#Brad Shoemaker

[ilomilo]

(Disclaimer: This post is not my own. This is a repost from the official ilomilo developers on blog.ilomilo.com (only accessible on the wayback machine)!)

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Kotaku and Giant bomb plays some ilomilo

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Another ilomilo article from Pax! This time from Kotaku.

“Giant Bomb’s Brad Shoemaker and I each took an Xbox 360 controller in hand at the Microsoft booth at PAX East and tried our best to understand Ilomilo, a puzzle game involving two characters who need to walk across tricky terrain in order to stand next to each other.”

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[Pasting below for easy reading!]

Ilomilo (first letter is an "i", second an "L") is great to look at. But how do you play this game about two cube-people needing to meet? Maybe let a Kotaku guy and a Giant Bomb guy play, sans directions.

On second thought, maybe that's not how you do it.

Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker and I each took an Xbox 360 controller in hand at the Microsoft booth at PAX East and tried our best to understand Ilomilo, a puzzle game involving two characters who need to walk across tricky terrain in order to stand next to each other.

Brad and I were bravely trying this new upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game. Our first discovery: we would be taking turns. We could each move one of the cube people, but when I had control and could move, he could not. It seemed that we were playing a cooperative game, but we could not move at the same time. When I had control, my cube guy was front and center. Brad could only control a cursor version of his guy. With that cursor he could highlight areas of interest, but not control his guy. When I pressed a button, Brad had control.

We figured out that we needed to get our cube people to stand on adjacent cubes in each of Ilomilo's dreamy floating environments. In the early levels, this was too easy. My guy trotted over. His guy hit a switch to pull my guy over. They met. We won.

Ilomilo has many tutorial levels. These levels teach you that some blocks can be picked up from the game world and transported on your back until you put them down again. This important action allows you to create bridges where there once were gaps. You can also walk on small ramps that rotate the world and turn what were the sides of the game's floating platforms into the new bottom of the terrain. Brad would do this, flipping the camera view, while my cube guy waited, dangling but not falling off. Without much effort, we met again.

The game was too easy, so Brad and I backed out to the game's level selection screen and skipped a couple dozen levels ahead. Mistake. On this new level, our guys were very far apart. There were bubbles coming out of vents on some of the blocks. One of the blocks I picked up and placed back down became three cubes long when I put it down. Except sometimes it was back to being just one cube long. I bridged a couple of gaps and wound up with my guy on a high perch. He was stuck. Brad spun the level by walking his guy up some ramps. He was spinning the camera enough to make me feel unwell. It no longer seemed wise to have skipped the rest of the tutorial levels.

I beckoned an official who was working the PAX Microsoft booth. He explained the expanding blocks to us. We asked him about the whole taking-turns thing and wondered whether the second player really could only control a cursor while the other player moved around. The man looked confused. Cursor? I guess he skipped most of the tutorial as well.

Brad and I each had other games to play. So we dissolved our brief partnership. He went off to play other games. I stood behind one last second to ponder Ilomilo. Looks great. Doesn't seem like it needs to be played by two people to be enjoyed. Probably ramps up in difficulty better if you, well, ride up that ramp and don't jump ahead. It's a puzzle game at its core, for people who like staring at a complicated game level and figuring out which switches need to be pushed, which gaps spanned in order to be solved. Give me and Brad more than a few minutes of Ilomilo play time sans directions and I'm sure we could be masters.

[ulkaralakbarova]

