Danny O'Dwyer, Gun For Hire?

Anyone else notice that Danny's twitter bio has the line "Gun for hire @giantbomb?" Is that a new development?

He announced something on his Patreon a few days ago or so I heard. When Jeff put out the statement saying that GB would become more about outside voices I assumed this is what he meant. Not staff members, but people who occasionally make videos.

danny still has noclip as a going concern. he's been appearing as a 'hired gun' on gb for weeks now- i presume it'll be more of the same.

While I probably wouldn't read into Danny's post in particular I would be curious if this is a sign of things to come like @alistercat said. Danny is already a bit of a "hired-gun" appearing on most the recent Bombcasts but it might be cool to see GB become an amalgamation of inside and outside talent. People like Jeff, Jason and Jan covering the "regular content" with others rotating in for short series or one off stories.

GB has always found a perfect middle for me - More freeform than the heavily edited "Video Reviews" or whatever from major outlets but less freeform than watching some kid play for hours while bullshitting with his chat. Most of the time, GB staffers have played the game already and are coming at it with something to say.

@dareitus: I assume it will be, which is kind of a bummer from a worker's rights standpoint as that means that Red Ventures is going the "independent contractor" route so they don't have to bother with things like "wages" and "insurance" ugh.

The way Jeff said they were looking at "creators" made me think of contributors rather than straight up new staff, but that's just a feeling.

Danny O'Dwyer is great and there are a lot of other great guests, but I really hope they don't just go the contributor route. The whole thing that makes Giant Bomb great is the chemistry between the cast members and how they interact. They've integrated new cast members really well in the past, but it takes time for them to find their stride and develop those relationships and chemistry.

Adding someone like O'Dwyer (who also has history and chemistry with a lot of the people) into the mix can be fantastic, but that core familiarity is so important. The people knowing each other, knowing each others' tastes, knowing how to interact with and bring out the best in one another etc...

Now maybe they can accomplish something like that through having a relatively tight circle of contributors who get to know one another, but I don't think they're going to be able to recreate the special sauce without people who do a lot of content together on a regular basis.

I'll say that some of my least favorite Giant Bomb stuff has been when there were guests on the Bombcast or in the studio who just had no chemistry with anyone and turned it into another boring awkward stream. Usually guests were good because they were able to feed off the core, but I really hope they add at least a few more permanent cast members even if they're also going to utilize contributors more.

At least Jason, Jan, Jorie and Jeff have good chemistry, and Danny does have good chemistry with them. So that's something to build on.

I just watched Danny's NoClip Patreon Update video released on Friday where he talks about his work at Giant Bomb for part of it. Here's a summary of what he said:

Danny was appearing on the Bombcast temporarily for free because it was fun. The hours he would spend at Giant Bomb was his free time outside of NoClip. He's been in conversation with Jeff Gerstmann and Jeff Bakalar about his involvement with the site in the short and long term because he needs to be aware that anything he does adjacent to games could affect his energy and inspiration for working at NoClip (he doesn't want to get burnt out). NoClip is still his focus, he loves it and hopes to continue building it for the next few decades if possible. That said, he's a big fan of Giant Bomb and the staff there, and wants to help them out during a tough time. Also, changes to how his NoClip business is run means he actually has more free time to try things.

He hasn't settled on a decision of how much his work at Giant Bomb will expand, but he'd like to try making videos that he's wanted to do for years but either didn't get around to at GameSpot or that didn't fit with the aims of NoClip. He currently spends 3-4 hours a week of his free time on Giant Bomb per week. This is on the bombcast and checking out a few games beforehand. He's thinking about increasing up to maybe 8 hours of work a week and formally becoming a contractor (so he will actually get paid).

I was unsure if he meant the upcoming E3 this year, or E3's in general (post the pandemic) but... he says Giant Bomb already had some interesting plans for E3 which has fallen to the wayside now (especially with Alex, who traditionally organizes guests, leaving). So Danny's looking into how Giant Bomb and NoClip could potentially work together to bring some of those ideas to fruition.

He frequently stresses that he doesn't work for Giant Bomb, and he's just talking about his own experience from the view of how it affects his NoClip work (with the aim is that it doesn't - i.e. those who don't care for the site and didn't realise he's been appearing on the Bombcast recently should continue to not notice anything different).

[Edited for grammatical clarity]

It's a system that has worked for sites like Waypoint or Kotaku where they get a lot of outside contractors to do site content like reviews and opinion piece articles while the core crew concentrates on the podcast or big tentpole releases. Whenever they get an outsider to do a review for a big game like Resident Evil 8 on Waypoint for instance, they invite that contractor onto the pod to discuss the review with them. Which is sometimes odd as here is Waypoint with a lukewarm review for the game and here is Patrick talking about how he likes the game more than the review does. It's obviously an interesting conversation to have people pick apart their own personal likes and dislikes and personally I always liked the idea of a "second opinion" blurb on a main review, but overall highlights how dumb it is for a Website to have a single official review in the first place.

