Do you worry about the future of the site?

I never worry about the site, the guys are going along fine. It will always be better than most others. this is a personality driven site. Enjoy the ride. Bring on WWF 2K15

@fibabanchi: Giantbomb has been doing this for years; same as many others that have done it for years. It was never a problem before and I don't see it as being a problem now.

Adding more people to an industry doesn't shrink their current consumer base (even if it changes it) and if anything the rising popularity of it increases their own traffic being that it becomes more and more what other people are looking for and it is easier to land on something when it's been around for a while (especially when so many google searches alone land on Giantbomb). This can only be a good thing for Giantbomb.

As for shifting ideas for content going forward; that is something that the duders who work for the site have to (and often do) consider whenever discussing what they want to do going forward. It's unfortunate they don't have these discussions openly anymore, but they have less people working on the site now so I can see how that has been more difficult. They do discuss site stuff when they can, though, on UPF occasionally- which seems to have become the dumping ground for that kind of stuff.

So, as I said, their method of content is not an issue. =)

@nodima: I agree with the rest of the crew being, to a degree, interchangeable. Jeff has a wealth of experience and knowledge which comes across in his jar time videos. He is a funny guy but when he stops the humour you can tell he knows his stuff. Patrick also does this.

As long as I continue to get a sweet Bombcast and QuickLooks, I'm not worried.

Little known fact: If you work for CBS then CBS pays you.

@cornbredx: What mainly concerns me is that the crew themselves almost seemed defeated. In one of the latest podcasts Jeff said "game journalists are fucking going away" or something to that extent.

for me, it's more just our mutual shared interests. plenty of people out there have a deep knowledge of video games, few have married that to a deep knowledge of 80s and 80s hip-hop with a healthy ongoing curiosity for the new stuff like Jeff has. I am also someone who (at least until the past year or so) very adamantly did not fuck with my foods and still find condiments to be a waste of time outside of hot dogs and (sometimes) hamburgers. I'm one of those people who'd be entertained to hear Jeff talk about just about anything, if only because he's proven time and again he's on my level.

but my point was also that the show can and has gone on without Jeff around, and I haven't liked the show any less because of it. The same was true of Ryan's passing. It was a great loss, but the show went on, and it wasn't (for me) necessarily because of the characters. The format of the Quick Look seems simple but no one else has captured it yet including Let's Players. Unprofessional Fridays could be way crazier but, hey, it's still pretty nuts as far as live internet shows go. If the core Gamespot guys suddenly took over Giant Bomb and the core Giant Bomb guys took over GameSpot, I'm not entirely sure I'd flip sites assuming the formats remained the same. GB just has that...something that needed Jeff, Ryan, Brad and Vinny to get it off the ground but can probably sustain itself on its own at this point.

@nodima: True.

What gives you that impression? Its a little harsh to presume that they can't get a "better job"...

@fibabanchi: It's hard not to say that when several video game websites have gone under or been severely upheaved in the last 5 years.

He's been around awhile, though. At some point it's impossible to not be jaded by such a tumultuous industry.

He is right, though, games journalists- as people perceive them today- will not be the same in 10 years. They aren't the same as they were 10 years ago, either. Or even 20 years ago for that matter- considering most "games journalism" that I recall from the late 80s to early 90s was more PR than actual journalism anyway.

Anyway, the defeatist feeling of the crew is not one I can speak to (as I don't know them personally) and is a common complaint on the boards which I have no response to. When you get old you get jaded. It will happen to you and everyone you know. I suspect real world reasons and what the duders have done throughout the years and gone through plays a large part of it. It's hard, to, when the current state of the industry is not particularly that exciting. Well, other than the rise of indie development which I find very exciting. That and the rise of Souls games.

@cornbredx: The Souls games will continue to thrive. My 60 year old mother clocked in over 1000 hours on Dark Souls.

I am not worried about Giant Bomb. They will be just fine. What I am worried about is that they may be headed in a direction other than where I would like them to go.

I do not!

I guess my main concern is that I gravitated towards Giantbomb because it was this group of interesting characters at Whiskey Media all playing off one another and it was entertaining. And of course that has slowly gone away with the break up of Whiskey, departure of Dave, death of Ryan, Patrick and then Vinny moving across the country, etc etc.

