Comic Vine is merging with GameSpot. We're not!

Hey there,

As of today, Comicvine.com is being merged with GameSpot.com and will live at comicvine.gamespot.com. You’ll be able to see all Comic Vine content going forward at that URL, and a good amount of it will also be posted to the GameSpot Entertainment hub at www.gamespot.com/entertainment. You can find more details here.

Comic Vine and Giant Bomb have been fairly intimately linked for a long time now, sharing user accounts and login data, but going forward, Comic Vine accounts will be more closely linked to GameSpot accounts in terms of login details and passwords. If you log into Comic Vine regularly, you’ll probably want to head to the new URL to ensure that everything’s in order. In the future, if you perform account actions like password resets or email changes to either your Giant Bomb or Comic Vine account, you shouldn’t expect those changes to carry over to the other site. Premium benefits (e.g. ad-free browsing) will also likely stop working on Comic Vine at some point in the near future.

This is being done because GameSpot has been expanding their editorial coverage from strictly being about games to a broader look at movies, television shows, and other forms of media. It makes sense for Comic Vine to join forces with GameSpot, as Tony and his editors have been covering those beats for years now.

I’m mostly posting this because I’m sure many of you would notice this and be concerned that similar plans were in motion for Giant Bomb. That is emphatically not the case, and wouldn’t make much sense at any rate, given that Giant Bomb and GameSpot cover such similar beats. Giant Bomb will remain at good old www.giantbomb.com until we’re just a collection of old fogies ranting about how games were better before everyone uploaded their brains to the Google processor farms for 24/7 cybersensory overload sessions.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them here and I’ll do my best to get back to them, but please be patient: it’s going to be a busy day for support emails.

Good for CV, thought it might get shut down but this is probably the best way to prevent that.

Kind of funny that Gamespot is expanding its scope considering the name. Though GB doesn't cover bombs as far as I know but will keep pushing for that coverage.

This does seem like a good move considering Comicvine seems kind of smallish. But the forums are really to be avoided and the site seems kind of faceless.

I choose to view this as more of a depressing commentary on where Gamespot as a website is at right now than any sort of threat against Giant Bomb.

@jeff Where do I send my Jar Time questions now, Jeff?

Always thought it was weird that IGN did movie stuff, but I guess this is how the web is going now. At least in this case we know the ComicVine folks are good at that stuff, so rolling it into Gamespot makes sense.

I saw a tweet a couple weeks ago that sort of hinted at this, glad that Comic Vine has a solid base to run off of.

The irony in Gamespot expanding their editorial side in everything but video games. But I suppose that's the times now, either you're a very specific thing or you're someone's go-to swiss army knife on the internet. Not sure what Gamespot's popularity or reputation is like these days though to make an educated guess on how this would work for them. But then again, I watched space related news on IGN, so it's all sorts of crazy out there.

'Until'

This is both saddening and happy to see. Saddening to see Gamespot focus less on games, happy to see ComicVine sticking around.

@rorie As far as questions: My wife and I have 3 dogs in the house now, 2 Australian Shepherds, and 1 Irish Wolfhoud/Terrier mix. My wife keeps wanting to dress them up, which I find a horrible affront to their dogness. Where do you weigh in on torturing dogs by putting them in clothes?

Not sure how I feel since I rarely logged on to CV but I can't imagine the regulars there will be too thrilled with the change. Last I checked, the comments section on GameSpot is unfortunately still on par with the quality you would encounter on YouTube.

Overall, I can see the logic in the decision with what GameSpot is trying to do. Just probably sucks for longtime CV members.

So Gamespot is trying to turn into what Whiskey Media was? Interesting ..

It's fascinating to think of the intense conversations that must have happened in order for Gamespot to merge with ComicVine instead of Giant Bomb...

What about my Screened.com user account?

Jeff didn't want Comic Vine, he really wanted Anime Vice.

@beachthunder: I assume it was an easy decision, since Gamespot doesn't have their own wiki. Not sure how they would have handled having 2 wikis in GB's site and merging them would be tough given how much overlap there is between comic books and games (characters like Batman etc).

This is exactly the same I thought. The interesting part is that probably like 80%-90% of their userbase are completely against this move to Entertainment but hey, as long as they get more clicks from outsiders, it's all the big corporation guys want. Right now I only visit Gamespot via the links Danny, Mary and Tamoor share on their twitter accounts. The site itself is sadly going on a depressing, avoidable, route.

@johnymyko: The worst part is that I think Gamespot had a lot going for it over the past few years... Aaaand then they let go of most of their in-house editorial staff. And then Kevin left. And then they started posting a bunch of articles about things other than video games and it was pretty obvious things were going in a direction I wasn't a fan of. They still have some great personalites on the site (Danny, Mary, Peter, etc), it just bums me out immensely to see the website formerly known as "videogames.com" reduced to merging with its comic book sister site and becoming more of a general "nerd culture" thing.

I have to admit that it would be interesting seeing "giantbomb.comicvine.gamespot.com".

@andrew2696: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes counts as Bomb Coverage I think

@arbitrarywater said:

At least you can choose to view it that way. I can't help but see it as such.

I like comics as as dabbler, I need yo get in the habit of going over to CV more often. That is how I see this, a friendly reminder that I have other interests that the fine CBSi family of websites can satisfy.

I...honestly didn't know Comic Vine still existed.

Good to hear GiantBomb is maintaining its autonomy. I hope GameSpot doesn't expand too much though! I feel like IGN lost a lot of their audience through expanding a bit too much in all directions.

@johnymyko said:

The gaming websites under CBSi are an interesting study in contrast. One is subsisting largely on ad revenue, so has to continue to make content for the broadest gamer/geek audience imaginable to keep getting those page views, while the other is so personality driven that their paid subscriber model compensates for what must be much lower overall pageviews.