That said contractors tend to make a website become less of an established place and more of a hub for different pieces of media that don't really mesh with one another.

@humanity: Contractors for things like reviews or other content have always made sense, but Giant Bomb is a personality driven site. They haven't even done a review of a new game in a year (Jeff did a Rez Infinite review in October). Maybe it will work here too, we'll have to see, but it's a different type of content.

Of course Danny O'Dwyer is not just some random contributor.

As for sites having official reviews, it's pretty useful for people who just want to know whether the game is good or not without sifting through a long podcast or seeing a bunch of spoilers on a stream. Reviews and Metacritic are actually very useful for a lot of people's buying decisions, especially people who aren't that into gaming media and don't watch hours of video or listen to hours of podcasts. They can also be good places for focused critiques.

None of that is to say that there's any reason not to have multiple reviews of a given game from multiple perspectives. That's probably mostly a resources thing. But I actually wish Giant Bomb hadn't stopped doing reviews. I found them useful. And many of them were very well written too.

Giant Freelance. Except Giant Bomb have the industry contacts to make that approach more worthwhile. By the sounds of it, it's not the last we'll see of Vinny, Brad and Alex. Just not in a full-time commitment.

If they kept up reviews, that would've probably required more hands. If anything, Red Ventures already cover that with Gamespot. Giant Bomb has always been a different thing and in 2021, it's different to that.

@shindig: Yah on one hand I'm all for Giant Bomb transforming into a more "go to" site for me in terms of gaming where I can get a broad serving of news, game coverage, reviews etc along Quick Looks and more personality driven content, but on the other hand I'm afraid of this diulting the formula. If anything I can see a pretty good business model to have the site expand it's scope with a lot of what I mentioned above being the free content to draw in views, and then have the more personality driven stuff be the premium offering. Although as I said in the other thread, I still don't think premium makes sense anymore when they're part of a big corporation. I like Jeff and I've been supporting the site for ages, but I'm also a consumer and unlike others I'm not just going to throw money at them because I like them.

@humanity: Premium does or does not make sense based on the size of the audience and cost of the production, not the size of the corporation that controls the subsidiary. Giant Bomb has always had a smaller but more passionate fanbase. Look at their Youtube view numbers (which aren't the whole picture because some people watch on site) they are tiny. I doubt they could have survived with the content they produce without premium. Yes the podcast has been popular and podcast ads do create revenue, but their video side just has never been even as popular as a mid-sized Youtuber. Passionate fans who subscribe has been their business model.

There are lots of boutique subscription services owned by larger companies. HBO and other "premium" channels are just one example. If they'd gone free when CBS bought them they'd have had to change their format radically to appeal to a different, larger, audience. That may be what they're doing now, and premium may go away, but the question is revenue vs. cost, not size of the parent entity.

@shindig:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Someone came out and said that Vinny, Brad, and Alex will still have involvement with Giant Bomb?

I think becoming a host of outside voices is an interesting direction to go in. No one at Giant Bomb is the same person they were twenty years ago. For instance, they all have families now. Now I've never had to raise a family, but from the sounds of it, it seems significantly harder to dedicate your free time to your job when you have a family to raise, than when you're a twenty something single. Bringing in other people who can still dedicate all their time to playing video games for a living to fill in the gaps, while elevating them and giving them a place to be heard, and paid properly I would hope, makes a certain amount of sense to me.

No, and there's absolutely no indication they will.

They'll be guests on stuff. I'd stake your lives on it.

I think each one of us come here looking for different things so this is just my view: I would be totally ok if they drop QLs and Reviews for more of the weirder shows, like Murder Island or This is the run. I think Danny is a very welcomed addition, just not sure if he will have the time to do anything super weirder since he is already on the Bombcast but I'm fine with anything he can put out now, let´s see what he has in mind.

My feel is that contract route is the only one that would work for now, I don't see them going back to a studio any time soon (not sure if they even have a studio do go back to right now) and trying to onboard new people remotely is a huge problem to solve. So, video/content savvy people that can hit the ground running and can do that from their home is best bet.

Honestly I'd be pretty excited if they have Danny as regular on the bombcast.

He is such a great voice on the bombcast & I'd much rather have there consistently instead of on video, Danny already does the great Noclip documentaries so I'd rather he have a great work/life balance than burn himself out.

I love seeing Danny on stuff, but I'm surprised with NoClip's output and the size of it's team (two people) that Danny has any free time to even show up on the Bombcast. I welcome it 'cus Danny's great but I can't imagine it'll last for long. I don't know what Giantbomb would look like if it was all freelancing but if Jeff described reinventing the way Giant Bomb works I can't imagine that will mean the exact same staffing structure as before.