Giant Bomb in 2016 - Predictions

What do you expect to happen to the site in 2016? I have a few thoughts.

• A much needed site redesign.
• Somebody leaves the staff, either Drew or Rorie.
• Dan vomits Taco Bell on a Mario Party Party stream.
• Brad continues to laugh while talking despite my weekly letters.
• No persona 5 endurance run. That would be dumb.

• I don't see a 'redesign' happening any time soon. This is a lumbering beast. I can see the incremental changes Jeff wanted to the wiki happening, slowly but surely like they have for years.
• Don't say things like this. Drew is like bossman for all things production in the GB West. Rorie laments on UPF a lot but I assume he's happy enough. He's in a pretty casge work environment as far as colleagues go. If anything (I don't know if it's possible) but I would like to see the crew expand even more.
• Possibly, possibly a live show like PAX.
• You send weekly letters? I hope he 'continues' to laugh more while talking to spite you. You can't control a way someone speaks or holds themselves otherwise they're just self conscious all the time and will freeze on camera. Get over it
• This to me is the dumbest elephant in the room on GB to date. A lot of people came here after seeing the P4 ER, that grew the audience immensely I imagine. Everybody want's it. If they don't even consider the idea it's like throwing dollars down the drain. I don't get the push back when it comes to ER's in general. Hey guess what, you did a thing people like, oh no, what a pity. Instead of embracing that we're going to push back so it becomes an awkward topic and chastise anyone for bringing it up. Yes the copious amount of suggestion for ER's are annoying but ER's, Quick Looks and the Bombcast to me where the trifecta for GB goodness. Saying that Metal Gear Scanlon wore out it's welcome in the early days but I think that's just MGS fatigue in general for me. The GBeast stuff works great when they've done it - dirty little secret, they're ER's without the name.

My own thoughts, I don't really have many. I'd like to see the Box Office Bomb come back but I don't know how feasible that is. I'd like to see GB grow more in general actually in terms of content. I don't follow the Powerbombcast or Alt+F1 but I appreciate it's there. I do like me some Danswers - It's like a more serious but with a GB flavour, My Brother My Brother and Me. I like the guest nature of it giving their own perspectives to freshen it up each episode.

- Jeff snaps and dedicates the rest of his days to becoming the top Destiny player

- Brad begins development on his pet project, "Braddlefield: Brad Company"

- Dan does Dan things

- Drew finally curses on camera, nearly destroying the site

- Rorie joins Pitchfork as a critic

- Jason begins training Griffin in Street Fighter tech

- GBEast defects and joins Gamebomb.ru

• A new show where the crew watches old E3 Press conferences and laugh at them

@dudeglove: I like that you took the post as 100% serious and requiring serious analysis.

The Beastcast finds someone new who can fill the 4th Chair who is not Jeff Backalar.

You thought Until Han was good? Wait till you see Until Dan. On Giant Bomb, 2016.

DREW DON'T LEAVE ME

The new crew member ends up being Jeff Bakalar.

Drew will do a play-through of another franchise he isn't hugely well-versed in. Maybe the old Fallouts?

He was just giving his thoughts dude, damn. Seems like you're taking it a lot more seriously than he did.

I love Brad's laugh whilst talking, always makes me smile, very endearing.

qft

@lackingsaint said:

He said he liked it. Even if it was mocking, it's not like anyone is yelling. It was taken more seriously than intended, though I do think people asking for a Persona 5 endurance run are being dumb.

@vierastalo said:

This will happen, so I didn't include it. I don't think it's interesting to predict things that we have pretty good evidence will happen. Like the next mario party party happening in 2016 with Dan's mario party invites.

Isn't this pretty much all but confirmed? They spoke about it on the Bombcast recently about doing it next year. I'd like to see them do all old conferences - TGS, Gamescom. Particularly console announcement/ launch years, dormant franchise announcements.

I wrote this after a UPF a while ago when Dan was talking about becoming president, but I could see most of this happening in 2016 and the years to come.

Dan - As a joke, runs for president of the United States in 2016. Due to the success of his series of self-help/ Gator related books, and an American populace disillusioned with the current two party system, Dan is successful. With Stardust as his Vice-President, Dan leads America into a new golden age.