A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home finds herself entangled in a mystery involving the house’s dark past. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Caroline Ellis: Kate Hudson Violet Devereaux: Gena Rowlands Luke Marshall: Peter Sarsgaard Ben Devereaux: John Hurt Jill: Joy Bryant Bayou Woman: Marion Zinser Mama Cynthia: Maxine Barnett Hallie: Fahnlohnee R. Harris Desk Nurse: Deneen Tyler C.N.A.: Ann Dalrymple Nurse Trula: Trula M. Marcus Madeleine Thorpe: Jen Apgar Robertson Thorpe: Thomas Uskali Grace Thorpe: Jamie Lee Redmon Martin Thorpe: Forrest Landis Nurse Audrey: Tonya Staten Creole Gas Station Owner: Isaach De Bankolé Creole Mother: Christa Thorne Papa Justify: Ronald McCall Mama Cecile: Jeryl Prescott Frail Customer: Lakrishi Kindred Luke’s Secretary: Sabah Paramedic: Joe Chrest Party Guest: David J. Curtis Party Guest: Tiffany Helland Party Guest: Brian Ruppert Film Crew: Producer: Stacey Sher Set Decoration: Beauchamp Fontaine Original Music Composer: Ed Shearmur Costume Design: Louise Frogley Producer: Iain Softley Director of Photography: Dan Mindel Art Direction: Drew Boughton Producer: Michael Shamberg Unit Production Manager: Clayton Townsend Casting: Ronna Kress Production Design: John Beard Producer: Daniel Bobker Editor: Joe Hutshing Writer: Ehren Kruger Costume Supervisor: Joyce Kogut Producer: Lorenzo P. Lampthwait Steadicam Operator: Colin Anderson Carpenter: Leo Lauricella Sound Mixer: Peter J. Devlin Set Production Intern: Hiro Taniguchi Key Hair Stylist: Susan Germaine Gaffer: Adam Harrison Sound Designer: Harry Cohen Standby Painter: Andrew P. Flores Location Manager: M. Gerard Sellers Production Supervisor: Gary R. Wordham Visual Effects Coordinator: Stephanie Pollard Greensman: Ronald S. Baratie Key Grip: Thomas Gibson Craft Service: Chris Winn Stunt Coordinator: Buddy Joe Hooker Lighting Technician: Greg Etheredge Supervising Sound Editor: Wylie Stateman Construction Foreman: Chuck Stringer Painter: Andrew M. Casbon III Stunts: Liisa Cohen Transportation Captain: Louis Dinson Scoring Mixer: Chris Fogel Video Assist Operator: Greg Mitchell Special Effects Supervisor: Jason Hamer Thanks: Michelle Guish Post Production Supervisor: Tania Blunden Stand In: Lexi Shoemaker Digital Compositors: Sean McPherson Art Department Coordinator: Stephanie Higgins Frey Makeup Artist: June Brickman Set Costumer: Laurel Frushour Set Dressing Artist: Dale E. Anderson Propmaker: William Davidson Rigging Gaffer: Martin Bosworth Production Manager: Kimberly Sylvester Music Supervisor: Sara Lord Leadman: Jason Bedig Leadman: Brad Bell Grip: Gordon Ard Production Intern: William Jackson Transportation Coordinator: Ed Arter Set Designer: Mick Cukurs First Assistant Camera: John T. Connor Visual Effects Supervisor: Karl Herbst Script Supervisor: Elizabeth Ludwick-Bax Best Boy Electric: Larry Cottrill Production Coordinator: Zoila Gomez Still Photographer: Merrick Morton Special Effects Coordinator: Bob Stoker Editorial Production Assistant: Jen Woodhouse Foley: Craig S. Jaeger Dolby Consultant: Thom ‘Coach’ Ehle Art Department Assistant: Amanda Fernald Jones Sculptor: Fred Arbegast Aerial Director of Photography: Phil Pastuhov Orchestrator: Robert Elhai Visual Effects Supervisor: Dan DeLeeuw Construction Coordinator: Dave DeGaetano Seamstress: Giselle Spence Driver: Bill C. Dawson Property Master: Peter C. Clarke Publicist: Patti Hawn ADR Supervisor: Hugh Waddell Sound Effects Editor: Christopher Assells Assistant Art Director: Jann K. Engel Hairstylist: Kathryn Blondell First Assistant Director: Gary Marcus First Assistant Editor: Davis Reynolds Electrician: Jimmy Ellis Production Accountant: Gregory D. Hemstreet I/O Supervisor: Ryan Beadle Set Medic: John Lavis Visual Effects Producer: Gary Nolin Rigging Grip: Mike Nami Jr. Boom Operator: Kevin Cerchiai Casting Associate: Courtney Bright Stunt Coordinator: Tom Bahr Stunts: Conrade Gamble Stunts: Annie Ellis ADR Mixer: Jeff Gomillion Camera Production Assistant: Alex Scott Storyboard Artist: Richard K. Buoen Assistant Location Manager...

