Hello to newcomers and what's up to those familiar with and/or are already a part of this family of Giant Bomb PC duders who play all kinds of awesomely fun games together.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Starting from next week, I'm gonna begin posting a monthly "Gaming Hub News" blog that informs you of the latest Hub news, updates on our voice server/chatroom, and of course to tell you which games we'll be having gamenights for, and other things. It will be stickied to the PC board thanks to MattyFTM.

(Hint: Expect some explosive Giant Bomb community action in Max Payne 3 multiplayer and Diablo 3 on the PC).   

But before I begin those monthly news blogs, I wanted to reflect on what we've done so far, the experiences we've had, and most important, to THANK all the awesome people who've helped make these plans a reality. 

A brief description of this hub if this is your first visit to my PC Gaming project:

I am proud to say that what we're doing is unprecedented in Giant Bomb history.

Since the website's creation in mid 2008, there has not been any community gamenight that survived a given game's "launch population" and went on for more than one month on any platform. And most of those that did have some momentum to them, died off rather quickly and maintained only small numbers of dedicated players.

I'm proud to say that our Battlefield 3 efforts, 360 US Dollars worth of community donations to rent two full-capacity game servers and donating $180 every 3 months to keep one (since we dropped the other), so the point where the Giant Bomb staff actually used our server for two TNTs and had a total blast, as well as a 100-slot voice server that you can hop on at any time today and find OTHER GIANT BOMBERS playing games or voice chatting in big numbers..

It's unprecedented. To have steady gamenights that live on for long months and our own thriving servers and assets, by the community and for the community.

But I didn't do it alone. There were a lot of great people in this amazing community who helped me push this social gaming phenomenon to the point it has reached today.And I'd like to thank each and every one for working together and making this an absolute reality that exists today in its best form.

A big Thank You to:

• @Sweep - the man who decided to revive the briefly-lived Bad Company 2 bombing runs in January 2011, which was the starting point for everything I've done.

The people who were the foundation of the Bad Company 2 GB community that grew later on:

• @benjaebe for providing a Ventrilo server that served as our very first voice joint for BC2 for a brief while.
• @Darksaw for welcoming us onto his friends' small Mumble voice server for our BC2 nights.
• @rb_man and @Wildfire570 for recording and uploading our very first GB bombing run videos (for BC2 and BF2).
• @Rolyatkcinmai - For helping with renting, co-owning and maintaining our GB BF3 game servers and voice server, as well as being in contact with Ryan and Norm during both BF3 TNTs on our server.
• @Mu5hy - For finding us a really great server rental deal from a great company.

Those who helped with various Battlefield 3 matters while the community and the servers were still fresh. As well as VIGGO123, YoThatLimp and many others for donating to keep the servers alive:

• @Liber
• @Swoxx
• @Matthew
• @Akrid
• @roughneck117
• @Branthog
• @thornie
• @mosdl - Aside from all his help, this motherfucker donated over $120 for the BF3 server since game release.

• Whiskey Media engineer @gpbmike and his two brothers for being our Battlefield 3 buddies over these months.
• @Xyber , @AlexW00d, @Liber and @SwoXx for capturing and editing the most awesome videos of our community gamenights and uploading them to our YT channel GiantBombSquad.

>> Some of their most popular videos:

1. [AlexW00d] A video of our 31-man Giant Bomb Mexican Standoff in BF3 during one of our CrazyNights - 3,324 views.
2. [SwoXx] Air Buccaneers Pre Alpha impromptu bombing run - 1,700 views.
3. [Xyber] A montage of one of our best ArmA II Free2Play gamenights. Hilarious and entertaining! - 680 views.
4. [rb_man] GiantBombing in Bad Company 2. Ah, good times. - 507 views.

• @Liminality for creating most of the stunning and beautiful banners of my various gamenight threads over the years. Example!
• @SlasherMan@Roughneck117, @Vodun and @No0b0rAmA for also creating banners for my various threads/groups.
• @SwoXx for building our Giant Bomb Gaming Hub mIRC chatroom on the Quakenet server and maintaining it.
• @NekuSakuraba for being the entertaining clown that he is on that IRC channel.
• @WilltheMagicAsian for creating the GB Gaming Hub chatroom web page that connects you to our mIRC chatroom.
• @Infinitum for being supportive and helpful to our assets (from a tech stand-point) and briefly renting a Counter Strike: Source server.
• @Hero_Swe and @Azteck for performing Swedish black magic to host ArmA and Airbuccaneers HD games.
• @MattyFTM and @PsEG for being supportive of my Gaming Hub plans and also regulars on our mIRC chatroom.

