Another set of new shows - The Very Online Show, Albummer, and Armed and Rangerous

If I didn't know any better I'd say it seems like they're actively trying to kill the site.

Even Jeff's content has for a long time been more suitable for a solo twitch streamer. Or a youtube streamer. Which I guess is what they technically are.

I miss shows about video games on my video game website. Actual shows with a premise and production, not just webcamming random thoughts and reading chat messages. And now apparently they're not even about video games.

Can't say I have any interest whatsoever in Power Rangers or Internet Culture, but Albummer is an interesting premise for a show that I really hope won't just end up being people shitting on a thing that's already considered bad, but maybe exploring how it was misunderstood at the time or something. There are plenty of albums throughout history that were critically panned at the time of release, but have gone on to be considered classics.

A lot of the posts on this irked me a bit, but I guess people watched GB due to different things.

Although this is a videogame website. The reason I supported and watched it because the people presenting were humans that liked different stuff, to some degree the games was the job and the stuff surrounding it helped shape their content and led to interesting and human conversations.

This content feels interesting and different which might be what GB needs to try, it doesn't diminish the product in any way. Streaming games is saturated, but people like the people behind it more. I think over this past year especially, people would realise that just purely streaming games or doing the same thing can't be that fun for folk and a mix up of content might just be what people need to feel reinvigorated.

I know people have limited time and cash, so maybe people are deciding this is the time for them to jump off, but I think this mix of things allows people to also enjoy the content from ex GB folks as well as this, and have a nice variance of shows and material.

I can totally see one of these or another not-yet announced show to click with folk and then things will make sense.

This site has been a wiki, a wrestling almanac, a blog, an insight into the lives of some industry veterans, families, personalities and I think there's opportunities for it to be more (as well as games content).

Maybe as a mid 30's person that worked in the industry, I guess I'm also finding that other content interesting as I'm also getting a bit more tired of games based on schedules to play. I've loved seeing garage cleanups and the newer guilty treasures will hopefully have some great gems.

This is way longer than I expected to type, but I hope it helps people to give it a try at least. People trying new stuff but then seeing this kind of feedback (even the nicer/better worded critiques) can be extremely disheartening. There will be something there that clicks (I'd love to see some kind of history of pinball series or something more about arcades with the 2 Jeffs myself as things open up but then I'm a sucker for things like The Arcade Blogger/ Tony Temple's stuff).

Anyway still excited to see all of this stuff and it has been pretty refreshing!

GiantBomb was always about few guys goofing around on quicklooks or any lets play some new/old games. Guests were always an addition not a norm.

Site was never following trends it felt like it was a last bastion on internet not affected by all that bullshit.

Now it starts to look like any other site.

Oh well I enjoyed the site for more than a decade, i guess its the end of the era.

Man I'm gonna be glad when the trend of saying you're letting your sub run out ends and people just let their sub run out instead of declaring it like they're leaving their workplace or something.

@fugoy: I think we’re all just venting our frustration with the direction of the site. Everyone’s always saying “vote with your wallet” when it comes to enacting change, so that’s what we’re doing and we’re letting our intentions be known.

I'm not into music much but I'll tune in to the Albummer episodes about musicians I'm familiar with. Weird that an established group with music industry connections would sell a show to Giant Bomb though. Maybe a way to avoid copyright bots? Never meshed with Jan's thick nostalgia goggles and I haven't had the desire to listen to podcasts in a couple years, so Armed and Rangerous is a pass. Very Online Show sounds dreadful.

I also hate to be a downer but when I saw the title Armed and Rangerous I was hoping it would be something in the style of Murder Island or the Contra "This is the run" sad to see it isnt about gaming.
I just want to see the guys playing games again, the greatest thing for me the last week was seeing Jan and Ben playing pokemon and I usually dont care about either mobas or pokemon.

Hoping for the best but not feeling this new direction.

Not to mention a sexist comment towards women (Negative Nancies). People are just expressing their opinions.

I'll check out Armed and Rangerous as a kind of spiritual successor to All Systems Goku, and as someone who still finds original Power Rangers fun in kind of a dumb way. I won't watch along, I watched it not THAT long ago and if I'm gonna watch stuff like that these days I'll watch Super Sentai, but it should be fun at least.

I'll say, I'd almost find it more fun if they watched the Sentai shows its based on either alongside or instead of, as I feel like that's a more untapped market. They're (legally!) streaming a couple of places and the DVDs are still available as far as I know.

I must be a weirdo because I’m extremely excited for Albummer. Less excited for the other two shows but willing to give those a shot. The site’s done features before that didn’t sound good on paper but worked in execution.

