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

@bisonhero: wow, I must have completely missed them revisiting that segment, I genuinely thought that was just a one episode thing.

In June 2018 when they had started to do Star Spangled Beasters (the series was going to gradually post episodes, ending around 4th of July much like Abby's Halloween and Valentine's Day themed shows), the unfortunate timing was that this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44518942

was all over the news during those exact weeks in June 2018. The comments on the Star Spangled Beasters videos were basically not about the video, and focused on/argued about how maybe those weeks in June where the US was receiving internal and external condemnation were maybe not weeks where people were proud to be American, or had any interest in watching a series celebrating America. The series was cancelled and Abby released this statement:

https://twitter.com/ybbaaabby/status/1009864343226404864

Probably for the best given the timing. They could've launched the show during any other June in Trump's presidency and it likely wouldn't have gone nearly as bad as June 2018.

At this point I feel like I'm part of a weird Twitch reverse raid setup. We are being shopped to these various creators as a large subscriber base where they may be able to come in and pick up a few followers by providing GiantBomb with a few episodes of content no matter how relevant it is to the original idea of the website. To put it another way I feel like I'm a product of GiantBomb not a customer.

That's also the nature of doing a music show around a certain theme instead of discussing 1 album for an hour. They were struggling for content and kept having to talk about Rivers Cuomo being a creepy dude, because there just wasn't all that much to talk about for an hour straight. Especially without really zooming in on these songs and treating the music as study-worthy.

GB's music shows didn't have this problem. There were so many songs to talk about. The bands that produced them. The scene that they were a part of. 5 minutes later, and we're talking about a different band. That's a good pace to have. And because it was structured around a theme, it could be a collaborative effort between the crew and the audience. Even outside of the video, you still had plenty of GB folk sharing bad music from the 80's and 90's with eachother.

Oh, huh, that's a good comparison. I was super into ScrewAttack from like 2006-2013. (In fact, one big reason as to why I eventually gravitated towards Giant Bomb was because I was looking for a SA replacement.) I think it's relevant because just like now, I largely ignored those ancillary videos and only cared about the ones containing the ScrewAttack crew. Same principle is at play here today.

i came into screwattack cause a friend of mine showed me a brentalfloss video around 09? and stayed around till about 2013 or so myself, i dropped it slowly for similar reasons in favor of more gameinformer content and jared's youtube. i didn't intend for the comparison in the same way your making it but now that you mention it yeah , eventually that site changes in a similar way and then got bought and merged and now no longer exists. i would hate for GB to have the same fate but frankly its hard to assume they won't if this is how change is going to be. even before all the collab stuff was announced and the guys left something in me made me wonder if it was more of a downsize and merge with gamespot thing. i'm not saying thats what they're going for but its not an impossibility either even moreso with the amount of GS staff in these new shows ( not that they never guested before but still shows and guests are different)

i've seen things discuss albums in depth before for an hour in my younger years and i frankly just don't think the thing of not having something to talk about is a real issue. If anything Maybe its cause they just weren't into the topic? but then hey idk why not just not do that album as a topic? i missed the GB 80s/90s stuff mentioned somehow ( probably cause there was other content around the time and i was working/had less time) so i can't draw a comparison to that personally but i don't feel the need to . i have zero real opinion on weezer good or bad but it didn't seem like most of them did either other than the 1 person and frankly music can be more than the artist that made them imo. the only reason i can assume they might have picked them as a topic that comes to mind is the stuff around e3 that had that 1 song and was talked about on here around then. either way alot about those ppl just rubbed me the wrong way. i know bakalar at the least seemed to like them based on his t-shirts but that aside they seem to have zero connection and like others said it was oddly negative vs what had been mentioned about negativity on the site in more recent times. i've kinda said it before and i agree with others i think all these random changes just feel more bakalar than jeff g. i still find vinny's exit remarks on the final beastcast alot more telling at this point when he mentioned bakalar and not jeff, its pretty clear who seems to more be in charge at this point specially when they're job title is obviously higher.

@czircon: Yeah, I figures that's how all of this would go down as well.

