Yo is GiantBomb slowly becoming premium-focused or what

The amount of free content has never diminished. More premium content is never a bad thing. If you like GiantBomb and want access to more content then pay up and support the site. Making a big stink about this is nonsense...

@laksa:

I'm sorry I was watching premium content. Did you say something?

@hailinel said:

I'm pretty much with Hailinel.

So the overall number of Quick Looks is comparable, but staff participation on Quick Looks is lower; the conclusion is that most Quick Looks are a 2-man-QL these days, when in the old days you would get 3-man-QLs more often? That just seems like a weird argument, because I don't think 2-man-QLs are inferior to 3-man-QLs or something. 3-man-QLs are wackier, but there are plenty of amazing 2-man-QLs. Yeah, Ryan and Brad's number of participated Quick Looks has fallen, but it does sound like they have more weekly meetings to attend now that they're part of CBSi. They spend time playing games to prepare for Quick Looks or reviews. They make arrangements with PR people to go see a game, or have someone send the game to the office. And just overall, who cares? Why should their entire workweek be something we're keeping tabs on? I'm sure there is a man in the CBSi offices somewhere whose job is to make sure people are actually working, and not just jacking off in a corner somewhere.

All this comparing numbers year-over-year seems insane to me, when you really get down to it. It's kind of gross that we're getting this far into comparing each staff member's involvement in Quick Looks. We're not stockholders or owners or anything. Do those data actually correlate to anything meaningful? Have non-premium users stopped coming to the site because Brad is in 31% fewer Quick Looks than this time last year? Is Giant Bomb a bad website now?

Eggzacktly. They're a small team, so if they make more premium stuff, they will do less of the free stuff. You can't have it both ways people! I suppose there is a solution here, something in the middle that makes everyone happy (nah, people will always be grumpy on the internet), but it's hard to do for a couple guys running a small website. Chill out.

@bisonhero: I'm not trying to make this a gross numbers game, I'm merely pointing out that things are different; there are differences. You can certainly argue that things being different doesn't make things inferior, but a lot of people enjoy certain kinds of QLs and certain QL pairings over the other, and I just dislike it when all comments are dismissed as "well, things are the same as they've always been, stop complaining."

All I'm trying to say is, let's be fair to those comments by at least acknowledging that Quick Looks now are a little different from the Quick Looks of then, and certain staff members participate more than others. When people complain about how things "feel" different to them, you can dig into the numbers and the details of the Quick Look appearances and see certain things changing, and that's where that sentiment comes from. Whether or not that's good or not, whether or not that's an unfair expectation, I leave that judgment up to other people, but the sentiment that things are different than they used to be is not an invalid one, when you break it down.

Unprofessional Fridays aren't free. (edit: speaking from a standard. Some episodes have appeared on the twitch archive, but not all and certainly not the majority.)

And have you ever tried looking for something specific in the twitch archives? It's a nightmare, especially because GB doesn't label most of their stuff or labels it inaccurately.

I'm not complaining about the ratio or anything, just wanted to get those two things out there.

You guys really bum your expectations for the website when you keep reading into stuff like this.

Yeah, pretty much this. If you guys think that the Premium content is that important, then pay for it.

As a non subscriber I think the amount of content I have access to is just fine. I am a little worried about the near future after Patrick leaves, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

To those that bitch and moan about subscriber videos, how about you just buy it for a month and watch everything you wanted, maybe download them, then unsubscribe again? How much does it cost, 5 bucks? Also, how many quick looks do you expect, when there are barely any games coming out? And finally, which videos, that used to be released for free, are only available to subscribers now? QL's are still free, bombcast is still free, the ER's are still free, TNT is free live and on twitch, daily DOTA, unprofessional Fridays as well. So what do subscribers get, that a simple user doesn't? An occasional spookin with scoops, Q&A video, some random old PC game video, a few very rare subscriber podcasts and the ability to download the videos.

Why are people whining about not enough free content, we have hit the summer drought, what do you want them to do pull games out of thin air?

I don't see it as a problem. I didn't renew my subscription about a year and a half ago because there was so little premium content that it wasn't worth it. They actually need decent content as an incentive rather than just hoping everyone wants to use the premium membership as a donation.