Personally, I’m extremely glad nothing so far has been an unedited playthrough of a game. Not only can you find a billion of those elsewhere on the internet, but I burned out on any desire to watch that kind of thing during the Lockdown streams. It’s my opinion that the constant streams were high quantity low quality, and represented the biggest rut the site’s ever gone through. It’s not the staff’s fault, and to their credit they changed things up after several months. But even after that shift, the only feature that I had any excitement for was Going Rogue.

If people are upset that none of the announcements have followed that particular vein of a high concept playthrough, then I can certainly understand that. Personally, I find the type of content that’s rolled out at Nextlander exactly what I’m not interested in. Love those guys but it’s just not what does it for me anymore, after this year and counting.

Chiming in as another longterm subscriber, Armed and Rangerous isn’t something I’m going to listen to, but it feels of a kind with what the site has done in the past — a core site personality talking about a non-game thing they are passionate about. To a lesser extent, The Very Online Show also feels more or less relevant, as a clear descendent of things like Business Dave’s Top 10 List with involvement from staff and the Giant Bomb Extended Universe. But the Albummer thing feels completely out of step with the site’s vibe, or even what I interpreted Jeff’s pitch for the future of the site to be. What I’ve always come to Giant Bomb for has been first and foremost the core personalities, and secondarily video game-related content. Getting weird with it by bringing in contractors to bring new perspectives and outside of the box approaches to the video game sphere and closely related mediums is what I had expected from Jeff’s articulated vision. Borne to Run, Guilty Treasures and GrubbSnax have been of a kind with that expectation. But bringing in a passel of random hired guns to do a bad music podcast (kicking things off with a piping hot “lol Weezer” take, no less) with no involvement from any of the main staff is not a compelling pitch at all and feels like the furthest thing from “getting weird with it” imaginable (sure, music coverage isn’t exactly in the GB wheehouse, but “comedians dump on bad content on a podcast” is about as safe and boring a premise for a show I can think of). It gives me the same bad “entertainment dumping ground” vibes I get from IGN and GameSpot in recent years.

That said, while Borne to Run hasn’t grabbed me, I have been loving GrubbSnax and Guilty Treasures, and the Bombcast has if anything gotten better since the Nextlander Separatist Movement, so I’ll be sticking around for quite a while longer for that content alone. I just hope that initial batch of shows and whatever Ryckert’s doing wasn’t the last gasp of new game/staff/extended universe-centric content before The Wild World of Random Entertainment Freelancers takes center stage.

Can confirm you're not a weirdo! Even if they weren't what I expected I'm expecting to still be grabbed by the other two shows aside from Armed and Rangerous. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was really burned out during lockdown. The content was lacking and even what was there was just so lifeless it made it unwatchable. I didn't even listen to the bombcast or beastcast at a certain point. Now I've basically got the bombcast on every week and I love it, especially with some of the guests and Jan really coming into his own.

Rorie mentioned there's even more stuff being announced this week so I'm excited to see what. This will probably be a bit more video game focused I feel but who knows! It's exciting.

Waiting to see what the Ryckert show is before I consider re-subscribing. Only thing that has my interest is Guilty Treasures

If Dan came back and resurrected Demo Derby or Game Tapes, I'd resub. I'd be surprised if it was anything other than wrassling related, though.

I do wonder if there is some recency bias at work here cause the first three new shows we actually got were all game related. Grubbsnax, Borne to Run, and Guilty Treasures(which is fantastic btw). Now we have three new shows that aren't in that space(yet still fill the gb mold) and it's an immediate reaction to say that giant bomb is no longer a website about video games.

Every week I go to Giantbomb to see if there is something new and exciting for me then I get disappointed.

Every week I go to Nextlander and am super excited for the week. With stuff like State of Decay, FMV Vinny, and Sea of Thieves with Abby.

What this tell us is that Jeff might have lost control over his site. Which is sad cause it was started so he wouldnt have corporate breath down his neck. Oh well i guess it had to happen one day.

Welcome to the Max Fun network.

I know its a mind-blowing concept but things change and sometimes its not in your benefit.

Hell yeah!

I don't care about any of this. And that's okay.

Even if none of the new shows are of interest (and mostly that is the case for me, though Danny's new shows are a delight), I am more or less paying about $3 a month for the podcast, relaxed streams on Fridays, and some random quick looks and garage talk and such, and honestly that's ok.

I do hope Ryckert's new show is not wrestling related, because if so I'd just add it to the not interested pile.

I'm here for it! Happy for the bombcast to be the crux for the games talk and for them to take chances on whatever they're enthusiastic about for video stuff

Those shows you mentioned seemed to indicate that GB was going to focus on video games, or at least video game adjacent shows. These new shows, from their description, did not appear to be related to video games.

Most people in the comments are expressing their disappointment in that direction.

@wardcleaver: Did you think for maybe a second that they could possibly do both before replying to me?