The fact that so many of the new shows are just glorified podcasts is a little disheartening. I do think Guilty Treasues was really good but was deliberating whether to sign up for Premium after the free trial ended last week and these shows have made up my mind. Albummer was really dreadful imo.

There seems to be about 3 positions here:

1) GB's recent changes seem antithetical to their original vision, I don't like it, and I will choose other entertainment/spend my money elsewhere.

2) I have nostalgia for GB and am willing to ride along to see what happens. I like at least some of the new content and am willing to continue to support the site.

3) Traitors to GB shall be purged, GB was never about video games, goodbye false prophets, long live GB!

The common thread is that no one really likes the new RV/GB.

Good luck Jeff G.

@digitaldisco: How do you manage to draw that conclusion with position 2 already right there?

@hydranockz: lol you can be ride or die and not like the direction. That's the whole "or die" part!

All can say is thank god for Nextlander and their content. These shows are all well and good but I miss the random content and of course the bread and butter of quick looks. Feel like we the days of the site churning out quick looks are just gone.

@twins: But the post didn't say ride or die it just said ride along. It's still a positive option if you read the sentence literally right after it.

The new shows are confusing. Albummer isn't about video games and doesn't have any GB members on it. Borne to Run is a odd choice. Not only have the Souls games been played to death on twitch and youtube but on this very site. Grubbsnax is the only show that makes any sense to me but it has to compete with Waypoint and people like Yong Yea. When they first started talking about new shows I imagined stuff like Burgle My Bananas or Steal My Sunshine. Maybe a talk show with different devs as guests. I'm sure they will figure it out eventually but for now I'm a little disappointed.

GB really needs Dan Rykert back to do some game related shows

I was really only here for the people, now they're mostly gone. Can't find it in me to care much about the new folks, plus I just don't give a shit about random people's negative views on music or anything else. New weezer album sucks, that's a show right? I guess.. Not for me. Also, I'm already way too online. Waaaaay too online.

I wish they went for a wider spectrum of gaming rather than including other forms of media. More VR, maybe even more phone games or whatever the hell. Broader range of genres, more simulators etc. etc. etc.

If I want someone's opinions on movies or music or whatever, I'll ask someone I know. Gaming is different because you can actually watch people do it. Content made about every other medium is just "oh hey we can't really show or play anything cause then we get copyright struck, so here is me talking about a movie/album for 45 minutes." Valueless. Even if they have the right to play clips or whole songs etc, just of no value.

Games are the superior medium. They are all that matter. Everything else is inferior passive garbage.

I don't even know what Giant Bomb is anymore. This isn't what I want from it.

I'll echo the sentiments on Albummer. I've just listened to it and I enjoy the crew just playing off each other but I'm not learning anything from it. Todd in the Shadows covers bad albums in a much better depth in a shorter runtime. For free.

Although it might get me to check out 2 Minutes to Late Night.

No matter your opinion on Albummer, definitly check out the covers 2 Minutes to late night put out. Definitly one of the online highlights of 2020-2021 for me, despite not knowing 95% of the people involved.

Just giving my 2 week check in. Not a fan of any of this new content. And I'm not here saying it to be a downer or to be rude. The content over the years has been literally amazing. The Giantbomb now feels like I'm on a different planet and it makes me sad. If it matters, I'm 34 years old and LOVED Power Rangers growing up. But I don't have any desire to watch Power Rangers and then listen to a show about it later. No interest in the music show with all new people either. I'll keep stopping in once in a while to see what pops up, for now it's only the Bombcast.

The post-mortem of what went wrong that lead to the eventual shutdown of this website will be interesting, at least. All the torrid details of Red Venture management making them churn out a bunch of unrelated content to appeal to millennials while totally alienating their core fanbase will be hilariously ironic; since that is what the original GB crew always made fun of in the past.

Might be waiting a while on that one, Barack. Especially if the new shows bring in a new audience. That's the flipside of it and it's why so many freelancers/influencers/youtubers collaborate.

