For what reason did you come to Giant Bomb?

I used to always read Gamespot reviews and Jeff was one of my favorite reviewers as I thought he was tough but fair generally. I remember feeling pretty betrayed by Jeff's firing and kinda lost faith in Gamespot. A little while later I remember thinking, I wonder what Jeff's up to these days and fell in love with GB, particularly the quick look format.

@cornbredx: Wow. I really enjoyed reading what you had to say!

I remember the forums being hostile and crazy. Unfortunately, I didn't help the cause sometimes, but I've learned from my mistakes. I'm surprised that things have gotten better for this place, and it's a shame that I wasn't here to see it for the last year or so. I don't know why I ever left and stayed inactive for so long.

@tireyo: To be fair I know you were having some real life stuff going on so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

If nothing else I do remember people who create forum threads a lot (even if they're silly nonsense- which I'm not trying to imply is bad btw) and you were one of those people at one time. We've talked about that in another thread you did before, though.

But ya, it's been better.

Some of the silly nonsense ones can be entertaining to read and participate in at times, like this thread! LOL! ;-D Posting silly things gave me a release then, and it helped me a great deal. Perhaps doing so many at the time helped someone else too to keep their mind occupied, but that idea is probably unrealistic.

Bombcast was my entry point and always the centerpiece of the site for me, though everything they do is generally great. Also really started following them after Patrick joined so for me he's always belonged.

Came here looking for info on GTA The Lost and the Damned in 2009, ran into the wiki. Then I clicked on the homepage saw the P4 Endurance Run and stayed.

They kept firing people at 1up and eventually I heard one of those people say how great the bombcast was, listened and been here ever since.

Like others have said I followed Jeff and Ryan from Gamespot over to Giantbomb. It's been a long journey and the site has progressed way further then I even dreamed possible.

I got really into 1upYours back in its heyday, but as people kept leaving, it was clear I had to find someone else. I don't remember who left specifically that got me to move on (I think it was Shane), but I remember browsing the forums and someone said the bombcast has been better than 1upyours for years at that point. That comment irked me enough to check the site and here I am now.

Just an aside, because somebody mentioned 1upyours. I used to love the shit out of that back in the day. Luke, Shane, John and garnet. I still occasionally debate with myself whether the highs of 1upyours match the highs of the bombcast and vice versa.

Like a lot of the people on here, I moved over from Gamespot when all my favorite personalities for The Hotspot had moved on over here. I've been listening to the Bombcast ever since.

I feel old because I followed the GB crew form their Game Spot days.

I went to Gamespot when I was a teenager, even though I didn't really check out the hotspot or anything. I was mostly into just game reviews and previews and stuff at the time. I remember Jeff getting fired, though I mostly knew him as "that game reviewer who is kinda harsh." I also remember Brad was the one with the cool voice.

Anyway, I stumbled upon the bombcast about a year in and was so stoked that Jeff started his own thing and Ryan and Brad came with him. It seemed like expert level critical game analysis combined with a laid-back, guys in their basement indie passion. Every other site seemed so corporate and stiff by comparison.

These days, other sites seem to be leaning into their personalities more and more, which is cool. But Giant Bomb still seems like the most laid back, down to earth site. But it also just seems like a higher standard here. People just get it. I'm into it.

I just followed Jeff. It was a bonus when Vinny joined. I loved it when Vinny was the host on the Hotspot.

Rogue Warrior QL

I started following the guys back in 2004 when Gamespot was in its golden years with Gallup, Kasavin , Gouskos, etc, and the Giant Bomb crew. I loved all their fun content and how they clearly were people that didn't allow games to be their entire life, but apart of it.

So after GerstmannGate I followed them on Arrowpointingdown.com and Giant Bomb from there and never looked back.

I'm pretty sure I was looking for videos of Castlevania: Judgement (Yeah, I know it sucks. Go ask the me from 6 years ago what the heck he was thinking.) and after watching that and the other QLs that already were up, I kept visiting the site, since everything just seemed really fun and different.

Then the DP ER happened, which got me to finally sign up and made me realize that I'd never leave again.

