[HN Gopher] Fandom sells gaming media brand Giant Bomb to long-t...
___________________________________________________________________
Fandom sells gaming media brand Giant Bomb to long-term staff
Author : minimaxir
Score : 202 points
Date : 2025-05-11 00:00 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.fandom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.fandom.com)
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Great 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.
| kevingadd wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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 wrote:
| The 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
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Once the VCs get involved you will soon find the company
| you founded is no longer the company you work at.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yeah 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 wrote:
| Things 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 wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| You're gonna be blown away if you read a bit of Apple's
| history ;)
| phatfish wrote:
| Jeff chats about some recent history on his podcast from a
| few days ago.
|
| https://youtu.be/bQiGkSCQN7o?t=165
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Is 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 wrote:
| Not 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 wrote:
| >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.
| astrange wrote:
| Since 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 wrote:
| You obviously are not alone. Sorry to break it to you.
| Brybry wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The social aspect is lost though.
| dubiousdabbler wrote:
| Not totally. For smaller streamers, it's easy to interact
| with the streamer. And many people make friends in the
| chat and that's even why they keep coming back for - the
| community in the chat.
| pier25 wrote:
| Online chats don't really compare to IRL interactions
| though.
|
| There's currently an epidemic of genz who barely interact
| with their virtual friends.
| Wololooo wrote:
| To add some context here, at the time you had Jeff Gerstmann
| which is a dinosaur in the game journalism sphere and had
| insights and insider information from many different sources.
|
| He has also an encyclopedic knowledge of weird esoteric
| games.
|
| Add to this a series of people he had great chemistry with
| and people that were not familiar with some franchises and
| introduced by other members lead to funny moments.
|
| Their coverage of E3 was legendary.
|
| It depends how deep people are within subcultures but giant
| bomb did offer a lot of entertainment (even for free I never
| paid for the premium stuff) and honest game reviews. I can't
| speak for the current state because I was watching before the
| core team left and stopped watching after.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| There are some great videos about videogames out there.
|
| This is one of my personal favourites, just for all the
| background it reveals about how the game was made.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0058A651EB882B48
| nottorp wrote:
| > It seems I am alone on that front.
|
| No :)
|
| In a third of the time you spend watching one "content
| creator" "goofing around" you can go through 3-4 text reviews
| and figure out if the game is for you already.
| natebc wrote:
| FYI Since you two don't seem to have engaged with Giant
| Bomb previously. This is exactly what Giant Bomb did NOT
| do. Most of their new games video coverage was their Quick
| Look series that was typically 10-20 minutes from maybe a
| few different points in the game.
| nottorp wrote:
| > don't seem to have engaged
|
| I don't engage. I read or watch. If it looks like
| engagement I close.
| natebc wrote:
| I apologize. It doesn't seem like you two have watched or
| read anything from the folks at Giant Bomb.
|
| Have a nice day.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| I don't know why you would watch videos where people are
| goofing around. That seems like a you problem. Instead of
| picking random reviewers, stick to a few that like the
| games you like.
|
| And honestly, one of the best reviewers I know does video
| reviews and puts the recommendation in the title. I still
| like to listen to the reviews because I can do it while
| doing other things, unlike reading.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Instead of picking random reviewers, stick to a few
|
| I do. In text mode.
|
| > that like the games you like.
|
| But this way I'll never get to play anything new to me.
| Best to check varied reviewers even if i don't always
| agree with them.
|
| > I can do it while doing other things, unlike reading.
|
| Reading is much faster than even listening to a talking
| head though.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about
| or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege.
|
| Wait till you find out about American Football, or Soccer, or
| any of the racing events.
|
| But seriously, we talk about programming. And people pay to
| talk about programming. Why wouldn't people interested in
| gaming or other things do the same?
| lanthade wrote:
| > It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about
| or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege.
|
| You must have missed all of professional sports, pay per
| view, etc.
