PAX East 2012: Giant Bomb Panel

Nervous Alex

I'm watching all the pax panels in reverse order. I love Rich Gallup's segment for magic and how much the writing on the walls was there for 38 studios.

i love the bombcast crew. keep making my world seem like a marginally better place : )

Holy shit JEFF your hair reminds me of Eric Bishoff. Weird.

Jeff: "With a little bit of PRESTIDITATION....."

Ryan: XD

Brad is wasted. Hilarious.

@AdMordem said:

@fisk0: Patrick has slowly been earning his stripes with giantbomb.

He made some mistakes early that made him look like a jerk (Nolan North INterview!), but has got a few things under his belt now. His articles stimulate a lot of conversation and have provided more solid indie coverage than was previously available, and the Molyjam thing is just amazingly good for the industry as a whole, as well as providing real actual insight into gaming.

Alex, on the other hand has basically treated Giantbomb with contempt. On top of that his contribution is a waste of funds in my eyes - he provides no video content, he is not on location (this suits him more than giantbomb), I nearly always find myself with a completely different opinion to things than Alex, therefore most of his editorial is, and has been for 10 years, pretty damned useless. I also feel he disrespected Screened and it's community, not to mention now jobless Matt who he left to clean up his mess.

Alex only has this position with Giantbomb because of his strong friendship with Jeff, not because of his job performance. He has failed miserably at his last 3 jobs.

Yes.

@joshthebear: Thank you sir for putting up that video of daniel bryan. I am totally stealing it from you

@first question guy , fuck your opinion :P

Great panel! I need to go to one of these sometime.

Alex is so funny

Rich Gallup running around after the magic street was the best. THE BEST.

Where... is Vinny?

@Irishranger said:

@Aarny: Check around 3:10 and listen reeeeeal close! :-)

I didn't start watching before posting :P

@Aarny: Check around 3:10 and listen reeeeeal close! :-)

They are fucking awesome they never disappoint!!!

Yeah, Comedy Button representing at 1:12!

Where... is Vinny?

Alex's laugh.

I like how all the audience questions come from an area shrouded in darkness so you can't see the person.

Alex seemed really happy to be there.

Two questions made me cringe. The guy asking if they'd have a one on one with him about Future Soldier, was just weird and I think the whole panel was weirded out by it. Like they said, they'll eventually receive preview builds to look at, and he was what? a tester? why such a fascination with the game?

The second was the guy asking for a new "Extended Play". The question's been done to death, it's not funny in the slightest, they get annoyed when ever anyone asks it and they even answered it earlier in the panel. If you're gonna just ignore what they've said a hundred times already and ask that stupid question again, then at least get the fucking name right. I would have felt sorry for the guy if he hadn't been such a prick for asking that dumb question again.

I like all of them, including Alex.

Yakuza ER would have been amazing...

@vizionblind said:

patrick is so annoying

@BeanoFritz said:

@GunslingerPanda: I cringe when ever Alex talks. It is the worst. He improves nothing. His jokes are never funny and no one at the panel ever laughed at them.

Hey, that's not fair. One person always laughs at Alex's jokes:

Himself.

@GunslingerPanda: I cringe when ever Alex talks. It is the worst. He improves nothing. His jokes are never funny and no one at the panel ever laughed at them.

@AdMordem said:

@Octaslash said:

@AdMordem: Please stop posting your hate. You're idiotic assumptions and baseless speculation about Giant Bomb employees isn't productive. You're just being a dumb cunt.

He has failed miserably at his last 3 jobs.

No, actually he's been doing fine, asshole. Vitriol comments like these are why you're the cancer of the Giant Bomb community.

He didn't do fine with screened in either position, Screened has weak support, Alex did nothing to improve it while he was in charge, and then handed it to Matt to slowly die - which it now has. He didn't do fine with Matt. I'm sure I'm not the only person he was needlessly rude to when he was at Harmonix.

