Looking Back and Forward: Giant Bomb and Minor Issues
By Systech 13 Comments
We're nearing the end of the year and the end of a decade. In this relatively brief time, I have been in elementary school, middle school, and three-fourths through my high school journey. However, it's only been since 2005 when I entered the world of enthusiast gaming. That year, I started listening to Jeff Gerstmann, Rich Gallup, and many other Gamespot staffers on The Hotspot, slowly gaining their knowledge and inside jokes of the industry. I was involved in the boards fairly regularly, but never rose to any form of popularity or received renown for my posts until what is now Giant Bomb.
Giant Bomb
Then it was November 28, 2007. Jeff was dismissed from Gamespot and my source of laughs and entertainment disappeared into the depths of the internet to start his own blog site. I read it everyday for news on his next venture, every click accompanied by a gleaming hope of good news. The months went by and Gamespot staff members were leaving by the weeks, the first of the bunch being Ryan and Alex. Ryan joined Jeff over Skype for the first of what was to be the Arrow Pointing Down Podcast, and in March, they released their vision for Giant Bomb in the form of a blog. It never crossed my mind how large the website could possibly get, but my interest piqued greatly when they nabbed recently-departed Gamespot employees, Brad and Vinny.
Before I knew it, my calendar told me it was July 21, 2008: the day the site would launch in full. Immediately, I ran to my computer to register my user name, post some wiki edits, and take a few looks at the forums of madness. It took a little longer for the users to develop a hunger for something larger: a community. Around September, a few users (DualReaver, Lies, and tokyochicken) developed a "manifesto" for what we should become. Within weeks, the thirty or so core-contributing users talked through the IRC, the original community podcast Bomb Should Have a Face was starting to gain listenership, and our form of game nights called "Bombing Runs" were being planned regularly. It seemed like there was only forward-moving from there.
Entering the new year, Bombing Runs began to diminish in quantity due to lack of other users pitching in, the quality of Bomb Should Have a Face became questionable, and the forums started to gain popularity for groups of users with lesser intentions. Still, the site continued to live on through editorial content and the Bombcast.
Now, the situation doesn't seem all that different to the average forum user's eye, but improvements truly have been set in play. With ZombiePie being the committed editor of the Community Thread since March, well-produced content by the users has never been easier to access. Bombing Runs have also begun popping up here and there without the leadership of a certain user (who is proud of this) and it seems that those thirty core users from a year ago are not the only ones who desire a better place to converse with people who really fucking love Giant Bomb.
Minor Issues (the podcast I work on)
It wasn't until the very end of 2008 when I met user Coltonio7 (Colton David) in a Left 4 Dead PC Bombing Run that I hosted. Immediately, we hit it off and started talking over Skype. Around the middle of February, Colton pinged me the message "dude we should make a podcast". I thought he was being crazy so I just shrugged it off by saying "we totally should," not knowing what I was about to get myself into. Later that month, we recorded our first episode of Minor Issues, which was more or less a test podcast. It was 15 minutes of him and I chatting about random subjects off the cuff.
We decided that we should make the podcast longer and sought out easier, more effective ways to record our Skype mischief. Since we didn't really have much of a budget, we figured that using the trial for Skype recorder and recording 15 minute intervals with constant breaks would suffice. We got together with albedos_shadow to record our first real episode, and boy, that went to hell fast. Recordings were corrupted and the inside jokes and mayhem was lost forever. After a couple weeks of sitting out the podcast, we got back in the game and recorded the next episode with Jayge.
After episode 7, two entire episodes were made, but were never released due to technical challenges. Those episodes were joined by our next Minor Issues member, TheGamerGeek (Jay Malone) and veteran guest, Jayge. Being wary of failure, it became difficult to put out a show, with only four out of eight episodes in 3 months (July-October period) being a success.
In our entrance of double digits, it seemed as if Minor Issues was dead with the release of Episode 10 when I stayed absent. I told Colton earlier in the week that I might stop doing Minor Issues around December, putting us at each others' throats and out of frustration to his reaction, I abstained from the recording. The following morning, we made up and started to plan out the next episode with John Drake, PR Manager at Harmonix, to talk about The Beatles: Rock Band and other business. Not only accompanied by him, we also acquired our next permanent member, ajr123 (better known as Alex Rubens on Twitter).
Now, it's December. I have no intention of leaving and every intention of continuing it into the new year. With Colton, Jay, Alex, and the occasional guest of importance, I want to make Minor Issues a more enjoyable podcast by improving on the formula that is beginning to feel a little stale.
Minor Issues on iTunes