[breakingarrows]

Games Media in Review: Nextlander

The first Giant Bomb spin-off project was Drew Scanlon leaving in March of 2017 to begin a Patreon called Cloth Map, “exploring the people, places, and cultures of the world through the lens of games, and making sweet videos about it.” Due to Covid-19’s outbreak in early 2020, Drew could no longer travel and shut down the Patreon in July of that year. Drew would go on to join Digital Eclipse Entertainment Partners Co., developers of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration and Mega Man: Legacy Collection. This would not be the last spin-off of Giant Bomb, itself a spin off of GameSpot following Jeff Gerstmann’s firing in 2007.

In September of 2020, Viacom CBS would sell CNET Media Group (GameSpot, CNET, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, GameFAQs) to Red Ventures. In May of 2021 Brad Shoemaker, Vinny Caravella, and Alex Navarro would announce that they would be leaving Giant Bomb. Brad and Vinny had been with the website since its beginnings in 2008 and Alex had joined in 2010 after a stint on the development/PR side of the industry with Harmonix. The name of their new venture was Nextlander, and they launched their Patreon for it on June 7, 2021, quickly accruing over 10,000 patrons. Their departure left Jeff Gerstmann as the only remaining founding member at Giant Bomb, and he would be fired in lieu of seeing through his two week notice one year later in June 2022.

Nextlander have retained a stable base of around 10,000 patrons since launch, giving them a solid foundation of income for the past two years. Speaking to Ben Hanson of MinnMax shortly after their Patreon’s launch, Vinny would share, “You know, it's very, we talked about this a lot when we were part of bigger companies. It's a bit of a bubble and you're not sure what the actual response is going to be from everything. I mean, we were, we were all in there for a decade, right? Like inside kind of a, a kind of a bubble for lack of a better word and you know you have you don't know what your self-worth is you don't know you know there are a lot of people you get messages and stuff you also get a lot of criticism obviously and you it's you know your kind of futures are dictated by other people.” They go on to discuss the newfound freedom in being able to make decisions without any management position above them second guessing their decisions, no longer, “being in a corporate machine for that long, which is nothing but hierarchy.” Whiskey Media, the original owner of Giant Bomb, was small enough that they shared a room with the people making the business decisions. They were then absorbed into the giant machine that is CBS after a sale in 2012. After another sale to Red Ventures, Vinny, Brad, and Alex were all contemplating that transition being, “my off-ramp to kind of investigate other things.”

On YouTube Nextlander regularly uploads their Twitch streams, pretty consistently two hours of playing a game and talking over it amongst themselves. The lack of being in the same physical space is something I’ve mentioned before but I need to repeat here, it really takes away from the energy. Sharing a space with someone and talking/joking with them cannot be replicated over a Skype-equivalent. There is something about the dynamic between these three specifically that lacks the energy and enthusiasm I had for them under Giant Bomb. Brad and Vinny trying to remember their Astroneer status after a new update, the three of them just talking amongst themselves and repeating “I’m down” while playing Remnant II cooperatively, and the frequent troubleshooting and just uninteresting conversations during any video was so bland I ended up watching less of their output than even the current Giant Bomb.

Nextlander’s podcast is what you would expect from a gaming podcast: what they’ve been playing, news, and letters. There isn’t anything here that you can’t find anywhere else, and it really becomes a question of, “How much do you like listening to Vinny, Brad, and Alex?” One standout element that does set them apart from every other YouTube channel is that comments are off on all of their uploads. I actually really like this choice as comments are generally not something I recommend reading once you’ve reached a certain mass audience, and this pushes those who do wish to participate to join the Discord via a Patreon subscription, funneling more people, and engagement, to a place that they can better control than the untamed landscape of YouTube comments.

Given that you can watch anybody play and talk over a game it really is on the back of personalities that people pick gaming channels nowadays, so why is Nextlander so lacking? Each person have become such caricatures over the course of a decade of talking into a camera for an audience that a lot of the time their output reads more like fulfilling an expectation in terms of performing these characters than actually being themselves. How many times does someone have to reference how Alex is a grumpy old man and wait for him to perform that bit? During their game streams non-players passively watch and ask questions nobody knows the answer to. More time is spent talking about the bit than doing a bit. Watching them play games isn’t entertaining, it isn’t informative, it isn’t insightful, it just exists as background noise even when actively watching.