Drew - He is accidentally activated when Dan says his trigger phrase (Dead Patriots) during an episode of Metal Gear Scanlon, and is revealed to be a sleeper agent of North Korea. Subdued when he cannot bring himself to kill Rorie, he is taken away by "The Man" and never heard from again.

Rorie - Scarred by Drew's attempt at murdering him. Rorie quits Giantbomb to start dog breeding business called "Alpha Dog Protocol". The business folds within a year because Rorie is unable to let go of a single puppy.

Jeff - The WWE, desperate for improved ratings, contacts Jeff to offer Dr. Tracksuit a contract. After years of success, Jeff becomes the obvious choice to succeed Vince McMahon as chairman and CEO.

Austin - Inspired by Jeff's success, launches a career as a professional wrestler know as the The Game Doctor. Never completes his thesis.

Alex - Becomes a professional Big Rigs speed runner. Eventually Kickstarts a Big Rigs sequel that is released to glowing reviews. Is later revealed to have paid off reviewers, but Patrick's expose is lost among accusations of being an SJW.

Jason - Along with John Drake, campaigns furiously to stop Dan from becoming president. After Dan is successful, he is chosen for a state mandated surgical procedure and becomes one of Dan's greatest supporters. Is known to scream "Somebody stop him!" in his sleep, but it's probably nothing.

Brad - Leaves to pursue an offer from Valve to be a creative consultant for DOTA 3. Unknown to Brad, this is part of a plan by Dan's administration to eliminate all MOBAs and MOBA players, as they are an unproductive scourge on society. Brad is never heard from again.

Vinny - With no one else left at Giantbomb, Vinny convinces Gamebomb.ru to hire him so he can continue to produce video content of shitty PC games.

1. Tina Amini joins Giant Bomb East.
2. Brad continues to like games that Jeff gives three stars to (or dislikes).
3. Also, Load Our Last Blood [echoes].

- Dan will get fired for something he says on Twitter

- GB East starts some kind of d and d or other RPG series with Austin as DM and it will be great

- After years of talking about redesigning the wiki, Jeff learns to code and starts rebuilding it himself

- Rorie tries coffee on a stream and almost gets sick

- Drew is finally activated, signalling the start of the North Korean invasion

Dan learns to love mayo after a poorly placed bet finally burns him. That or he plays through a game series as Drew watches on in disgust.

John T. Drake tells the story about how he met Dan whether he wanted to or not.

Another member joins the duder crew, becomes the actual actual actual Anime Editor.

Site redesign, but not quite an overhaul.

Biff comes back with a new thread.

Someone from Gamesto,... I mean Gamespot moves over to GBeast.

Rorie gets in trouble with a dog.

Also seconding the whole Drew accidentally cusses and destroys this site.

@archer88: I would love to be the CEO of Taco Bell when Dan becomes president.

1 - Jeff gets married. While on his honeymoon Dan edits every written review to include some comparison to Metal Gear.

2 - Austin finishes his dissertation and sets his sights on the Nobel Prize. (Gets presidential medal of freedom instead)

3 - Drew goes to space.

4 - The wiki gets a redesign, but if you edit it at midnight you windup /somewhere/

Dan Ryckert will lead the human are to it’s end. He is the herald of the apocalypse, the harbinger of death. They must not follow him.

no just no.

Giantbomb in 2016: There will be video games

There might not be videogames

That seems like it will eventually happen, given the way they've been talking about it.

Here are some of my predictions, probably not serious:

• Dan gets disappointed by professional wrestling for the first time in his life; continues to watch it.
• Jeff starts to like professional wrestling for the first time in a decade; doesn't watch any more of it.
• Austin finishes his dissertation, becomes "Official Doctor of Video Games"
• Drew goes to Antarctica.
• Brad tragically has to give up DOTA 2 after getting a really bad case of carpal tunnel.
• The Giant Beastcast slips and starts being 3 hours minimum just like the Bombcast.

I hear Brad is leaving

Jeff, frustrated after years of wiki neglect, finally decides to do it himself. He succeeds, but eventually ends up creating a database so complete, so interlinked, that it forms a rudimentary intelligence. This intelligence starts adding games and concepts on its own, thus increasing its complexity and capability.

• The Wiki becomes the regular 4th member of the Beastcast

Dan, while drinking with his dad during the Super Bowl weekend, inadvertently tries mayonnaise. Unfortunately, the manner in which this happens is documented in a video or podcast, and thus he cannot pretend it didn't happen. He realizes that it wasn't actually that bad, and decides to jump all in and puts it on everything.