And this is a personal one:

Thank you all, this adventure has been amazing and I'm looking forward to what we'll do in the future.

Preview of the next Gaming Hub blog entry (June 10th):

• Title: The Community PC Gaming Hub Monthly News - June 2012.
• Date posted: June 10th.
• Highlight: Gamenights/competitions will be scheduled for Max Payne 3 multiplayer and Diablo 3 multiplayer.
• Other content: New gamenights will be scheduled for ArmA II: DAYZ // Tribes: Ascend // Super Monday Night Combat // Battlefield 3 // Company of Heroes // Red Orchestra 2 and Counter Strike: Source.
• I will also attempt to revive the co-op games, will keep the discussion for next time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Join the Steam group to get notifications of our bombing runs and gamenights here: Gaming Hub group / Battlefield 3 group.
• Main threads you should bookmark, with all the info you need: Gaming Hub thread / Battlefield 3 thread.

Hello to newcomers and what's up to those familiar with and/or are already a part of this family of Giant Bomb PC duders who play all kinds of awesomely fun games together.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Starting from next week, I'm gonna begin posting a monthly "Gaming Hub News" blog that informs you of the latest Hub news, updates on our voice server/chatroom, and of course to tell you which games we'll be having gamenights for, and other things. It will be stickied to the PC board thanks to MattyFTM.

(Hint: Expect some explosive Giant Bomb community action in Max Payne 3 multiplayer and Diablo 3 on the PC).   

But before I begin those monthly news blogs, I wanted to reflect on what we've done so far, the experiences we've had, and most important, to THANK all the awesome people who've helped make these plans a reality. 

A brief description of this hub if this is your first visit to my PC Gaming project:

I am proud to say that what we're doing is unprecedented in Giant Bomb history.

Since the website's creation in mid 2008, there has not been any community gamenight that survived a given game's "launch population" and went on for more than one month on any platform. And most of those that did have some momentum to them, died off rather quickly and maintained only small numbers of dedicated players.

I'm proud to say that our Battlefield 3 efforts, 360 US Dollars worth of community donations to rent two full-capacity game servers and donating $180 every 3 months to keep one (since we dropped the other), so the point where the Giant Bomb staff actually used our server for two TNTs and had a total blast, as well as a 100-slot voice server that you can hop on at any time today and find OTHER GIANT BOMBERS playing games or voice chatting in big numbers..

It's unprecedented. To have steady gamenights that live on for long months and our own thriving servers and assets, by the community and for the community.

But I didn't do it alone. There were a lot of great people in this amazing community who helped me push this social gaming phenomenon to the point it has reached today.And I'd like to thank each and every one for working together and making this an absolute reality that exists today in its best form.

A big Thank You to:

• @Sweep - the man who decided to revive the briefly-lived Bad Company 2 bombing runs in January 2011, which was the starting point for everything I've done.

The people who were the foundation of the Bad Company 2 GB community that grew later on:

• @benjaebe for providing a Ventrilo server that served as our very first voice joint for BC2 for a brief while.
• @Darksaw for welcoming us onto his friends' small Mumble voice server for our BC2 nights.
• @rb_man and @Wildfire570 for recording and uploading our very first GB bombing run videos (for BC2 and BF2).
• @Rolyatkcinmai - For helping with renting, co-owning and maintaining our GB BF3 game servers and voice server, as well as being in contact with Ryan and Norm during both BF3 TNTs on our server.
• @Mu5hy - For finding us a really great server rental deal from a great company.

Those who helped with various Battlefield 3 matters while the community and the servers were still fresh. As well as VIGGO123, YoThatLimp and many others for donating to keep the servers alive:

• @Liber
• @Swoxx
• @Matthew
• @Akrid
• @roughneck117
• @Branthog
• @thornie
• @mosdl - Aside from all his help, this motherfucker donated over $120 for the BF3 server since game release.

