What would it take for you to (re)purchase a GB membership?

I just bought another year today- I'm up to like 2016 or something. As long as they keep doing what they're doing I am satisfied- I only pay to support the guys anyway even if they completely changed the structure of the site (and I suspect it will change a lot in the next year or so).

I believe they love games as much as I do, even when I don't agree with something (like Jeff's stance on the souls series) I know it comes from a place of honesty.

Since they cant really release DVDs of their stuff or whatever, the yearly sub is the least I can do for all they've done for me entertainment-wise.

I rarely listen to the Bombcast or watch Quick Looks anymore, so I'd gladly exchange those for a well produced video each week like the Iceland one. I'm not suggesting they travel oversees each week; they just need to get out of the office. There's an amazing penny arcade in San Francisco that I've been to, I think Drew spoke about it on the Bombcast once. Get the whole crew down there, take a camera and see what happens.

Basically, get out of the weekly grind that clearly myself and others have grown tired of, and start producing some meaningful content. If they focused less on playing games and more on documenting the culture surrounding them, I'd subscribe. Patrick is on the right track.

As long as I can get a subscription without the coupon (which you now can with the current promotion). Because as much as I want GB merchandise, fuck the shipping they charge for a T-shirt.

The Mother's Day promo got me locked in until 2016.

What I want most is more Jar time and Patrick's equivalent.

More off-the wall crazy stuff would be good. For example, the blind taste test of fast food burgers, which came up in a podcast a while ago seemed like a gift of an idea, but hasn't happened.

I like the indie coverage, but would like the AAA releases to get a bit more time, too.

Not disagreeing, just curious, but what would you do to it?

Also, I really like the idea a lot of people have had about a "Spoiled Rotten" podcast to talk about a recent release in-depth.

Haha, jesus. I know someone who was waiting for a sale to get a membership. I never even saw this mentioned anywhere on the site and now it's sold out. Great!

I am not clear on what the benefits of purchasing membership are!

You get access to hours worth of subscriber content (videos, podcasts, archives of some live shows), you don't hafta deal with ads, and you can download videos so you can watch them anytime!

More details

Yeah, welcome to everything that ever gets sold here.

You know what, add that to my list. Stop doing bullshit promotions where you sell 1000 of something and don't even advertise it anywhere. Put up an article on the front page, say "alright here's the signed poster order/new limited run tshirt/whateverthefuck. it'll be available for order for the next two weeks at [link to store]." I can guarantee that nobody is going to give a fuck that their shirt took an extra six weeks to ship because you had to get the orders before you printed them. I've missed both signed posters and several limited-run t-shirts because they either weren't advertised, or they were advertised everywhere but the site itself and by the time I found out about them they were sold out. It's honestly a joke that a site with this many members would run a store the way they do.

I'm not trying to blast Rorie, because most of it happened before he got here, but the newest signed poster did happen seemingly under his command, and that was just the latest in a long line of mismanaged merchandise sales.

I think the part I enjoyed the most were the random pc game and endurance runs. The former was the reason I subscribed for a year at all.
But I currently have so many different hobbies that requires a lot of my time. I guess having something awesome to look at while painting and preparing my miniature armies would be a motiviation to buy a subscription again.

Tbh, I just listen to the podcast and watch a couple of quick looks.

To be fair, if you watched the archive of the latest Vinnyvania, Rorie mentioned it there.

Hell, even the new job openings were posted on the forums as opposed to a main article... Though there was at least a reference on the bombcast, but still.

That's kinda the whole problem. I shouldn't have to watch two hours of a random installment of a premium video feature that I may or may not be interested in (or follow them on twitter or tumblr or mixlr or whateverthefuckelse they're on) to get news about that kind of stuff. There's no excuse for it not being an article on the front page of the site itself.

Exactly. Doesn't even have to be a whole article even. Just a runner at top with a link, like you said. A lot of times it feels like they think everybody reads/looks at everything on the site, and some probably do, but not everybody. Hell, I still remember the whole confusing "podcast will be broke into two" thing. Big announcement on podcast about it, and then.... nothing ever happened (which was good). But, I never really knew what happened or why it was dropped until like a year later, when I believe it was Dave who randomly made fun of it during a podcast. I also even think they sometimes forget when they are doing it what content is subscriber and which is free. The obvious gets missed sometimes. I recall Jeff making fun of themselves one time for taking forever to simply get a shirt/hoodie with just the normal site name and logo available on the store.