I mean, Brad just tweeted that he is hosting the podcast. The fact that the only other Giant Bomb employees available to podcast with are Drew and Rorie should tell you all you need to know. Things are weird. I'm not sure if they plan to change things up in such a way that brings back the interaction in some form, but I hope things move in a positive direction.

To those saying GB will be fine because Pewdiepie makes a zillion dollars a year:

While the medium is the same, the content is totally different. It's like saying, "Lionsgate studio is fine. Transformers 4 made four billion dollars." Pewdiepie's content is made for quick consumption. While he talks over games, like the GB crew does, his commentary is not attempting to invoke the same responses as GB. Even the funny Quick Looks such as Arma have the intention of showing you what a product is first and foremost. Vinny being a bird is just a byproduct of it.

So, the worry becomes, "Is long form video media a viable and sustainable source of income." If you can crank out 5 10 minute videos in the time it takes to make 1 30 video, you're potentially increasing the amount of ads viewed by a large number. How does GB sustain and grow based on internet ad revenue. Their youtube channel doesn't bring in the amounts of views as the sub-Yogscast members. Tested's viewership has grown a lot since the Whiskey family broke up whereas GB's doesn't change much. Maybe a lot of people watch off the in house video player?

I like to think of the GB community as gamers who don't just like video games. They know -why- they like video games. They want to know more about video games than simply, "LULZ NO SCOPE 420 HEAD SHOT TEA BAG." The content the GB guys produce is made for gamers who are critical thinkers. I tend to worry there aren't many critical thinkers left in the world.

Yep, definitely. One internet website, one tv station. That is the world we live in.

I find there are a lot of similarities between this site and something like Howard Stern. It is the characters that make the mundane interesting and it would be beneficial if they tailor their content around that mentality.

One thing I think about is whether quick looks (the majority of videos) are purchasing advice or entertainment? 90 minute videos are too damn long if they are going for the former. People want a quick answer of whether a game is good or not.

@zelyre: My understanding from over the years:

Giantbomb's largest source of revenue is subscriptions- not ad revenue. Honestly if Giantbomb had never considered a subscription they'd have shuttered the doors a few years ago because Giantbomb didn't have the views that, say, Gamespot does (still) merely because this site (still) is considered niche (and the site does get a fair amount of unique hits each month- when they were with Whiskey Media it was over 1.2 million a month or so, and Jeff's statements recently suggest to me it's even more now).

Giantbomb's youtube page was created (originally) when they were interchanging the youtube player for non paying members which they quickly retracted- a large reason for that being that Vinny hates Youtube because Youtube's bitrate is garbage and at some point it actually became clear (I forget what podcast it was when they discussed it with fans) that 1080 video was standard everywhere so it should not be behind a pay wall. Anyway, their youtube presence at this point is purely just a way of branching out as it's not really a main source of revenue for them (although some of their youtube videos do get massive hits; although it could be argued that the "best of" videos get even more hits over there which are edited together by a non affiliated fan- none of these videos have ads though as far as I recall).

But ya, a large portion of their hits are on the site and from their own player. I don't have the current numbers (I don't know where their analytics are done anymore) but I do know that Giantbomb traffic has generally been site based. They used to get ad revenue from live streams, but (I think) they use their own in house player now (from Gamespot actually) so I don't think that's a factor anymore- I don't know.

Big portion of their site income is subscriptions, though. They aren't lieing when they say any of this would not possible without the subscribers. So, as long as people subscribe they will be around. I assume this (still) also gives them a bargaining chip when they need to ask CBSi for additional resources and what not.

Worrying doesn't do any good.

@fibabanchi: I think that games journalism is facing the same problems as regular journalism: millions of people who can report faster than most newsrooms because of social media.

What people want though is for someone to make sense of that flood of information. Context, opinion, filtering through the deluge. You can see that with Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the mass of Youtube channels dedicated to news, gaming or otherwise. Journalists are becoming editors, taking scraps of news, sorting through them and pushing what they think is important to the forefront.

That is where news is heading. Personalities who can give context (whether it's correct is another matter) and speak to a certain audience that have learned to trust their opinion. Heck, most GB users followed Jeff here after Gerstmann-gate.

As for your question about Quick Looks: I think purchasing advice first, entertainment second. Think of it as a debate. People can trust your opinion, but they'll always want proof. Saying that something is good or bad is one thing, showing it is a stronger argument.

not another soap box/opinion on a pedestal "giant bomb isnt as good as it used to be" thread.

