Here Are Some Plans for the Second Annual Big Live Live Show Live

Hey all. The gang at Whiskey Media is again planning some silly stuff on September 9th with our second annual Big Live Live Show Live (This Time it's Live!). If you missed it last year, we basically gave Vinny a panic attack and invited the community to join us for some good-natured mayhem as we broadcast a live variety show for a full 8 hours.

This year's show will also mark the one-year anniversary of the launch of our premium subscription offering. It's become a big portion of our business and for the most part keeps the lights on in our little crypt here in San Francisco. While I'd like to assume most subscribers feel they've gotten their money's worth, we figured it would be smart to do a check-in and see how you guys feel about how things are going one year later. If you've got the time, we've put together a quick little survey to help us out in that regard.

We're also planning on doing an open podcast sometime next week with our various heads of state in which we'll take calls, ideas, and threats from the community about what we should focus on in this next year. In the meantime, I can make the following general announcements about our upcoming system-level changes.

• The price of subscriptions will not go up in September.
• Yes, if you're an annual subscriber, you'll get the option for another free t-shirt. There will be a new design by community member buzz_clik.
• There will be other options to choose from in addition to the t-shirtl. We plan on giving all annual subscribers the option of a $15 coupon for use against any of our store goods. So if you don't want the member shirt, you can give that money to charity, pay it forward to another user, and a whole lot of other stuff. This option will essentially drop the extra $10 cost international members have incurred.
• We're working on full-featured Boxee, Roku, XBMC, Plex and iTunes/Apple TV solutions for each site where you'll be able to login and receive HD video if you're a member.
• We're also working on a general subscriber hub, as well as rebuilding our login and billing hubs, so you can manage your accounts a bit more cleanly and get a better overview of the features your membership offers. This should launch in the next week or so, and you'll be able to update your credit card (in case it's expired) then. This should also help alleviate the facepalms I do when I get a tweet from someone who's just finally discovered the full mobile site or iTunes feeds or something else that we added for members months ago.
• You will be able to gift subscriptions to a friend.
• Lastly, we've decided to scrap the World Tour. We didn't come close to our goal and at this point, we've got better ideas for how to meet up with our community in person (like our party at PAX East). Personally, I still plan to go to Russia and Ukraine and try to meet someone from the STALKER team in the next year or so. At the worst, I will ask for a job at gamebomb.ru.

awesome

sounds good

More drunk Will. All I want. 

Woot

Good news for subscribers! And I'm one of them :)

SUBSCRIBERS KICK ASS. Just sayin.

Noooo! I was so looking forward to the World Tour. :( Now I will never meet the Giant Bomb team, ever.

Glad the World Tour was scrapped. In my opinion it was an awful idea.

If Vinny has a panic attack, what does Drew, Anna and Joey end up with?

@Snide

This is great news. I totally understand about the World Tour. I would love to se you guys visit another country though and experience the culture, food, gaming and so on. And maybe go to a game company while you're there to get some coverage out of it. For example, go to Sweden for a week, have some fun, and while you're there visit DICE and whatnot.

Anyways, I'm happy with what I get as an annual member. The stupid/great content and the well known personalities alone is enough to make me choose to pay. So as long as you guys are around in that format, you can expect my money.

R.I.P. World Tour. We'll never know ye.

The news about the World Tour is sad, I think that it would have been great fun. I hope the ideas for meeting the community involves countries outside of the US at some point.

All good news

On the topic of Gamebomb: make a video with warped voices like they use ^^

Will this one feature an appropriately edgy sequel-listic subtitle?  
 
 
 
                                                                                  

The Big Live Live Show Live!  

Awh, I'm a little sad about the World Tour, but it sounded like a logistical nightmare to plan...

I am a satisfied customer.

"The price of subscriptions will not go up in September."

What about October?

There seems to be a problem with the survey I can't choose Anime Vice as the site you're doing the best job on.

Guys?

Come on guys. ;-;

I can already see everyone outside of america (like me) bemoaning the lack of the world tour. See, I'd love to be at pax. But it's, like, in America. And really expensive. The world tour was a large impetus in me subscribing in the first place. Very sad to see it go.

Subscribers reign supreme!

This is awesome! upset about the world tour but what are you going to do! Still all hyped for bllsl2! BOOOOOM!

Hopefully if the guys from GB ever have to come to the UK for some coverage in the future a meet up can still be arranged.

I'll subscribe if Will gets drunk on camera again.

Good news, will most definitely do the survey. Btw, you guys totally fixed all those video problems, for me at least. I actually didn't even notice until I really thought about it, but anyway, good stuff.

I followed gamebomb.ru and was completely flabbergasted. It's like peering into a mirror universe where the Soviet Union won the Cold War.

Why aren't you featuring AnimeVice on the websites list? Are you that embarassed by it?

Everyone must take the survey, if only to check this box:

"What would you like us to focus on with membership content?

Endurance Run "

A new t-shirt? sounds good to me.

Also sad to see the World Tour go but if they're nowhere near the goal then nothing can be done! Being a US subscriber seems more fun.

thank god world tour is gone

Other than that, keep up the great work and can't wait

Good stuff. As long as you keep doing what you're doing :-)

@Matoya said:

Why aren't you featuring AnimeVice on the websites list? Are you that embarassed by it?

it is hard to do regular content for a site that does not have full time staff

Just a few thoughts.

