The site is a mess

I love the E3 coverage as always but the site is just a mess. It's really difficult to find the actual coverage (videos and podcasts with the crew) between the shit-ton of trailers and assorted videos when everything is marked "E3 2015". Also, the new episode of the Beastcast isn't even advertized on the front page.

It really is. Even if you are just trying to find videos its a trainwreck.

Go to the videos tab and click events. Done.

No, not done because that doesn't give me all the different podcasts.

The point being that the front page is poorly curated. I don't know if all these trailers draw more traffic than editorial content but it would be nice if the front page reliably surfaced the videos and podcasts coming out of E3; even a list with all editorial content in chronological order would be nice.

It's been really hard to find the podcasts. I wasn't even aware of them until someone mentioned it on the livestream. They're apparently listed under "giant bomb presents".

I guess you just have to see the podcast link on the first page and then use that to listen to the others.

I understand your point but I think the site has improved a lot since they brought in a developer a couple months ago.

All the bug fixes and improvements are great!

Though it might be nice to see the tags on videos just like podcasts and articles that could make it easier for you to find them.

The E3 2015 concept page has videos in the list but it might be hard to filter out the different kinds of content.

I have to say that first, I'm pretty pumped they (mostly) fixed video controls for people like me on Windows RT. I can't find the bug thread to find the engineer to private message thank him, so I'll do that here! Thanks!

But yeah, I think some lessons will definitely be taken this year into next when it comes to the layout on the front page for E3. I've had trouble finding stuff as well.

Completely agree.

I couldn't work out if the podcasts from day 1 were different to the videos from day 1 (round up, with guests etc) and there's really on way of finding out without attempting to play the videos, some of which seem to still be the source fed (twitch, I guess)

I just wish I could turn trailers off generally. I don't want to watch trailers. Do people still watch trailers?

Cool. Giant Bomb should let that site handle it, then.

Yeah, things are kind of messy.

Yeah, I have a feeling I'm gonna miss a lot of the actual original content when I catch up this weekend.

This is especially true as someone who doesn't visit the site as often anymore. It's impossible to find the latest GB content.

I rarely watch trailers for movies and games. They usually end up giving away too much of the story.

Umm am I the only one seeing the big fat NEW above Podcasts in the menu? I don't like having all those E3 trailers being front and center either, but it really isn't hard to find the new podcasts or even the GB videos. Hell, all the videos on the carousel are GB videos and the new Beastcast is definitely advertised on the front page.

Yup. Giving 2 million trailers and a handful of coverage videos the same name and throwing them onto the homepage is not good work.

has E3 broken Grid View for anyone else? Every time I visit the homepage it's on list view and it's a pretty weighted dice roll as to whether or not I can click back over to grid.

When you go to Videos -> Events you will see videos and not podcasts. Podcasts are under, well, podcasts. Maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't see any difficulty in finding GB original content for E3.

Also, while things can get hectic on the front page, you can still subscribe to the various podcasts in iTunes, or via RSS in your favourite podcast app.

Are they going to do show floor highlights this year?

@gaff: As an aside, I really wish Pocketcasts would make it easier to add password protected feeds. Their app is fantastic but adding GB premium feeds to it is a pain in the ass so I'm forced to use Doggcatcher.

Ok, off topic rant over. Sorry!

Yeah, the organisation is terrible. It's terrible every year.

I mostly get confused by that "push unwatched content to the front" algorithm they have going on. I understand what it's attempting to do but it just means that sometimes I don't watch something and instead of the newest thing taking up the top square, that new thing gets relegated somewhere to the bottom or as one of the smaller squares, just because it keeps wanting me to watch other content I haven't seen before regardless of how current it is.

Also I do like trailers and I rather not have to go off site to go watch a single trailer and then come back here so I can talk about it.

This is the site for me. I've watched the Day 1 video so I have no need to listen to the podcast version of it, yet it's way up there at the top and the newest thing being the Beastcast is somewhere down below among the trailers.

@kazona: Weird. I've never really had a problem with Pocketcast for the premium stuff. Are you using this method? Basically adding your username and password in front of the RSS URL.

@tortoise: The actual E3 convention starts on June 16th to June 18th. The various press conferences always start before E3, generally the Sunday before. So yes, the first press conference doesn't actually count.

@rvone: done

It's a little messy but I usually manage. I also don't care about trailers; I'm here for the Bomb-crew and their ventures. An option to turn trailers off from showing on the front page would be amazing.

They should sort the videos so they are categorized and easy to find, it is a mess right now =(

Bleh, it was kind of a mess to check around and find it manually. But at least now that I figured out where everything was located its pretty fast. They need to centralize the E3 shit a lot better next time though. Maybe a page that is dedicated to a current event or something.

@humanity: The way its supposed to work is that top slot is kinda like your backlog? Once you watch that piece of content, refresh the page and it changes to something newer. However I think it's cookie based or something, because it doesn't remember between devices. If you watch it on mobile, it'll still be in the top slot when you log on on desktop.

It does need to go through another round of organization. When E3 hits, it would probably benefit to have all that on one page, chronologically. Same with GOTY stuff, GDC, etc. Would be nice to have those as just events, not videos tagged with that event information.

I treat the front page as a sort of grab bag of the latest stuff (or stuff they wish to highlight) and go into the sub-sections when I want something specific. I suppose I don't have the podcast issue because I only consume their podcasts via my podcast app. But even without that I would still find most things easy to locate. If I want to read stuff I click News. Videos have a bunch of sub-sections where trailers are one thing and their on camera E3 stuff always end up on the events tab. I suppose for my way of using the site nothing really rubs me the wrong way.

