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Fandom sells gaming media brand Giant Bomb to long-term staff
- Trasmatta 1y agoGreat news. Giant Bomb is in some ways one of the few remaining relics of the older / weirder internet. I thought it was done for after the past week.
- kg 1y agoFor those unfamiliar, Giant Bomb was one of the first video games press outlets to focus on premium video content. They offered monthly/yearly paid subscriptions for unlimited streaming/downloads: a mix of livestreams, review/criticism content, and Just Goofing Around pre-recorded content. They typically released a few hours worth of content a week at their peak, if I remember right, and the cost was something like $30-50 a year. This was before long form video was a big thing on YouTube; arguably sites like Giant Bomb were pioneers that showed a path forward (at least temporarily) for lots of creatives. Their podcast has been running weekly for the entire time the site has operated alongside (intermittently) other podcasts, so they're approaching 890 episodes. Each episode was typically a few hours long as well. When they were doing good they were a well-oiled content machine operating on a small budget with a small team. A lot of the stuff they put out was really special or unique in games press at the time - for example, one of their staff went to North Korea during a vacation so during one of their weekly live streams they devoted a time slot to him showing his photos and talking about his experiences there.
- Trasmatta 1y agoThe history of the site is wild, too. From the origin in the wake of Jeff Gerstmann being fired from GameSpot, the subsequent exodus from that site, to the death of Ryan Davis, to being bought by CBS Interactive and brought right back under the fold next to GameSpot, to being acquired by multiple other companies, to Jeff Gerstmann getting fired AGAIN, and now this. And all the fun times and weirdness and insanity along the way. And a funny bit of trivia: likely the most widespread impact the site has had outside of gaming is that it was the origin of the "blinking white guy" meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb6BsegPewk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb6BsegPewk
- bigstrat2003 1y ago> to Jeff Gerstmann getting fired AGAIN Hold up what? I didn't know that. It seems insane to fire the man from the organization he co-founded.
- cube00 1y agoOnce the VCs get involved you will soon find the company you founded is no longer the company you work at.
- bigstrat2003 1y agoYeah I suppose. It just is shocking to me, because for me Giant Bomb was Jeff (and Ryan, may he rest in peace). Hard to fathom the site without him, but so it goes I guess.
- lazide 1y agoThings change, and sometimes require you to change in ways you’re not okay with to stay/have it keep working. So either change yourself, leave (if you can), or get pushed out (if you’re not majority control). Or everything grinds to a halt. It isn’t just companies.
- RevEng 1y agoIt happens. Our CTO "resigned" about 6 years after we started our VC funded startup. He sold his shares to the rest of the investors. It wasn't his choice to leave.
- riffraff 1y agoYou're gonna be blown away if you read a bit of Apple's history ;)
- phatfish 1y agoJeff chats about some recent history on his podcast from a few days ago. https://youtu.be/bQiGkSCQN7o?t=165 https://youtu.be/bQiGkSCQN7o?t=165
- IG_Semmelweiss 1y agoIs it right to say that giant bomb is in social.media terms was equivalent of myspace, vimeo is something like a far smaller linkedin, twitch is the equivalent of twitter, and that YouTube is Facebook?
- duskwuff 1y agoNot really. Giant Bomb is a content creator, not a social media network. They have some social features on their site, but it's all centered around GB and the content they produce. As an aside, Vimeo isn't a meaningfully social site anymore. They pivoted to commercial video hosting long ago - there's still some commenting features on videos but it's not a significant part of what they do.
- protocolture 1y ago>For those unfamiliar, Giant Bomb was one of the first video games press outlets to focus on premium video content. They offered monthly/yearly paid subscriptions for unlimited streaming/downloads: a mix of livestreams, review/criticism content, and Just Goofing Around pre-recorded content. They typically released a few hours worth of content a week at their peak, if I remember right, and the cost was something like $30-50 a year. This was before long form video was a big thing on YouTube; arguably sites like Giant Bomb were pioneers that showed a path forward (at least temporarily) for lots of creatives. It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege. It seems I am alone on that front.