^ This right here

I think Giant Bomb's doing fine, but with how often this comes up, I think I might be the only one.

I don't worry about it since I don't really care. As long as there is Vinny content on the net I'm ok.

GB differs it's self from Youtubers and such by being a reputable game website. This is how you get news stories here first and things like the GB E3 coverage and all the guests they get.

After Spill.com shut down, I'll never take another site for granted ever again. Though I have a feeling that even if Giantbomb shuts down unexpectedly, Jeff, Vinny, and the rest will be back with a new site, just like how the Spill crew rebounded after their site was shut down.

I worry about lots of stuff. Nearly everything, in fact. One of those fun little quirks of my personality. Strangely, the future of the site isn't one of those things right now. I know that the games media business is in a weird place right now, the upheaval of Vinny moving is weird, and it's gonna be bizarre having new faces in the SF office (which will be along shortly), but that's all the stuff that gives me hope. I think the changes we're making are the kind that could very easily break us out of our rut--because let's face it, we've been in a rut for a while now. Maybe it all goes south someday down the road, maybe game journalism as we know it dies a horrible, sputtering death, but just objectively looking at what we're doing in the immediate future, I feel pretty great about where things are headed.

Just my two cents. Feel free to disregard all of this as the kind of stuff I'm "supposed" to say, given the circumstances. I'll understand.

Do you really think this is on your guys' end though? I feel like it's just been a slow year for games, generational transition and all that.

@smcn: I think at least some of it is. I mean, this year's E3 was certainly an indicator that there are larger issues at play in the industry, but in regards to a lot of the "health of the site" threads I see floating around here, there seems to be a lot of worry about how we, as a team, are holding up. That was more what I was addressing there.

Giant Bomb will be fine because every time Jeff talks numbers, he says that they're growing year-over-year. On top of that, they've branched out to two other cities, are hiring one editor and one video producer, and an engineering intern (although that's a company-wide position, not only a GB position). They grabbed Phil Spencer and Shuhei Yoshida for a drunken video podcast. As much as it feels like GB is for a special niche audience, they've got a relatively large and well-trafficked website that reaches a lot of people. Some of those guests, like Greg Miller, are there because they like the duders. Other people are there to build rapport with the userbase of GB and gather good-will, like Spencer. Their revenue is also not solely based on ad revenue; that's something else Jeff has talked about moving away from. he saw the ad market deflating and so he decided that a premium business model was the way to go. It's doing well for them, obviously, otherwise they wouldn't have been bought out by CBS in the first place.

GB isn't going anywhere for a while, and I doubt we'll begin to see trouble before another five good years pass.

Giant Bomb is a lot more like a band to me, and less like a video game website. Members can come and go, styles change. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Sometimes a band breaks up. Sometimes members go their separate ways temporarily and reform later. Sometimes your drummer dies and you just can't go on. Sometimes your singer dies and you get a different one. I could make any number of parallels with rock bands. Point is that this isn't forever. Maybe this is Giant Bomb releasing Coda and that's goodbye. Maybe this is Giant Bomb releasing No Prayer for the Dying and we'll have to wait a little while longer until we get something really amazing. Maybe this is Giant Bomb releasing Meddle and it's the start of something great with only better stuff to come.

Edit: I also want to add that before Ryan passed away there were a lot of similar threads on these forums. People claimed that content had sort of stagnated and people were getting worried. Then, y'know, it happened and shit got weird for a while. Then it stabilized, and we're back here.

@alex said:

I'll be honest Alex, I think it's mainly due to the timing of how you guys handled this big change. I realize there's a lot of factors to consider that we on the outside don't and shouldn't know, and things outside of your control, but the timeline was less than ideal on the viewer side.

If the new hires had been in the SF office for a couple months before Vinny moved, I think this concerned "health of the site' perception could have largely been averted (assuming you guys hired well). But as it is, you've got a situation now that the viewer has only a rough idea what any of the content is going to be like in the new GBE/GBMW/GBW arrangement. You guys have even been talking about changing the format of the bombcast. All probably smart ideas and healthy ones, but handled simultaneously it creates anxiety for those who are enjoying the status quo.

That's an understandable concern for someone who is paying money for something they don't know if they like it. Buying a giantbomb sub now is a bit like preordering a game from a franchise you know, but maybe has a new creative lead or some other material change.

fwiw I'm pretty optimistic myself about the site's future, more so than any point since 2011. The new hires says to me CBSi believes in you guys, which is something I've been concerned about ever since the buyout. I figure as long as they give you guys the tools you need, you guys will make good stuff.

