Another set of new shows - The Very Online Show, Albummer, and Armed and Rangerous

In the past two days, the staff have announced three new shows.

First is Armed and Rangerous, a podcast in which Jan and voice actor Matt Shipman (who appeared on a Jan 'N' Juice video in March) re-watch the first season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Premieres tomorrow.

Second is the Very Online Show, in which Gamespot friends Lucy James and Tamoor Hussain educate Jeff Bakalar about some aspect of internet culture, which can include things like memes or subsets of the internet. Premieres on Thursday.

Finally, Albummer, where a group of writers from Two Minutes to Late Night, Jordan Olds, Katie Rose, Emily Panic, Jeremy Hammond and Lucie Steiner, pick a critically panned album and try to dissect it. Premieres tomorrow.

Looks like we're shifting into high gear now. Looking forward to the new faces and the new shows :)

First episode of Albummer is out tomorrow at 1pm.

Thanks, I've amended the first post.

The last two days have been very sad for me. Looks like it’s time to accept that the bomb exploded. :-(

Zero content about games. Kind of a big oof...

Agreed. I really don't know who this stuff is for? I feel like they're trying to broaden their appeal, especially for a younger crowd. The podcast is a really good idea but the shows? I dunno about that. They're premium, right? And we all know how much younger people love paying for content on the internet (just kidding, they don't at all, and I can't blame them I was the same way when I was in my 20s).

Whoa. What’s going on at Giant Bomb? Not sure about this direction.

Not interested at all in this new content. Looks like I waisted my sub money, I should have cancelled. If this is the new direction I am afraid you have lost me. What a shame at least I have the podcast.

Jeez you guys are a bunch of downers. Is there a tier of premium where I can get Albummer and not have to see anything from all these Negative Nancies? I'll pay more for it.

@doszero: I think polite criticism about the site's possible new direction is fair. I'm happy people are showing a diverse range of opinions on this stuff without it devolving into gross name calling, harassment or other BS. If only the people who were happy with all of this commented, then the higher-ups at RV and GB wouldn't have an accurate picture of what the greater community thinks of this stuff.

Wow... That's not at all what I expected (or honestly want) from a website about videogames. This is very weird.

Nope

This is what I was afraid of... GB is going to be stuffed with a bunch on "content" that the marketing department at RV sees being aligned to their demographic data and "metrics." I'm seriously considering cancelling and giving my sub money to Nextlander.

RIP Quick Looks. It was a nice run.

@heelbill: Yeah really that's what I miss the most for sure. Bummer time.

As I said in the other thread, the new content makes me quite sad. I’m sure this stuff will be cool but with GB having a serious lack of video game coverage over the last several months and then these announcements has made me think pretty hard about the future of GB and my place as a consumer.

I’ll be clear, I’m more than happy for GB to diversify but, currently, it’s at the expense of video game stuff. I actively have a strong dislike for internet culture, nostalgia, and a lot of music stuff so none of these announcements interest me at all.

For real though, are quick looks etc. just gone? Is the only video game stuff going to be Borne to Run, Guilty Treasures and UPF?

Feels kind of...scattershot? Like GB has always had more than just games stuff but I felt like that all kind of grew out from the staff. This doesn't really feel that organic, does give me a slightly worrying "entertainment" website vibe. Not to be down on the people making the stuff, I'm sure it will be good, I just dunno if it does a ton for me.

@vectortheangel: 100% agree - the one of the main reasons I've been a GB subscriber since day 1 is because (aside from the occasional wrestling and anime one-offs) they've focused entirely on games. If I want music news and criticism, I'll go to a site devoted to music. If I want games coverage, I'll find a games site where I enjoy the viewpoints of the people at that site. That used to be GB but now I think that time has passed.

I don't want to be too down on the new stuff, and it probably speaks to me as someone who has a ton of hobbies and an awareness of the value of my time, but even the good personalities involved in Armed and Rangerous/The Very Online Show coulnd't make me watch any of these shows. Albummer sounds actively awful as a concept, too, not least because you can find very informed analysis of many records (from fans and professionals) elsewhere that isn't attached to a deeply unfunny team like Two Minutes to Late Night.

