Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf! 08/26/2013

equating adblock use to piracy is dishonest. No one signed a licensing agreement or a contract to view the content. If that's what you guys want, require logins, put a EULA up-front for people to click-sign.

adblock on by default & paying subscriber to sites I think are worth it. Make your business work given the realities of the market or go do something else.

Dennis Dyack wastes not only his own time, not only his subordinates time, but also time that could be given to devs who aren't collossal fuckups. These prima donnas like him, Cage, and some others have that nasty ability to be so "relevant" beyond the quality of their work and common standards of behavior it actually negatively affects people only tertiarily connected to him due to stealing away money and mindshare!

And he'll KEEP getting interviews! And he'll KEEP getting opportunities!

@alex: That's an MMO launch. If it keeps doing this like this, the previous trainwreck will end them yeah. (It'll still fail! Box n Sub is poison now! SE is a shitshow! DOOOOMED) Ahem...

To give a more blunt, less 'message board' (according to Alex) response:

1. Ads are annoying.

2. I don't like looking at them.

3. If I like a site I give them copious money anyway.

4. I'm a fuckface and have come to terms with it.

5. Later discover the ad system is actually really fucked up. Feel LESS like a fuckface.

5. Fuck you too, Alex.

I dont think Patrick and Alex realize that those of us with Adblock on by default, we actually whitelist domain we like... aka... giantbomb.... sites we want to support.

eh, saying adblock is piracy is saying a dvr or, turning the channel during commercials is piracy. I don't use adblock anymore (just because it didn't update on my last version of firefox and i haven't checked again), but i use no script because if i don't know what it is, i don't trust it. I'd rather sit through ads on video content than have popups while i'm reading something. If the site isn't bad i'll even click on links just to support though, but 99% of the time i don't give a shit about anything but what i'm reading/watching and just click to support.

I have no problem watching a 30 second ad before watching a piece of content that is 100 times that length. It's not that bad guys. It really isn't much to ask.

I have no problem watching a 30 second ad before watching a piece of content that is 100 times that length. It's not that bad guys. It really isn't much to ask.

My two dads are basically telling me off...

Before I had an subscription, I had adblock turned off. It got to a point where every single video had 30 seconds ads, even when just refreshing a page, and I just couldn't stand it anymore. It's funny that scoops mentions piracy because it was like that breaking point with DRM in games where people just throw their hands in the air and say "Oh bugger this I'll just pirate the bloody thing!". That's what it felt like when I went off to download ad blocker.

So I think that sites themselves also need to toe the line between being a "Valve style DRM" or "Ubisoft style DRM" when it comes to site ads - make them unobtrusive enough and people wont mind them - Start pushing ads that are in any way annoying and people will just turn adblock on.

I really like Patrick, Alex and Giant Bomb (I'm a gold member after all). But I'm really disturbed by how angry and vehement they both are against adblock. I use adblock on by default and will VERY occasionally turn it off on a website. My reasoning, which is mostly political and moral in nature I guess doesn't matter to either Patrick or Alex for I am clearly a monster. But I will say that I think calling using adblock piracy is stretching things a bit. Like some have said before me, is using a DVR piracy? And they even admitted that the whole ad revenue business is broken. Is keeping a broken model afloat just a little longer any better than trying to make go away faster?

Of course, we are talking on internet forums and as everyone knows we are clearly wrong because we choose to discuss anything on the internet and we aren't getting paid to do so.

Final Fantasy XIV - STILL getting full messages with no queue.

" MUH PRECIOUS ADSENSE MONEEEEY!"

Terrible rant.

The only reason why I use adblock here is because Twitch still tries to get me to watch ads even though I'm a premium member.

You can also whitelist sites with adblockers, which is the only reason why the damn things are on the google plug-in market in the first place.

I couldn't bring myself to do the side missions in saints row 3 but in 4 I did everything. patrick is dead wrong.

Also I do use adblock though I don't really frequent many sites that have ads. And I have the sites I do frequent such as Gb and hulu ads enabled.

love the artwork dudes!

@mosaicm80 said:

Don't they have a right to be upset when people are putting their livelihoods at stake for little reason other than an unwillingness to let a short ad play once in awhile? Content needs a source of revenue in order to continue existing. Ads are one such form of revenue. As a supporter of Giantbomb, why should I be upset if I have to let a 15-30 second ad play before a 45 minute Quick Look, an hour + morning show, or a Daily Dota that can run more than 2 hours? Is it really too much to ask for?

