@excast: It would tell me that Giant Bomb's hires are showing positive results, and that Gamespot had too much staff. I don't think GB will be affected just because they're part of CBSi.
Man, who is actually left at GS now? Unfortunately, GS has fell prey to well, sites like Giant Bomb. I know I hardly ever read video games articles because to be brutally honest I think there are more important and interesting topics to read about. The only media that really makes sense for me is the more entertainment-based, video content now. I want to give a shout out Maxwell who was laid off as well I believe, that guy seemed pretty cool on professional Wednesdays.
@chaser324: Ryan McDonald incubated and wrote the idea for The Lobby, along with other GameSpot shows. Seems like a pretty video focussed person to me.
I wasn't aware he was among the lay-offs. Given how sweeping these lay-offs are, I'm more inclined to say it's just straight up budgetary. GameSpot's staff was rather large, especially if you include freelancers. If GB is doing reasonably well on a far leaner budged and showing audience growth, some suits may have taken that as a sign.
If you look at the list of currently confirmed people getting laid off, this is a massive house cleaning. Whether it's budgetary or not, I definitely feel something is up. Who's to say GiantBomb won't suffer the same fate years down the line?
The timing strikes me as super weird considering the GB hires. What kind of a message does it send to Gamespot when the other side of the floor is hiring people and you just laid off most of your writers and some of the longer term vets of your site? That is why I would really like to get some kind of confirmation from Jeff or elsewhere as to if this is going to affect Giant Bomb.
Maybe consider the fact that even after the layoffs, GB still has a smaller staff then GS. Really if GB had to lay anyone off, it would be Matt Rorie. Obviously video dudes are safe (even Alex, as Vinny would have to do solo quick looks without him), and Patrick, as he's the only news guy, but as much as it hurts to say, Rorie probably has the smallest role on the site.
Maybe consider the fact that even after the layoffs, GB still has a smaller staff then GS. Really if GB had to lay anyone off, it would be Matt Rorie. Obviously video dudes are safe (even Alex, as Vinny would have to do solo quick looks without him), and Patrick, as he's the only news guy, but as much as it hurts to say, Rorie probably has the smallest role on the site.
I think recent events have shown that Rorie is absolutely essential to the long-term health of the site.
@excast: That tweet was for E3 this year. And if I remember Danny's comments on Alt-F1 (maybe 5 weeks back?), UPF and other premium streams consistently pull in more viewers than GS' The Lobby. Going by sheer numbers, Giant Bomb is in a better position than Gamespot.
Which puts the worries about the CBSi take-over a few years back into a weird perspective.
I'm reading Ebert's Wikipedia article (because I don't know Siskel's first name (or last name; I don't know which name Siskel is!)), and I stumbled across this quote:
In August 2004 Stephen King, in a column, criticized what he saw as a growing trend of leniency towards films from critics including Ebert. His main criticism was that films, citing Spider-Man 2 as an example, were constantly given four star ratings that they did not deserve.
Needless to say, I'm in a nihilistic mood for the rest of the day.
Stephen King is apparently a video game review comment in human form. No wonder he can write horror so well
I realize Giantbomb is small and all, but it is super weird that they were given funding to higher two people exactly a month before that many people in the same office get axed. I hope that this doesn't end up affecting this site at all, but who can say?
Giant Bomb hired two video guys. GameSpot is firing writers. Shifting paradigms, revolutionizing outside the box, etc.
It fucking sucks.
Isn't Ryan MacDonald a video guy?
Yep, and two others mentioned in a tweet from earlier were GS producers including one who worked on The Lobby. This seems like a general cleaning of house and focusing on a handful of employees who do both on and off camera work rather than a "fire the writers" layoff.
You're right, my mistake. Too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction with everything that's happened over the past month.
Maybe consider the fact that even after the layoffs, GB still has a smaller staff then GS. Really if GB had to lay anyone off, it would be Matt Rorie. Obviously video dudes are safe (even Alex, as Vinny would have to do solo quick looks without him), and Patrick, as he's the only news guy, but as much as it hurts to say, Rorie probably has the smallest role on the site.
I think recent events have shown that Rorie is absolutely essential to the long-term health of the site.
I realize Giantbomb is small and all, but it is super weird that they were given funding to higher two people exactly a month before that many people in the same office get axed. I hope that this doesn't end up affecting this site at all, but who can say?
No, the two are entirely unrelated. Giant Bomb and Gamespot are two different businesses, putting more money into one has no impact on the other, they just happen to be in the same CBSi office. It seems pretty clear that the written side of Gamespot had their success floundering, even with a lot of very talented writers it doesn't seem like written content is what mass audiences are as interested in anymore. As a business you give more budget to the website that's growing, not the one that's losing pageviews. The situation isn't a matter of, "money at CBSi is tight, if they hadn't hired two new people at Giant Bomb then two people at Gamespot wouldn't have lost their jobs", this would have happened if Giant Bomb hadn't hired anyone or had hired ten people.
