numbers are for GWJ vs WM (as an aside, how would I even look that up? Anyone know?), but I'm pretty sure going off the amount of people who showed up to the GWJ S&T at PAX this year vs the number of people at the GB live panel recording that it's at least a 1:100 ratio. And it's that signal to noise ratio of GWJ vs WM that attracts me. There, the great unwashed masses of people who are gamers, especially the immature, jerk ones, vs here, are quite overwhelming, which dissuades me from being active there at all.
While the volume we get here is manageable for a volunteer moderator of one, the amount of eyes on their site and traffic to have to moderate is probably quite large, such so that they do need to either take the hands-off approach to moderation or pay people to do that.

If their site was as small as GWJ is and targeted a demographic much smaller, and had a demonstrated availability of superfluous income, the donation method would probably work fine for them. It works for Public Radio, which is why it works here. I would posit that the vast majority of people on the WM sites are either too young to have any appreciable disposable income, too miserly, or of the internet-age opinion that content that is free now should continue to be free.

What's the solution, though? I have no idea, and clearly they don't either, since they are trying to target too many demographics at once with this scatter-shot tactic. I do agree it's going to cause a lot of ill-will towards them by erecting a negligible pay-wall. The content they produce is still going to be released either way, and while I admire their chutzpah in trying this, I don't think it's going to increase their revenue appreciably in the long run.

As for myself, I have the disposable income, and looking at it as a donation towards keeping them in business, I'd be okay with sending them the money to keep them going. But I bet I'm in a minority here.

I love Giant Bomb and Tested, and find myself liking Screened more and more.

I'd probably not have a problem subscribing, seeing it as similar to GWJ's donation drives (that I've not had an opportunity to donate to since getting really involved here) or other sites that I've given money to over time. However, for me, I think they've priced it out of my comfort realm. $50 a year makes me think a lot more. $25, I wouldn't have even thought about and would have pulled out my credit card.

It's not that I can't afford $50, it's that I'm not sure I feel that I will get $50 worth of perceived value FOR ME.

I don't get into all their quests and stuff. Love a lot of their videos and a couple of their podcasts, but I'm just not sure it's $50 worth of love.

I suspect they'd probably more than double their subscribers by cutting annual down to $25 or so. I think they missed the supply/demand curve if others feel like I do.

Ah, this sucks for so many different reasons and for so many different people.

And you know what sucks the most for me? I'd probably sign up for this service were it not for the very real possibility that the site itself will get so fractured, that it loses the value I currently see in it.

It also sucks because I see the giantbomb crew as the spiritual succesor to the Brodeo.

I love GB, my favorite gaming podcast by far right now. Their idea is a terrible one, 50 dollars for product that, frankly, I can't see any value in at all. Splitting up the Bombcast won't really affect me much, given my own listening habits of being late and rarely finishing the end of podcasts. I listen for the impressions and snark, which are just fine in the first hour.

Having said that, I don't get the hatred and the "I'm unsubscribing from the GB podcast right now, forever" comments that I've seen elsewhere.

If they were charging, say, 30 dollars a year for a weekly "1Up Show" type video podcast, I might jump in. I do miss that one.

I don't mind that they're monetizing their podcast, but I think the lack of a cheaper membership option is going to hurt them in the long run. Putting out a $20 membership option that gives you immediate access to the Bombcast (along with a pushback of the free Bombcast availability to two weeks) would give a more price-sensitive option to listeners like me that rarely, if ever, frequent the actual Giant Bomb website.

I don't think $50 is going to appeal to many people outside those of us (me and whoever else) who use more than one of their sites. In the past year I've grown to love what Whiskey Media does. I like that they don't cover everything, but that they're able to put a personal touch onto what they cover.

Still, $50 is a lot.

Edit: Oh, and I don't really read comics, but I'd like to keep Babs employed and in front of a camera.

I'm not sure. I like the original video content on giantbomb and the bombcast is probably my favorite podcast now. I like tested a lot and have started listening to their podcast. And, I didn't even know that screened existed until today and I will probably start frequenting the more often.
But...
The original video content on giantbomb actually, to me, seems to be decreasing in volume. There are way to many trailers/advertisements now. The community over there is atrocious. And, they don't specify what time the live Friday shows will be. The 4 pacific time that they have for Thursday night throwdown is really hard for me to do.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

The original video content on giantbomb actually, to me, seems to be decreasing in volume.

This may be because they have been putting so much effort into working on infrastructure for the new model. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt there.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

The community over there is atrocious.

.

