How do we feel so far about Patrick @ Kotaku?

I don't go to Kotaku, so Patrick has pretty much dropped off the face of the earth for me. I never bothered watching any of his videos, and only ever read his "worth reading." Overall, I miss Vinny more than I miss Patrick - and Vinny is still affiliated with Giant Bomb.

I saw on twitter that he wrote about the lip syncing in some game today. It struck me as the sort of filler shit that he wouldn't waste his time with at Giant Bomb. I think he's slumming it, or at best it was a lateral career move.

Eh, he hasn't done anything "important" yet, but like others have said, he's doing the same work he did here so far.

I at least stop by Kotaku because I visit Deadspin regularly. Sometimes I want to know about dumb bullshit happening in the video game world that GB doesn't cover.

It's possible for intelligent people to enjoy stupid GIFs.

Still fucking tore up about it. I came to Giant Bomb a couple of years ago when one day I said hell where's that Klepek guy that was on The 1up Show and then boom I hit his twitter and found Giant Bomb. Every since that day GB has been such a gigantic part of my life and I loved watching Bombin the Am and Worth Playing. Now that he's at Kotaku I have no idea what he's into. I really don't like that website. I'm all about video content and there's really none of that there. I miss my PK. :'(

If you focus on the ridiculous articles Kotaku puts out, you'll miss the deeper articles they write. That is Patrick's forte. When Patrick came to Giant Bomb, he was the fish out of water who adapted very well. Kotaku is more up his natural styles than Giant Bomb was.

I don't go to Kotaku but I miss Bombin' the A.M. a lot.

Here is a link that only shows the things he writes.

http://patrickklepek.kinja.com

I miss Bombin' too. I watched it more consistently than any other regularly scheduled show.

Well, I enjoyed some of his input, I enjoyed his video content, I thought that he had some interesting things to say in articles, some of it opened my eyes to things in the video game industry that I'd never considered. He also had great chemistry with Ryan, I miss him to an extent, but I certainly wouldn't say that I wish he hadn't left, whatever works for him is good.

As a big Patrick fan (I even went to his TED talk!), I've been missing his presence on the site quite a bit. Especially Bombin' the AM. I, like many others, found the move to Kotaku pretty baffling. At least, until I remembered some stuff like this:

If I were a betting man, my money would be on Patrick making the decision to look elsewhere for work right around here. Seems like he felt that sort of response from the site came way too late. And if that's the case, I can't really say I blame him for making the jump. You gotta follow your convictions.

Either way, it's a bummer that he's gone and I will continue to miss his content on the site. I've been keeping up with some of his offsite work (mostly the Q&A videos and some articles), but what I really miss is his interaction with the rest of the GB crew. And that obviously won't be replicated at Kotaku or anywhere else.

I miss Patrick in general and especially audio interview content a lot (Dumptruck, Bombin) in particular , I felt he really help revitalize Alex here. Alex has felt more alive and interesting in the last 18 months than he has since the Gamespot era. It's been cool to see.

Don't read Patrick's new stuff because well... it's at Kotaku. I don't care for how Gawker does business or what they produce.

Looking over what he's cranking out there it seems like he has adapted some of the in-house style they have I happen to dislike already.

latest 3 articles I see from him

• Life Is Strange's Mouths Are Freaking Me Out
• Hotline Miami 2 Voicemail Is Weird As Hell
• My Brain Just Melted While Reading This

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but that is exactly the sort of Tease title superficial articles I have almost zero interest in reading.

There's a definitely a place for Blog/personal journal type content, but such shallow thoughts don't seem worthy of fullblown article status to me. Deadlines and an in house style will do that to a person, in the eyes of Gawker such things seem to deserve equal billing to a feature piece.

Still the old Patrick researched pieces like this

College Student Found The Perfect Gamer To Win $6,000 From

and Worth Reading are there too. Is what it is. I suppose that's the perhaps Faustian bargain you make when working at a place like that.

To me it seems like he basically took a demotion (senior editor to basically a Resident Evil/Dark Souls beat reporter) for quality of life/career reasons. Still he seems happy there, so I guess that's what counts. I wish him well.

I really miss his presence on the site, but the fact that Spookin' With Scoops (by far my favourite video series on the site) continues on on his YouTube channel pretty much makes up for it.

I miss Patrick being in the GB San Francisco office. I haven't paid that much attention to what he did after he moved to Chicago.

