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I 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 la

I 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 ago
Giant 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 ago
  I think they all lost a little something when Ryan suddenly died.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    That 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
  I don't think they had issues making money, they had issues hitting unrealistic growth targets being set by their overlords. This was discussed on the most recent Nextlander podcast. Nextlander being 3 of the Giant Bomb OGs.
  - sylens 1y ago
    No issues making money once they were up and running, but they needed to bootstrap somehow and therefore weren’t just owned by Jeff G from the start
  - poloniculmov 1y ago
    Jeff Gerstmann, one of the founders, also goes into details about this, Giantbomb was always making money, but had issues scaling up because corporate wouldn't invest in them. He says that it was very hard for them to monetize the podcast, which was one of the biggest podcasts before the boom, because they wouldn't allow him to sign a deal with a ad network, nor would they provide a sales team so they could get those ad deals. CBS also owning Gamespot was a big issue, because it wasn't making money but it had the potential of bringing much more if they could fix it. It got even worse with the last 2 rounds of buyouts, because the buyers never wanted Giantbomb, it was a package deal.
- silversmith 1y ago
  While the monetary overhead of an office is a fact, that couch also built their show. The in-person dynamics of both the podcast and their other shows were a class above the remote-only version that was forced by the east/west split, and later COVID. I miss that couch.
- j_timberlake 1y ago
  They pioneered it, but they lost because "gig-economy" streaming is better at finding diamonds in the rough. Giant Bomb couldn't find more Vinny's or Dave's no matter how hard it tried (and it did try).
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Youtube can pay okay when you hit those 6 figure subs, but it's still not quite enough to pay for a traditional office setup. Not even a small one. Sadly, geting 10 vinnies on one channel doesn't get you 10x Vinny income, it's better to do a setup like Channel Awesome (minus the whole harassment and rebellion of the clients) and manage 10 Vinnies if you had the choice.
bartread 1y ago
I can only give a personal perspective but I don’t necessarily trust reviews from large, established mainstream outlets, as opposed to independent creators and reviewers. My taste in games tend to lag by at least a few years, so I’d often far rather watch a let’s play or an independent review - especially one created some time after the fact - to get a true impression of the game than an overly curated take whose perspective is often overly skewed and coloured by then-current trends and tastes in gaming. For anything >10 years I still find myself looking for content from CGR and, particularly, CGR Undertow, for example. Plus it’s not unknown for mainstream reviewers to overhype new games. The plethora of content, and view counts, suggest I may not be alone in this point of view.
- chris12321 1y ago
  That's certainly not a criticism that could be levelled at Giantbomb, considering it was started when its founder, Jeff Gerstman, was fired from his job at GameSpot for giving a game a low review score while the developer of the game was doing a big marketing campaign on the site.
Taikonerd 1y ago
> Looking at the Titan of the industry, IGN, they barely get more that 20k views for videos they put out on Youtube I've noticed the same thing, and it confuses me. There are massive numbers of gamers in the world, and more every day. These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't worth their time. Sure, as you mentioned, there are individual YouTubers or Twitch streamers... but one streamer doesn't have nearly enough time to review all the games that come out. Not even just the AAA titles! So, how are gamers making their decisions about what to play next, if they're not reading reviews on a site like IGN?
- jitl 1y ago
  IGN huge, they review/cover a broad amount of stuff but since they’re so big they become known for having average coverage, and the average is not great. So I personally have never looked to them for opinion coverage. I think most people have some specific things they like, and end up following community opinion, like Reddit or Discord for a game genre, and following a different personalities on YouTube or Twitch. Personally I’m mostly playing mostly (indie) Metroidvania games which are not well covered by IGN, I hear buzz about new releases on Reddit or from Cannot be Tamed on YouTube. Beyond that I sometimes see cool stuff on Twitter, I picked up Clair Obscure after seeing a few tweets mention its great writing and music. I also end up seeing the front page of the Steam store, which has reasonably good recommendation profile for me given 90% of my game purchases are through there and I’m playing on Steam Deck which focuses the recommendations on titles well supported by Linux and the hardware.
- CivBase 1y ago
  I think most gamers use YouTubers and Twitch streamers as tastemakers rather than reviewers. If your favorite personalities are having fun and it looks like you'd have fun too, then you don't need a review.
  - j_timberlake 1y ago
    This. I've bought games after seeing 10 seconds of gameplay from a streamer. And those were some of my best purchases, hidden gems.
n1b0m 1y ago
The IGN review of Doom: The Dark Ages from 2 days ago currently has 636K views
jaoane 1y ago
I'm not a huge gamer myself but game journalism the last decade has been scandal after scandal after politics after scandal after politics, so it's no wonder everybody has moved on. If I want to know what a game is like, literally the last opinion I'm interested in is that of a "game journalist".
ethan_smith 1y ago
Sites like Game Informer, Easy Allies, and MinnMax have shown viability through subscription/Patreon models that focus on dedicated communities rather than mass appeal.
malfist 1y ago
I think it's because there's no trust in the big names anymore. Most of their "reviews" seem to be largely written by the game studio. How many times can you see IGN gush about how awesome a game is before launch and then when you get your hands on it, is a buggy boring mess before you stop checking IGN?
- techjamie 1y ago
  A lot of it is on the publishers for their early review copy practices. Big media outlets will get early review codes for the games so they can be among the first to get a review out and net the traffic. But the publishers want good publicity in return for the early access codes, and reviewers that don't play ball can find themselves on an industry wide blacklist from receiving them in the future. So the best, least biased reviews you can find are going to be 2-3 days post release, and not from someone who is large enough to get free review codes. I never trust pre-release reviews.
gambiting 1y ago
The problem is that TikTok/Instagram Reels have taken everything. The engineered crack that is the most addictive thing ever takes every second of our attention so it leaves no time to do anything - no "proper" journalism, no books, no films, even YouTube is too long format for someone addicted to TikTok. It's actual catastrophe of attention spans.