Attack my arguments if you want to. Name calling and comparisons to cancer are not really acceptable anywhere, grow up.

I have had 2 close relatives die from cancer over the past 12 months, it is not a joke, and definitely not a reasonable response to some text on a website.

I will be reporting your post.

@TheHBK Yeah thankgod he is not a regular on the bombcast. He talks over people way too much, which always rubs me the wrong way, cause generally I don't agree with his opinions. Had to stop listening to the screened cast cause I got sick of hearing Matt get talked over and interrupted constantly.

It's kinda of weird because on paper I should love the guy - loves games, loves movies, musician, loves zombies. He is just not able to connect to me at all through those shared passions, scary considering that's kind of his job at the moment.

As you say, grow up.

@Nicholas said:

@asmo29a said:

@Nicholas said:

@McDevy said:

They really should have Drew and Dave there, (at least Dave since Drew has to film) -- they're essential!

Get Alex the fuck off seriously, guy is such a tool. Never could understand why anyone likes him, he's obnoxious and childish and narcissistic.

Perfect panel: Ryan, Jeff, Vinny, Brad, Patrick, Dave, Drew, Johnny Vignocchi, Adam Boyes. Done.

Have you ever met Alex is person? He's one of the kindest people I've ever met.

That might very well be true, and good for him, but that doesn't change anything about his internet video persona. I find most the adjectives thrown around in these comments rather fitting. Alex might be the awesomest guy in the world, but he still reduces my enjoyment of pretty much every single piece of GB content he's in. I can't even stand his writing. Sorry *shrug*.

That's fair I suppose.

Alex is the guy who takes the joke just one too far. We all know that guy, and I feel like it can make a conversation a little awkward, but that dude is necessary to get the conversation back on track sometimes- especially when we're talking about, I dunno, 10-long poop lines and magic dudes ripping off Richard Garriot.

That flowerpot magic thing was so hilarious. And Rich Gallup is still awesome.

Dude who asked the last question, you were awesome and I talked to you right after the show when you helped me out. I never got your name but you're a badass!

@Nicholas said:

@McDevy said:

They really should have Drew and Dave there, (at least Dave since Drew has to film) -- they're essential!

Get Alex the fuck off seriously, guy is such a tool. Never could understand why anyone likes him, he's obnoxious and childish and narcissistic.

Perfect panel: Ryan, Jeff, Vinny, Brad, Patrick, Dave, Drew, Johnny Vignocchi, Adam Boyes. Done.

Have you ever met Alex is person? He's one of the kindest people I've ever met.

That might very well be true, and good for him, but that doesn't change anything about his internet video persona. I find most the adjectives thrown around in these comments rather fitting. Alex might be the awesomest guy in the world, but he still reduces my enjoyment of pretty much every single piece of GB content he's in. I can't even stand his writing. Sorry *shrug*.

@Octaslash: That is a much better reply then your personal attack on me before, and brings up a point I want to clarify.

I'm not trying to say Alex had some insideous plan to destroy screened, but talking about his job performance. He was hired to be the head of screened and make it a successful site. He didn't meet that goal and then stepped down to let someone else have a go. Unfortunately that's a little like the warm up comic sucking, and the main comic having to deal with a shitty audience.

While the general user base of screened do like Alex, that's not the point. He didn't attract anywhere near enough new susbscribers, and could not create enough activity from the community in the forums to make the site grow or turn successful. Matt has bitched about his low pay grade through this period, that is clearly a direct result of the successfulness of the site. Alex never really came good on a lot of the promises he made at the start of the site either.

The traffic and other data was available on the Whiskey Media site, so I have seen the numbers.

Now he might be a nice guy and all that, and I'm sure he tried really hard to make it work.

Unfortunately trying hard didn't stop the site from essentially dying. It needed a leader who could deliver successes for the site, something Alex said he could do, and then - as I said before - failed miserably.