I miss the visibility Giantbomb gives to its staff. On Kotaku it's pretty easy to be scrolling along and miss who wrote a post because of the small byline. I think Patrick is working on a way to find his posts in particular but right now it's a little hard to discover his work. I also miss his live streams.

I still don't read Kotaku, and don't really plan to start. Don't need to, don't want to, so I won't.

I am enjoying Patrick's increased Youtube output, though. Not having to pay for Spookin' with Scoops is very nice.

I like Patrick, I dislike Kotaku quite a bit. That whole site leaves a bad taste in my mouth so I haven't visited it in months or even longer now that I think of it. I just don't enjoy their tone in general.

My sentiments exactly. I truly appreciated Patrick for being open to new experiences, and the thought he gave to games outside his comfort zone. At times, though, his politics could made him stubborn in his own way. Gawker seems like a good fit.

I'll miss Patrick at Giant Bomb, though I've really missed him since he left SF. I kept up with Worth Reading and watched his "Endurance Runs" of games like Binding of Isaac and Spelunky. But I always felt Patrick was at his best in Quick Looks with Ryan. You can tell it was that friendship that brought him to Giant Bomb in the first place. I also feel he had a great chemistry with Jeff. Patrick was able to stick to his guns and push back on Jeff's opinions better than anyone else in the office, and they had some terrific friendly sparring matches over the years.

I gave Kotaku a try once, before they hired Patrick. It only reinforced my antipathy for Gawker.

I'm bummed because I liked him at Giant Bomb and I don't visit Kotaku. I'm in the minority here I think because after the podcast I primarly consume the written content, not the video stuff, and that's definitely taken a hit with him gone.

Did never really care for his written pieces, and I thought he was lacking in onscreen presence (quality not time)... so here's hoping they hire someone new who fits better in with the rest of the crew. Maybe something Dan-like minus the wrestling. So I don't mind him writing for Kotaku because I care about neither.

Giant Bomb to me is "video games are fun so lets have fun with video games", which makes the most sense to me. Patrick has always been about the deadly serious side of the industry which is fine, hopefully he finds Kotaku stimulating in the way he's looking for... instead of, you know, having fun.

I was genuinely surprised when I heard the news, thinking "Why the hell would you do that, Scoops?" Kotaku seems like a big step backward to me, but that's not my call to make. If he feels it's the right move for him and he's happy there more power to him. I wish him the best.

The "eh, fuck that guy, I wish him the best though" commentary is always fun.

I feel pretty good about it. Like @professoress said, Patrick can now write his style of articles to a more receptive audience. GB no longer suffers the identity crisis brought on by Jeff and co's lightheartedness in contrast to Klepek's self-seriousness. It's a win-win for all involved unless you're the sort of person who came to Giant Bomb because of PK but refuses to visit Kotaku, which I think must be a very small group.

I also agree with @nodima in that Patrick still has a ways to go as a writer. I think people here tend to overestimate his skills. Most of his writing consisted of opinion pieces and links to other, more thoughtful writers' works. That EVE Online piece was well done but that was one in, what, 5 years? I hope he does well at Kotaku as it seems to line up better with his beliefs and personality and should give him more opportunity to grow personally and professionally.

@mb said:

I will reiterate this earlier post from a fellow moderator and say that this morning I have already deleted some comments that are not really appropriate, even after this warning. If this continues, we may have to lock the thread. We really don't want to do that and would love for the thread to remain open for discussion, but using this thread as an opportunity to bash a former staff member is just not cool.

I saw the Dragon Age article and didn't like it. Admittedly though, I've never been a fan of the way Pat wrote article headlines and video taglines.

I liked Spookin' With Scoops because he didn't come across as too serious, I simply didn't like his writing.

Edit - I hope this doesn't count as bashing Patrick. To answer the thread title more briefly, I haven't kept up with him over there.

@liquidprince: I barely even notice who writes the article son Kotaku because most of the headlines are so uninteresting I'll never make it to the author. The only thing I can take a stab at is guessing if it's about Japan it's probably Brian Ashcraft.

Patrick fits over there better, it suits his style more. I know people love to rag on Kotaku because they have articles and click bait you don't like but honestly it's not that difficult to scroll past those things until you find something that sounds interesting.

Spelunking with Scoops was absolutely wonderful.

I haven't kept up with his stuff because I don't like Kotaku at all. Granted, I haven't been to it for years, but my memories are of it being the same stories every other site was running, padded out with games articles that wouldn't look out of place in the Daily Mail. I took him off my Twitter as well, after something he posted which turned me off him a little more. He is smart and articulate, and thinks about videogames as a wider medium in ways which few others do, but like other people in this thread, I wonder if Kotaku is the place for him, really.