Due to my history with Giant Bomb it is really disappointing to have constantly approached Nextlander over its brief lifetime only to be turned away by how unengaging it was. They still collaborate with former coworkers, most frequently Abby Russell, which should help offset this feeling. Abby was at her best when behind the wheel however, and there is only so much energy she can bring to a Zoom call as a guest for one-off shows, even if her presence is greatly appreciated.

When writing about Kinda Funny and Kinda Funny Games I did not get into the perks people receive for supporting via Patreon. At this time, Kinda Funny and Kinda Funny Games have a $25.00 tier in which six series of exclusive “short-form video bonus shows” are published. $10.00 supporters will receive these shows as well, just a month afterwards. Two of the six series were not part of their published content in the past 30 days, but I also found enough enjoyable content in their regular upload schedule that I didn’t feel the need to take a one time dip to see what’s up. With Nextlander their regular schedule is so familiar, and so dull, that I felt the need to see what was behind the wall.

I joined their Patreon at $10.00 a month to see if these exclusive podcasts are any different from their free content. When thinking about Kinda Funny, I really enjoyed their content well into the late 2010s due to their vibe harkening back to earlier IGN days, when the website's podcasts were a series of people just shooting the shit and not taking the content very seriously. As the website aged and its podcasts got more popular, spreading to YouTube, it took on a much more “on topic” air about it, which really killed the fun. Kinda Funny was a return to the “conversational” podcasts where getting off topic was encouraged in the name of entertaining listeners. Nextlander’s regular output of content is more of the “on-topic” approach, whereas the Patreon exclusives are more shoot-the-shit. Never Been a Better Podcast and the Ramblecast are pretty much free range discussions about anything and everything and are much more entertaining because of it.

The Watchcast allows them to talk about television and movies at length and usually on one specific piece of media everyone has seen, leading to stronger discussions of the subject compared to the scattershot talk about whatever game someone happens to be playing. This issue was apparently something they sought to address in the beginning of Nextlander, with every member playing the same game in order to generate better conversations as everyone would be informed on it. Instead they fell back into one person poorly explaining the game to the others who have no experience and likely little interest in trying it out themselves. As film and television episodes require significantly less time and energy it means they can all participate and episodes are stronger due to this. Their Planaroma podcast is fairly boring, merely being a read through of the month of releases, and it makes me ponder how necessary keeping up with the latest releases is to their bottom line. Is this something they do because the audience wants it, they want to, or because it has been The Thing they have been doing as a career for over a decade?

Online personalities, or those who make careers out of talking into a camera for a video posted or streamed to the internet, has eroded the barrier between personal life and professional life. For people such as these, their personal life partly becomes the content, creating what has become known as a parasocial relationship between themselves and their audience, where people who have done nothing other than simply watch and listen to individuals such as those at Giant Bomb feel that these people are their friends and begin to talk amongst themselves about the personal lives of those they watch. This phenomenon is best explained, and made popular, by Shannon Strucci’s series of YouTube videos: Fake Friends. Kinda Funny exacerbates this with their naming of the audience, “Best friends,” seemingly encouraging the creation of this one way relationship, usually as a way to draw in financial support via Patreon subscriptions. Even when it isn’t actively encouraged, in an extreme case such as RedLetterMedia, who are openly antagonistic to their fans, sections of the fandom inevitably fall into the phenomenon.

When looking into the current Giant Bomb I mentioned that a Premium subscription no longer offered exclusive content and instead offered Discord access. This has become a standard Patreons subscription perk, Nextlander included. Unlike a group such as, I don’t know, Superculture (which you can support here) the engagement by the Nextlander hosts is less comparatively. Some of this is explained by audience size. Nextlander’s Discord is 10,716 members as of this writing whereas Superculture is 242, a much more manageable number where you can have actual conversations instead of drowning in a sea of responses. Still, given that the YouTube comments are disabled and the Reddit is unofficial, Discord is the place to be if you want any online interaction with the hosts, though you’re lucky if you even get that there.

Instead, I think this lack of engagement is intentional. All this time at GameSpot, Giant Bomb, and now yet another venture centered around themselves, the individuals, as the product being sold, I imagine they have little interest in engaging with an audience who so often speculate and publicly post about intimate details not shared and not owed. How often is the lack of collaboration between Nextlander and Jeff Gerstmann after his solo career started going to be posted and lead to the same conversations regarding their personal lives and interpersonal relationships? I can’t imagine being held under such scrutiny by people I’ve never met, and it explains their overall lack of community engagement. However, due to their funding model, it can bring some tension due to the audience who is willing to give you money month after month is also partly the one most interested in every little detail about your life.