• Dan "can't get enough of a good thing" eventually spirals out of control. He is discovered one morning dead in an alley, mayonnaise smeared all over his face. Cause of death is inconclusive.

Brad decides to go even crazier with his hair.

• Eventually dyes it pink, but decides he's gone too far. Sticks with crew cuts after that.

Drew finally beats Metal Gear Solid V. Having completed all 5 main Metal Gears within the span of a year or so, the mental conditioning takes effect, and Drew begins to subconsciously tweet about hamburgers. This triggers a series of signals, coded phone calls, and text messages to spread across a network that spans the globe. Eventually, one H. Kojima is woken up at 4 am, and is told that "D has come to." Kojima flies to San Francisco and lets Drew in on a global conspiracy, and tells him that only he can help.

• The conspiracy is about shitty workplaces in the Video Game industry, and they end up taking down Konami.

Vinnie officially joins the War on Spiders, and retrofits his home to be an anti-spider death fortress. Powered by VinnCo MagLev tech, he takes his floating castle of doom and begins a campaign of genocide against the spiders.

• Is overrun by spiders at some point during the night, and is never seen again

Austin completes his dissertation and finally earns his doctorate. He is invited into many prestigious circles, where he promptly introduces anime. This destroys the most intelligent individuals alive today

• Nothing of consequence happens as a result

Alex has an epiphany about the beauty of life, and realizes all the people who care about him. He becomes happier as a result, and dedicates his life to helping people with mental health issues. For months, his work is lauded, and even inspires policy change for the betterment of society. He is later tasked with reviewing DoA Extreme 3 when it is localized for North Americal in Q3. This drives him off the cliff for good, and this time he becomes so disillusioned that he decides the only way to eliminate suffering in the world is to destroy reality itself.

• Does not succeed, and just says "fuck it" and goes back to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

Jason, having lost both Vinnie and Drew, needs help producing video. So, he holds a tournament for the greatest video producers in the land. The winner of the tournament would become the next video producer on Giant Bomb. He intends the tournament to be for fighting games, but instead a dozen or so video producers with supernatural abilities show up, so he decides to have a fighting tournament instead.

• The winner misinterprets Jason's motives, and figures that Jason is the final boss. This costs him the job.

Rorie decides to combine the two things he loves, puppies and the support@giantbomb.com email address, and creates a program that automatically posts puppy images with captions taken from dumb support requests to Tumblr. Within a month, he has made over $10,000,000, and purchases Giant Bomb from CBS.

• Nothing changes, except the site is now called Giant Chomp. The mascot is a dazed-looking pug.

From Jeff's tumblr

Given Brad's recent Bombastica videos, I hope we get a new segment called "Brad Shootmaker's Guide to the 90s".

That Patrick kid becomes the third most popular Youtuber, and shortly thereafter is finally broken by Dan's SMM levels.

Austin gets in trouble for leaking the next Assassin's Creed, then everyone realizes that it was going to happen anyway.

The wiki becomes sentient and beats Brad at DOTA 2. Brad then returns to Destiny.

Something tragic happens, but is almost immediately forgotten, because it will just be something on the internet.

Dan somehow get Leslie Moonves to appear on UPF, he becomes a regular appearance.

Jason becomes the first human to actually perform a Hadouken, someone is injured, maybe an engineer.

Zombie_Pie plays more Final Fantasy games.

Brad kills a man with his bare hands in self defense. Drew became inspired by Brad and becomes Brad's Disciple.

there is something beautiful about this.

GB takes over GS on a glorious and highly strategic coup using Ryckert as a main deterrent, but nothing really changes except Jeff gets to walk around saying he's the bossman.

drew plays metal gear rising i hope.

They will get settled in the new first floor office just in time for GOTY 2016 discussions.

Dan moves with his girlfriend over to Jersey and joins GBEast. He's happier that he can now get Taco Bell after 10pm at night because he no longer lives in the vacuum wasteland that is San Francisco.

Dan decides it's finally time to prove his claims he can take on a wolf (and even a damn bear) barehanded. He works his way up the animal ladder as training, starting with ants. Dies a horrible death to opponent 14: a cute kitty cat. (Note: It wasn't due to allergies.)