Got interested in Lets Plays way back when they were mostly picture/text with some limited video and before YouTube allowed long videos and game stuff took off there. Someone pointed to the Persona 4 Endurance Run back when it was first starting and I was hooked by Quick Looks, the Bombcast, and all the rest.

I honestly can't remember for sure, and that's kind of bothering me. As best as I can remember, my first solid memories of the usual suspects was during the Gamespot days, seeing a livestream of them covering the PS3 midnight launch. At some point one of them just started standing in front of a cartoon beach setting on the greenscreen, cutting wrestling promos about "Bash at the Beach."

Shortly after, I had a trip coming up where I'd be flying for a few hours and needed some podcasts to kill time, and I was familiar enough with what happened with Jeff getting canned from Gamespot to give the Bombcast a chance. The first episode I heard was either the one with people freaking out about a spider in the room, or the one where Jeff(?) talked about doing nothing but sitting around eating a bucket of KFC over the weekend. Have stuck with it ever since.

I have a shameful fetish for watching people play video games on the internet and in late 2011/early 2012 I heard about the highly regarded Persona 4 endurance run in a gaf post. I owned P4 but never put in the time to play much of it and was curious. After a few episodes I could not stop watching. It helped me get through some tough times.

Shortly after that I found xpantherx's best of GB Quick Looks on YouTube and immediately knew I was in love with every single employee of GiantBomb.

It wasn't until a bit later I learned that Jeff was *the* Jeff that took a stand at Gamespot which I remember reading about a few years prior.

And just after that I gave the podcast a listen. It was the first podcast I had ever listened to and is the reason I have like 35 different podcasts in my feed now.

I think i was looking for a game site that wasnt gamespot/ign like in their coverage. At the time i didnt even know that all of the original Giant Bomb Duders came from Gamespot. I really did not / still dont like the "serious" game coverage.

Followed Jeff to the Arrow Pointing Down Podcast and then on to Giant Bomb.

i used to check gamespot daily back in the Greg Kasavin days, when greg left for a time it seemed that it was going to be alright but then the whole kane and lynch stuff happened, then when Ryan, Rich, Brad and Alex left as well i pretty much stopped going there. For a time i even stopped following games at all, but then i watched the too human video and that's pretty much all that needs to be said. It still took me sometime to become a member though, but i've gotten more laughs out of this site that probably any other one thing in my life.

I installed XBMC on my HTPC and I was looking at Add-Ons. I saw the Giant Bomb add-on and I figured, "What the hell?" I didn't understand what they meant by "Quick Looks" but I saw an entry for "Michael Phelps Swimming". Nothing could have prepared me for what I was going to see.

The scene is still so crisp in my mind. On the couch, I was doubled over in laughter. My wife comes running out to see what was so funny. Snorting, I pointed to the TV. My wife saw virtual swimmers, shook her head, and said, "What the hell are you watching?"

I finally caught my breath and gave her the gist of what was going on. She didn't understand and went back in the other room.

After watching Michael Phelp's Quick Look, I watched another one, and another one, and another one. I spent the rest of the day watching Quick Looks.

I started with Gamespot in 2004 son. I remember when the hotspot was a news stock ticker feature and someone told Jeff in the forums to do a podcast. I said it was a dumb idea because I didn't know what that was and I was 15. Jeff then said it was a good idea and here we are.

Been a fan since the GameSpot days. GameSpot and 1UP were my haunts for video game coverage way back in 2004-2005 when we finally got broadband internet. That whole shit went down and I followed what Jeff was up to while checking in with the GameSpot stuff until most of the main crew left out of respect (I assume). Arrow Pointing Down soon came out and then when this site started up, I came over here right away. Been here ever since.

On a side note, poor 1UP never really came back after their glory days. I'd argue CGW/GFW Radio still reigns supreme over every gaming podcast before or since, The 1UP Show was ahead of its time, and the cast of characters at 1UP was pretty talented. After the gutting, the replacements that came up never as good. Co-Op was pretty cool while it lasted, Weekend Confirmed never really felt the same, and everyone eventually split up toward different things, so I just kind of forgot about them all about 3 years ago.