Their Patreon content is better than the regular stuff they put out, but is it worth paying $10.00 every month? I don’t think so. While I enjoyed the Ramblecast, Watchcast, and Never Been a Better Podcast, due to the regular output being so dull I don’t see myself giving them money beyond this one instance of investigating what exactly it was being paywalled. Listening to Jeff Bakalar rant about how dumb contestants on game shows are was funny, and hearing Vinny talk inside baseball regarding old corporate policies on money spending was the kind of stuff I like listening to, much more than the standard and expected opinions on the Latest Release, but it is not worth the monthly subscription and I only ever see myself doing it again simply for one month in order to play catch up.

Hosting video is expensive, something the Giant Bomb folks know firsthand having created their own video player in order to host their premium video content. A player which was then slowly passed over in favor of YouTube and now exists solely as a legacy way to view that old premium content. Video makers need a place to host their content, but they also expect to be compensated for the work behind that content, especially when it is bringing in lots of eyes to that host’s platform. YouTube wasn’t cutting it, but as the biggest platform around, creators didn’t have many alternative choices but to continue to publish there. Then, with Patreon, a new way to receive funding arrived. The main problem was converting your viewers who were used to watching for free into those who would contribute a small amount month after month.

Of the 58 channels I have tracked who primarily publish through YouTube, 45 see a less than 1% conversion rate from YouTube subscriber to patron. Two of the top three conversions are the relatively brand new channels Nextlander and Jeff Gerstmann, where they have yet to accrue inactive subscribers over the course of a decade plus of existence on the platform. The other is Last Stand Media with an 18.92% subscriber->patron conversion despite being 6 years old. Your potential audience is only so large, and 99% of them are unwilling or simply unable to give you funding. Large sites such as IGN, GameSpot, Polygon, Kotaku have built in audiences thanks to their lifetime spent adhering to the SEO. Internally they raise up (or grind up) individuals who then go off into either game development, leave the industry entirely, or launch their own venture, taking part of that audience with them and getting an even smaller portion to fund them directly. How many more times can this occur before Patreon, what was once the savior of independent games media, becomes unsustainable itself? Most recently we’ve seen Waypoint disintegrate into Remap (and successfully transition the subscriber base of Waypoint+), the launch of Aftermath (made up of former Kotaku, Motherboard, Verge, and Launcher staff), and a significant portion of The Escapist resign and reform as Second Wind to massive success. Will that base stay strong like Nextlander or will it become a slow decline like Easy Allies? I myself subscribe to multiple Patreons, but I can’t continue to divvy up my monthly income to more and more channels. Of the people who follow specific YouTube channels, there is such a small percentage of them who are willing to give their money to ensure it continues, and that money can’t be divided up infinitely.

It has been disappointing going back through all these websites, many of which I once had a real deep affection for, and finding myself uninterested and disappointed by their current activity. Ben Verschoor, when writing about Bill Watterson’s latest output, “The Mysteries,” reminded me of a quote from Watterson, “It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now ‘grieving’ for ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.” I don’t have any ill will towards folks like Nextlander, but with how mundane a majority of their output is, maybe it would be better if the Patreon pie was dominated less by their slice and left for fresher, livelier talent out there.

[jasvvy]

undefined

I will never forget this moment, @jeffgerstmann

[blazehedgehog]

Thoughts on Brad, Alex and Vinny leaving Giant Bomb?

Having digested a bit more of this now, I wonder how long this has been in the works. People are saying this is related to the Red Ventures buyout, but I’m not so sure.

When I knew our renovation was coming up, I paid $8 for a one-month Giantbomb premium pass and loaded up on a bunch of shows and podcasts to throw on my tablet. In particular, I wanted to listen to the new HotSpot episodes.

The HotSpot, if you didn’t know, was the old Gamespot podcast that precluded what would eventually become Giantbomb’s Bombcast. Not long after Dan left Giantbomb last year, Jeff, Vinny, Alex and Brad basically picked up right where they left off, at HotSpot episode 360.