That is true, it's populated with the same children that frequent almost every other gaming site out there. I'm not sure how we could reasonably expect them to do any better... as a commercial entity they are kind of forced to accept the consumer demographic its content attracts.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

And, they don't specify what time the live Friday shows will be. The 4 pacific time that they have for Thursday night throwdown is really hard for me to do.

.

I would actually consider the subscription if it means archive access to live content as well as some hope that the video content will be beefed up overall. The Giant Bomb Quick Looks are my favorite part of the site as it is content that is actually pretty unique to that site.

They've also promised the ability to turn into a cute girl as part of paid membership.

But more seriously, $50 is a lot to drop at once on a budget. I love what the GB guys do and I've followed Will and Norm ever since their days at MaxPC, but the price is holding me back from purchasing it outright. If the price could be lowered, or if there was some middle tier available, I probably wouldn't think twice about it and grab my credit card.

Also, split bombcasts make me sad.

GB is great, I like it, and the blokes a lot. But it's also a work time-waster. I can't justify paying for such a thing.

Making something free to something that costs is a very rough transition. I think Red Vs Blue does a great job how they have paying members. From what I remember it's only $12 per 6 months and you get full access to their episodes in HD and some other stuff. I did that for a couple of years and thinking about doing it again.

I'm torn on this one. I love the Bombcast and use Screened.com fairly regularly, but $50/year is a real psychological hurdle for me to get over. The fact that I never use the community features of any Whiskey Media site and don't need a mobile version of the site also hurt any perceived value to paying the membership.

Today's "live show" becoming some kind of telethon thing, as far as I can tell, hasn't really helped any.

I agree with some of the previous posters that if there was a $25/year I-just-want-the-freaking-podcasts version I'd probably pay that right now.

I've been thinking about it... we're talking about $1.25 per podcast episode. Given the amount of laughter I got from the PAX panel episode, that's one heck of a deal.

Decisions, decisions...

bnpederson wrote:

I agree with some of the previous posters that if there was a $25/year I-just-want-the-freaking-podcasts version I'd probably pay that right now.

I agree. I can't tell you how many podcasts I would love to contribute money so they can dedicate their time and effort to it. When GFW radio was around I would easily put down money for that so they could stay together and keep that show going.

Blind_Evil wrote:

This is kinda important to you guys on the fence: If they get 5000 memberships, monthly or annual, by 10am PDT tomorrow, the Bombcast will remain available to everyone as it is now. I'd say if you're on the fence, you should probably kick them 5 bucks and cancel in a couple weeks. It'll help us all.

Not sure how that's a logical incentive for people. If you pay, why do you care what freeloaders get?

I went ahead and bought the yearly membership.

I also agree with people that are saying it's not a great value.

I've been listening to the bombcast, often more than once, every week for the last three years. Not taking into account special weeks in which they produce more than one podcast like E3 or GOTY award time, that's roughly 312 hours of original entertainment for which I haven't paid a penny. I might not be getting a lot for my membership, but that's partially due to their unwillingness to screw the non-payers over. GB is by far my favorite gaming site, I have a lot of respect for their goals and methods, their style of editorial. I compare it to contributing to my political party on my yearly taxes.

I also dig neat t-shirts.

This is kinda important to you guys on the fence: If they get 5000 memberships, monthly or annual, by 10am PDT tomorrow, the Bombcast will remain available to everyone as it is now. I'd say if you're on the fence, you should probably kick them 5 bucks and cancel in a couple weeks. It'll help us all.

(yeah, someone posted that earlier but I posted this without reading the thread).

MannishBoy wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

This is kinda important to you guys on the fence: If they get 5000 memberships, monthly or annual, by 10am PDT tomorrow, the Bombcast will remain available to everyone as it is now. I'd say if you're on the fence, you should probably kick them 5 bucks and cancel in a couple weeks. It'll help us all.

Not sure how that's a logical incentive for people. If you pay, why do you care what freeloaders get? :)

I've never claimed to be particularly logical.

I don't want to pay $50/year for this over time, because as I said I don't really see the value of the product offered. This particular $50 is to support the dudes I've come to like most as my source of video gaming info/editorial. Come September of next year I want to start freeloading, and a little contribution now will (hopefully) keep these guys successful and growing.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I've never claimed to be particularly logical.

I wasn't saying you were illogical, I was saying WM using this as a play for more subscribers is not doing the smart thing.

As much as I like the sites, the more I think about this as a business move, the more I'm unsure of their business plan's likelihood for success.

It's hard to go from free to for pay. Not sure this is the right way to go about that.

Pages