This might be the best GB PAX panel ever.

Great panel. I hope the "band" comes back next year.

@AdMordem said:

He didn't do fine with screened in either position, Screened has weak support, Alex did nothing to improve it while he was in charge, and then handed it to Matt to slowly die - which it now has. He didn't do fine with Matt.

The Screened community loved Alex and were sad to see him go. He and Matt got along fine. They still talk on Twitter. Speculate all you want, but you don't know what went down behind the scenes of their departure.

@Octaslash said:

@AdMordem: Please stop posting your hate. You're idiotic assumptions and baseless speculation about Giant Bomb employees isn't productive. You're just being a dumb cunt.

He has failed miserably at his last 3 jobs.

No, actually he's been doing fine, asshole. Vitriol comments like these are why you're the cancer of the Giant Bomb community.

He didn't do fine with screened in either position, Screened has weak support, Alex did nothing to improve it while he was in charge, and then handed it to Matt to slowly die - which it now has. He didn't do fine with Matt. I'm sure I'm not the only person he was needlessly rude to when he was at Harmonix.

Attack my arguments if you want to. Name calling and comparisons to cancer are not really acceptable anywhere, grow up.

I have had 2 close relatives die from cancer over the past 12 months, it is not a joke, and definitely not a reasonable response to some text on a website.

I will be reporting your post.

@TheHBK Yeah thankgod he is not a regular on the bombcast. He talks over people way too much, which always rubs me the wrong way, cause generally I don't agree with his opinions. Had to stop listening to the screened cast cause I got sick of hearing Matt get talked over and interrupted constantly.

It's kinda of weird because on paper I should love the guy - loves games, loves movies, musician, loves zombies. He is just not able to connect to me at all through those shared passions, scary considering that's kind of his job at the moment.

@oscar said:

I'm going to tread lightly in order to avoid being labeled a hateful person, a "hater", or a "dumb cunt" by the "mature" members of the community.

I don't think anyone minds if you aren't pleased with the behaviour of someone on the panel. However, when someone personally insults and spits on a founding member of this website, I feel the need to use the best of my vocabulary. The person I was replying to had no constructive criticism to offer; Just disgusting vitriol.

FUUUUUUUUCK YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! :D

That is the nerdiest ska band, ponytails and fedoras.

Alex is the man!!!

I'm going to tread lightly in order to avoid being labeled a hateful person, a "hater", or a "dumb cunt" by the "mature" members of the community.
I hope we can all find a common ground and agree that interrupting is rude, that raising one's voice to talk over another person is rude, that interrupting with jokes that nobody laughs at makes things awkward (a la The Office), and that doing this continuously makes conversations uncomfortable to listen to for some spectators. 

That being said, I wish that didn't happen. It didn't happen very often before, and when it did, people complained not because they saw guests as outsiders (some pleasant guests, such as John V, were welcomed) but because some guests were loud, disrupting, told bad jokes, and made things awkward (e.g. Leigh <>). Now it is happening quite often, and some people (including me) find that the kind of behaviors I mentioned disrupt the flow of the conversations and the general feel of the content. 

I'm not hating, I have nothing against changes and new people coming in (the more the merrier), I'm certainly not in favor of neutralizing the personalities of the people who make the content (the more varied, the better), and I don't pretend to know how the staff behaves when they're not in front of microphones (any judgements I make about their personality and behavior are in relation to the content they put up), it's just that I personally think that that kind of behaviors stick out in any kind of conversation and make some content slightly less enjoyable.

Alex is too snarky and loud... I know that's his shtick, but it's kind of distracting.

Amazing.

no offense but this was a POOR panel. embarrasingly bad

patrick is so annoying

wow that asshole who stole the last question

Very entertaining video. Was probably quite fun in person.

Brad sitting in the middle of a stage between everyone, hardly saying anything, hungover as shit and drinking beer.

@ZGoon: Amen