For me personally though, the no ads thing alone is enough for me to keep subscribing, Fuck ads.

@ajamafalous: Yeah, I missed that signed poster thing too, didn't know it was a thing until I saw the stream of them signing them. I don't really follow the forums much, if that's where all this stuff is being promoted... What the fuck are they doing?

Also I watched Vinnyvania tonight and saw that brief mention of it... Which helps a lot now. And, since that's a premium feature anyway, uhhhhhh...

I don't watch the streams live due to the constant technical difficulties. So fuck me, right? My sub is still good for quite a while but I would have extended it while I could. But, yeah. Put a limit on the number of these digital things that you can't run out of. Fantastic.

Honestly, I don't have time for the premium content. Therefore, I can't justify spending the money for something I won't watch. I take the time for the main podcast and try to fit in Bombin' in the AM, but I barely have time to watch very many Quick Looks.

A Spoiler Cast really interests me, as long as they kept them reasonably short and didn't do one every day (again, too much content is overwhelming to my schedule). :P

Another thing I've really wanted is the ability to create small, locked communities within the forums. This may sound odd, but one issue I have with forums is that when dozens of people respond, it loses the sense of conversation. I'd love to have threads or whole mini-forums where there are only a couple dozen involved people so we can get to know each other better and have meaningful conversations. I don't know how all the logistics of that would work out, but I still think it could work somehow...

Other than than that, though, it's really hard to say. There's so much free content out there - more than I can consume. So, it's hard to justify the money for content I don't have time for.

Another deal. I just got the Mothers Day sale.

Unless there's a big, story-based game everyone has played and really dug into, there isn't really a way to do a proper spoiler cast.

What I would like is what they did with Dark Souls 2, the update videos and podcasts were really cool and fun to watch/listen. More stuff like that is always really fun.

@shinjin977 said:

I have yet to sub and this is pretty much the main reason why, I just don't really have time for it. I've always wanted a membership so maybe when I get more time I will finally get one.

A klondike bar

Since I just did ... I guess all it took was a Vinny Castlevania episode featuring John Drake. :P

It's not the most constructive comment since it's a lot of things that need fixing, but they really need to recapture that essence that made me subscribe to begin with, which I personally think they've lost. They've strayed from the reasons I subscribed, and this will probably be the last year I do so unless I feel they're going back in that direction.

I've re-subbed again, but I would like to see:

• Less focus on non-game content, i.e. wrestling, films and F1 (for instance, I'm a big F1 fan but don't listen to their F1 podcasts).
• Endurance runs in a format that delivers weekly (rather than daily) content, to ease pressure on production (like Game Informer's regular "Super Replay" series).
• Random PC games returning with Vinny and Drew.
• Flight club and more technical PC games with Drew and Brad.
• More guests on the Bombcast.
• Less focus on attending gaming conferences - I'm not sure they all need to go to every one, since the site does go dark for large periods in those events and the output from them does not seem to match the effort expended in my view.
• An average of 2 new pieces of video content per day. "I Love Mondays" forced some planning onto the team as well as informing viewers and whetting their appetites.
• Video investigations into games like LoL, World of Tanks, Eve and the like; perhaps with help from the community or the games' communities
• Better scheduling, timekeeping and advance information about upcoming shows and live events.
• Some Coverage of TI4.

I'm hopeful that GB secures some new hires and the staff are allowed to focus on producing gaming content. I wish them every success in reinvigorating GiantBomb!

Winner.

Nothin', son! Subscribed FOR. EVER.

I am in this New World Order of Video Game sites 4 Life.

I would like to see more content like the Pathfinder run, more Unprofessional Fridaylike occurrences and just more personality type videos. I come to Giant Bomb for the personalities of the crew and enjoy their less professional content. I regularly check back on the Fortune Street TnT, it's my favorite material Giant Bomb has done.

I guess what I am saying is I would like to see the guys do more content of things they want to have fun doing. It doesn't look like they have fun with press events or quick look EXs.

I'm still down for another year, it's my way of saying "I miss you and respect your dream" to Ryan. Oh, and I refuse to miss any Spookin's that come out. I agree that the gang has seemed very low energy and low enthusiasm for a long time. Dan's inclusion on the team has already helped in my opinion.