I haven’t listened all the way through The HotSpot, but those first five or six episodes are definitely framed as nostalgic pieces. There’s a very strong vibe of “Let’s look back on all we’ve done, because we’re not going to be here much longer.” Vinny will pitch a topic, like review culture, and they’ll step through time going over the different eras of leadership and what was going on behind the scenes.

Listening to it, I definitely had this thought of “This feels like something they’d put together if they were planning to retire soon” -- but I pushed that out of my head, because it felt like there was no way that would ever happen.

That started six months before the Red Ventures buyout. In fact, episode 360 of The HotSpot was posted almost exactly one year ago to the day, and three out of the four people on that podcast are now leaving the site.

I think that, regardless of whether or not this was planned that long ago, these guys have been doing a lot of long-term thinking about their lives over the last year. And I think the pandemic and working from home and how that has shaken everybody and everything up, I can see how they’re reevaluating their life goals. Jeff has always said he’s in this job for life, because he feels like it’s the only thing he’s qualified to do, but what even is this job for him anymore? He’s not going in to an office anymore. None of them are.

Do they really need an office anymore? Do they need to be a company?

My only hope is that they stay in touch after this. Thankfully, that seems like it would be the case -- I know Giantbomb people have been regulars on Abby’s streams now, even though she isn’t official GB staff anymore. Some things are going to change, but I imagine if you want to see Brad and Vinny making each other laugh in a sandbox game, that’ll still be out there. These guys aren’t going to just stop playing all video games, and the allure of having an audience will undoubtedly draw some of them back in.

It wounds me deeply to think that this could be the end for Giantbomb. They always felt so niche, but I feel like they have been deeply, deeply influential to this industry. But the fact of the matter is, I almost never go to the Giantbomb website anymore, when that used to be the only place I’d post my writing. I’ve been skipping more and more Giantbomb videos, even on Youtube. I still like the people there, but they’ve been in one killer slump over the last 9-10 months, which was now more obviously a tailspin.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nothing lasts forever. What’s next?

[giantbombnonsense]

Let's check in with GameBomb[dot]ru and see how they are taking the news.

...

Oh shit!

[currentkick]

Ex-Giant Bomb Launch Nextlander - Alex, Brad, & Vinny

Ex-Giant Bomb Launch Nextlander - Alex Navarro, Brad Shoemaker, & Vinny Caravella #nextlander #giantbomb #patreon

Well, it finally happened! I logged into Twitter, only to see a message from Vinny Caravella that he, Alex Navarro, and Brad Shoemaker have formed a new, post-Giant Bomb, video game focused company — Nextlander! https://twitter.com/VinnyCaravella/status/1401942157368365061 If you’ve been living under a rock – Alex Navarro, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinny Caravella left Giant Bomb in May 2021. There…

[survivingedgedweapons]

better glo up: jay bauman or brad shoemaker

[kriss-essem]

One of the contributor tiers for the @indivisiblerpg fundraiser was designing your own minor NPC. I didn’t splurge on that myself, but one person who did asked the Giant Bomb forums for help in designing a character that could get put into the game. He’d then bring that design on to Lab Zero to work on. This was all over a year ago. With that in mind, I tried designing various characters based on either my own ideas or thread suggestions, usually community memes or references to various video game playthroughs. 

The dude who asked for help with the design process had to go silent after signing an NDA, so I dunno if any of these got picked up and are gonna be in the game. I kinda don’t think so, he was more hoping for the community to design their OCs together, but of course it was gonna turn into this lol. Fun exercise, anyway.

[simseez]

Video Thing: 2Human

[fuckyeahgiantbombdotcom]

[dilbrad]

#065 - It’s their VR world, now! Thanks for reading, everyone. That’s a wrap! For now.