@shindig: that is a valid statement. personally i haven't been too hot on most of the new stuff but who knows where it goes. brining in outside ppl always helps bring in new ppl anywhere tho , so even if ppl who were here for years don't stay or sub that doesn't mean the site will die persay but no matter what it will change. i know i wasn't here from the start i came cause of dan , i stayed cause i liked what i seen.

The Albummer show sounds ok, but I feel it’ll have the same problem with me that I have with the Song Exploder podcast: I’m only really going to watch when they do an album/artist I’ve actually listened to, and just like Song Exploder, even the artist choice can be tenuous (I get that it’s probably due to licensing, but really, you have Metallica on an episode, but you do a mediocre C-side like Moth to a Flame and not something like Master of Puppets or One?). In the end, I’m just not going to go out of my way to listen to an album I probably wouldn’t have listened to out of my own volition just to hear a bunch of people shit on it.

However, I should be fair and reserve proper judgement until they do an episode on an album I’ve actually listened to (might be triggering though if they do one I actually like).

Sucks that most people don't seem to like the new shows but I think they are all pretty fucking rad and I like all the new people I've been introduced to over the last few weeks. The last time I was this excited about the site was 2015 era GB.

It's weird seeing people say "well thank god Nextlander is here" because I've found their content to be so incredibly boring and safe I've yet to finish an entire video of theirs. They are doing the exact same thing that theyve been doing for like a decade only now it costs much more and you are getting significantly less of it.

I get that people want to see more "core" GB staff but let's not forget how incredibly under staffed they are right now. Jan and Jason are both video producers, Rorie still takes care of customer support and other backend stuff and Jeff G is in the middle of moving with a second child on the way while trying to run a company behind the scenes. Maybe exercise a bit of patience and understanding.

Also the notion that we are being "shopped" to other creators is pretty absurd. It was pretty clear from the get-go that these new people are creators that people like Jeff B and Jeff G were already familiar with and thought they would be a good fit for the "GB Extended Universe" or whatever people are calling it.

Maybe take off your tin foil hats and give it some time for these new shows to find their groove instead of immediately writing them off because of some weird preconceived notions you have about what GB is or should be.

@ak416: Wait how does Nextlander cost more?

@efesell: strictly speaking comparatively to Giant Bomb, its much worse value for my money. If I want to watch NL's content without ads (which I do, because fuck ads), I'm either paying for a monthly Twitch subscription or a Youtube Premium subscription or both, at CAD$6.99 and CAD$11.99 per month. If I want to "consume" every piece of content they put out, I'm looking at a minimum of CAD$13.50 a month, or in and around $150.00 per year with the 8% discount.

With Giant Bomb, I'm paying ~CAD$43.00 per year and I get every piece of content they put out, all of it ad free.

@ak416: Honest question: where are the ads? I haven't paid for anything yet concerning Nextlander and I don't think there's been one yet on the podcast (or if there has, it's not a weekly basis thing which is why I don't remember) nor seen one on their videos. But that's the difference between being independent and being owned by a corporation.

As to your earlier post, "doing the exact same thing" is kind of the point. That's what a lot of people seem to want, and GB is currently not delivering on that front.

Alright well the only thing I'm considering there is the actual cost of accessing content of which the vast majority of it costs nothing. The only thing I've seen on the bonus tiers are behind the scenes stuff.

@jasperkazai: As I mentioned in my post, on both YouTube and Twitch their content is monetized. Also, one of their Patreon perks of the lowest tier (CAD$7.00 per month) is "Ad-free flagship Nextlander podcast, every week".

But I feel like this is getting completely off-topic. I'd say we should take this conversation over to the Nextlander Discord but that's also something they've monetized.

Just as a side note, I'm pretty certain Nextlander's Youtube videos are not monetized (i.e: they are set so they don't show ads). I don't use an ad blocker on Youtube, have watched pretty much every Nextlander video, and I've never had an ad. This makes sense as their primary focus for income right now is Patreon, not advertising. None of their podcasts have had ads either, at least when listened to on Apple's podcast app.

edit: Huh, weird. I've never had an ad on their videos once. Twitch I have, but never Youtube.