I'm bummed out. I really loved his personality. I think he fit really well as 'the new kid on the block who wants to earn a name for himself', and I think the Bombcrew really helped him facilitate the drive to be a good journalist. I think he was very good at reporting news.

It seems funny but in a weird way he was the opposite of what you would expect. The 30+ year olds were spending their days goofing off and playing video games while he was the one covering the 'serious' journalistic pieces, news and topics. It kinda worked out great.

I am of the opinion that moving to Kotaku wasn't the best choice though. Patrick has a lot of passion and is very opinionated when it comes to political issues, and recently GamerGate, gender in games and society, etc.; - which I think is great (I'm kind of disappointed that he and Alex were pretty much the only ones to take on these issues while the rest of the crew stayed silent), even though I think many of his opinions and beliefs are very poorly justified. Here in GB he actually had to make the attempt and make the case for the topics he's passionate about, which can do nothing but wonders for a person's critical skills. However, I feel like at Kotaku/Gawker, because of how uniform they are in their views on the afromentioned issues, he won't feel the need to excel at making a case and will let his staff members attribute countercriticism of his position to hate/misoginy/sexism, etc.

But hey, he knows a lot more about what he wants to do.

patrick is a valuable voice in the field, so i'll continue to check-in wherever his career takes him. thus far i haven't been bowled-over by any particular piece work he's done for kotaku- but it's early days yet.

i would be interested to know what ultimately motivated his departure, but like most big decisions- i bet it wasn't any one, monolithic reason. money, journalistic ambition, editorial culture, the type of content itself- i'm sure these were all considerations.

it is pretty hilarious/depressing to see the latent tribalism emerge every time there's a thread like this though. we should start a bingo board for words like clickbait, that moronic 3 letter acronym that ends with a W, and any permutation of 'politics.'

I'd like to see him back at Giant Bomb one day.

For me it's been kind of out of sight, out of mind. Kinda sad really.

As others have posted, if you so wish, you can follow Patrick's current output here without engaging with the proper Kotaku site itself:

http://patrickklepek.kinja.com/

He started up Worth Reading again over there, and continuing Spookin' with Scoops over on his Youtube channel:

http://youtu.be/laf-CmrSYb4

Not sure if anyone mentioned it yet or not, but he is pretty active on his YouTube channel. He has done a few new spookin with scoops and answering questions video. So if you don't like kotaku and want more Patrick I suggest checking it out.

His youtube channel's Spookin with Scoops only got about 2000 views so I wonder what sort of numbers he had on Giant Bomb

I miss Patrick more for his video content than his writing, true. Spookin' and Spelunkin' with Scoops were great features as was his Dark Souls stuff. However, I appreciated that he was willing to tackle serious issues within gaming culture and it disappoints me how many people chafed against his style as if it were some affront to their precious vidja. Nothing wrong with Giant Bomb having some layers to it besides 'games are fun let's ride a roller coaster.'

I dislike Kotaku because of their dumb website design, articles without titles, links to random articles in articles, the generic gawker layout, you can't respond to a article Patrick wrote because of the approval system they have when commenting, I gave up on commenting because my comments remained in limbo for days.

If you want to keep track of Patrick, I found the UK Kotaku to be slightly better:

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/author/pklepek/

Also there is an RSS feed:

http://patrickklepek.kinja.com/rss

I don't like Kotaku, but I'll miss patrick. I won't go to Kotaku for him, I'll go to his youtube instead or something

The one thing that bothers me about Kotaku is putting so many damn Gifs on there front page.

I absolutely love his youtube stuff, but I don't keep up with his stuff on Kotaku. So far very few of the articles he's posted there have been the kinds I enjoyed reading by him here on Giant Bomb.

I like the guy, and I miss having a second, shorter, more frequent podcast, but otherwise I have been missing him way less than I thought I would. I was never too into Spookin' or his written features, and I guess his personality was always the one that spoke to me the least. I hope he does great at Kotaku, but it seems I'm not going to follow him there.

I'm never going back to Kotaku for any reason. I mostly just follow him on Twitter now, but I'm debating even stopping that because of the way that he ALWAYS responds to blatant haters, but will only respond to a compliment maybe once in a thousand times. It is really fucking infuriating.

I don't go to Kotaku and I never really cared for Patrick's content either, so I don't have an opinion at all.