[dresslikejeff]

Giant Bombcast 506: CornFights.com

SNK Retro Shirt by Tony Kuchar

[breakingarrows]

Games Media in Review: Giant Bomb

I don’t have as long a history with Giant Bomb as I do IGN or Kinda Funny but the love and enjoyment from when I was a fan is definitely equal to those two. I have strong memories of listening to the Giant Bomb Game of the Year discussions in 2014 while pushing shopping carts around outside the Wal-Mart I worked at. I was a premium subscriber from June 2016 until I let it expire in March 2022. About a year ago I sat down to try and narrow down what my personal “golden age” of Giant Bomb was by counting the various shows or highlights put out in each year, this narrowed it down to the 2017-2019 period as being the strongest. Drew Scanlon’s departure was softened by the hiring of Abby Russell and Ben Pack, later joined by Jan Ochoa. Abby and Ben’s later departure, the COVID pandemic making in-person recordings no longer possible, and the later departures of Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro, and Brad Shoemaker pretty much killed any and all enthusiasm I had for the site. Jeff Gerstmann’s firing (still such a strange warped reflection of his firing from GameSpot due to external ad-pressure which led to founding Giant Bomb, now being fired from that website) didn’t help any interest that may have remained, especially given the site’s response following his sudden departure.

Watching and listening to the current Giant Bomb for these past two weeks has been the most disappointing experience of this series so far. Kinda Funny may not have very strong critical bones, and I can’t say Giant Bomb really does either, both are more to provide entertainment than thoughtful critiques, but only one of them ever provided any laughs: Kinda Funny. I know some of this has to do with finding Dan Ryckert more obnoxious than funny, but also just the overall content I watched (34 videos checking over my YouTube history) wasn’t very fun to watch along with.

When discussing Kinda Funny I mentioned their adherence to enthusiast press talk of excitement and positivity above all else, and while I don’t think that is true of Giant Bomb, I did find their critical talk similarly lacking. Most of it I can attribute to the shadow Dan Ryckert casts over the site. Dan loves wrestling, and specifically loves reenacting the role of the “heel” from wrestling in his work life, a term referring to someone who plays the bad guy who is supposed to make the audience and other cast members mad at them for their behavior. Dan finds this funny, I find it obnoxious. At least during his previous employment at Giant Bomb he had Jeff Gerstmann, Vinny Caravella, and his fellow GameInformer coworker turned Giant Bomb staff Jason Oestreicher to somewhat counter his heel tendencies. All of them are gone now and it shows. During the Giant Bombcast 808 Dan explains why he didn’t like Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Lord of the Rings around 1:42:37, and it was at an early point in my watching that I began to question whether or not I really wanted to continue. It isn’t that I disagree with the opinion being expressed, that either can be/is “boring,” but it is the way this thought is explained that irritates me. This feeling is expressed by others as well. This has always been an issue with people when watching Dan, as I remember my wife never liked him once he started showing up in Giant Bomb east videos with Abby. To me, I’ve always found his critical thought skills severely lacking, and am still surprised he was a writer at GameInformer and for several years and was contributing his voice to the greater critical volume.

Blight Club is their “playing through a bad game” show, but since bad games are so different from bad movies, especially given the time required and the lack of any editing on the backend (which is completely understandable from a production standpoint), it never reaches the sort of fever pitch of RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst series revolving around watching bad movies together. I also just don’t find the concept of dressing up in cheap halloween costumes that amusing. Additionally, they’re never together; they're always on video calls with each other, something which really killed a lot of game coverage/channels for me when COVID hit. No more Business Dave Top 10’s on UPF as everyone was working from home now. This has led to some hijinks, such as Dan using layers to replay video during livestreams to the bewilderment of the participants. Again, the specter of his character casts a shadow that makes it something I find mildly amusing instead of laugh out loud funny. Zoom/Discord video chat recordings just do not have the same energy as being in the room together. It is unfortunate because I do support remote work but there is just something magical lost when you transition from doing UPF in the same room together to doing it over a video chat service. This is primarily why I never kept up with Nextlander despite consisting of the Giant Bomb members I’ve followed the longest, and would likely kill Jeff Gerstmann’s channel for me if he ever ends up expanding beyond being a solo show.

The Bombcast continues to be their general gaming podcast of “whatcha been playing?+news+reader emails”, Voicemail Dumptruck is an extension of reader emails in voicemail form. Quick Looks remain a varying-in-length playthrough of recent releases. Unprofessional Fridays are still mostly a grab bag of cooperative games to play together. Game Mess Mornings is the newest show to me, but is basically a version of Kinda Funny Games Daily, itself a version of many familiar morning shows viewed everywhere that runs through the news, now with commentary from Jeff Grubb and a guest. Demo Derby returned recently though with Dan at the wheel it went about as well as I thought it would, that is: he called Final Fantasy X [ten] “Final Fantasy X [x]”  and called Final Fantasy X-2 “Final Fantasy Twelve” to annoy Mike Minotti and beat it into the ground by the end of the demo.