@ak416: I think there’s two things to consider.

1. It’s totally reasonable to not like new content

2. Not everyone wanted gb to become something different. When the site changes to this off brand av club it’s going to lose people it no longer interests. That’s a reasonable conclusion.

Nextlander is continuing what they did before, and that’s going to grab people who liked that content. As for GB being a value, is a hard argument to take seriously when they do not post any content I wish to view. It’s not a tin foil hat, it’s bad change management.

But people want "more of the same" as in Quick Looks, Demo Derby, Game Tapes, Ranking Of Fighters, Endurance Run, etc. Or, at least, shows similar to that (since some of those might not be possible to do from home).

Nextlander isn't doing that, they're "doing the exact same thing" as in long aimless streams like Giant Bomb was doing during the early days of the pandemic last year and everyone got tired of that a long time ago. They're not actually doing "shorter" gameplay shows with a purpose. So, right now, neither Giant Bomb nor Nextlander are actually delivering the type of content a ton of people want.

@ben_h: Nah the YouTube channel definitely plays ads.

If you're into Nextlander for the content, you can straight up watch 90% of their content on youtube for free. Get Ublock if you despise ads and don't want to contribute to their show in any way i guess. I don't see in which world this is unreasonable on Nextlander's part.

YouTube ads are also 5 seconds then you press a button so paying to get rid of them is for rubes.

I started watching Albummer and had to shut it off. It was just dumb. I can listen to Rick Beato Beato, a 50-something year old music producer with expert music knowledge say good things about Weezer and criticize it intelligently, or I can listen to a bunch of 30-year old hipsters try to mine an hours worth of “comedy’ out of talking about something they don’t understand and criticizing a 30-year commercial hit machine with vapid personal attacks.

No?

this is a valid point , while not exactly related to the site or its new shows (the topic of the thread) alot of ppl keep saying if you want the same old gb content with the old ppl you might have liked to go there .. thing for me is do i love the old staff at next lander? yes , i also enjoy the popcast but the rest of their stuff doesn't always do it for me either cause like you said they're not doing shorter gameplay shows , they do streams. streams aren't bad but they're a totally different vibe from pre-recorded stuff i think and when you just archive them your loosing that chat/intractability aspect making it not always the best viewing of said content. and as for the price .. ppl have limited income, i would love to get access to their premium content , but personally i'm unemployed till further notice so i have to be careful with my money i backed waypoint+ cause it sounded like they would be able to create stuff they used to be able to do before management made them pivot away from video and random side pods, i paid for premium in good faith here cause i was hoping gb would still provide the content i usually like and maybe more on top(sadly so far that hasn't mostly been true) so i don't have money to provide to other places even if i'd like to. my twitch sub goes to aavak so i can sympathize ppl complaining about ads cause if i do watch nextlander stuff live i get ads here n there

It's an interesting one and I see both sides of the argument about the new shows. I was hugely sad when Vinny et al left and worried by the lack of content thereafter, however, when Nextlander sprung up it felt too on the nose and just re-affirmed how stale a lot of GB had gotten. What was going to be an instant patreon i've held off in the hope they do something new.

Meanwhile the new GB stuff has been hit and miss so far but at least it's been something new (with the exception of bourne to run). They do need more new games based content and I hope it'll come, especially once JeffG and Jason's situations are more normal, but I do feel another core staff member would be a good move. The podcast has remained the best podcast i listen to with Danny a great addition at least.

Also, sorry Fluidk, afraid that Weezer album was complete trash to my ears and ripe for that kind of low level ripping into. Simon Cowell is an old movie producer with "expert" music knowledge, does it mean i should only like what him and Beato like?

@azazello: it’s not disliking VanWeezer that is the problem. With the exception of the White album, I haven’t liked anything they’ve done since Maladroit (which is a hidden gem that most Weezer fans of only the first two albums don’t know exists).

The problem was the dim approach to it. It felt like a show developed by people who don’t actually have a show idea. Like high schoolers going “let’s start a podcast”. If you’re not the Angry Videogame Nerd, it’s too late to start a show hating on things. You’re 20 years too late.