So it's no longer a website about videogames. That's fine.

Not my cup of tea, but happy for those who enjoy the new shows. Personally I'm kinda hoping for weird Amiga stuff from Danny.

Are you just going to yell at everyone who doesn't like something about the site in every thread critical of it? You being combative does not help anyone.

I’m bummed. Dunno if I can think of three gb shows besides these that just totally miss me. I even like a lot of the folks involved! Oh well, I wish the hosts and fans the best.

wasn't until I saw this that I felt like I really understood what they are chasing and... yeah, these are honestly the vibes I'm getting.

I will try on the new shows here and there, I like to think I have diverse interests, but I have very little time for video content these days and the time I do have I spend watching more game-centric stuff, so unless they start pushing more of these into audio only podcast feeds I will probably start to fall off before my premium renewal comes back around.

EDIT: also in the face of all the pessimism this is honestly all I could think of. please excuse the photoshop skills

I'm, relatively speaking, an old-timer. This feels like something Jeff G has been trying to describe for years, in terms of doing crazy, random things. People talking about what corporate influence and market-research is behind all this... I mean maybe... but if you were actually listening, this feels like what was in his head for a long time to me. And a recent comment of his about how he would have liked to have been able to go ahead and do this along with old friends suggests to me that they would have primarily continued to provide the gaming-centric content that some people are concerned will be lacking... but is likely coming, as staffing occurs going forward. I feel like no one's been listening... the only surprises in any of this to me are the individuals involved and topics of shows, but as a general approach it's exactly what I've expected.

I will say I think the one thing that could mitigate a certain amount of negativity would be more transparency in the actual process of all these changes. I know you can't stream contract negotiations, but less off-hand comments in streams and maybe more of the thinking... perhaps.

I'm hugely pessimistic about everything in life in general, but hasn't anyone else thought that maybe... just maybe... these new diverse shows bring new content and breathing room to also allow for more videogame content to be made for your happy consumption? That maybe this doesn't spell the end of Giantbomb? Are we all so incapable of having hope?

Well... this is a new direction. Not interested in any of these three shows, but at least I can't fault them for trying something different.

I'm supportive of having shows not about video games, but the announced content seems completely out of left field. The easy thing about having content about video games was that it was a common theme that connected to the rest of the content. GrubbSnax, Borne to Run and Guilty Treasures, all nail that.

Now we have a video series about bad albums, internet memes and power rangers. There is no through line and it feels like a product of RV market research analysis. Another take is that this is the first step where GB becomes a platform for content creators to jump off YouTube, Twitch, etc. so they can host their content behind a premium membership and not have to worry about their evil overlords at Google and Amazon.

I'm here for Power Rangers talk. I'm glad they picked a good show to follow up All Systems Goku, instead of a trash show like Dragon Ball Z.

@tdous: Yeah, I agree fully about the listening part. Not only for the things explicitly stated on podcasts, videos, etc., but for what’s been apparent in staff member’s tone over time. Vinny and Alex sounded so exhausted after Abby left, and I wasn’t shocked when they announced they were leaving as well because of the prior 5 months of content. Similarly, Jeff’s frustration with the site in its late-CBSi incarnation was evident even before he said it out loud. The Bombcast has had such a major infusion of energy since they ripped the transition bandage off, and I’m happy the current staff is super excited about the content they’re working on now.

That all being said, 10000% agree with wanting more transparency and written recaps of what’s discussed offhand during streams. I don’t think dissatisfied members of the community are making bad faith comments on this and other threads, I think there is palpable frustration on the relative lack of concise communication. Tensions are high, the world is shit, and having to guess a lot of the details of Nu Bomb is wearing on people. Clear up the unknowns, and I bet that cools things down a bit.

Honestly, I'm very disappointed with most of these shows so far...

• Borne To Run is just more of Soulsborne games, which there's a ton of on this website and all over the internet. I gave it a shot because I like Danny and Tam but, even though they're great, I'm already getting tired of it.

• GrubbSnax is essentially just a longer news section of the Bombcast. Yes, I know it's not exactly the same, but honestly the format didn't attract me and listening to just Grubb on his own gets tiring so I'll just listen to the Bombcast.

• Guilty Treasures has been fun so far and definitely my favorite from these new shows! Despite the format and the editing (which is great btw), it's the one show that feels the most "Giant Bomb" for some reason.

• I'm praying for The Very Online Show to be good since Lucy and Tam are my two favorites from GameSpot and I got super excited when it was announced they would be doing content for GB, but I'm very disappointed with what has been revealed of the show so far and I was hoping it would be something more related to videogames. I'll give it a shot, but still...

• Albummer didn't catch my interest at all. I have no idea who these people are and, after checking their other videos, I didn't get any more interest in it and I also don't see how this connects to Giant Bomb. This will be another pass for me.