*disables all adblock from all gaming sites* *sheds a single tear*

This AdBlock defense is really fascinating to me.

Without placing judgement on anyone using adblocker, (I totally get it, who likes ads?) you make a decision to not support certain outlets or services, and if you feel that way, so be it.

The comparison to piracy makes perfect sense to me. Though AdBlock may not be illegal, you make the same decision of "do I want to support this website with my money or 20 seconds of my time." If Giant Bomb, or Twitch, or certain youtube channels aint' worth your time, there we go.

@patrickklepek: I use ad block and I don't white list any sites. It's my right to do so. I listened to your arguments and I still choose to not white list this site, or any site. I think it's really low of you to insult and trying to shame your viewers into watching ads on your site. You can have your opinions but don't call me and asshole for not viewing ads.

well- the ads thing is a pretty complicated issue to unpack. and that's epitomized in my reality- i'm a subscriber, and i have adblock on all the time.

i fully understand and respect the perspective alex and patrick are expressing, but i think it's more nuanced than just saying 'this is right, and that is wrong.' context and history are important- especially when we're talking about the internet (and the lawless and freeform place it used to be). the traditional ads-based model of print media was jury-rigged into what we call the internet, and not the other way around. just like music as a commodity (the single and album) was jury-rigged into a preexisting artform.

it sucks that former streams of revenue are drying up, but that's just sorta how it goes. i'm an aspiring musician, and i've come to terms with the fact that if i'm ever lucky enough to cut a professional record, and people love it, i shouldn't expect to earn a dime from it. it's just the world we live in now.

AdBlock is mostly terrible if you use it to block ads, AND you demand that everything be free. To all you AdBlockers out there, be prepared for all of the free content on the internet to disappear behind a paywall.

Reading way too much into the GTA 5 thing there Patrick, this shit happens. It has nothing to do with Sony and their impending console.

Reading way too much into the GTA 5 thing there Patrick, this shit happens. It has nothing to do with Sony and their impending console.

@mistercrow said:

I like to add a space and think of it as "Bomb in the A.M.! With Scoops and the Wolf!"

I don't want to touch this adblock stuff with a ten foot pole.

Ad blocking = Piracy?

Fuck you. I guess having a DVR and fast forwarding through commercials is pirating television too. I don't enjoy having gigantic banner ads shoved in my face when I go to any site, and long as fuck video ads whenever I want to watch a YouTube video or a Twitch stream. Oh, because they put money in your pocket I should put up with that bullshit? That's a terrible argument. Find a better business model than relying on awful advertising companies that provide nothing to me except making the internet shittier.

Should I stop and read every billboard on the street too? Fuck off. I have zero obligation to be solicited in the privacy of my own home.

Find a better fucking business model. Better yet, stop preaching to me and telling me I'm a pirate despite me funding your paycheck.

I don't pay for this site to have you insult my morality.

Blocking ads is piracy? Wow, Patrick, that's ridiculous.

Watching ads to watch ads? Nah, brah.

AWOOOOOOOOO!

I think this needs some dumb intro where it has a montage of things Scoops and Alex have said, followed by RadioVoiceGuy saying, "You're rocking the morning with Scoops and the Wolf on GLGB" or something.

Are there MP3 versions of Bombin' in the AM? I caught mention of an iTunes feed?

Just want to listen on-the-go.

This continues to be a solid addition to the site. Keep up the good work.

I love the name. It's hilarious! But it's also kinda clunky. I just wish I had a good short version of it to use when discussing it. "Bombin'?" "Scoops & the Wolf?" "BAM?" Hrmmm...

Wow freeloaders can be so defensive!

Regarding blocking ads. Hope there aren't too many angry comments about it, because I think it's an interesting thing to have a civil difference of opinion about.

When I hear someone say something to the effect of, 'justify it however you want' and 'It's Piracy,' about a topic of debate, what I hear is 'I am not willing to even consider a different point of view from my own.' And I think that's too bad if Alex and Patrick do really feel that way. Whatever side of an issue you're on, I think it only strengthens your position to put yourself in the shoes of someone else.

I would argue that there's nothing guaranteeing that a website will avoid family-unfriendly ads - there's just the websites you trust. There's nothing guaranteeing that a website won't force the ad to load first from an overloaded server, before the page content loads. There's nothing guaranteeing that ad links don't lead to a location that will compromise your computer. There's nothing guaranteeing that all websites will act ethically with the personal data they collect. There's nothing guaranteeing there won't be crazy giant ads that remodel the whole site.