For a podcast about one specific thing, it wasn't very focused. Took them 15 minutes to even talk about the album in question, for one thing.

I keep hearing "give it time" well how much time do you think they need? It was the beginning of May when we heard Brad, Alex and Vinny were leaving and do you believe that was a last minute decision on their part? 4 months along and nothing new added to Giant Bomb other than outside content creators. If they wanted to give it time they could have suspended subscriptions until they got their ducks in a row, why continue to charge me and others while they work on personnel issues whatever they may be behind the scenes?

How absurd is the idea that we are being shopped around when most of the comments about the new content are how it isn't relevant to them? Why toss all these outside content creators in front of us with no rhyme or reason for their content to be here? Jeff G has been absent from even commenting on the new content and why would Jeff B know what the GB audience wants? He only came onboard in May. All I see is Jeff B using the subscriber base as a morsel for these guys to come in a try to grow their separate base away from GB.

I find your final comment to be condescending to long time GB fans, "preconceived notions of what GB is"? maybe the last ten or so years of GB content allowed us to determine what we thought GB was and perhaps just perhaps what we might like to see in the future. You may be content to sit back and watch a decade of experiences change beyond recognition but some of us would like to at least voice our concerns at the process we've seen so far.

that first bit is pretty much how i've been feeling about things. i've mentioned it before and while i understand being understaffed and having personal issues i can't honestly see why they're understaffed this many months later. sure there have been alot of things going on but Every industry and company have those problems at times and if they can toss money to outside contractors i don't see why they should have an issue hiring staff. don't get me wrong we don't know how long exactly they knew before the guys were leaving but they lost 3 staff even before that too and never replaced them. i can understand the timeframe between abby and ben leaving being a corporate transition period issue but at this point it just seems odd. ppl say they haven't seen any job listings but not every company posts those things If they have ppl in mind and are in talks. we don't know what they're doing but they have mentioned realizing they need more staff but thats it. personally i'm hoping once jeff g settles with his moving that might change but only time can tell.

as to suspending subs while they got their stuff in order they gave everyone a free may i think considering but with my opinion on the newest content they put out i personally wish they had a pause button similar to humble monthly for those of us who pay for a yr and are not happy with the current content that we might not want.

i can't say i disagree with most of that 2nd point because theres alot of reasons why that pretty much feels the way it does, hopefully things even out but frankly i wish my premium wasn't supporting outside ppl but the remaining staff we have been supporting instead. i get contractors cost money but if i don't know or like they're content i wouldn't willingly support it. i guess we'll see how things go in the future since they've started to get everyone's feedback, they haven't said a thing about any of it but i was in the discord the other night cause i wanted to see if there was any content discussions and well, rorie is at least paying attention to it so that does feel nice to know at least regardless of if he has any say or not of what comes from it.

To be fair that feels on brand.

The video game related shows are alright with guilty treasures being the best of the best of the new shows

the meme show needs a bit more tightening up, armed and rangerous is fine but that’s cause Jan is genuinely excited doing it.

I Could care less for albummer but I recognize I’m probably not the audience for it,

It’s all growing pains as they figure out the way forward, and for the folks missing the classic content, nextlander is literally unprofessional Friday’s extended

@mrfluke: My only worry is that 6 months down the road we will still be talking about them figuring things out, not hiring new people because they "just" got acquired and are settling in so on and so forth. I have premium bought out for the next two years ahead so I'm down for the ride either way, but I feel like I've been hearing the same sort of issues for the past several years now.

I get that we've heard these things before but GB has literally never gone through something like this. Nevermind that there is still a whole ass pandemic(that is back at full force it seems) but also the Vinny, Alex, and Brad all left not too long after Abby and Ben had also left as well. On top of all this they just went through a whole ass sale and restructuring that only just recently even had them get some form of studio space. This isn't the usual 6 months of finding the right person to replace Austin or Drew ect. This is as large a shift that has ever happened in the site's history.

@fugoy: I'm sure six months from now we'll have another compelling in the moment reason why they're just settling into the office again.