I don't think Giant Bomb has to be a site solely about video games, but there are so many great existing options for non-video game comedy and analysis elsewhere so shows which are a set of talking heads you may or may not like having a chat isn't inspiring. I reiterate that I know I'm definitely not the audience for these things, and we all outgrow stuff, so yeah. No premium renewal for me, even if I miss some of the new shows I liked the sound of (Tamoor/Danny doing the Souls series, favourite odd games etc).

I'm excited!!

As a big power rangers fan I'm fuckin stoked for tomorrow. Will check out Albummer even if I'm not a music guy and interested in Very Online Show.

I'll withhold judgement until I see the shows for myself but I'm definitely leaning towards not being very excited by any of these ideas. The Very Online Show in particular seems like something I could enjoy but feels like a weird fit for a scheduled format. It very much feels like something that would have just randomly happened on a Happy Hour every once in a while so that could be good, but having it planned out like this could really go either way.

Anyway will wait and see.

I'm super stoked for all of the new shows. I come to GB for the personalities and all of these seem like Home Runs.

I get that people are upset that the new things aren't video game related considering this is a website about video games but I've always wanted GB to turn into some form of UHF run by Jeff. And this seems to be that.

Also the way these are so different makes me even more excited to see what the hell Dan comes back with.

I feel like people are forgetting that they specifically said they wanted to try really different things and just allow spaces for their friends/colleagues/other artists come and make cool stuff. They specifically don’t want it to be just a website about video games anymore. Plus, they also said that some of these shows are going one offs. It’s totally fine that people are disappointed and have criticism, especially if you paid for a sub. And I also don’t think that criticism that is just essentially ‘this isn’t what you’ve done for the past decade’ is very useful because doing something different is the point! I think at the beginning they even said throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

I genuinely hope these are good pieces of content and the people they are for enjoy them.

That said, I am not one of those people. I do not think the direction the site is going in is one I have much interest in, and that's fine.

I wasn't very involved in that site, but it reminds me of the post-Whiskey content shift over at Tested.

I'm tentatively positive on Very Online Show. I like all three involved, and UPF segments involving internet deep dives were often some of the very best content GB could deliver. The "explain to Jeff" angle is a little worrysome - he's not exactly Karl Pilkington in that he's more of a "I know best" snob than a "I'd rather not know" snob - but we'll see how it goes. I love reading articles by Alyssa Bereznak on The Ringer or Taylor Lorenz at the NY Times because they almost always are exposing me to some side of internet culture I find totally bizarre. It's also why I've continued to enjoy Kotaku as it's shifted into more of a streamer gossip site, because even though I know I don't care about that stuff I find it wild just how many people do.

As for Albummer? I'm a huge music junkie (or was, anyway, when I worked as a critic) and yet I've never really gotten into video reviews of music. Music criticism is some of my favorite reading material, both professional and amateur, and I just prefer it as written word while listening to (or thinking about listening to) the full album. And writing about bad albums can be some of the best humor out there for me as well, but as someone who spent nearly a decade deeply involved in the RateYourMusic community I can safely say that while metal fans are incredibly nice and warm-hearted people, they take the music bit of the music listening experience a little too seriously to be truly funny about the stuff they don't like. Like, I recently went and watched "NOW! That's What I Call a Metal 90s Club Mix" video and it's impossible to tell what they're going for - it's a pretty well made, well engineered metal send-up of '90s hits, except I think they're making fun of those songs? Or think it's absurd that those songs would be played in a heavy metal style (despite heavy metal covers of pop songs being perhaps only surpassed by whiney emo covers of pop songs in popularity since the founding of the internet)?

You can be really funny skewering a Chris Brown record (it's the Graffiti that does it for me), a stubborn trainwreck like Gucci Mane & V-Nasty's BAYTL or some drivel from Puddle of Mudd or Florida Georgia Line where the hits come a mile a minute...but it can be real easy to find a metal fan who has terrible taste in terrible music and too often picks on things that aren't at all interesting to pick on. So...I'm worried!

As for Power Rangers? I liked it a lot in the '90s, I dressed up as the Green Ranger one year, the Red Ranger another, and I played the hell (the hell) out of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers on the SNES. I still make Ivan Ooze references to this day. I'm not lying when I say Jan Ochoa, bless his heart, is not going to be the man that makes me indulge in Power Rangers at 32 years old when there's all this other legitimately good entertainment lying around. But I wish him and the podcast all the success!