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| A lot of it is just fun and silly, but for me it was also an
| interesting way to develop my taste in something - to hear
| other people who are real heavy connoisseurs of something
| discuss it, and learning from them. Of course, you can get
| this from your friends and the people who are really around
| you in your life (or, just don't develop your taste at all
| because you just like what you like), and there's nothing
| wrong with that, I get why some people find it odd to watch
| people play video games.
|
| You have to understand as well that Giant Bomb was the first
| of its kind in a lot of ways, this was an era where video
| game journalism began to loosen up from the corporate, PR-
| friendly, very stiff and consumer-focused era it had been in
| during the dominance of print media, and Giant Bomb was this
| novel thing where people who had been deeply involved in that
| era began to find their own voices. If you followed video
| games at the time online, Giant Bomb was this total breath of
| fresh air.
| laserDinosaur wrote:
| "It would never occur to me to watch someone else talk about
| or play a game online, let alone pay for the privilege"
|
| I think that's specifically what made GiantBomb so different
| in the first place - people were tuning in for the
| personalities, more so than the game news. There were already
| a lot of places you could just go for game news and updates
| (like IGN and Gamespot), but GB had decades of industry
| stories that were worth tuning in for. All sorts of 'behind
| the scenes' stories and faces would show up, Jeff finding out
| about the Dreamcast being cancelled in a conference call
| while on the toilet with food poisoning, Drew going to a
| Starcraft tournament in South Korea when they were still
| fairly new, the crew getting blind drunk at a birthday where
| they duct taped whisky bottles to their hands, stories of the
| sheer nightmare of lugging equipment and setting up for E3
| every year with Drew and Vinnys video diaries. It was a peek
| behind the curtain into how the industry works with a group
| of very likeable people that made it different - more than
| just a place to go and watch people play games.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Glad to hear, fandom is a horrible website to use
| bertil wrote:
| What are your concerns with Fandom?
| aprilnya wrote:
| For 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 wrote:
| The https://getindie.wiki/ browser extension helps mitigate
| that problem.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Why should anyone download extra crap for a crap website?
| I'll pass.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Because it helps keep you from accidentally visiting that
| website.
| Macha wrote:
| Fandom would rather I do anything other than what I came to
| the site to do.
|
| - Autoplaying barely related videos at the top as someone
| told them video content has better CPM
|
| - "Have you tried looking at this page on another wiki?"
|
| - So many ads
|
| - Others like you viewed
|
| - Would you like to join the discord?
|
| - Fan Central?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Just go there without an ad-blocker and see for yourself. It
| is pretty bad even with an ad-blocker.
|
| The worst part is that it wasn't always like that. When it
| started of as wikicities and then wikia, it was pretty good,
| very Wikipedia-like, which is to be expected considering its
| history. But it enshittified quickly as it became Fandom, all
| while making it hard to move the existing communities out of
| the platform.
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| YOOOOO! Still a threat!
| natebc wrote:
| Wrong Jeffs!
|
| That Jeff is still a threat but he's not these Jeffs.
|
| <>
| randall wrote:
| JEFF BAKALAR?!?!? THE 404 JEFF BAKALAR!!?!?!?!?
|
| Insane. How times have changed.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| His arc at Giant Bomb is pretty great. From guest to co-owner.
| randall wrote:
| i worked with him at cnet all those days ago. super weird.
| stevage wrote:
| Boy that was a confusing headline. I did not realise that fandom
| or giant bomb were proper nouns.
| archagon wrote:
| I want to live in your reality.
|
| (Edit for clarity: because the literal headline is hilarious.)
| DevKoala wrote:
| Hahahaha. 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 wrote:
| Well, 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 wrote:
| Everyone who clicked the link is not on CIA's observation list.
| riffraff wrote:
| I even misread it as "sends" and thought this was a stunt of
| some kind
| bromuro wrote:
| These uppercase titles need to stop, why is that?
