@msavo: I wish Jeff would at least hint at what the problem is rather than use such condescending phrasing to ambiguously address the quite reasonable question without any real clue as to what the actual problem is.

@ThePickle said:

@ominousbedroom said:

I'm slow to the party and didn't even realize Rorie was gone. Why'd he get let go/leave? He's got such a great personality. Best of luck to him wherever he goes...

He left/was fired from Screened after it was bought by BermanBraun.

It's weird logging onto screened now, it looks exactly the same, but feels soulless and empty.

@msavo said:

@DG991 said:

So... they don't have a job position open basically.

I agree that is what it sounds like.

Yep. This is most likely the reason.

@DG991 said:

So... they don't have a job position open basically.

I think that's probably not the case.

Jeff has stated several times that his goal for the immediate future of Giant Bomb is to roll out the new site and then to staff up.

The problem probably lies in a number of things. What is Rorie's skill set? What are the needs of Giant Bomb? Is he a smart person to get when they could get someone else?

Who knows. I just think it would be real awkward to be Jeff and have the internet, who doesn't know you ro your friend, constnatly being like "why don't you hire your friend?" and your friend being like "yeah, why don't you?"

I have lots of friends I would never go into business with.

@Humanity said:

@msavo: I wish Jeff would at least hint at what the problem is rather than use such condescending phrasing to ambiguously address the quite reasonable question without any real clue as to what the actual problem is.

What a bizarre thing to say.

Jeff is trying to run a business, and the internet has basically randomly picked a guy to work for him and then demands answers as to why he's not hiring him?

Like.. what?

Maybe Rorie is a crappy employee? Maybe Jeff just doesn't like him that much? maybe Rorie just doesn't have the skills?

NONE of these things are the kind of stuff a sane person with any business sense would comment to an internet forum.

@JazGalaxy said:

@Humanity said:

@msavo: I wish Jeff would at least hint at what the problem is rather than use such condescending phrasing to ambiguously address the quite reasonable question without any real clue as to what the actual problem is.

What a bizarre thing to say.

Jeff is trying to run a business, and the internet has basically randomly picked a guy to work for him and then demands answers as to why he's not hiring him?

Like.. what?

Maybe Rorie is a crappy employee? Maybe Jeff just doesn't like him that much? maybe Rorie just doesn't have the skills?

NONE of these things are the kind of stuff a sane person with any business sense would comment to an internet forum.

Maybe so. But if you have read Rorie's work or listened to the Screened podcasts back when him and Alex were doing them then all of that points to that he is good at what he does.

That being said... yes maybe they don't feel he is right for GiantBomb. So that's that.

I wish Screened would come back :(. And not that crapfest that is Screened right now.

Has no one realised that Rorie has being doing a bunch of freelance work for Gamespot for a while, mostly doing game guides? He should totally be Giant Bomb's guide dude. We're gonna have a whole new guide system soon too, dude we can work with him. WHAT WHAT.

@Humanity said:

@JazGalaxy No one demanded they hire him on the spot. The question was: you said you'd love to work with Rorie and now he's looking for steady work so why not hire him? Seems reasonable enough. Rorie is probably by far the best writer out of the current staff. Go read some of his blogs on the forums. In addition he plays a wide spectrum of games and has an open mind about them. In turn the response to this query was: hmpf

I've followed Rories stuff since he was "Boss of Bosses" back at Gamespot.

He's an okay writer. But that's not necessarily what Giant Bomb is looking to expand in.

I mean it's a moot point. It doesn't matter what any of us think. It's just bizarre for the internet to be asking guy "why don't you hire your friend?" There's absolutely no answer to the question and it's jerk-ish to ask it.

@Humanity: I'd rather he just not answer the question than be a dick to someone asking it, to be honest.

@Humanity said:

@msavo: I wish Jeff would at least hint at what the problem is rather than use such condescending phrasing to ambiguously address the quite reasonable question without any real clue as to what the actual problem is.

Have you considered that when Rorie was around, Jeff had to really elbow his way into Ryan's life? Think about it. All the times during Happy Hour when Rorie would sit next to Ryan, and they'd hold hands and make puppy love eyes at each other. Watch Jeff in those scenes. His eyes were spitting daggers.

Jeff just wants Ryan all to himself. Think about it.

@Humanity said:

@JazGalaxy No one demanded they hire him on the spot. The question was: you said you'd love to work with Rorie and now he's looking for steady work so why not hire him? Seems reasonable enough.

And his answer was basically: I'd still love to work with Rorie, but right now (for reasons he doesn't HAVE to explain, but are fairly obvious) that's not possible (and his referral to seeing how the adult world works implies that it's due to money or corporate bureaucracy; more likely both).