Was looking for info on Rogue Warrior and found the quick look. Shitty games make for the best quick looks.

My brother showed it to me.

I used to watch some Gamespot stuff during E3 and it was hard to miss the controversy surrounding the Kane & Lynch review which made the Jeff Gerstmann name stuck in the back of my head. And then I think I was just googling around and his name popped up in my head so I made a search to see what he was doing and I found the How To Build A Bomb-videos and got hooked on the podcast that summer. It took a while before I started to watch all videos and I distinctively remember thinking the Endurance Run-concept was crazy and just skipped it completely for like 6 moths until i realized what I had missed.

I was horny and made a typo after 'giant'.

Just stuck with it.

I'm here from the On The Spot days. Though I started catching it on the tail end of what made that show great at the time. I was also around for the Kane & Lynch debacle. What kept me here, however, was the Endurance Run. Seeing two guys with very little anime knowledge but so much game experience was so very, very interesting to me. Took me a while to make an account on the site, though. I haven't really ever posted much.

Jeff was always "the guy".

That's pretty much it. Where he goes, I have followed.

Joined the community and membershiped a few years ago, after deciding to both A) write more B) read more and C) support Jeff and crew directly.

I was trying to help my mom decide between The Biggest Loser game and whatever the other fitness game was when the original Kinect came out. Somehow my research brought me to the Quick Look for The Biggest Loser. I remember being entertained (by a video of a fitness game) so I went back and started watching old Quick Looks. I've been here ever since.

I was a huge GameSpot fan back as a teenager when Jeff and Rich were there. I fell off after Jeff was fired and kind of forgot about all of it.

I then was looking up spoiler videos for Bioshock Infinite last year after I beat it, and I find this video with all of these familiar faces in it on GiantBomb.com. I don't know how I went on for like 5 years without knowing of the existence of this place, but I've been a subscriber since that week.

I w sh I could remember. Whatever it was, the content here was fresh and funny so that's why I stuck around. Before here, I was mostly just going to ign and 1up.

Read about the whole Jeff thing, remembered liking his reviews from Gamespot, heard good things about the podcast.

I came here after years of Gamespot. I liked Jeff, Ryan and Brad already, and when the whole thing with Jeff and Kane & Lynch went down, I was pumped for something new. And man, quick looks? Amazing idea at the time.

it was fall 2012 when I first started seeing giant bomb stuff that twitter friends were sharing. I'd been really burnt out on video games for years so I wasn't interested at first but the personalities kept me coming back, and giant bomb actually made me passionate about video games again. thanks giant bomb thanks ryan davis.

I found the podcast when it was two lonely episodes of Arrow Pointing Down, and I listened for a long time. Then, one day, Ryan and Jeff made a specific "Let's Talk About Memberships" episode in which they discussed splitting the podcast in half, and I said: "Wait, a membership to what? Is there some kind of website behind the Giant Bombcast? If they're going to split my Bombcast in twain, I'd better get my ass to giantbomb.com."

Well, they didn't, but I haven't left. It's kind of weird: I never really visited any gaming website with any regularity before finding GB, so most of my gaming news was from the few people I knew who occasionally played video games. Giant Bomb, and the Bombcast specifically, kind of got me into video games.

I love this story, in no small part because there was about six months of the Bombcast in which they talked about whether or not that game would ever ship. "So does everything change now that the weed controversy's a thing? Is it a drug simulator now? 'I don't want to go swimming, man, I just wanna touch stuff.' "

i saw brads profile on a christian dating site

Came here accidentally while looking for reviews. Staying because of the community.

Had been keeping up irregularly with On the Spot and other Gamespot media for several years, and came to recognize Jeff as the guy. When he was forced out, and followed by others whose opinion I respected, I sort of stopped caring enough to invest myself in online games coverage. Then, I happened to catch an episode of X-Play - which I hadn't been watching consistently - where Jeff came on to talk around what had happened with Kane and Lynch and plug the site (not sure whether it was jeffgerstmann.com or arrowpointingdown.com at that point). Had an impulse to check it out a few months later, ran through all of "How to Build a Bomb", and fell in love with everything the guys were doing.

