Well, it’s been quite the little saga. I joined the Ace Combat Union on GameSpot in late 2005, and posted for quite a time. I was eventually invited to found the United States Air Force Union and promptly proceeded to drive that poor bastard into the ground with several other Ace Combat Union veterans. The military, failing? I know, it sounds crazy. I fell off the GameSpot map for a while, but eventually found The HotSpot through iTunes in mid 2006, and quickly appreciated the chemistry that existed between the HotSpot crew. The coverage was both expert, professional grade, and drop dead funny. The amount of inside jokes shared among the crew and the listeners was just ridiculous (gay sexual content, anyone?).

I joined the GameSpot Live union in December 2006, and became a regular poster. Soon after that, long time GameSpot editor Greg Kasavin quit GameSpot to go work on what would later be revealed as Red Alert 3. Fast forward through many a HotSpot homework, email, and phone call to right after E3 07. E3 wrap ups were wrapped, and everyone expected a nice, quiet couple of weeks in the GameSpot community. It was then that long time host of The HotSpot as well as On the Spot, Rich Gallup announced he was leaving California for the colder shores of the east coast. He was wished well, and is now working for 38 studios. You know Kurt Shilling’s company. Wait, what? Anyway, dude was gone. (Throughout all this, not much happened to me, at least not on the intertubes.) He really was a natural fit for The HotSpot, and a super funny guy. It pained me to see him go.

Now, the next big thing to happen is probably as immediately obvious as a swift kick to the stomach for anyone who was on the video game loop in December 2007, but I’ll retell it anyway. Jeff Gerstmann, long, long time employee of CNet, was told to pack his shit and roll on out. Popular reasoning for his departure is pressure from Edios over his 6.0 review score he gave to Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. That was widely denied by GameSpot and CNet, so whatever. It was handled poorly, and it probably shouldn’t have been handled at all! Anyways, massive hits in the GameSpot staff department. From then to now, some good content producers have just straight up quit over the firing of Jeff. People like Ryan Davis, Alex Navarro and Vinny Caravella just up and quit, and left the GameSpot community in quite a vacuum.

I have to admit; I felt a bit betrayed when one minute the staff was reassuring the masses, and seemingly the next they were on the next train to fuckjoshlarsonville. It was a turbulent, strange time. The GameSpot Live Union lost many people, as did the rest of the GameSpot forums. Now, any fool could tell you that Jeff Gerstmann wouldn’t just go and stay down, and sure enough, Ryan Davis and Jeff Gerstmann announced GiantBomb.Com mid May 2008. People were hell of excited, and that excitement only built when Brad Shoemaker and Vinny Caravella joined the staff. About then, I started talking in the super secret GiantBomb chat room, where we talk about super secret things. Later on the GiantBomb beta was announced. I signed up, got and email, and that leads us here!

I don’t really know what to expect from GiantBomb besides good reviews, a continually hilarious podcast, and a decent community, but that’s more then enough for me. As far as the forums, I just want a place to talk about games! Really, I just kinda want to go skiing.

Best,