As someone who has been here since the Arrow Pointing Down days, registered for a user ID day 1, and started a paid subscription since the first day it was available I'm not worried at all. GiantBomb.com is still the best video game website on the internet in my opinion and the guys continue to produce great content that get's me excited about video games.

If I can give the crew any advice its to keep doing things that made you guys stand out in the first place. Video features like "This Ain't No Game", "Mail Bags", and the "Jar" type videos really help make users feel connected with the site. GiantBomb videos never feel forced either with a staff member trying to act like someone they are not but rather the staff just being themselves which I think has contributed to the sites success. The Podcast is of course a staple of the site and I think Jeff has done a great job leading it.

Yep your opinion is worth more than his because you've hit 'post reply' more times on a forum than him

Worried? No, most of the youtubers out there are just plain annoying, pewdiepie makes me furious, even his user name makes me want to rip off my own arm and hit myselft with it. The GB crew are fun to watch and to listen to so as long as they keep making content they will always have an audiance, i feel personally that the stuff here is for a wide age group but more for older folks like me whilst pewdiepie is for the 12-17 bracket (no offense if you watch him and are older).

I find it hard to be anything but excited for the future of the site, until we at least give the new people a chance. In regards to games journalism as a whole... fuck, I donno. Ask Michael Pachter.

I'm not worried over the future existence of the site, I'm pretty sure it will do just fine. I'm more worried that the site becomes too much like a youtube Let's Play channel.

Man, there was a time there when it was startin to look like it.

This site was firing on all cylinders and the future was really exciting; everything was hilarious and it seemed like it would only keep getting better, and then Ryan left. The site hasn't been what it was, but of course it hasn't. It is impossible to ever have that again, and for a really shitty reason. When you lose such a pillar of not just the content you're creating, but of your life, you might not be able to put out your best work. Giant Bomb got unexpectedly and immediately thrown into a period of restructuring, transitioning, and rebuilding in a new reality. Sometimes it takes more than a year for that process. That is normal.

I've followed the core GB crew since 2003 or something. There was a time when they didn't have a website or work at one at all, and Jeff put out kind of concerning videos about his outrageously high gamerscore and playing Burnout Paradise all the time. Bad stuff happens sometimes, and it can hit people, even people who write about video games, pretty hard. But then we got Giant Bomb.

Life changes. In a way, the Giant Bomb we've followed for years is gone. They're making something new now, and these threads worrying about the future just show that we don't know what's coming... because it'll be new. I started following from the GameSpot days because they had honest, serious, and well-considered thoughts about video games, and years later I'm in tears watching them play Gang Beasts. All we should be is glad of the times past, and excited for the future.

I think GB has its own (unique) target audience, that being the 'somewhat older gamer'. I'm 30 yrs old and been playing games since I was 4 or something, so I can relate to the likes of Jeff and Brad who 'have seen it all' and still can get excited for games. I don't know if that is GiantBomb's intent, but at least I feel at home here and I think that target audience is growing larger every year.

I worry about July.

Nope, was for a bit like everyone else when Vinny anounced he's leaving, but Danny's a great member of the crew, and GB knocked it out of the park at E3.

They'll be fine.

It's just not as fun/funny anymore without the regularly awesome quicklooks

They're going in a different direction than I would have liked, but they're expanding, so I'm sure the site will be around for a while. I'll keep supporting them because, honestly, I still value their opinions and insight more than most people on YouTube and other games sites.

Danny is and will continue to work for gamespot. I'm sure he would make a fantastic addition to the crew but he's also like the best on screen personality they have over at gamespot so I'm sure he won't leave.

I've found that needlessly worrying about something almost never works out. At this point they still have quite a lot of viewers tuning in for live streams. Once it looks like no one is watching then we should start worrying about this site.

No i worry for GameFAQs lol.

@drekly: D:

*chomp*

Not really. If anything the OP seems to be missing on the general trend that groups have been migrating to video and audio content aggressively where the thing the web site is for to point them to that video and audio content.

The assumption that watching stuff on Twitch and Youtube is bad is fallacious. I'd be worried about Giantbomb.com if they were only producing text content this way because that will lead to a much smaller site with a lot less to say.