- Aesock 1y ago[dead]
- astrange 1y agoSince gamers are a subculture, they want a mirror of any part of real life you can think of, except about games. There's a sub-subculture in this of video game journalists. There's a further subculture inside this of people who want to be writing for a video game review website (or a sports blog etc) but only ever actually write about their half-baked opinions about American politics.
- twixfel 1y agoYou obviously are not alone. Sorry to break it to you.
- Brybry 1y agoI grew up in the 90s sitting on couches watching friends and family play games while we socialized. For me, watching other people play games on the internet is basically an extension of that but with the addition that I can also watch some of the best gamers in the world if I want to.
- pier25 1y agoThe social aspect is lost though.
- nubinetwork 1y agoGlad to hear, fandom is a horrible website to use
- bmacho 1y agoI like Fandom it - has the content that I am looking for - the website is fast, lightweight, easy to read I wish every website were more like Fandom.
- poly2it 1y agoIt adds a whole new meaning to reading between the lines.
- bertil 1y agoWhat are your concerns with Fandom?
- aprilnya 1y agoFor one, when I visit the site on my phone, the bottom 25% of my viewport is taken up by their recommendation algorithm, the top 30% is usually but not always taken up by an autoplaying video completely unrelated to the topic or wiki I’m visiting, and so I’m left with a tiny piece in the middle of my screen actually containing the contents of the wiki page I’m trying to read. They also hold wikis hostage by not allowing them to move to another platform and redirect/get rid of their Fandom wiki. This means that if any wiki tries to move to be independent, the Fandom wiki will keep existing, and usually will still be the first result on Google for a long while, maybe forever, because of Fandom’s SEO. Of course the entire community of editors will have moved on, so this heavily outdated Fandom wiki full of ads and other elements trying to catch your attention and keep you on the site, will rank above the independent ad-free and active wiki with up-to-date information on Google search.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoThe https://getindie.wiki/ https://getindie.wiki/ browser extension helps mitigate that problem.
- RistrettoMike 1y agoYOOOOO! Still a threat!
- natebc 1y agoWrong Jeffs! That Jeff is still a threat but he's not these Jeffs. <>
- randall 1y agoJEFF BAKALAR?!?!? THE 404 JEFF BAKALAR!!?!?!?!? Insane. How times have changed.
- c-hendricks 1y agoHis arc at Giant Bomb is pretty great. From guest to co-owner.
- randall 1y agoi worked with him at cnet all those days ago. super weird.
- kridsdale1 1y agoDid he ever show up to work in a hockey jersey?
- randall 1y agoLol not that i recall, but I know he's ride or die devils.
- stevage 1y agoBoy that was a confusing headline. I did not realise that fandom or giant bomb were proper nouns.
- riffraff 1y agoI even misread it as "sends" and thought this was a stunt of some kind
- fhd2 1y agoAlso independent creators.
- fhd2 1y agoAh, that's fixed now. And here I thought Independent Creators was a company. What a delightful puzzle.
- archagon 1y agoI want to live in your reality. (Edit for clarity: because the literal headline is hilarious.)
- DevKoala 1y agoHahahaha. Upvote. Fandom is a pit of the internet that you never want to find yourself in. Giantbomb probably should have never happened, it never hit the heights of Gamespot.
- thaumasiotes 1y agoWell, I didn't know about Giant Bomb, but the fact that the domain for the headline was fandom.com was a big clue for Fandom.
- nilslindemann 1y agoEveryone who clicked the link is not on CIA's observation list.
- bromuro 1y ago
- monster_truck 1y ago[flagged]
- scheeseman486 1y ago[flagged]
- monster_truck 1y agoThis is word salad dude. If you think decrying their kind of behavior is a sucky attitude then I am only further justified in my stance.
- scheeseman486 1y agoI probably could have thown in an extra comma. What behaviour? Who did what? You made the vaguest of assertions, assume everyone downvoting you knows what you're talking about, then proceed to get upset over it, which is pathetic. Don't get on my back for not being clear when you can't even communicate what it is you're angry about.
- jpalawaga 1y agoWhiskey Media was top tier back in the day. A group of folks producing really fun content, and having a great time doing it. The community was top notch too. I have no idea where the diaspora ended up, since the forums and wiki are comparatively dead these days.