I do think they need to put out a little more free content. When there are no new releases there isn't a lot that comes out. I hope they fix this in the form of more regular Bombasticas.

Subscribe or don't complain about content. Those are peoples options imo. GB need a tonne of money to do what they do and continue expanding what they do. If you don't want to pay for arguably the best game-related content online then you don't really have a right to complain about its consistency lacking. Especially with how insanely cheap said subsciptions are.

I've renewed mine 3 times now and every year its the best god damn 60 bucks I've spent all year. A third of a years GB content alone exceeds that value imo, I feel like I'm getting a crazy bargain every time.

People really have a problem with people having a problem with things huh

Just in case you don't know, premium stuff is anything not related to current video games or new releases.

Non subscriber stuff is quick looks, TNTs, console announcements, podcasts, and then stuff that is pretty much barely related to current new games and consoles is premium.

So hopefully it makes sense that there isn't much non subscriber stuff at the minute during the most empty release period in the year.

The only thing I wan't to watch is Spookin with Scopps and I can't

What are you duders talking about?! Aren't all videos free? I've been watching this so called "premium" content for some time now without having paid a cent.

I'm joking by the way, just thought I should say that in case it wasn't obvious enough.

I find it hilarious how goddamn defensive subscribers are getting for no reason.

Right now I think they're providing some of the best premium content they ever have, but I get where some folks are coming from. That said, I don't watch TV so paying for premium membership is totally worth it for me, as GB makes up a vast majority of my entertainment. The only one I think should be available to all is the return of Matt and Alex's movie podcast, there to good to be hidden behind premium in my opinion. Plus not having them on iTunes could be troublesome.

It's a fine balance I guess, but if you're an avid GB user than membership is easy to recommend.

I don't know why but I freaking looooooove that statistics like "Well, Ryan's involvement in QL has decreased 53% over the last three months. This can be attributed to the relocating to a new office, the weak Yen in Japan and a slow year in the industry overall, furthermore it should be noted that compared to the Quarter One 2012 we can actually see..." exist.

The main free content has always been Quick Looks, bombcast and TNT (live).

Because the new releases are in a slow period there have been less quick looks. However you can watch the Daily Dota live for free (twitch for archives) and even if you are not in to that you could argue that the daily free content in hours is a high as ever.

The trick is to look up the date and time of the video on GB and then sort the twitch archives by date (sometimes you have to convert a date in to XX months ago) and then ignore the titles.

I think they should do Kickstarter or something else that does not split the community that much. I think that it would be rather hard to get new users if most of the stuff is behind the pay wall. I fear that if they come up with brilliant new idea (akin to the ER or TANG), it will be missed by the majority.

I'm going to try and not pick a side here, but rather note that as Patrick's leaving date approaches I feel like I've seen these types of threads more often, which sounds to me like there's a growing concern in corners of the community that the content output at Giant Bomb is going to be below-par, or already is. It seems like the best thing they could do right now is for a member of staff (especially if it was someone who oversees a large part of the video content such as @vinny or @drewbert) to just lay down what they currently do and don't have time to do, even if the response is just "guys we're making everything we have time for". Otherwise it seems like these concerns are going to get more common as time goes on.

If you compare the amount of free content in recent weeks to the same week in previous years, I'd bet that there hasn't been a significant reduction.

Free content has for a long time revolved around Quick Looks of recent releases. And if you check your release calendar, nothing is coming out at the moment. During the summer months there is nearly always a thread along the lines of "why isn't there any content on the site?" It's because there are no games coming out.

Once we hit the busy release season there will be more quick looks than you can shake a stick at, and there will probably be a reduction in premium content as a result of the staff spending their time on quick looks and reviews of the new games. And then we'll get the inevitable "why is there no premium content?" Threads.

pay to win, more like pay to Vin.

I like the separation I'm seeing between the subscribers and free users here. How stupid.

@mattyftm:

Its weird - its almost like the people that pay for content are getting more than those who don't....

And there's never a middle ground where complaints won't be vocalized because this is the internet.

As a subscriber, the only thing I have to complain about is the *types* of content (I miss the Random PC Game trio of VinDavDrew because even though most of that content has been rolled into Unprofessional Fridays, it's just not the same) and how the way I used to communicate with people was broken with the new site and hence I still feel isolated and use the site a whole lot less (even thought about cancelling my subscription even though technically all of the broken features were always free anyway).