That said, best of luck to everyone who was laid off today. It looks like the complete list is @justicecovert@carolynmichelle@TomMcShea@MaxwellMcGee@GSRyanMac@worndog@beng3, all of whom I'd consider to be really talented people. Hopefully they're all able to land on their feet, either through finding new places to work or making new places to work, I certainly think they all deserve to.
@conmulligan: The staff has said on occasion how invaluable Rorie is to the site.
Isn't Rorie constantly checking site-related shit for hours upon end? I always thought he was super busy behind the scenes. If that isn't the case then I want more video content from him!
@conmulligan: The staff has said on occasion how invaluable Rorie is to the site.
Yes and rorie was along with Alexis the back-end of relaunching both GameSpot and GiantBomb in the redesign. They're webdesigners by nature IIRC. Rorie is valuable across all CBSi websites.
anybody got any ideas on how to make writing about video games financially viable?
It would probably require every person who ever visits a video game website to disable ad-block.
In other words, we're fucked.
Or a subscription model for quality writing. In other words: super fucked.
I just paid $50 to import two issues of Killscreen Magazine. The former features editor at Polygon has two books in the works. We're still going to see long form writing. It's just that you'll need to make enough to fill a book in order for anyone to pay for it.
@snowsprite: I read this mistakenly using the crass definition of "boned", and thought "Jeez, this dude is just throwing shade on Jeff." Then your actual meaning clicked, and I laughed for a while.
TL;DR: Thanks for wording it that way. I needed a laugh.
Adblock didn't help, but that kind of impression advertising was already on its way out. Shiftier ad networks and more invasive ads, needed to get any value from display advertising, hastened the rise of adblock. It's shitty all around.
Hope everyone who was fired lands on their feet. It sounds like they gutted the place given the number of veteran employees they let go. Really sucks for a bunch of people who have talent, but perhaps don't have the type of talent GS wants anymore (or they're too expensive). Guess I can't say I'm totally shocked, big game sites all seem to have had layoffs in the recent past.
I'm kinda randomly thinking back to a conversation Jeff and Giancarlo Varanini had on the bombcast post e3 where they were talking about the old way of doing things (huge staffs, trying to cover everything) not making sense anymore. Got kinda awkward at one point when Giancarlo had to more or less admit it made no sense that GameSpot was trying to fill TWO live stages each day of the show. Speaking of which, anyone know if Giancarlo was laid off? Dude has kind of a terrible history with layoffs as I understand it...
@trafalgarlaw: Wait, is that everybody, I didn't seen Giancarlo Varanini on the layoff list. Anyway, that is worryingly small. It's kinda crazy that GB has arguably the stronger line up now, though I guess I am biased.
@excast: That tweet was for E3 this year. And if I remember Danny's comments on Alt-F1 (maybe 5 weeks back?), UPF and other premium streams consistently pull in more viewers than GS' The Lobby. Going by sheer numbers, Giant Bomb is in a better position than Gamespot.
Which puts the worries about the CBSi take-over a few years back into a weird perspective.
Hell, if you listen to the audio-cast thing Jeff did in his car on the way to E3 Danny implied that that had more live views/audience than The Lobby.
@trafalgarlaw: Wait, is that everybody, I didn't seen Giancarlo Varanini on the layoff list. Anyway, that is worryingly small. It's kinda crazy that GB has arguably the stronger line up now, though I guess I am biased.
@Levius: Still missing Giancarlo Varanini, Shaun McGinnis, Peter Brown, Eric Tay, Ty Root, Andy Baumann, Cam Robinson (GS UK), Seb Ford (GS UK) from the list, but seeing as GS UK just hired Lucy James as a video editor, it seems like most layoffs are concentrated at GS US.
Also, I'm guessing that list is verbatim the NeoGAF post.
"If you don't like seeing news about people being laid off from websites, consider turning off your ad blocker. "
Ugh, tweets and ideologies like this just really burns me. Yes, it is my fault they got layed off. Not the Ad agencies that cover 90% of my screen, cause my eardrums to burst with louder than normal sounds (which is supposed to be illegal now), and exposing me to potential backdoor threats. Nah, it is all my fault.
No offense to those laid off but GS has always seemingly had a bloated number of staff, thus layoffs was never too surprising. However to cut some of the mainstays and central GS figures is surprising and kinda crazy.
Anyway, shitty news so good luck to those cut, hope they find some jobs asap.