- j_timberlake 1y agoFYI to anyone missing the core GB guys, they're on a Twitch channel called NextLander. Vinny, Brad, Alex, Will Smith, Abby.
- kridsdale1 1y agoAnd podcast. You can get more via Patreon.
- punnerud 1y agoIn this context, the term “bomb” refers specifically to Giant Bomb, the gaming media brand that has now become independently owned and operated by its creators.
- bitwize 1y agoI'm still waiting for a gaming site that could rival what TheGIA was back in the day. But unfortunately, the web that gave rise to TheGIA is long gone...
- snickerbockers 1y ago[flagged]
- jaoane 1y agoThe best thing Fandom could do for the community is close forever. Talk about a cancerous website. People like to talk shit about Pinterest, but Fandom is tremendously worse, since its SEO efforts drown actually useful websites.
- pm3003 1y agohttps://icarly.fandom.com/wiki/Seddie https://icarly.fandom.com/wiki/Seddie
- anton-c 1y agoMy goodness I clicked a link to Fandom on accident the other day - most external links on tvtropes go to Wikipedia. A sidebar opens automatically, there's a pop-up at the bottom, tons of distracting design and things showing up asking me to take a poll. What a mess. And I have adblock ofc... can't imagine what it really looks like. I am saddened whenever an IP I've just discovered has their knowledge hub on fandom.
- MyPasswordSucks 1y ago> Fandom is tremendously worse, since its SEO efforts drown actually useful websites. This cannot be emphasized enough. A clean, no-cookied, location-off search for "Doom wiki" (no quotes) returns the terrible, low-information, awful-layout, often-outdated/incorrect Fandom Doom Wiki as the first result. The actual Doom Wiki, better-designed and far more content-filled - which is called "The Doom Wiki", and with a domain that is literally just "doomwiki.org" - comes in second.
- jon_richards 1y agoHuh. Just checked kagi and it’s the same. At least you can block sites manually.
- 7jjjjjjj 1y agoThere's extension called Indie Wiki Buddy that will replace Fandom links in SERPs with links to non-Fandom wikis.
- 1y ago
- drumhead 1y agoI dont know how popular Giant Bomb is as a site, but in general video game journalism online is pretty much in the doldrums. Most of the big players from the last 20 years seem to have either disappered or are cutting staff back to the bare minimum. They seem to have become click baity and but dont even get much interaction from viewers.Looking at the Titan of the industry, IGN, they barely get more that 20k views for videos they put out on Youtube, even though they have 19million subscribers. Their audience seems to have moved on from them to individual Youtubers or twitch. As a business proposition, video gaming sites seem like a money pit with no guarentee of a return. They may have a chance at survival by serving a niche audience that wants a specific type of content, limiting their scope and ambitions. But at the moment I just dont see a comeback for them.
- sylens 1y agoGiant Bomb is a bit of a tragic tale because they essentially pioneered the idea of personality driven game streaming at a time when most video game sites were still doing the templated 5 section review. The problem is that they were a bit too ahead of their time, so they had to rely on outside funding which caused them to be sold - first to CBS, then Red Ventures, and now Fandom. If they were launching today, it would be a patreon funded YouTube channel without the overhead of an in person office, rolling your own video streamer, etc
- geetee 1y agoI think they all lost a little something when Ryan suddenly died.
- bigstrat2003 1y agoThat was definitely the case in my opinion. I used to listen to the Bombcast religiously, and it just wasn't the same after Ryan died. I kept listening for a while, but eventually tuned out because he really did bring something irreplaceable to the table.
- Kudos 1y ago
- dustbunny 1y agoAnyone remember 1up.com before giant bomb? 1up was how I got into podcasts. The computer gaming magazine podcast was hilarious. I loved those guys. I should try to download the archive.
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoWhat the hell, this new title is worse than the original, which was already quite confusing! Can I propose something like the following? “Giant Bomb (video game media company) purchased by its staff” “Giant Bomb (video game media company) splits off from parent company”
- halalfatal 1y ago[dead]