Brad goes insane after the DOTA 3/Destiny 2 mash up game tanks. He becomes a hermit with a 2 meter long beard. Hair's still awesome though. Rumoured to be working on his own DOTA/Destiny project, sadly it seems he's only working with empty ketchup bottles and used handkerchiefs. Could still turn out great.

Jeff becomes the new host of the Conan O'Brien show (Weird, I know.) His co-host is one of his trusty jars. Eventually gets killed by another one of the jars, who became jealous. Jar Nr.1 continues the show in his name and achieves record breaking ratings.

Drew goes against other people's predictions and turns out not to be a sleeper agent for Russia/North Korea, but a Double Agent for Sweden. (Just look at him.) Sweden in turn takes over all of Europe and Korea. Go, Sweden!

Austin gets selected to pilot the first actual Mech built by humankind. Things go seriously wrong and he gets fused with the Mech. He decides to live a life of exile on the moon, because "RX-78-2 Austin" is posing to high a danger to the people he loves. He continues to work on his dissertation there.

Jason stops playing Street Fighter to become an actual martial artist. He goes on to win the Olympic gold medal in Karate, but never achieves true happiness. He gets redeemed, when Griffin wins EVO 2032.

Alex finally grows a real beard (sorry) and then gets voted Sexiest Man Alive. He starts a career as a model, but only for gaming related ads. Weirdly enough he becomes more popular than even the likes of Naomi Campell.

Rorie does something with puppies. I don't know.

Vinny goes on tour with his guitar and part(s) of his Gundam army. He becomes even more of a big shot than Alex, but still stays the same man. Constantly haunted by dreams of spiders, he eventually gets seriously addicted to drugs (synthetic weed, oh no) and drowns trying to drink some water out of a faucet. People all around the world travel to his memorial service, everyone still hoping the rumours about him faking his death to go underground in his battle against the spiders turn out to be true.

• Jeff gets married and asks Dan to take care of the catering. In a surprise twist, Dan chooses Wendy's. As a result we get a 3 hour hamburgercast that quickly rises to number 1 in the iTunes charts
• Drew gets too deep into Metal Gear conspiracy theories after finishing Metal Gear Scanlon, and uncovers and leaks the big reveal for the REAL mgs5. He is quickly poached by the New York Times
• Brad develops an MMO addiction. Possibly The Secret World. The bombcast descends into him discussing it fervently to silence.
• Kerbal: Project B.E.A.S.T gets picked up by CBS and aired prime time. Commenters on GB complain that it has become dumbed down and they're cancelling their subs

honestly how can we be sure this hasn't already happened also i really want this to happen

The last thing ever that I want to turn out to be true and how dare you even suggest it you monster, you heartless monster.

Not so much a prediction but a hope: bring Tim Turi onboard with GBWest. I need Tim and Dan playing off each other again. Also it's good to have a resident Sonic expert on staff. You need somebody designated to hand that garbage off to.

My one prediction is that Jeff wins the final Mario Party Party and admits "Mario Party is alright."

Congratulations on writing the most unlikely to actually happen thing in this entire thread.

Blight Club still doesn't happen. Maybe in 2017.

Vinny's obsession with doomsday prepping expands to such a notorious level that he decides to move the GBEAST offices to a remote location in the upstate New York woods, both to avoid the man and that asshole in the office that hit him in the head with a football. CBS documents this episode and molds it into a television drama.

They get adjusted to their new office.

• Jeff puts a filter on "Persona Endurace Run" - every sentence with these three words posted by someone on the site is automatically deleted.
• Drew takes over from Brad as the designated "This person is leaving because X" person.
• Jason beats Dan at a fighting game and in doing so becomes the new Dan of the crew.
• Austin, Vinny and Alex do a playthrough of Kingdom Hearts. They don't finish it.

Haha spot on. Now, with no ERs, and inexplicably boring QLs (I actually watch them at night before I sleep. They're not as funny as before but I do feel calm and cozy watching them now) I've lost that love for GB. I get my dose of humorous game videos from Funhaus instead. But nothing can touch the golden era of Giantbomb. Sigh...

@atomicoldman said:

I know, but after I predicted (to myself) that patrick was leaving, and when Vinny was going to leave, I have this dread of ""who's next!?".

Alex gets way into League