• Whiskey Media engineer @gpbmike and his two brothers for being our Battlefield 3 buddies over these months.
• @Xyber , @AlexW00d, @Liber and @SwoXx for capturing and editing the most awesome videos of our community gamenights and uploading them to our YT channel GiantBombSquad.

>> Some of their most popular videos:

1. [AlexW00d] A video of our 31-man Giant Bomb Mexican Standoff in BF3 during one of our CrazyNights - 3,324 views.
2. [SwoXx] Air Buccaneers Pre Alpha impromptu bombing run - 1,700 views.
3. [Xyber] A montage of one of our best ArmA II Free2Play gamenights. Hilarious and entertaining! - 680 views.
4. [rb_man] GiantBombing in Bad Company 2. Ah, good times. - 507 views.

• @Liminality for creating most of the stunning and beautiful banners of my various gamenight threads over the years. Example!
• @SlasherMan@Roughneck117, @Vodun and @No0b0rAmA for also creating banners for my various threads/groups.
• @SwoXx for building our Giant Bomb Gaming Hub mIRC chatroom on the Quakenet server and maintaining it.
• @NekuSakuraba for being the entertaining clown that he is on that IRC channel.
• @WilltheMagicAsian for creating the GB Gaming Hub chatroom web page that connects you to our mIRC chatroom.
• @Infinitum for being supportive and helpful to our assets (from a tech stand-point) and briefly renting a Counter Strike: Source server.
• @Hero_Swe and @Azteck for performing Swedish black magic to host ArmA and Airbuccaneers HD games.
• @MattyFTM and @PsEG for being supportive of my Gaming Hub plans and also regulars on our mIRC chatroom.

And this is a personal one:

Thank you all, this adventure has been amazing and I'm looking forward to what we'll do in the future.

Preview of the next Gaming Hub blog entry (June 10th):

• Title: The Community PC Gaming Hub Monthly News - June 2012.
• Date posted: June 10th.
• Highlight: Gamenights/competitions will be scheduled for Max Payne 3 multiplayer and Diablo 3 multiplayer.
• Other content: New gamenights will be scheduled for ArmA II: DAYZ // Tribes: Ascend // Super Monday Night Combat // Battlefield 3 // Company of Heroes // Red Orchestra 2 and Counter Strike: Source.
• I will also attempt to revive the co-op games, will keep the discussion for next time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Join the Steam group to get notifications of our bombing runs and gamenights here: Gaming Hub group / Battlefield 3 group.
• Main threads you should bookmark, with all the info you need: Gaming Hub thread / Battlefield 3 thread.

32 more hours.

I'll make my part and join the Counter-Strike: Source gamenight. Depending on whether I get Diablo III, I'll join that too. And I'll try and join the chat more often. Good (and by good I mean terrible, awful) talk happening there.

Metallic, I demand you give me a shoutout for my ear sexings I gave you with my glorious intonations.

I look forward to playing with you people once i've gone through diablo rehab (read: inferno)

<3

That is all.

VIDIERGAYMS

Wooo! Though I'm pretty sure I've done more than host AirBuccaneers Metallic, nudge nudge :P

i've had a great time playing bf3 with everyone. thanks guys

It's cool that you guys are doing this, wish I had a PC so I could join in...

This is the hotness, let there be many more Giant Bomb Gamenights! Also, i'm so glad I found that Irc channel, whenever I want, I can jump in and Yell something along the lines of "ARMA!!" and usually someone responds with something. It's the best.

I look forward to playing max payne and diablo 3 with you guys :)

I also had a lot of fun playing arma II for the first time with liber, akrid, alexw00d, citizenkane and a few others the other day :)

 .  . . . . . . .  71hourswithdiablo3

Well fuck it, double postin' up in this.

mIRC has been amazing. It still is! While timezones and thin walls keep me from visiting mumble a lot I'm often around (these days playing D3).

Anyways, this happened a while ago:

Which soon after turned into this.

So here's to testicle man #1 @MattyFTM and hoping he does not murder us all. As you can see, drawn by the lovely @Turbo_Toaster

In retrospect, Matty's butt kind of looks oddly similar to some other prominent feature of his.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Counter Strike.

Looking forward to Diablo III, that game is controlling my life right now.

@Hero_Swe: But hosting Airbucaneers is a larger and more impressive feat than most on that list.

Yo, I should start joining these things... Good thing a lot of free time is opening up in the near future.