Damn you, you magnificent beast.

A Fork!

Ok, so if the price is not the issue, it's the principle of producing content that some members are willing to pay for, and others are not? They haven't really moved any of the free content behind the pay wall. Quick looks and other features are still free, so nothing has really changed for non-subscribers.

A lot of the premium content isn't as premium as it sounds. The Spookin with Scoops and Jar time are as scrapped together as could be (Doesn't mean I don't like them). The Dota 2 stuff is only interesting if you're really into Dota and is also pretty thrown together. The only content that I would say is of the same quality as a quick look or live show is unprofessional Fridays. Oh and Vinny playing Bio-forge.

I am not a member yet but I hope that they continue this current trend of increased premium videos continues as it will give me an additional reason to subscribe. I only really discovered GB properly around August so I missed last year's sale but I'm hoping they do another sale this year. How much of the membership goes straight towards GB and how much is back to CBSi to support their other sites? Anyone have an idea? I want to show my support for GB for their content.

Ya ya.

So it goes. Either there's to much subscriber content, to little, or not enough interesting subscriber content.

To much non subscriber content, to little, or not interesting enough.

I'm sure there will be another of these threads in a week or so.

I'm ready for whatever content Giantbomb gives me and pay to support the site. I don't personally require anything special; just that they keep doing what they do and I'll probably keep watching.

It's been a dry spell recently, so there's not a whole lot of games for them to cover quick look style recently.

No.

The issue is not that the guys are fucking people over, it's that nothing is coming out. It's almost always been QLs/Content = Free, Watch us be dumb goofs = Paid.

Since very few things have been coming out, and almost all the attention is on E3/Consoles, they've had very little time for QLs, so it's been almost all paid content. Come holiday season, we'll be back to "There isn't enough paid content!", because they'll be putting so much work into setting up QLs for all the games that come out.

It's no giant CBS conspiracy, it's just they can't magic up games to look at. Sure, I think they've skipped a few, Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing came out on the PC, and is getting compared favorably against stuff like D3/Torchlight 2 and they haven't done a QL of it yet, but it's not like the well is so dry they need to resort to stuff like that yet.

In the end Giant Bomb has to make some kind of a profit in order to go on. The premium subscription that I pay for translates to about 4 dollars a month.

Jeffs jar time alone is worth the subscription.

It's so weird how people keep treating entire communities like single entities. Obviously those two ideas aren't coming from the same people. Why is everyone pretending otherwise?

Tell us ... what exactly was free and is now behind a paywall? I'm really interested to hear that.

I can see where you're coming from. There's a lot of really good premium content on this site. I'm usually pretty turned off by subscription based stuff but this site is so good at offering soo much content that I had to join.

Since then I haven't even looked at what was premium and what was free as I pretty much watch everything. I remember wanting to watch certain videos and being annoyed when I couldn't though before I became a subscriber.

I feel like right now there's more premium stuff because there aren't many games to do quicklooks on. When the gaming season starts up again I'm sure there will be more content for non subscribers.

Hasn't the non-premium stuff been about on par with how its always been (since they started the premium model)?

Just because the premium:free ratio is not the same does not mean that they are doing less free content. It just means that they are doing more premium content.

@razielcuts: Thank you. The people that keep saying there are no games to play, can practically pick a Mailbag at random to see someone sending them a box full of games. Didn't Ryan buy like 200 SNES games from Japan a couple months ago? So the whole "no games" argument is kind of bullshit.

I believe Jeff already said that most of the income comes from ads and not from subs.

Facts! (just browsing through the features/ql/events area of the video archives)

2013 May:

22 QL/Encyclopedia Bombastica (and there is at least 1 more QL to come this month)

features: 10 free, 3 premium (2 of those are dota), +1 free "event"

2012 May:

26 QL

features: 11 free +1 free "event"

That is pretty close. On top of that, the dump truck is an awesome new feature that is also free.

Can't charge people without justifying it with premium content. It's it's quite frankly very cheap for some great stuff. I mean the truth is if they don't have subscribers they might not exist...

This is the funniest thing I have seen today, thank you sir

There is enough content of both sides, stfu already.