There's just the trust you develop for some webmasters to provide a good experience. And those are the ones I think a reasonable person might choose to whitelist. I think streamlining the whitelist process is the path to ending the adblock war, really.

But as is, I don't think the business model of websites supported by ads is something any webmaster should assume they are entitled to. Under the law it's a totally speculative model. And content online is far from being totally dependent on business; back in the early 90s the vast majority of the information flowed just fine on the backs of private enthusiasts that never made a dime.

As far as for-profit, I think that if more places emulated Giant Bomb and focused on delivering really entertaining content to get people to subscribe, that would actually move things forward a lot towards a better model. Right now Giant Bomb's my only subscription other than Netflix, nothing else is even close to being as good of a value proposition. And I think there are just going to be more and more people out there who would never in their lives knowingly click on a banner ad or stop to read one, which calls into question whether people should even be advertising their products that way in terms of ROI.

As is, the thing that makes the internet different from other media sources is that the user actually has a fairly large amount of control over which files they choose to download. Websites are not entirely a prepackaged product, only permissable to be used in the exact specific way that the server owner intended. It's just some files. You can download those files to many different devices, running many different forms of software, presenting the content in many different ways, and you can even modify that software yourself if your problem with the way the content is presented is a problem unique to you.

The part that makes the net great, as far as I'm concerned, is not that it's a convenient online television, newspaper rack, and radio station. The part that makes it great is that it's a shared space that gives anyone the ability to access portions of a vast pool of information, on their own terms, and learn, create, and participate. GB's wiki and community content are good examples of this. I think that's the direction to move towards, not the whole one intended experience for the masses Apple model.

Accessing content on the net however the hell you want, within the law, with the ability to protect the machine you use, matters more than making the obsolete banner ad business model viable - in my opinion. I understand if you guys think there oughta be a law. But there isn't, regarding ads, any more than there are really any laws regarding data collection or any of the other questionable stuff webmasters can do. It's a mostly open frontier where the control is not all one-sided and trust has to be earned, and that's what makes it worthwhile.

Anyway, that aside, loving the show, and I like the fact that Patrick and Alex have the guts to say things that some in the audience might not like! It's got a bit of a sat-radio opinion show vibe that way.

Sudden onset La Parka was amazing!

Piracy? seriously? adblock might be shitty, and costs smaller sites revenue, but find a way around it, like GiantBomb did. Work for it, make us want to subscribe. I know I'm not a subscriber but I've come damn near close because I enjoy most of Giantbomb's work. You can't look as adblockers as lost revenue, you never had those people to begin with, just like game/movie piracy.

Also this artwork is the worst.

As much as people want to point to Adblock as the death of "Official" Internet sites I will gladly point out that the way we consume media is changing.

No longer is there one official website that has all the exclusive footage and such. Since that barer to that information is being held back by Facebook likes and such now blogs themselves are changing the way we consume this info. A lot of the blogs I read aren't getting money for their work. If they are it's going to pay for their website hosting. They cover and write stuff because they like to. Not because it's a paycheck.

Not only that but ads themselves have become way more intrusive to the way we view content. I hate eyeblasting ads. The "scroll over" for some ad to expand is really the definition of a pop up ad. One wrong move of the mouse and I end up having the "scroll over" ad pushed lower bumping the content out of the way. Then I have to decide do I want to find the close button that's usually so small and hidden or wait for this 30 second ad to finish and the ad to roll up. I also hate that I have to watch a 30 second ad that I can't skip for a 1 min video.That's why I use Adblock.

In order for websites to survive they'll have to adapt. Ad agency's and websites need better ways of presenting ads. I will support something if the website is genuine. I will gladly promote websites that aren't pulling us for dick teasing article headlines. That's why I subscribe to you all. You aren't dragging me around with your content. I will gladly stay subscribed and give my money to a website until that day content doesn't come first.

- Cameron

Ads? I don't even notice ads anymore. I've seen some shit...those late 90s/early 00s had the heaviest concentrations of ads. We were really in the shit then.

