Junpei

@ll_exile_ll: I will give you the fact that Sonic Mania was well regarded by more than just the Sonic faithful, but I would still caveat that in that it was made by a team external to Sega. While that doesn't discredit it in any way I do think it illustrates that Sega and Team Sonic really lost their way for a long time.

For me, I grew up with the classic Sonic games on Genesis and never thought that the 3D games felt good. Even when my friends brought their Dreamcast over with Sonic Adventure I never felt like I was in control of anything happening. I felt that way trying demos for Heroes and other semi-well regarded 3D Sonic games. They just never made sense to me. Hell, Sonic 3D Blast felt better to me and I think more fondly of it than I do Adventure.

I'm glad that Frontiers found an audience and it seems that Sega might be on the right track, but I think my time with Sonic has just passed at this point.

Just expounding on some of the 'Giant Bomb has not been the scrappy underdog' or the sense of corporate autonomy that they once had, but there is a pretty easy to gauge the shift in that.

Whiskey Media: While they did have financial backing, Ryan and Jeff were the founders and had full creative control. When it came time for the Whiskey sell off the main interest came from CBS. The site of their mass exodus.

CBS: As part of the negotiations, Jeff and Ryan had made clear that they had conditions before they would agree. They were still going to make the kind of content that they did, they were going to swear freely, etc, etc. Because they were the owners and had creative control prior they were able to be part of the negotiations that ultimately let them maintain that identity despite being under the CBS corporate umbrella.

RV and Beyond: No longer being the owners meant there was no stake in any negotiations from this point forward. I can imagine there were some discussions had with corporate here and there, but ultimately the decisions were likely no longer in Jeff's hands at this point. He was most likely along the ride like everyone else. Each sale led to a degradation of control and no the site is here.

As for the randomness of the layoffs, none of the corporations making cuts the past week have reported profit losses which means that it is purely a preventative measure. They see forecasts that show loss in the future and react in advance.

If I had to guess, this industry shift is the result of the merger and acquisitions boom that has been the pandemic years. Everything was cheap, bolster the portfolios. Now there are projections of things reverting back and everyone is too big and bloated to maintain their profit margins. It's really the only "logic" I can see for why we are seeing this seemingly everywhere. It's sucks and if my assumption is accurate then yes, it does stem completely from corporate greed in growing too quickly without a way to sustain it.

Can it be viewed as standard business as usual? Absolutely. But the business of business as usual can be extremely shitty for the people just trying to make a living.

I can only clarify my logic as someone who has been here since I helped beta test the site as to why I hit cancel. As I stated before, I am subbed for the full year and I don't intend to stop watching and engaging with the content. For me it was more of a hopeful message sending because corporate won't see forums. They won't see twitter. They only see charts. People are angry and that metric shows it. How they respond to that we don't know and won't for some time.

When the old crew left I stayed on and never wavered my sub for the exact same logic others are stating. I kept it going for the support of the remaining staff, new and old. This one hit me different since this is the ownership side directly saying those support numbers are not enough and/or don't matter already. In all likelihood, knowing myself and how much I love this damn site and have for it's entire existence, I will probably end up reupping coming the end of the year if things are still running as we all hope they will, but I felt like this one needed to be handled differently just to at least affect something that the ownership would see to know how much we all think this situation is garbage.

Is there a risk that they see the numbers drop and wash their hands of it? Yeah, there is. I can't deny that. But there won't be new subs coming in and seeing as they already have showed us the current ones don't matter then I can't assume keeping mine would improve anything either. So the options I saw were 1) Hold pat and hope the bleeding slows despite no expectation of change or 2) Hit cancel and hope that something changes.

I'm tired of bleeding out.

That's the hard part. We've been led to believe that the subs went to support the staff, but this really really feels like it flies in the face of that. My sub is paid up through the year already, but I did hit the cancel to prevent the auto-renew for the time being. Something I have never done since I subbed during the very first Big Live Live Show: Live.