I would like to get a membership for those guys but ... I live in the a country where with my wage I can buy like 5 games (60 euro) and have to starve and the GiantBomb membership is not the only thing I will need to pay every month. I have a wife and kid and expenses to pay like every other member of society. It's not about what extra content they need to produce to get my subscription but more the thing is at my end ... if I start making more money I will get a membership for sure. The thing I do to support them is that I don't use my add-block on the giantbomb site.

Cheers

From what I've read of this thread, the biggest issue is structure. This whole magnificent site was born from Jeff and Ryan getting together to talk about games and whatever else. From there, the main gang was formed, and their formula was modified until it became the winning formula that we all know and love. Even when they were trying new things like Happy Hour, the way that crew worked off each other made anything work. From there, they could deviate into whatever, like calling off TNT to just play the 3DO for hours. When Ryan died, an integral part of that winning formula left, and now the current product is still running the formula with Ryan, and Ryan's not there, leaving Jeff to host when he's at his best at the #2 chair, and the rest of the crew perhaps a little less inspired to do more hilarious things because they wanted to, like when Brad and Ryan had dueling Monday videos (fuck, remember those?! I loved those!). Even now people have been noticing the negativity of Giant Bomb, when they've been critical of games for a while, but Ryan had a way of bringing out a sense of humor in the middle of it all, like cussing out Dave after he admitted he was kinda excited about a new Sonic. That's not there anymore.

In response to this question, their existing premium content will likely keep me funding it. When I need to sleep with something on, I often turn to their Random PC Game of the Ripper, and the 3DO video. As for the possibly inferred question of "how can Giant Bomb get back on track?", I personally agree with the sentiment many seem to be echoing here, which is that they should return to some form of structure. Get a Mondays video thing up again, where they have to start laying out what they're going to do for the week. Then once they figure out what segments work with their new setup(s), they can start deviating again, and it'll be back to the glory that it once was. All of the members of Giant Bomb, old and new, have what it takes for sure, they just need to tweak it to fit the personality of the new collective staff.

In a world where everybody uses adblock i am happy to pay 10 dollars a month for some premium content. Also a premium show from GB East would be cool ( vinny yelling at robots was a Nice start )

They lost me with Dan, I honestly can't stand the dudes voice and it renders pretty much any video he's in unwatchable. Giant BEAST has been doing awesome, but with now about half the content of the site Danified I probably won't reup when the time comes next time.

More interesting content.

What about Extended Plays? Basically a Quick Look, except much longer (4-5 hours?) spread across multiple video's. I really liked what they did for the Dark Souls II content for instance except it was way too infrequent and didn't last nearly as long as it should have.

More frequent Jar Time video's. And I have to be honest, I haven't checked but I get the idea that they have been getting more frequent lately. I don't mind if they are a bit shorter as long as they last more than 30 minutes or so.

Don't be afraid to give in to your passion. I don't watch the Daily Dota because I don't care about it, but I don't mind the video's being there. I wish the rest of the crew would do that stuff for games they are passionate about. Daily Dark Souls would have been amazing. Daily XCOM would have been amazing. Daily Civilization would be amazing (your chance to do it is still here Alex). Daily Saints Row would have been amazing to watch Jeff play. He said he plays those games multiple times anyway, he could've for the second playthrough.

UPF needs an overhaul for me to start liking it. Stop playing old games. A throwback once in a while is fine, but I seriously can't remember the last time I checked in and they were playing a relatively recent game (360 era and further). The most recent game I saw them play was that dog sniffing game for the PS2 and usually it's even older than that stuff.

The actual subscriber content isn't that compelling for me. So I would need to see some new content that catches my interest, like the daily videos of the staff's favourite games suggested above, I really liked the quick look of Divinity and watching Brad play though that might be cool. Either that or another discount, I didn't see a reason to subscribe during the previous discount because the content was pretty thin but it seems to be really picking up with the new hires.

At this point, they could kick me in the face and I'd still want to give them money.

What would it take for me? My membership actually running out, which it will again in...September I think.

Content seems to be kicking up like crazy now with the new hires and GBEast getting their rickety jalopy of a studio up and running with cans and string.

My favorite content is usually live (ie: UPF , the former TNT, and the shortlived GB/GS "Weekly" show that didn't work out for multiple reasons), or long-form playthroughs like the Dark Souls stuff or Vinnyvania. Problem with the long-form stuff is it can't really be forced, they have to want to do it or it just comes off as a chore.