• Glad to see the World Tour scrapped, that's a huge ton of money that could be used for much better things like more equipment, more workers etc.
• I know a lot of subscribers are feeling that the initial onslaught of new features was awesome but the well has kind of dried up a bit. And to keep us going you gotta throw us a bone every once in a while.
• Speaking of the bone. I don't feel the Happy Hour is cutting it. Sure it's fun, I enjoy it, but lately it just feels thrown together at the last second and many segments come off as boring and unprepared. And how many weeks in a row do we have to watch movie trailers and listen to movie trivia? Let's mix it up sometimes. It also doesn't help that some of the on air talent isn't as perhaps electrifying as other personalities.
• HD Videos are awesome and WM's real strength at the moment is the video content. Let subscribers watch Quick Looks happen live, and let us see them before the regular joes. You're not stopping users from receiving content you're just giving members a small perk.
• I think more classic quicklooks are a great idea and even more off the wall office content would be great. Some of the greatest videos from Giantbomb are in the old office where they just turned the camera on and started fucking around. That seems to have diminished greatly with the move to the new office.

I'll add more later if I think of them, but I do know the only thing keeping me from switching from monthly to yearly is a couple little things that make me go, yeah that's awesome. That's totally worth the money upfront. And I'm just not quite there yet.

T-shirt!!

@CrimsonClown said:

Everyone must take the survey, if only to check this box:

"What would you like us to focus on with membership content?

Endurance Run "

No way. I don't want that being exclusive to members. I specifically made a note of that in the survey. I'd love another Endurance Run, but not on those terms.

That said, something I totally forgot to mention in the survey is that I want more stuff in the Whiskey Media store. I want to actually be able to buy Giant Bomb shirts and hoodies and plush giant bombs and all other sorts of dumb stuff reliably, not just when you guys happen to feel like maybe putting out a product.

How am I supposed to answer a survey question about which sites aren't doing well when I don't visit them all? That hardly seems fair. I only visit Giant Bomb and Tested because the others don't interest me, not because they aren't doing a good job.

Why aren't you featuring AnimeVice on the websites list? Are you that embarassed by it?

Sounds great, but all I really want from my subscription is blog and status updates from people I follow on the front page again.

Kind of sad but expected that the world tour's been scrapped. They already have a certain number of users that are willing to pay for the site (Giant Bomb's the only site that brings in subscribers, in my opinion) and that market seems to have been tapped out. When new users stumble upon the site they may not necessarily feel the need to pay for it right away so I'm expecting slow growth in subscribers here on out.

I plan on transitioning from the monthly membership to the annual one. This site is THAT good!

I love you guys!

I love it when Dave makes posts like this about the site. It's obvious how much they care about the community, but these updates just solidify it.

@HAL9000 said:

Just a few thoughts.

• Glad to see the World Tour scrapped, that's a huge ton of money that could be used for much better things like more equipment, more workers etc.
• I know a lot of subscribers are feeling that the initial onslaught of new features was awesome but the well has kind of dried up a bit. And to keep us going you gotta throw us a bone every once in a while.
• Speaking of the bone. I don't feel the Happy Hour is cutting it. Sure it's fun, I enjoy it, but lately it just feels thrown together at the last second and many segments come off as boring and unprepared. And how many weeks in a row do we have to watch movie trailers and listen to movie trivia? Let's mix it up sometimes. It also doesn't help that some of the on air talent isn't as perhaps electrifying as other personalities.
• HD Videos are awesome and WM's real strength at the moment is the video content. Let subscribers watch Quick Looks happen live, and let us see them before the regular joes. You're not stopping users from receiving content you're just giving members a small perk.
• I think more classic quicklooks are a great idea and even more off the wall office content would be great. Some of the greatest videos from Giantbomb are in the old office where they just turned the camera on and started fucking around. That seems to have diminished greatly with the move to the new office.

I'll add more later if I think of them, but I do know the only thing keeping me from switching from monthly to yearly is a couple little things that make me go, yeah that's awesome. That's totally worth the money upfront. And I'm just not quite there yet.

Just as a note to future commentators, this type of criticism is very helpful for us. Luckily all of these issues are in that survey. We check this stuff more than you guys would imagine, so we're definitely listening. That's why we'd like to discuss everything in an open forum BEFORE we go and make a bunch of changes. I think we can all agree though that we need to be doing more for our subscriber base.

@aceofspudz said:

I followed gamebomb.ru and was completely flabbergasted. It's like peering into a mirror universe where the Soviet Union won the Cold War.

There is an option in the survey for more Endurance Runs... oh man.

Super bummed about the lack of World Tour, I would have loved to hung of with the guys in Sydney.

I'll be resubbing, but I would even if there were no perks for members at all. Whiskey Media is what all companies should strive to be, and I am more than happy to support that.

It's a shame you scrapped the world tour, it was probably a waste of money that could be put to better use, but I'm guessing a huge amount, if not all of the meet ups you're planning will not happen outside of the US, this hurts me.

Answered the survey. As I said at the end, keep up the great work guys and thanks for absolutely everything you've done.