@alistercat: Forking was also canceled for tonight.

This feels awful. I mean, not that Alex, Brad, Vinny and Jeff didn't, but there was already the sense in the air that they were tired and wanted to move on. This though? Right after building a new team that I still contend was really beginning to gel and that this coming year was going to be a great step forward for the site... it feels worse.

Nothing, but love to Jess and Jason. Jason for the years of science and anime game defense when there was none. Jess for bringing the energy and shining a light on the independents and especially on the horror genre that was largely ignored for the majority of this sites existence outside of Patrick and occasionally Brad. I will absolutely keep an eye out for what is next for you both.

I still want to support those that are left but it does legitimately feel bad continuing to give money to Fandom. My sub renewed not too long ago because I saw brighter things ahead for this crew and I wanted to support them. Not the site ad hoc, not fandom, but them. This... this just sucks.

I have a slightly older Samsung. If it is just older stuff the built in YouTube app should work fine. For live stuff though I would have to go through the Twitch app on my PS4/5 to watch.

Tried to get back into Horizon before Forbidden West came out. Between not really enjoying the combat and the audio logs talking about the "Apocashitstorm" I really couldn't find anything to hook me in. Just found myself being irritated by both gameplay and narrative fronts.

Actually been playing through God of War (2018) throughout the season. Other than that just a bit of Vampire Survivors when there is not enough time to really get invested in something larger.

Christmas Day itself I didn't really play anything though. We had family in so the cleaning, cooking, etc kind of took all the energy out of me. Basically just had a drink or two after they left and called it an evening.

As for gifts, I did get a couple things that were gaming related. Jojo's Allstar Battle R and No More Heroes 3 for PS5 as well as a new 4K Web Cam and USB hub for helping with streams. Beyond that it was drum stuff. Looking forward to getting my new drum thrown with a backrest set up because oh boy do long sessions kill the back sometimes.

I have definitely been on board with it, but can see some valid criticisms folks have leveled. Yes, the show rotation has been scattershot lately, though maybe I am just willing to give things a bit more of a pass during the holiday seasons here in the US.

I echo I would love to see more of Tam and Lucy on the regular. I don't begrudge them juggling work on both sites and know they have their plates full, but they are absolutely joys to have involved in videos and audio content.

Speaking of audio content, while nothing will likely ever hit the highs of the Beastcast for me, I think the flagship Bombcast is better than it has been since the east/west split. During those years, the Bombcast still had Gerstmann and Brad to bring the knowledge and historical contexts, but was lacking any spark of joy that made it a great listen. To me, while Gerstmann was the heart of the site Vinny was the soul that sparked everything up to make it better. When Vinny and crew went east that spark was gone on the Bombcast.

Since the revamp, Jan has been great at filling that role of keeping folks involved, engaged and keeping the energy up. I am in my mid 30's so a lot of the more modern references miss me, but the excitement in the delivery makes me not care so much about that. I just think the overall positivity and fun seems back in the Bombcast where folks sound happy to be there and to spend time talking to each other and us by proxy. Even if some more in depth critique may be lacking, I enjoy listening to a discussion that folks are happy to be having.

Covid era showed just how tired the original crew were getting. The grind combined with the issues with CBS through RV took it's toll and sapped a lot of the joy out the process once it was remote and you lose that human connection of in person work. I think the change was good for all involved. I listen to Nextlander's podcast and watch the shows that interest me. Gerstmann's stuff is more sporadic for me. When he is absolutely engaged I love it, but there was a reason we never had 5 Jar Time videos a week on Giant Bomb. It's hard to carry that much solo content week after week.

As for the new crew, I believe they all bring something unique to the site that they can provide. We have seen glimpses of what they can do together and I would love to see that hit rate continue to rise as they just try things and see what works and what doesn't. I look forward to seeing what next year looks like as things continue to gel.