Oh look, that's me in the IRC.

I'll join the CSS and Diablo 3 game nights, maybe the BF3 as well.

@Matthew said:

. . . . . . . . 71hourswithdiablo3

Don't remind me. Spent 4 hours today with randoms trying to kill the Butcher (on Hell mode), still stuck there.

We usually have several people on mumble playing Diablo 3

Woohoo, thanks @AhmadMetallic for creating and organizing such an awesome PC gaming community, and thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project. I haven't been very active lately, but it's great to know that the group continues to grow.

Thank you @AhmadMetallic for doing everything you have done the last couple of months, it has been great dicking around with you guys (in a no homo way that is!).

PC Gaming all day, er'ry day!

@Sjupp said:

Well fuck it, double postin' up in this.

mIRC has been amazing. It still is! While timezones and thin walls keep me from visiting mumble a lot I'm often around (these days playing D3).

Anyways, this happened a while ago:

Which soon after turned into this.

So here's to testicle man #1 @MattyFTM and hoping he does not murder us all. As you can see, drawn by the lovely @Turbo_Toaster

In retrospect, Matty's butt kind of looks oddly similar to some other prominent feature of his.

Fuck you Sjupp. FUUUUUCK YOOOOUUU!!!!!!!!

Also, the IRC is cool. People should drop in.

I should really join in on more ArmA2 nights. That game is awesome.

Congratulations on the success mate. Hm... I wonder if the community's indifference towards Napoleonic Wars will become less so enough (i.e. a Steam sale) in that a Giantbomb en-masse to one of the public linebattles would be possible. Lovely thought though.

We need to get in on that Arma 2 DayZ stuff. I need people to share my blood bags with.

Speaking of DayZ, is the price of the expansion worth it for what you're getting?

Edit: 

[SwoXx] Air Buccaneers Pre Alpha impromptu bombing run - 1,700 views.

Wooo! Though I'm pretty sure I've done more than host AirBuccaneers Metallic, nudge nudge :P

Woohoo, thanks @AhmadMetallic for creating and organizing such an awesome PC gaming community, and thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project. I haven't been very active lately, but it's great to know that the group continues to grow.

@AhmadMetallic said:

Edit:

[SwoXx] Air Buccaneers Pre Alpha impromptu bombing run - 1,700 views.

SwoXx made it not Hero_Swe!


@Hero_Swe said:

Wooo! Though I'm pretty sure I've done more than host AirBuccaneers Metallic, nudge nudge :P

Not really, wink wink!

@Liminality said:

Woohoo, thanks @AhmadMetallic for creating and organizing such an awesome PC gaming community, and thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project. I haven't been very active lately, but it's great to know that the group continues to grow.

I know, you and @No0b0rAmA: Have not played a single proper Battlefield 3 match with us since launch, and you were two of my favorite BC2 buddies, so I'm a really sad panda for capturing flags without you guys :(

I totally made it happen though, douchefaggle :P. See if I help you with anything

I was on the mumble server for the Guild Wars 2 BWE, it was pretty cool to get to talk to a bunch of duders. I would go on more often, but I don't really own any big multiplayer games.

Giant Bomb PC Gaming Hub: "We have schizophrenics!"

@AhmadMetallic said:

[SwoXx] Air Buccaneers Pre Alpha impromptu bombing run - 1,700 views.

FUUUUUUCK, you guys played some Air Buccaneers and i missed it?!

I'd love to play some of that again...

wait, is this not the UT2004 mod? they're making a stand alone version?

@AhmadMetallic said:

[SwoXx] Air Buccaneers Pre Alpha impromptu bombing run - 1,700 views.

FUUUUUUCK, you guys played some Air Buccaneers and i missed it?!

I'd love to play some of that again...

wait, is this not the UT2004 mod? they're making a stand alone version?

@AhmadMetallic: i know with the ut2004 modded version of Air Buccaneers there was a lot of complexities and design decisions that may not sit right for anyone expecting a common FPS so i'm curious as to what it being "shit" meant from those who played it. If they were turned off by the game design or the pre alpha just wasn't playable.

Either way if the PC gaming hub decides to do a retro mod night i'd highly recommend Carball for ut2004 (seems they've made Carball 3 for UT3 as well) It's basically football/soccer in cars that can jump and spin.