Apparently GameSpot wants to neuter its editorial voice. Fucking stupid move, but I can't wait to see what these folks can do when not working for a website that seems like it actively wants to kill itself.
Did you ask yourself why before posting that? If they want to continue existng, they have to make decisons such as this one. They're not doing it for giggles.
Its a real shame though. Hopefully they can all land on their feet nicely.
Have you been to GameSpot recently? They're shifting away from editorial content because they get more clicks with catchy bullshit about PS4 vs Xbox One and Twitter rumors. It's no coincidence they let their best writers go. Like I said, if that's GameSpot's thing now, then I'm happy some of the good writers will be moving on to, hopefully, more creatively hospitable environments. I suppose kill itself should be amended with kill itself creatively. I'm sure it'll thrive when it's basically IGN Jr., but I'll never go back.
"If you don't like seeing news about people being laid off from websites, consider turning off your ad blocker. "
Ugh, tweets and ideologies like this just really burns me. Yes, it is my fault they got layed off. Not the Ad agencies that cover 90% of my screen, cause my eardrums to burst with louder than normal sounds (which is supposed to be illegal now), and exposing me to potential backdoor threats. Nah, it is all my fault.
If anything I'd think the losses to amateur and semi-pro social media is probably worse than the decline in the ad market.
"If you don't like seeing news about people being laid off from websites, consider turning off your ad blocker. "
Ugh, tweets and ideologies like this just really burns me. Yes, it is my fault they got layed off. Not the Ad agencies that cover 90% of my screen, cause my eardrums to burst with louder than normal sounds (which is supposed to be illegal now), and exposing me to potential backdoor threats. Nah, it is all my fault.
If anything I'd think the losses to amateur and semi-pro social media is probably worse than the decline in the ad market.
I look at at like this: The same people using Adblock on GS are most likely using it on Giant Bomb.
Giant Bomb also has a website that is not a mess organizationally and offers a subscription service.
"If you don't like seeing news about people being laid off from websites, consider turning off your ad blocker. "
Ugh, tweets and ideologies like this just really burns me. Yes, it is my fault they got layed off. Not the Ad agencies that cover 90% of my screen, cause my eardrums to burst with louder than normal sounds (which is supposed to be illegal now), and exposing me to potential backdoor threats. Nah, it is all my fault.
Yeah it's filling up my Twitter feed right now too, and I agree with you. I've blocked ads since the days when all you could do was set up a hosts file. Hell, when I was a kid watching TV I would spend commercial breaks channel surfing. Advertisement has never benefited me, and these days it's actively harmful.
But I'm not about to argue that point with someone who just lost their job.
@conmulligan: The staff has said on occasion how invaluable Rorie is to the site.
Isn't Rorie constantly checking site-related shit for hours upon end? I always thought he was super busy behind the scenes. If that isn't the case then I want more video content from him!
Yeah, I just wanted to point out that Rorie isn't just some moderator. He also does the site's customer support, which is doubly important for a site like GB because it has actual paying customers.
"If you don't like seeing news about people being laid off from websites, consider turning off your ad blocker. "
Ugh, tweets and ideologies like this just really burns me. Yes, it is my fault they got layed off. Not the Ad agencies that cover 90% of my screen, cause my eardrums to burst with louder than normal sounds (which is supposed to be illegal now), and exposing me to potential backdoor threats. Nah, it is all my fault.
Yeah it's filling up my Twitter feed right now too, and I agree with you. I've blocked ads since the days when all you could do was set up a hosts file. Hell, when I was a kid watching TV I would spend commercial breaks channel surfing. Advertisement has never benefited me, and these days it's actively harmful.
But I'm not about to argue that point with someone who just lost their job.
It was from an IGN editor.
I know what ya mean though. But same goes for them. It sucks big time, but let us not start throwing punches ya know?
"If you don't like seeing news about people being laid off from websites, consider turning off your ad blocker. "
Ugh, tweets and ideologies like this just really burns me. Yes, it is my fault they got layed off. Not the Ad agencies that cover 90% of my screen, cause my eardrums to burst with louder than normal sounds (which is supposed to be illegal now), and exposing me to potential backdoor threats. Nah, it is all my fault.
That's blatant hyperbole and you know it. Your argument is way more ridiculous than the one you are countering..
@doomocrat: yup. I try to unblock sites I like to support but if you start with really invasive ads you often lose that privilege. I'm. It talking about a pop up but the whole find where the sound is ad is extremely off putting .
Haven't been to gamespot often so not sure what they do ad wise
I remember at pax east this year I went to the taping of the lobby panel and there were maybe 60 people there and most of them were giantbomb users from what I could tell.
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