All this sort of stuff makes it just seem like Giantbomb is becoming a curated version of Youtube or something. At the end of the day I'm here for personalities like Jeff G, Vinny, Brad, Ben and etc. talk about video games and none of this seems like my kind of deal. If this is an indicator of the type of site GB's going to be from here on out then I'm not sure if being able to watch a backlog of stuff about video games is worth the yearly subscription for me.

None of these seem all that interesting to me at first glance, but I'll check out the first episode of that Power Rangers thing. Jan has shown he can carry a show so I'll give it a chance.

I'm open to them experimenting with a wider swath of topics. To me it's even interestingly well-timed, because lately I've been feeling especially fatigued with all the games coverage I'm consuming (GB, Waypoint, MinnMax, Nextlander...). The saturation -- the overlap -- is real, and it has me feeling like I should make some difficult cuts. One can only listen to so many conversations about the same subject, lol

But different topics means less overlap, so even if I do the unthinkable and cut the Bombcast out of my rotation, these videos offer something else that's a bit different from what I've been tuning into for the last decade+, and that's attractive to me right now. They may well just keep me watching GB even after I enact a scorched earth policy upon my podcast feed.

ngl, I'm 100% ready and willing to let Jan Ochoa push me over the edge and rekindle my nigh-forgotten passion for Power Rangers. I love every Power Rangers tangent he's given us, so a whole show about it sounds perfect.

Honestly kind of nice reading this thread and seeing that I'm not alone in feeling apathetic towards this direction. Don't mean to be a bummer and I usually stay away from nay-saying -- and the new direction seems cool for someone else and I'll definitely stick around in a non-premium kind of way, but I feel like I get pretty everything I want out of not paying premium, and I could be paying that money to independents who aren't backed by some big media company like Red Venture. New stuff seems cool, even if it's just washing off of me.

I feel like these shows would be interesting if they were add on to the duders doing gaming stuff but it really looks like they are slowly going away from the games . It feels like when MTV stopped being about music.

Does not mean the new shows are gonna be bad but its worrying for the future of the site.

Like when, if ever, are we going to get a weird cold open in studio again? That's the part that makes me sad, and along with the lack of QLs, is why I cancelled my sub today.

I hope they find success though.

I'm excited about the new shows. GiantBomb has always been about the personalities so let's see where that goes. If people don’t want to subscribe, don't.

Is the Bombcast not about games anymore? I'm 3 years behind and 4 years behind the Beastcast and I only got to listen to 1 episode of Nextlander and I subscribed to the Fire Escape one, but didn’t listen to it yet. Almost forgot about Waypoint.

I'm guessing the times have changed and people have too. We don’t really watch Quick Looks anymore and maybe some of us are in denial about it. Maybe it’s been years the metrics are trending downwards, therefore the team isn't driven to do Quick Looks as much anymore. I miss the banter on them and don’t really like the solo ones. The pandemic didn't help. The audience probably is older too. And today in 2021, there are so many avenues to watch people play games and talk about them online (also for free/with ads).

Canceled my sub today also. This site is no longer fun. Very sad. :-(

Just to add, a music show on GB would be nice if they celebrated an album/band instead of talking shit. Being purely negative is just plain ugly and there’s already too much ugly in this world.

You're probably right. Personally, I did still watch most of them, even if it was only half to 3/4 through some times. I really enjoyed them because most Youtube/Twitch types do full start from the beginning playthroughs these days and there was something really nice about getting a look at a game 2 to 3-4ish hours past the intro and tutorial that I guess is going the way of the dodo.

I'm excited for the very online show, I really enjoyed yes yes no episodes from reply all so this absolutely sounds great. Tamoor and Lucy seem cool, it could be a real breakout thing for giantbomb.

Albummer I'll give a chance to but its not immediately my thing but I think its cool they are exploring different directions.

I love Jan but power rangers isn't my thing so hope that works out for them but I won't be listening.