They could definitely do better next year.

@mechakirby: It just makes it confusing. I rather have an option to set it so that the top slot shows the newest piece of content on the site.

yeah this happens during game of the year week as well. for the most important videos you're probably looking for, i use the gb youtube channel as trailers don't show up there. for podcasts, i use the podcast app on ios and subscribe to gbcast, gb presents, and gbeastcast.

i've been bitching about organization on this site for a long time. hopefully they'll tackle this issue sooner rather than later.

@humanity: That is also a problem since most of the time I can't watch a whole video in one sitting. So I end up in the situation of having to find the content having to scroll through a ton of trailers, while the front page is showing me things I dont want to see/hear.

I think Giant Bomb is suffering from a similar problem Penny Arcade's had - a bloat of separately named and branded projects taht all have their own link and listing.

Why are Giant Bomb and Giant Bomb East handled/talked about as two separate products in some cases? Why are videos and podcast slotted so much? I think at the top of videos and podcasts should be "Latest" and "Latest Premium". Latest podcast has the latest Bombcast, BEastcast, Alt F1, Gaming Minute, and Dump Truck...yes bring back dump trucks as a category for ALL catch-all topics. Latest Premium slot has all the latest premium videos. That way when you want to see what is new YOU SEE ALL IT. On the Podcast page give a sort feature to just see certain content, on the Premium page give the same sort to find one named "brand" like BEastcast or ALt-F1.

K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple stupid) should be Giant Bombs mantra, don't like a new named thing when you can put something in a catch all. Podcasts and videos are either the regular version of the Premium version- PERIOD, getting just one product is done by SORTING - not making a huge drop down list.

News is news, podcasts are podcasts, and video are videos; so don't making finding the latest content a chore of hunt & peck. If I'm busy one week I shouldn't have to recall that Alt-F1 might have had an episodes THAT is now NOT indicated by a new tag because later. Put all GB podcasts/videos under 'Latest' or 'Latest Premium' and 8-4 Play under its own listing.

Also, new people come to this website every day. These people don't know the cast of characters and they don't know the history. There needs to be a page that answers/tells people "What is Giant Bomb. How did it start? Who currently works there? Who are the alumni staff? "

Agree. Site is in need of a refactor.

jeff mentioned on his tumblr that they're going to start working on new ways to organize the site in general, and specifically with trailers. So they're aware and are already thinking about changes

Hey, y'all. Seeing as I'm the guy responsible for the deluge of trailers, I just wanted to throw my two cents in to the discussion.

You guys bring up some good points, and, admittedly, the layout isn't perfect. But, there is a method to the madness at least, so I wanted to try to make that clear at least.

The "top slot" (the big, full size image) and the four (usually three) images below it all require a "promo" to show up there. We have the option to pin/sticky some things up there, but, in general, all the staff content is going to be up there. Now, when you click on one, it cycles out of the rotation. So, in theory, you should be seeing new (to you) staff-related stuff up there.

Everything below that (under "latest stories") is referred to as "the river." Promos (from up top) that you've clicked on will drop down into the river, which lists things in chronological order regardless of what type of content it is.

Now, I was tasked with uploading trailers, which I assure you are still pretty popular. Even so, we know users don't want trailers clogging up the staff content, so I only make a promos for the most "important" trailers (i.e. Last Guardian, Halo, Final Fantasy VII, etc.). Out of 150+ trailers, less than 20 had promos. What that means to you is that the vast majority of trailers go straight into the river and never go up top.

In theory, this means promos of staff-related content should always be readily available up top. Sure, you can only see 4 or 5 at a time, but, as you view them, then come back to the front page, you should see other new (to you) things populate that space.

Anyway, that was probably longer-winded than I intended. Hopefully this helps.

There needs to be a way to create a hub for event-specific stuff like E3 especially. Honestly, during the whole week of the show the front-and-center slot should always be "Here is all the E3 shit in one place" and then have it link to a post that has things neatly organized.

It's totaly chaos when you have video versions of things, some of them also podcasts... premium and non-premium podcasts, and 8 billion trailers.

I also second the idea that it would be nice to have an option to simply hide trailers from view. I watch like 2 a year - i would be fine with having them hidden to expose more stuff that I want to watch.

The mobile version of the site is a lot worse. And not just for finding some of the E3 stuff. For example, its impossible to find an archived premium podcast in that section, because it only displays the latest one. I have to do a google search. There's a lot of pretty bad design decisions on this website that need to be looked at.

Jeff has thought about this

Just suffer through it for a week and find all of GB's produced videos through "Events" and go through the podcasts on the Bombcast page and the "Giant Bomb Presents" page.

I agree that the front page is just a splooge (splurge?) of trailers, but there isn't any written articles or videos being hid anywhere other than what I listed above (only thing is the Halo 5 Unfinished).

So I'd say yes the trailers are a bit much during times like E3 BUT I'd say a bunch of sites struggle with so much content. Gamespot had a bunch of great stage demos this year and because of Danny I've been watching a lot of these but fuck navigating their site the Youtube playlists/video sections they've got going is way easier to follow and keep track of.

Are the podcasts not just audio versions of the live streams?

This site really is poorly designed for a video game website. I just go to YouTube to watch giantbomb videos. The forums here are even worse it's like a 10 year old message board only with more bugs. I don't see a fix in sight though unless they plan on redesigning this place again soon.

I just use the android app for GB Video Buddy. I just visit the site when either a live stream is on or if I want to talk to you lovely people.