In addition to the standard shows they also have Mortal Kombat playthroughs, and miscellaneous streams such as F-Zero 99 and Counter Strike 2. Checking the video feed from even just a year ago and I was wishing I had done this then instead of now as my perspective would probably be much more popular. They had these shows plus Albummer and Arcade Pit. Two years ago they didn’t have Arcade Pit but did have Bak 2 Skool, VoidBurgers Hot Takeouts, and the Very Online Show. Not only was the video feed more varied but the community was more populated. Comparing the most commented video for the last couple of weeks in September from 2013-2023 paints a pretty bad picture.

Essentially the trend has been ever downwards for the community participation on the site. I previously used comment counts to gauge the audience size of IGN versus GameSpot, and here on Giant Bomb comments on their main site are even more valuable due to their premium subscription. Prior to June 2022 when all premium shows were made free and premium subscription was changed to give you behind the scenes stuff and discord access (though knowing how discord works for large communities this is not a benefit for all but the terminally online), premium would get you exclusive shows like Unprofessional Fridays (where the crew would each bring a game of their choosing to play and show off for the others or for entertainment), Metal Gear Scanlon, Playdates, Game Tapes, Demo Derby, Mario Party Party, and many more. It is important to note in the chart above that prior to the change, five of the nine top commented videos were premium videos, meaning you also needed a subscription in order to comment.

A lot of Giant Bomb’s best content was on these premium shows, but now with premium no longer having any exclusive content, at least none that appear on the site’s premium feed, there doesn’t appear to be much draw to give them money. This conduit of funding was previously what set Giant Bomb apart from most other games media sites before the advent of Patreon, as their fan’s directly helped fund them meaning they could rely on more than just click-through rates to earn them money. Nowadays, with dwindling community engagement, I’m not so sure they have solid footing, especially given the ownership changes and layoffs. CBS sold off Gamespot, Giant Bomb, and CNET to Red Ventures in September 2020. Red Ventures then turned around and sold off everyone but CNET to Fandom in October 2022. Despite promises to keep things as they were, Fandom laid off around 40-50 people in January 2023, including Jess O’Brien and Jason Oestreicher of Giant Bomb.

Other signs of diminished community are that qlcrew has essentially stopped updating its member tags, instead pretty much serving as an RSS feed for the new content but still remains a great filter for older content based on timestamps and tags. Best of Giant Bomb stopped uploading in mid-2021 and has returned for monthly installments for the back half of 2022 and only three videos for 2023 as of this writing. The subreddit is clogged with posts from Jeff Gerstmann and Nextlander, speculation about potential drama and collaboration between those two new channels, and the usual doom-posting about the site you often find on dedicated subreddits. Some of that doom is warranted, however, not only by the comment metrics but also the YouTube views. Out of IGN, GameSpot, Kinda Funny, and Kinda Funny Games for the past four weeks of uploads (discluding trailers), Giant Bomb is at the bottom with an average of 6.68k and GameSpot surprisingly at the top with 257k average view, mostly thanks to their “ALL Fatalities - Mortal Kombat 1 4K Gameplay” video hitting 5.7 million views. Kinda Funny with 12.65k average, nearly twice as many as Giant Bomb, is the second-to-last ranking.

I’m just not sure what you can do with Giant Bomb at this point. I’m sure the backlog of premium content doesn't help with server costs, and with a low view count on YouTube and a guaranteed lower premium subscriber base than ever before I’m just not sure how long you can expect them around, especially given how much they rely on outside staff to help pump up the staff count and variety on their content. It’s sad to see how far the site has fallen. Despite my complaints I think Dan Ryckert is a capable production lead, some of the shows he created for old Giant Bomb were among the best (Burgle my Bananas and Mario Party Party), and I don’t have any ill will or blame for the individuals currently working there. It just is sad to be so disappointed returning to a channel that was once so beloved, and to see that this sentiment appears to be the prevailing one amongst the, admittedly, minority of online forum posters.

[jasvvy]

can relate. boobs scare me too.

[atekasey]

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DUB!