My Worries and Apprehensions.

As a 22 yr old I have grown up with gaming and comics journalism. Nintendo's powerful propaganda, the rise and fall of the great GMR, Wizard and Toyfare. Then came the internet. By 2000 I had been reading IGN, Gamespy, Gamespot, CBR, etc. for a while as well as a few magazines here and there. Life was...okay. There were problems, but it was okay because that's what we had. Besides, nobody would ever do anything stupid. The "official" sites were there to spread the propaganda, everybody else was supposed to be fair, of course there were suspicions, Gamespy was a bunch of heartless mischief-makers, Gamespot's forums were full of heartless monsters, IGN's content was essentially the same article over and over. Then in the late 00s the Gamespot fiasco came to pass. I don't need to really say anything about that because we all know what went down, but after that I stopped going to gaming websites all together. I was disgusted with what came to pass and I relied pretty heavily on Meanwhile comics journalism turned into a more social activity, SD Comic-Con went social and Wizard Worlds twisted cons into some grotesque abominations. They bought out the shows that wouldn't kow tow to their desires and turned them into everything you hated. Then around 2009 I saw the light, Comic Vine renewed my faith in comics journalism and soon I found the rest of Whiskey Media to be more than deserving of my attention. What is more is that I found the "Greatest Hits" of Gamespot journalists were living happily at Giant Bomb. I quickly threw my money at them, becoming a member in 2010. Giant Bomb, Comic Vine, and Tested have been the only three sites I keep tabs open on. All the time. The Cross-Site content kept me happy and the people have become like friends that don't know that I exist or are listening to their conversations. Now what is Whiskey Media. Will there still be memberships? What will this mean for things like the super shows? I worry about the future of these sites. Tested is already changed in appearance and content, it was unrecognizable to me at first and I actually did a double-take. Not to forget who shows up at the footer of Giant Bomb but Gamespot, the pariah of journalism for me and many of my kind. What will the new owners impose besides throwing names where they don't belong. I will continue to visit these sites, but I am on high alert and I am extremely worried.

RandomAtom. Concerned Consumer. Member since 2010.

As a 22 yr old I have grown up with gaming and comics journalism. Nintendo's powerful propaganda, the rise and fall of the great GMR, Wizard and Toyfare. Then came the internet. By 2000 I had been reading IGN, Gamespy, Gamespot, CBR, etc. for a while as well as a few magazines here and there. Life was...okay. There were problems, but it was okay because that's what we had. Besides, nobody would ever do anything stupid. The "official" sites were there to spread the propaganda, everybody else was supposed to be fair, of course there were suspicions, Gamespy was a bunch of heartless mischief-makers, Gamespot's forums were full of heartless monsters, IGN's content was essentially the same article over and over. Then in the late 00s the Gamespot fiasco came to pass. I don't need to really say anything about that because we all know what went down, but after that I stopped going to gaming websites all together. I was disgusted with what came to pass and I relied pretty heavily on Meanwhile comics journalism turned into a more social activity, SD Comic-Con went social and Wizard Worlds twisted cons into some grotesque abominations. They bought out the shows that wouldn't kow tow to their desires and turned them into everything you hated. Then around 2009 I saw the light, Comic Vine renewed my faith in comics journalism and soon I found the rest of Whiskey Media to be more than deserving of my attention. What is more is that I found the "Greatest Hits" of Gamespot journalists were living happily at Giant Bomb. I quickly threw my money at them, becoming a member in 2010. Giant Bomb, Comic Vine, and Tested have been the only three sites I keep tabs open on. All the time. The Cross-Site content kept me happy and the people have become like friends that don't know that I exist or are listening to their conversations. Now what is Whiskey Media. Will there still be memberships? What will this mean for things like the super shows? I worry about the future of these sites. Tested is already changed in appearance and content, it was unrecognizable to me at first and I actually did a double-take. Not to forget who shows up at the footer of Giant Bomb but Gamespot, the pariah of journalism for me and many of my kind. What will the new owners impose besides throwing names where they don't belong. I will continue to visit these sites, but I am on high alert and I am extremely worried.

RandomAtom. Concerned Consumer. Member since 2010.

Can we lock this one? Please? You people do realize that they did this because they needed money, don't you? That shit doesn't grow on trees, it had to come from somewhere.

I'm not allowed to be concerned, bro?

@RandomAtom: It's not that, just that there have been 50 threads on this already, no need for another one.

@RandomAtom said:

I'm not allowed to be concerned, bro?

Yes, but there are already dozens of threads about your concerns and you could have posted there, since it's annoying to have so many versions of the same topic.

Also, you're allowed to use paragraph breaks bro.

Use your head. Most GBers would leave. Half the two staffs would have to be fired. Jeff, Ryan and co. could likely easily go somewhere or start something else and maintain the following (they did it well enough after leaving GS the first time). There's no point in buying Giant Bomb just to destroy it, we'll all just take our ball and go play somewhere else. Above all else, calm the fuck down and see what happens.

I understand that they needed money, and it makes sense to be sold to a stable parent like CBS, this is great. I see plenty of redundancies in CBSIs list of brands so it isn't like they will try and crush the two brands together. I'm happy GB and CV get to stay together. I understand that since they have CNET they don't really need Tested. But I still can't help feeling unsettled by the whole thing. Either way I decided to vent by making a blog post and laying it out there. It happened. There isn't anything I can do about it anyway. Lock the topic and be done with it if you see fit.

There's no harm and certainly nothing wrong with being concerned; obviously, you care about the sites and don't want them to stop being awesome. The problem is that we've had so many topics of people with similar concerns, so users are getting burned out on this sort of talk (kind of like the whole ME3 ending debacle).

Anyways, if it helps you, here's Dave's Membership FAQ, and here's the announcement post, which contains an archived video discussing the deal in a little more detail. Because of all the threads about this topic, I'm going to lock this one down.