| pindab0ter wrote:
| It's called title case and for as far as I'm aware this is a
| uniquely American thing.
| lazide wrote:
| It's from newspaper headlines - using lower case starts to
| words looks really weird when the word is an inch plus tall
| on the paper.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| That's just because you're not used to that, many
| European languages don't have title case and newspapers
| still look perfectly okay.
| alephnan wrote:
| So UI designers prioritize form over function as always
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, spent plenty of time outside the US. It always looks
| a little odd when that isn't followed
| [https://www.pinterest.com/widget34/french-signs/]
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_signs_in_Spain]
|
| After all, which is clearer and easier to read -
| aeropuerto (road sign in spain)
| [https://images.app.goo.gl/iRcmkxvYX3hxLG59A] or
| Aeropuerto (road sign in Chile)
| [https://images.app.goo.gl/xcME6HEb4r1AnGS16].
|
| Even more fun when for instance Spain doesn't follow that
| consistently![https://images.app.goo.gl/P7cpegHC2unMsfJy7
| ].
|
| Talk about a typesetters nightmare. Still, better than
| India where a lot of signage is still done by hand.
| jaoane wrote:
| The last two images you linked to are fake, and clearly
| designed by someone who doesn't know Spanish and has
| never been to either Chile or Spain. No signs look like
| that in either country.
|
| Nobody would dare capitalise "de" in Santiago de Chile
| for instance.
| thih9 wrote:
| Confirming, the image linked by grandparent is tagged as
| 3d illustration on shutterstock[1]. A similar
| illustration with lowercase "de" spelling exists too[2].
| Actual road signs in Chile have lowercase "de"[3].
|
| [1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-
| illustration/santiago-chi...
|
| [2]: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-
| illustration/santiago-de-...
|
| [3]: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CARRETERA_
| COSTERA_...
| elcapitan wrote:
| > After all, which is clearer and easier to read
|
| Clear and easy to read is the one that you expect to
| read, which depends on your previous experience.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| It's like when Americans insist that fahrenheit is more
| "intuitive" since it's what they have experience with.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Well the one thing I do like about Fahrenheit is that it
| puts the average range of temperatures I experience on
| nice and tidy 0-100 scale.
| thih9 wrote:
| I could say the same about Celsius as a person who enjoys
| tea, hot showers and looking at CPU temperature every now
| and then.
| debugnik wrote:
| Your last two links are fake. And you can check on your
| own Wikipedia link that for Spain's direction signs, only
| proper nouns are capitalized: full uppercase on
| conventional roads for historical reasons, otherwise the
| usual capitalization rules such as on highways or town
| roads. Whereas full lowercase is reserved for service
| directions (e.g. service road, airport, hospital, beach).
| The exceptional capitalized service directions are really
| old town signs.
| k__ wrote:
| German capitalizes all nouns, not just then proper ones, so
| missing title case doesn't change much.
| rantallion wrote:
| But surely it'll help in this case, where an article is
| being published in English and being shared on an English
| language forum.
| k__ wrote:
| Fair.
| fhd2 wrote:
| Also independent creators.
| fhd2 wrote:
| Ah, that's fixed now. And here I thought Independent Creators
| was a company. What a delightful puzzle.
| bertil wrote:
| It would be fairly easy to add minor elements fo add context
| and help: Fandom*com sells creator-led brand "Giant Bomb" back
| to its key personalities.
| maratc wrote:
| In English, there's this:
|
| _Fandom_ Sells _Giant Bomb_ to _Independent Creators_
|
| In other languages:
|
| oo>>Fandom<< Sells >>Giant Bomb<< to >>Independent Creators<<
| jpalawaga wrote:
| Whiskey 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 wrote:
| FYI to anyone missing the core GB guys, they're on a Twitch
| channel called NextLander. Vinny, Brad, Alex, Will Smith, Abby.