I came here because of the "Gerstmann-gate". I stayed because of the bombcast...

Then the Persona 4 Endurance Run happened, and I was hooked.

A friend told me about the site and how it started with Jeff being fired from Gamespot for not changing his Kane & Lynch 2 review score. I had a look and dug the honesty, community and vibe.

So, it all started with 1up. They got me into this whole "Podcast" thing, but eventually I managed to chew through all their content, and I needed something else to listen to. This was before everything imploded, but that didn't help matters anyway.

So, I was browsing iTunes, and I found Tested. Not vidja-games, but I like tech, so I'll listen to This Is Only a Test. It took me until January 2013 to catch up with it, at which point I started jonesin' for more content.

Tested had a sister site, Los Bomba Gigante or something. I went over there, saw a ridiculous mailbag where they received a giant donut, and subscribed immediately. The rest is, as they say, history.

I was just following Gerstman, Davis and Shoemaker.

That naked cartoon pussy.

I was also around for "the happening" back during the gamespot days, and suddenly found myself considerably less enthused to stick around. So when my favourite editors (with the exception of Kasavin at the time) opened a new site, I fucking leapt on it..

1:1 In de beginnin' Jeff created da Giant Bomb it bein' ah damn website.

1:2 And da damn Bomb wuz widout fo'm, and void; and darkness wuz downon de face uh de web. And da damn Spirit uh Jeff moved downon de face uh de web.

1:3 And Jeff said, write reviews n-shit, dig dis: and dere wuz content like.

1:4 And Jeff saw de review system, dat it wuz bad: and Jeff divided da damn good score system from de badness.

1:5 And Jeff called da damn good ah' fiver, and da damn darkness he called wonz. And da damn first game' wuz de Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Slap mah fro it was GOOD!

1:6 And Jeff said, Let dere be some articles in de midst uh de website, and let it divide da damn reviews fum de articles.

1:7 And Jeff made da damn movin picture, and divided da damn content which wuz unda' de writen fum de content which wuz vids, dig dis: and it wuz so.

1:8 And Jeff called da damn videos Quick Looks. 'S coo', bro. And da damn website' was cool nshit. Slap mah fro!

1:9 And Jeff said, Let da damn content unda' de wiki be gadered togeder unto one place, and yet divided into catagories n'shit: and it wuz so.

1:10 And Jeff said, Let da damn website be full of sounds n'such and much yellin. So da first podcast was made in Jeffs image: 'S coo', bro.

1:11 And da damn website brought fo'd reviews, and quick looks yieldin' seed after his kind, and da damn podcast yieldin' views, whose seed wuz in itself wopper likes: and Jeff saw dat it wuz baaaad.

1:12 And da damn website' and da damn wiki wuz do'in fine

1:13 And Jeff saw, da damn content brin' fo'd abundantly de nerds, but dat troll dat fly above da damn nerds shat upon um'. 'S'not coo' bro, said Jeff.

1:14 And Jeff created great mods, and every livin' creature dat moved was subject to rulz. And da mods slapped a bitch when dey was out of line; dig dis: and Jeff saw dat it wuz baaaad.

1:15 And Jeff blessed dem nerds, trolls, and mods, sayin', Be fruitful, and multiply this wiki, and fill de wiki with facts n'shit. Slap mah fro!

I believe I saw the Bombcast on an iTunes chart or something while downloading other podcasts. Went to the website and East Side Mario's - Bada Boom Bada Bing!

Watched some "On the Spot" between 2005 and 2006.
Rich Gallup left...
The Kane & Lynch thing happened...
Jeff fired...
Others started leaving...
Then I stopped going to Gamespot for a while as well.

I found Jeff's personal Blog.
Was worried that was all that he was going to be doing from now on.
Still felt like that was at least better than nothing.

Arrow Pointing Down podcast happened.
I started drinking some Gatorade Tiger.
GiantBomb website announced.
How to Build a Bomb videos.
Burnout Paradise Bikes Quick Look.

Site Launched.

and that's how it happened.