Quick looks are interesting if I'm on the fence about a game or if a game is truly awful (the Balan Wonderland quick look was hilarious) but if I know already I want to play a game or its a genre/game I have little interest in, I'm not going to watch it for 60-90 mins if I wouldn't play it. I think what concerns me is there doesn't seem to be someone at GB at present who is able to do their own games show, like mass alex or steal my sunshine. Borne to run is that and I've really enjoyed it but both Danny and Tamoor are contractors, not staff.

honestly none of these sound appealing to me. it wouldn't be so bad if we had more actual game stuff on a weekly basis but i feel like this stuff just getting tossed in feels just bad in what i put my money towards. i come to gb for gaming stuff and good banter. i'm sure all of these will have good banter but this wasn't what i expected to put my money towards when i re-upped in good faith. i'll still give 1-2 episodes of this a go but i don't expect it to do much for me personally and thats kinda a let down.

also based on how these things seem to be a good departer from the regular gb content ( not to say they didn't do random stuff here n there over the years of course they did) i do wonder if thats part of the reason the guys left in the end , maybe they weren't feeling the direction things were going on top of all the corporate stuff ? pure speculation of course but considering what nextlander is putting out is the game heavy stuff ppl usually expect here it makes me wonder.

Sounds like a real downer on paper, let's see if the actual results have that special sauce.

Hey, at least the Bombcast trucks, keeps trucking.. on.. right?

Ok, so the site is moving on to something else and I hope it works out for them.

I paid for four years of premium during a sale. Those four years are up in september and i think I’m ok with that.

The fact that most of this isn't gaming related doesn't bother me at all, but when it's handled mainly by people that aren't permanently around the way GB staff used to be, and that we don't get to know the same way, I'm just not interested. Had, for instance, Albummer been an Alex and/or Jeff G feature that could have been sweet, but right now I just don't care. I've got nothing against the people behind the new content, it's just that the circumstances are wrong. It doesn't feel organic, like someone else said.

This aggregator direction Giant Bomb is taking may very well be the future, and I wish the staff all the success in the world with it, but personally I think I'm just gonna let my subscription run out and then put that money towards a higher patron tier over at Nextlander.

If Armed and Rangerous would’ve been a commentary like audio to listen to along the episodes, I would’ve probably tried it. No real interest to watch that show on my own and then listen to their thoughts, when there’s so much stuff I’d rather watch instead.

Very Online Show sounds like something I could maybe have as a background noise for when I play something or doodle.

Albummer…not being at all familiar with Two Minutes and not caring *that* much about music, I can’t say the premise sounds that interesting to me personally. I enjoyed the GB team as a whole rating 90’s songs, but this isn’t quite that.

Overall, I’d also love new shows more focused on games, but I’ve got patience to wait for those (and a sub until sometime 2023).

Albummer sounds interesting. I've been listening to some artists full discographies over the pandemic and I've hit a few critically panned albums that I though were perfectly fine that just maybe launched at the wrong time and didn't meet audience expectations and were just forgotten. Stuff like Ozzy's Ultimate Sin or Ice-T's Return of the Real, and it makes me wonder how many other hidden gems there are out there. Not St. Anger though, that album is still horrible.

Very Online Show, will have to see it. The premise sounds like it could be anything between great and terrible, there are a lot of pitfalls they could fall in when doing this.

Armed and Rangerous, well me being a Power Rangers fan from the 90s will give it a go for the first few episodes at least but am not sure if I can sit through all 60(!) episodes on just the first season.

I don't generally mind that there's not much gaming content, but I do hope we get back to that eventually.

Had some mixed feelings about these for a bit. When I heard about the Albummer show, I was pretty excited cause it sounded just cool. Once we got two more shows not related to video games I got a little concerned... then I took a step back and remembered that we also got 3 new shows related to video games that, personally, I'm really enjoying.

I def will give them a shot but I do hope GB hires some more staff to just cover games a bit more. In particular a quick look style where two people are just talking about the game in question. Even if that format morphs into something else, like the playdate Jeff did where they cover a few games in one shot; if the views just aren't there for a single quick look.

Keeping an open mind!

Yeah... I think that might be it for me. Been a member for probably a decade now, premium for maybe half of it (I let it lapse a year or so back) but this new direction doesn't excite me at all. I'd be super-interested to see the market research that led them to this decision.