• I really like Jan, but a podcast about Power Rangers doesn't seem interesting either (but considering we had podcasts about Wrestling, F1, Dragon Ball, etc I don't think there's anything wrong with doing the same for Power Rangers as a side content).

Now, I understand not everything has to be tailor-made for my specific tastes, but when 5 out of 6 new shows feel like a miss to me, that's not a great sign... There have been multiple shows on GB that weren't for my tastes, but at least I could still see the value on those. Sadly I can't say the same for some of these new shows. I'm sorry for the negativity, I tried to be as polite as possible, but I also had to be honest about it. Either way, I'm still hopeful for Dan Ryckert's new show, whenever that comes!

And I'm also hoping and praying that, one day, the old style of Quick Looks dedicated to a single game in a single video with under a one-hour runtime, will return (and in full screen without streaming overlays, please!)

Been a member since 2011 and premium since 2013 and I'm not in any rush to change that but nothing announced here is what I'm looking for. I'm all for new blood, new shows, and new ideas. Guilty Treasures first ep was phenomenal and something I can't wait for more of. Grubbsnax seems like this strange, vestigial thing disconnected from the rest of the site that really feels like missed potential. The Souls show is a Souls thing, nothing I'm going to be interested in but I imagine there's still an audience. These new announcements are so far removed from anything I would come to GB for. The Power Rangers show is the most GB-adjacent feeling of them but still nothing I need. The others could not be less appealing. Very disappointed with the new direction so far overall.

@brainscratch: i have a tendency to poorly phrase things but honestly these thoughts are pretty much down to a T my same thoughts.

I guess it really was the staff that made GB what it was for me. If you put any past or current staff member in the seats of these shows rather than the assortment of people they've chosen I'd probably be on board. Like, Albummer sounds like a fine concept but are any of those people even in the games industry? Or have any relation to the staff whatsoever? I'm all for learning about new voices but I just don't even see the connection there.
Unsurprisingly, Jan's show sounds like the choice pick of the three but I've got zero interest in Power Rangers.

@whitegreyblack: Here's the problem with that - GB only has so many employees and there are only so many hours in the day. Even if they are going to hire a few more people I don't see how making time for all of these non-game related shows won't eat into the time and resources traditionally reserved for Quick Looks, live shows, and all the other established game-related content they have created thus far.

@deckard: I guess I just sorta fundamentally disagree with that.

Having shows created by new folks should free up time for games content, not take away from it. I don't see how these shows that are created by new GB adjacent creatives will eat into the time the rest of the "core" GB crew (I hope they will hire more folks on that end of things) have to create their own shows - so long as it's Jeff B that's overseeing most of it (it's his new job description, after all) so the creative folks can focus on creating.

@ajamafalous: There's only two threads here and obviously in the other thread they deserved to get yelled at considering one deactivated and one apologized for their tone. Here however I'm gonna be honest I don't think you or most of the others are helping out any much either at all.

Just wanted to chime in (as someone who let their sub run out without an announcement) that that's an easy confirmation bias to fall into: you only hear about the people who announces it, there could easily be as big if not bigger of a trend of people quietly letting their sub expire and there's no way of us knowing.

I was curious to see what the reception towards the new shows were like in here. I didn't realize they are straight up cancelling quick looks which I actually do still check out as it's pretty much the only thing that's free.

Bakalar definitely likes his music a bit on the heavier side of things. 2M2LN are like if Ghost and Conan O'Brien had a love child. I've only started watching season one of their show, and it's kind of a blast. The skits are funny and gives me some GOTY vibes of the past.

As for their tie to games? I know a lot of the writers have varying interests in them. They even have this video of them playing metal renditions of game themes at Comic Con. Almost feels like a GB of heavier music that I'd been missing out on all this time.

@lanechanger: They are not straight up canceling quick looks. While I acknowledge that possibility about the people we don't know, by that same token there's the other side where the people who are content and are happy aren't actually saying anything because well, they're happy. So we don't really know either way here expect from the people who wax poetic about the good ol days and the stupid secret society of upset weirdos who have their own discord server.

@whitegreyblack: We just saw an example of this during the podcast this week - Jean-Luc had to fill in for Jan again because Jan had to duck out and finish editing the Power Rangers show. I'm sure there's going to be more situations in the future where games coverage is going to be compromised because the staff will be too busy producing all of this other stuff.

I hope Albummer is a one time thing because it sounds just terrible.

@bonorbitz: “Negative Nancy” is sexist towards women?

@nickm: I think people just see "Nancy" and thinks it's sexist. It's actually a variation on "Nervous Nellie," which refers to a worn-down horse. So I guess it's horse-ist?