Is there a weird limbo/1st ring of hell for people who use NoScript? I've come close to getting ad block on rare occasion just to see how effective it is but years ago I downloaded no script thanks to CNet's recommendation as a way to select and turn off sluggish scripts that bog websites down and have used it every since. It's actually fascinating and somewhat off putting to see certain blog sites use 30+ scripts for random bullshit, a lot ads but some not, that is many ways an obstruction to a fast loading website and the content you do want. Not a justification but an observation.

As it turns out a lot of sites use scripts for advertising and often times the version of sites I see don't have advertisements at all or some are missing (html ads that don't use scripts show through every time, as do video pre-roll). The trade off for me is that to actually run websites better and faster and focus on the content, I'm inadvertently disabling some or many ads when I occasionally or rarely visit sites. For heavy regulars I've specifically enabled as many scripts are necessary to run the site and make ads show up but only two sites (Tested and PA Report) are frequently visited enough that don't use subscriptions.

The implication of the discussion across the internet right now though is that there's no middle ground between advertised based internet, which is shitty and invasive a lot of the time but necessary to pay content makers, and pay-wall models which put the onus on the content to be good enough to earn it, which might punish "good enough" content despite working well for those that earn it.

I think the future for that middle ground is the way Penny Arcade allowed a minority or percentage of its viewership to subsidize the site for everyone not to have advertising. This takes advantage of the willingness of a minority to fund the site but not rely on the entire audience distribution to pay for the site piecemeal through their individual views. Coupled with occasional advertising and subscription models I think there's a way to make it work without hard absolute swings. I sure hope so at least, otherwise in this period we're going to see a lot of assumptions rattled and content creation jobs in jeopardy.

Also as two duders what make internet content they have no reason to not think what they talked about in this video.

I know radio guys who will get in peoples faces if they see them dial flipping to avoid "Used Car Shouty Guy". I imagine TV people can get the same way with DVR users. I personally am gonna lose my job to technology here shortly because of layoffs at the USPS pretty much traceable to people using emails instead of sending first class mail (which also drives up the price for everything else since FCM was always the workhorse of the business model)

I understand the tendency to get pissed at your livelihood being threatened, but the ad model in every media was always based on the end user having no real way to remove the ads. Now that that's no longer true for every major medium except radio (which has a host of its own problems), the model is just no longer viable and getting mad at end users doesn't change anything except maybe alienating them. I wasn't working for them back in the day but I've heard longtimers at the USPS used to give their friends and family grief about how they were killing the USPS by using emails, and while that was true people just weren't ever really going to pay out money they didn't have to just to save some guy's job. Technological innovation kills jobs and creates others and that's just the way it is.

I guess in the end I'm not even the guy you get pissed at, I enable user ads on SA, have a paid subscription here and don't really use any other websites that regularly that I'd care to support (Google can look after themselves).

can someone give me the minutes of Adblock discussion?

BG crew?!

Dude. Don't do that to yourself. Don't get me wrong I like this site, but I pay premium with one of the primary reasons being no ads.

Dude, your doing enough. Chill.

So I listened to the podcast version first because the video wasn't up yet, and I was wondering why during the ad block talk it sounded like Alex had something in his mouth or something, now I see why his voice sounded different haha. Also if the podcast version doesn't get Alex's sweet sound effects then people are missing out by not watching the video version.

This show has been awesome guys keep it up("That's what she said." - Rorie)!

Sorry, but unless I'm driving my car through times square there's no way in hell you're going to convince me that I have a moral obligation to look at an advertisement and I think it's incredibly gross to suggest otherwise.

You know why adblock practically became necessary? Because "the internet" went grossly overboard with plastering sites with dozens of blinking ads, even stacking them over each other, having them pop in users faces etc. The whole practice went far beyond of just being an annoyance that's easy to ignore. It severely impacted the ability to at least semi-fluidly browse the web. And I'm not convinced enough "the internet" has learned it's lesson to deactivate adblock by default. Sorry, I'm sticking with adblock and white-listing sites that I frequent regularly and whose ads are not too distracting and annoying.

@patrickklepek To listen to music while not in a car, all you need to do is go to the weapon selection menu and flip through the stations. There's an icon in the bottom left.

Have you guys ever gone to the bathroom during the adverts break on TV? Well, you are literally human pieces of shit. HOW DARE YOU!?

Wow! Had to stop watching, Alex really pissed me off! TV sucks, don't make the internet the same!

Hug Alex Initiative is a GO!

I want a video of some duders doing a group hug to Alex. Dude needs the love! XD