| punnerud wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| I'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...
| jaoane wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| https://icarly.fandom.com/wiki/Seddie
| anton-c wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Huh. Just checked kagi and it's the same. At least you can
| block sites manually.
| 7jjjjjjj wrote:
| There's extension called Indie Wiki Buddy that will replace
| Fandom links in SERPs with links to non-Fandom wikis.
| drumhead wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think they all lost a little something when Ryan suddenly
| died.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| silversmith wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This. I've bought games after seeing 10 seconds of gameplay
| from a streamer. And those were some of my best purchases,
| hidden gems.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| The IGN review video for Doom: The Dark Ages has 637k views
| at time of writing, which seems pretty good to me. More than
| the indie youtube outfits.
| zahlman wrote:
| > These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't
| worth their time.
|
| They seem to care very little about the opinions and taste of
| the people producing content for sites like IGN.
|
| > one streamer doesn't have nearly enough time to review all
| the games that come out. Not even just the AAA titles!
|
| They usually specialize in a genre, and a lot of gamers are
| interested in a fairly narrow range of genres.
|
| But also, _you don 't have to know_ about every game
| available. "The perfect is the enemy of the good", also with
| respect to information. The goal is really just to find
| enough games worth the time/money to keep oneself
| entertained. Life's too short to worry about whether you
| might have enjoyed something else more than the game you
| actually played. (If you can even justify spending time on
| video games at all....)
|
| > how are gamers making their decisions about what to play
| next
|
| Metacritic, Steam reviews, the aforementioned streamers, word
| of mouth in their own communities... probably other ways....
| sdwr wrote:
| Big gaming sites aren't as credible or informative as
| Reddit, and aren't as entertaining as streamers
| Loughla wrote:
| Reddit ten or twelve years ago, maybe. That site is so
| poorly gamed by companies that its usefulness as a review
| aggregator is almost gone.
|
| At least big gaming sites are pretty straight up with
| their sponsorships.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Hard disagree. That implies that that 'coverage' of new
| games on Reddit would just be generally positive without
| substantial critique, and I haven't found that to be the
| case.
| viccis wrote:
| Yeah my first reaction when I see an interesting new game
| on Steam or elsewhere is to search r/games (NOT r/gaming
| lol) for the game's name and look around at what people
| have to say about it. They're often very detailed and
| honest.
|
| It's probably a good thing that reddit seems to have been
| too incompetent to enshittify their site completely yet.
| There's lots of it that has been, but there's still
| plenty of very good discussion there if you know where to
| look.
| wookievomit wrote:
| They have multiple revenue streams for dollars. Decent to
| large numbers on multiple platforms.
|
| Check the TikTok numbers for example, and don't forget they
| still have the website.
|
| IGN doesn't need YouTube
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't
| worth their time.
|
| They want reviews _that the can trust to predict their
| experience_ , and trust in the games media for that is (for a
| variety of reasons) very low.
|
| > 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.
|
| So? No one has time to read/watch reviews of every game that
| comes out, either, or to play all the games that come out; if
| they can find a stable of trusted streamers that combined
| give reliable and timely impressions of games so that they
| can find a sufficient number worth playing _and_ mostly avoid
| wasting money on duds, they don 't _need_ reviews of _every_
| game that comes out, and they especially don't need that at
| the expense of reliability.
| smogcutter wrote:
| > These gamers presumably want reviews of what is / isn't
| worth their time.
|
| Judging by online reactions, what gamers want is their own
| opinion reflected back at them. Anything else brings frothing
| rage and vitriol.
|
| For some extremely-online types who have made "gamer" their
| identity, the purpose of gaming media is primarily to have
| that identity confirmed, not to gather information.
| n1b0m wrote:
| The IGN review of Doom: The Dark Ages from 2 days ago currently
| has 636K views
| jaoane wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dustbunny wrote:
| Anyone 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 wrote:
| What 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"
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