But if we're actually trying to think up new stuff and not just grouse about how everything was better "Back in the Day" (was anything ever worse back in the day, aside from diseases and plagues?), I think a new Multiplayer focused show could be pretty cool. Something to involve the community in- take crazy Skype calls during, just to amp the crazy to 11.

I also think a Studio V. Studio show could work, think competitive speedruns with less emphasis on speed- Awesome Games Done at a Medium Pace. There aren't enough staffing at the satellite studios to do a tournament really, one match at East, 4-6 at West, and there's the MidWest- do you risk letting in Dave Lang and letting him take the potential title? Though, you know he'd pay to get an actual trophy no matter what the competition was in.

There's a lot of possibilities now, and I can only see it going up from here. That's why I renewed my sub the other week- that and the card I had on file expired so that's the only reason it lapsed for a week anyway.

Random PC game needs to come back.

Random PC Game RANDOM PC GAME random pc game. no seriously random pc game.

all though I will maintain my membership regardless

As long as Jeff, Vinny and Brad still work there, my subscription is confirmed. Dan seems alright, but he's still new and "green" and it takes a while for me to figure out if I actually find someone worth watching/listening to. When Patrick started out, I couldn't stand his voice, but after about 4 or 5 months I was fine with him. Dan might turn out to be as good of a "hidden gem" as patrick, but right now he's not drawing me to GB - Jeff and Vinny are, for the most part. Brad's okay, but Brad needs those two to be interesting. By himself... uh, sorry but that's not something I would watch. Drew's cool.... but he's no Jeff or Ryan or Vinny. Alex is good, and out of Brad and Drew he might be the best at going it alone, but still, it's better that he has Vinny with him.

So long as Jeff and Vinny (and to some extent Brad) continue working there, I'll subscribe until I'm dead. But if those two go..... errrgggh..... I probably wouldn't even visit GB again.

I'd be totally down with that. However, that was kind of the realm of the GB Dream Team Flight Club. With Vinny and Drew so far apart, I'm not sure how the dynamic would work. Vinny and Alex would be pretty good. But, I can't see anyone else outside of Drew doing random PC games. And I swear to god, if an unmentioned new person were to say something like, "Oh. So TIE Fighter is Rogue Squadron on the PC?" I'll find a table to flip.

I am tired of all these topics about how much people feel cheated out of their subscription money. I mean if $4.16 since a month is too much of a hassle for you, then maybe you should put down the starbucks you get every morning or what ever vice you have. People make it sound like its costing them $50 dollars a month when most people spend that much on non essentials every week.

I'm just happy to support a site and people I love and don't ask to be rewarded in kind.

Im subscribed until Feb 2016, so im pretty committed.

I usually stay out of threads like this (not that I'm all that active in the forums anyway, but whatever), but since this one's been resurrected I may as well chip in.

I view my subscription more as a patronage, first and foremost. I have faith that, without financial pressure, they will eventually produce content I'll love more than almost anything. I kind of couldn't care less about wrestling games, even if I'm loving the Power Bombcast (or however it's intercapped), but all of those Sleeping Dogs quick looks were some of my favorite things that I've ever seen. I figure it evens out in the end.

As far as what I get out of it directly, it's the archive downloading that's most important to me. I don't really have the time/availability to watch most things live (unless I schedule a day off, like I've done for console launches), and I hate watching video in a web browser anyway. The user experience of streaming video - not just here, but anywhere - is so exceptionally poor that it's well worth my $50 annually to never deal with it for their content. I really wish Tested would make that available, but since they're YouTube dependent I don't know that they ever will; that's kind of the only reason I don't sub to Tested, and I feel bad about it because I like those dudes.

tl;dr: It isn't about the content, for me - I don't see a distinction between member content and free content, because it all comes through the same RSS feed for me. I subscribe to support what they do, regardless of who else sees it, and for the convenience offered by ad-removal and archive downloading.

This this this this this this.

Not that anything is wrong the EXPLOSION of content since GBEAST got rolling and new crew in place has been great.

For me to sub to GB I would need to see:

• Return of a "I Love Mondays" like show
• Alittle less focus on non-game content on the Bombcasts
• Return of a TNT/Scrub League like show (does not have to be every week)
• Endurance run (weekly or monthly episodes which ever works better for the crew)
• Looks into non-game game media (ex: pokemon manga, upcoming halo tv show, archie megaman comic, etc)