The bummer is that some of the Gamespot staff has just as much talent in an on-camera, personality sense as the Giant Bomb staff, but because they're caught up in the Gamespot machine it hardly matters that much because Gamespot is just casting out fishing lines in so many directions simultaneously, hoping for a bite.

Actually makes me want to go back to CV - haven't been in a while! Also reminds me how much I miss Screened!

Is it weird that I kinda look forward to hearing old versions of the duders rant about old video games?

So is Gamespot just turning into IGN? Are they going to have their own Snapchat channel soon?

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gamespots-on-snapchat-come-snap-with-us/1100-6433851/

...until we’re just a collection of old fogies ranting about how games were better before...

What do you mean, until? Look behind you. ;)

(Me too, for that matter.)

Re: snapchat. Too scary, too many ghosts. Also welcome back Mr. & Mrs. Gerstmann.

"Premium benefits (e.g. ad-free browsing) will also likely stop working on Comic Vine at some point in the near future."

Well I guess it was only a matter of time before I considered other places for a good wiki to dive into comic details (because if ever there was a space where a huge database of knowledge was almost mandatory, it's comics). The GameSpot full page dressing and intrusive ads really are something I find making me reluctant to even bother checking stuff there. As noted above, they've got some real talent (even with the slow drain of established faces in the last few years) just like GB (who sometimes even appears here on Giant Bomb Dot Commmmm) so it's a shame that the initial deal where our subs got us an ad-free view there (tied to their old subscription service) is completely gone and there is no way of paying rather than getting ads.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It depends on if they just become kind of clickbaity or put some substance behind the areas they're expanding into. Honestly, IGN as a concept has a lot of value. The primary issue with IGN has always been their reviews and review scoring seem to follow no standards or logic (insert the old joke about IGN's scoring system being between 8-10, with 8 being a terrible game). A lot of talented people like the Kinda Funny Games crew went through IGN at various points as well. So it has always been more of an entertainment site and less of a journalistic site to me. You're right in that the site currently is a bit of a mess from all the different paths they went down.

Modern Gamespot in recent years has offered some pretty good reviews, even if they sold out for Witcher and didn't follow their hearts with Rocket League last year. Their scoring system has gotten a lot better, and they seem far more willing to award scores of lower value. They have a lot of talented personalities over there.

I do miss Kevin though. He gave Journey a 10, so he's all right in my book.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gamespots-on-snapchat-come-snap-with-us/1100-6433851/

Thanks Rorie but I meant a Discover channel. The likes of Buzzfeed, Mashable, IGN, MTV, Vox and many others have their own unique Snapchat channels that allows them much more control of their content rather than a standard account. I assume Snapchat already fills that broad gamer category with IGN who show games, movies and comics so another channel like Gamespot would be covering very similar content.

www.giantbomb.jeffgerstmannisstillathreat.com

I never go to Gamespot, so I hadn't realised they went full on Polygon with the non gaming content. Having people who are supposed to be covering games suddenly posting shite reviews of superhero TV shows and links to Betty White reacting to the Deadpool movie.

Obviously it's different here. This is a personality driven site, so the guys cover what they like (which is why we come here), they crack wise on the Bombcast, and Jeff's reviews of The Blacklist are fucking fire.

Sounds like good news for CV but I bet some of the community aren't too happy.. Best of luck to them. I still visit every now and then because Tony is actually pretty great.

What happens to the wiki side of Comic Vine with this merger? That always seemed like one of the more fleshed out wikis in the "whiskey fam". I don't think users ever edited content on gamespot, for one? or at least I don't remember that being the case.

Edit: I'll just paste this from the article as it answered my question: The wiki will continue to exist as the largest repository of comic information on the net, and we'll also be able to bring some new resources to bear on improving the editing experience.This should solve some of the wiki’s biggest problems, especially the inability to edit very long/large pages like the Spider-Man page. We will have a public beta of some of these changes ready soon, and you can get a sneak peek at this here!

I always thought it was an odd move for CBS to scoop up GB with GS still under their wing; I assumed they'd break one of those sites out into a broader focus eventually, which makes this CV merger make perfect sense...not to say that's the only reason, mind you, but it makes for a fun Highlander metaphor so that's what I'm running with.

No Sara, no party.

As someone who has recently dug into comics / Comic Vine wiki editing I must say they are an awful lot stricter about their wiki structure and content than the Giant Bomb wiki.

I hope 2 years from now that there isn't a thread title named "Giantbomb Merging with Gamespot".

Gamespot was okay back in the day, but that is only because of the people.

I wouldn't mind Gamespot and Giant Bomb merging. There's a few scenario's I could see this working out, the biggest being that Giant Bomb becomes a straight Wiki site with editorial / videos hanging out over at Gamespot. I understand that my reasoning is only that I'd like the type of pages / content to be split neat and tidy over the CBSi sites for games, including GameFAQs, and having the data on all sites interconnected. It probably wouldn't work, biz-wise.

Happy that Comic Vine is still running! That must mean people are still using it, so more power to them!

Good news for Tony and the crew. More budget, more cool stuff to do, more events to cover, and the same old coverage we've always known.

@rorie: So what exactly happens if I merge my comicvine and gamespot accounts?

You should be able to log into both sites with that account. So long as the username and password are the same as Giant Bomb, it'll work on all sites, but changes to the GS/CV logins will no longer change your GB info, and vice versa.

How do I get into the beta for Google's processor farms?

so.. Gamespot is becoming IGN?

@rorie: I mean, does it remove or replace one of those accounts? Does it actually merge them? Does one account name replace the other? Etc.

wait. then where should I send all my hot jar time questions to now then @jeff?

Things-spot, its where the things are! Not just games!