sylens 1y ago

Giant 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 ago
I think they all lost a little something when Ryan suddenly died.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  That 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
I don't think they had issues making money, they had issues hitting unrealistic growth targets being set by their overlords. This was discussed on the most recent Nextlander podcast. Nextlander being 3 of the Giant Bomb OGs.
- sylens 1y ago
  No issues making money once they were up and running, but they needed to bootstrap somehow and therefore weren’t just owned by Jeff G from the start
- poloniculmov 1y ago
  Jeff Gerstmann, one of the founders, also goes into details about this, Giantbomb was always making money, but had issues scaling up because corporate wouldn't invest in them. He says that it was very hard for them to monetize the podcast, which was one of the biggest podcasts before the boom, because they wouldn't allow him to sign a deal with a ad network, nor would they provide a sales team so they could get those ad deals. CBS also owning Gamespot was a big issue, because it wasn't making money but it had the potential of bringing much more if they could fix it. It got even worse with the last 2 rounds of buyouts, because the buyers never wanted Giantbomb, it was a package deal.
silversmith 1y ago
While the monetary overhead of an office is a fact, that couch also built their show. The in-person dynamics of both the podcast and their other shows were a class above the remote-only version that was forced by the east/west split, and later COVID. I miss that couch.
j_timberlake 1y ago
They pioneered it, but they lost because "gig-economy" streaming is better at finding diamonds in the rough. Giant Bomb couldn't find more Vinny's or Dave's no matter how hard it tried (and it did try).
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  Youtube can pay okay when you hit those 6 figure subs, but it's still not quite enough to pay for a traditional office setup. Not even a small one. Sadly, geting 10 vinnies on one channel doesn't get you 10x Vinny income, it's better to do a setup like Channel Awesome (minus the whole harassment and rebellion of the clients) and manage 10 Vinnies if you had the choice.