CBS bought Giant Bomb. Everyone acted like that meant GB would be flush with cash. It's as if nobody realized that GB was probably bought because, despite having a comparably small audience, they're also not a very expensive company to maintain, especially compared to their competitors. Considering they haven't even been at CBS a year and as such are "untested" from a corporate viewpoint, I'm sure the last thing CBS wants to do is just hire on another person which will jack up the overhead costs of running the company without actually increasing the readership that much; especially considering that most of the Giant Bomb love is due to it's intimate start-up nature. I love Rorie. I'd love to have him on Giant Bomb. But hiring him, and everything that that allows, isn't a "sure thing" to increase their audience.

Basically, the last thing CBS wants to do is make Giant Bomb more costly to run. More employees will make GB more expensive to run without necessarily making it a bigger draw. They hired on some engineering/design guys (that they share with Gamespot and are actually CBS employees, not GB employees) because they legally HAD to make a new site. Fuck, if they had that much money to throw around, they'd probably have a lot of new gadgets, and likely would've at least offered Rorie some freelance work, considering most of the audience likes/wants him onboard.

(Hope this isn't coming off dickish, just trying to explain my thoughts on the situation.)

And to your question about why Jeff wouldn't outright state the reasoning, if my assumptions above are correct, CBS probably wouldn't appreciate Jeff throwing them under the bus and vilifying them and turning his audience's animosity against the site's owners.

@Wrighteous86 said:

@Humanity said:

@JazGalaxy No one demanded they hire him on the spot. The question was: you said you'd love to work with Rorie and now he's looking for steady work so why not hire him? Seems reasonable enough.

And his answer was basically: I'd still love to work with Rorie, but right now (for reasons he doesn't HAVE to explain, but are fairly obvious) that's not possible (and his referral to seeing how the adult world works implies that it's due to money or corporate bureaucracy; more likely both).

CBS bought Giant Bomb. Everyone acted like that meant GB would be flush with cash. It's as if nobody realized that GB was probably bought because, despite having a comparably small audience, they're also not a very expensive company to maintain, especially compared to their competitors. Considering they haven't even been at CBS a year and as such are "untested" from a corporate viewpoint, I'm sure the last thing CBS wants to do is just hire on another person which will jack up the overhead costs of running the company without actually increasing the readership that much; especially considering that most of the Giant Bomb love is due to it's intimate start-up nature. I love Rorie. I'd love to have him on Giant Bomb. But hiring him, and everything that that allows, isn't a "sure thing" to increase their audience.

Basically, the last thing CBS wants to do is make Giant Bomb more costly to run. More employees will make GB more expensive to run without necessarily making it a bigger draw. They hired on some engineering/design guys (that they share with Gamespot and are actually CBS employees, not GB employees) because they legally HAD to make a new site. Fuck, if they had that much money to throw around, they'd probably have a lot of new gadgets, and likely would've at least offered Rorie some freelance work, considering most of the audience likes/wants him onboard.

(Hope this isn't coming off dickish, just trying to explain my thoughts on the situation.)

And to your question about why Jeff wouldn't outright state the reasoning, if my assumptions above are correct, CBS probably wouldn't appreciate Jeff throwing them under the bus and vilifying them and turning his audience's animosity against the site's owners.

I already said that. But this is correct.

I don't think that's a particulary accurate reading of the situation.

Rorie says he'd love to work for Giant Bomb if they'd just ask him. That means he'd love to work for Giant Bomb if they would just ask him.

Jeff is saying "I'd love to work with Rorie on a project in the future if things line up" which means... absolutely nothing. There's nothing you can read out of that statement as to how Jeff feels, the state of giant bomb, or anything else. Even commenting on that sorf of thing in any real sense could have possibly legal implications.

A picture of Jeff facepalming would be a perfect way to end all of this crazy fan-fic staff discussion.

@Wrighteous86: Hey I don't know anything about running an ad-revenue based website. I don't know their budget, overhead costs or anything along those lines. The reason someone might ask is exactly because they don't know how any of this really works. I don't need to "grow up" to learn this, because I am a graphic artist and I never will and don't really want to know any business end machinations of running a site. My only issue was with the phrasing of Jeffs answer, which you can't deny was a bit dickish. A simple "I can't really comment on that right now" would have sufficed. Likewise if it's a budget problem then I don't see how "we don't have the budget to take on another writer right now" is any sort of insider information, or vilifying Gamestop in any way. I'm not naive enough to think all the talk about transparency of running the site would ever amount to anything beyond what color buttons they plan to incorporate in the future, but at the same time it would be nice if you could get a straight answer once in a while. Alas this has turned into way too long of an argument full of conjecture and speculation about something that is not even that important so I am humbly bowing out on this one. As one final addendum I'd like to say that I sincerely hope it is simply budget issues and not anything more personal because I'd love to see @Rorie contribute to the site on a regular basis as I enjoy both his varied taste in games and casual style of writing.

Guys, why can't we just celebrate that none of the horrible interns got moved over in the buyout?

Remember when Giant Bomb used to do this horrible -ish?

The amount of people that do not know how the real world of business works is staggering. This and the whole "More content!" crowd proves it.

Well he wont be coming to giantbomb anytime soon.

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/articles/122/1227156p1.html

Congrats duder.