bartread 1y ago

I can only give a personal perspective but I don’t necessarily trust reviews from large, established mainstream outlets, as opposed to independent creators and reviewers. My taste in games tend to lag by at least a few years, so I’d often far rather watch a let’s play or an independent review - especially one created some time after the fact - to get a true impression of the game than an overly curated take whose perspective is often overly skewed and coloured by then-current trends and tastes in gaming. For anything >10 years I still find myself looking for content from CGR and, particularly, CGR Undertow, for example. Plus it’s not unknown for mainstream reviewers to overhype new games. The plethora of content, and view counts, suggest I may not be alone in this point of view.

chris12321 1y ago
That's certainly not a criticism that could be levelled at Giantbomb, considering it was started when its founder, Jeff Gerstman, was fired from his job at GameSpot for giving a game a low review score while the developer of the game was doing a big marketing campaign on the site.

Taikonerd 1y ago

> Looking at the Titan of the industry, IGN, they barely get more that 20k views for videos they put out on Youtube I've noticed the same thing, and it confuses me. There are massive numbers of gamers in the world, and more every day. These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't worth their time. Sure, as you mentioned, there are individual YouTubers or Twitch streamers... but one streamer doesn't have nearly enough time to review all the games that come out. Not even just the AAA titles! So, how are gamers making their decisions about what to play next, if they're not reading reviews on a site like IGN?

jitl 1y ago
IGN huge, they review/cover a broad amount of stuff but since they’re so big they become known for having average coverage, and the average is not great. So I personally have never looked to them for opinion coverage. I think most people have some specific things they like, and end up following community opinion, like Reddit or Discord for a game genre, and following a different personalities on YouTube or Twitch. Personally I’m mostly playing mostly (indie) Metroidvania games which are not well covered by IGN, I hear buzz about new releases on Reddit or from Cannot be Tamed on YouTube. Beyond that I sometimes see cool stuff on Twitter, I picked up Clair Obscure after seeing a few tweets mention its great writing and music. I also end up seeing the front page of the Steam store, which has reasonably good recommendation profile for me given 90% of my game purchases are through there and I’m playing on Steam Deck which focuses the recommendations on titles well supported by Linux and the hardware.
CivBase 1y ago
I think most gamers use YouTubers and Twitch streamers as tastemakers rather than reviewers. If your favorite personalities are having fun and it looks like you'd have fun too, then you don't need a review.
- j_timberlake 1y ago
  This. I've bought games after seeing 10 seconds of gameplay from a streamer. And those were some of my best purchases, hidden gems.

n1b0m 1y ago

The IGN review of Doom: The Dark Ages from 2 days ago currently has 636K views

jaoane 1y ago

I'm not a huge gamer myself but game journalism the last decade has been scandal after scandal after politics after scandal after politics, so it's no wonder everybody has moved on. If I want to know what a game is like, literally the last opinion I'm interested in is that of a "game journalist".

ethan_smith 1y ago

Sites like Game Informer, Easy Allies, and MinnMax have shown viability through subscription/Patreon models that focus on dedicated communities rather than mass appeal.

malfist 1y ago

I think it's because there's no trust in the big names anymore. Most of their "reviews" seem to be largely written by the game studio. How many times can you see IGN gush about how awesome a game is before launch and then when you get your hands on it, is a buggy boring mess before you stop checking IGN?

techjamie 1y ago
A lot of it is on the publishers for their early review copy practices. Big media outlets will get early review codes for the games so they can be among the first to get a review out and net the traffic. But the publishers want good publicity in return for the early access codes, and reviewers that don't play ball can find themselves on an industry wide blacklist from receiving them in the future. So the best, least biased reviews you can find are going to be 2-3 days post release, and not from someone who is large enough to get free review codes. I never trust pre-release reviews.

gambiting 1y ago

The problem is that TikTok/Instagram Reels have taken everything. The engineered crack that is the most addictive thing ever takes every second of our attention so it leaves no time to do anything - no "proper" journalism, no books, no films, even YouTube is too long format for someone addicted to TikTok. It's actual catastrophe of attention spans.