I love Gaintbomb but I really need to rant about it

Need to let out all my frustration accumulated over the years. Sorry for the language.

I love the people at GaintBomb, the things they do and the contents they put on the site. The site looks great and it's very well designed in a lot of ways. But why the fuck wouldn't they ever organize all the contents in a sensible manner. The video feature page is one lousy mess with everything crammed into it. Even looking up for the video I want but unsure of the "name" is difficult, let alone trying to browse it.

Why do they insist on not adding more categories/folders/pages for all the different type of content they are coming up with, even with a brand new page redesign. For god sake Patrick had been doing the "Worth Reading" article for years now, how the fuck can there not be a page with a list of all those articles he wrote? And why isn't there an article page in general? Do they not care to keep a record of the stories they wrote at all?

Most of these categories of content sorting can sometimes be solve with using the search. Like sometimes I can search "Random PC game" and the site would display all that "category" of videos Vinny and Dave did back in the days. But half the time the search wouldn't work, right now I try to search Worth Reading and Worth Playing; nothing showed up.

And speaking of search. Maybe I'm stupid and never figure out how but is there no search by thread title?

Basically it comes down to me having some sort of OCD. With all these contents displayed in such a mess, drives me crazy over the years. And I love going back to watch all those "one off" silly they've done over the years, like the dungeon siege retrospective video Vinny and Ryan did. Please organize the site, it would be a shame all those content lost in pile of mess for new comer to the site.

Have that beer weekend sometimes and tag the content. Or select portion of the community do it, I'm sure there are people eagering to do it.

Rant*

Is Gaintbomb a body building website?

Always good to see legitimate criticism brought undone by internet "ranking"

@doe3879: All good points. The lack of an article page is just kinda the biggest standout.

I really do wish the search actually worked properly at times.

Was afraid this was going to be an incoherent rant, but the point is a fairly legitimate one. There is certainly room for improvement in terms of making the content easy to locate. It's not a huge problem for me, but I probably would go back and (re)watch a lot more of the old videos, if they were easier to find.

I don't know actually know if this is true, but it seems like as soon as the new GB launched CBS had all the engineers move to the comic vine and then gamespot sites and not a whole lot of extra work has gone into GB, but since they have finished GS now maybe they can get to some stuff on GB. Again, no idea if this is true just what I've sorta picked up on listening to them on UPF's and such.

Try to find a specific video from years ago that could be attached to multiple game pages. Good fucking luck. Yeah, there is a definite need for order on this site. Also, occasionally videos are just tagged and put in the wrong spot. So, they're even harder to find. This past Unprofessional Fridays for instance, is in the Quick Looks section.

Not sure what Giantbomb has to do with your bad odour, but if you shower more often you won't be so rank.

I dunno if it's just me or what but the Sonic Quick Look, which I watched, isn't even showing up for me anymore and is in the upcoming feed scheduled for the 19th - yes, yesterday.

Giant Bomb is pretty good but it's certainly no Brothers.

Agree with all that. Sorting of articles and news and searching has always been terrible.

I totally agree with you. Giant Bomb has produced so much quality content over the years, but it's far too inconvenient to try and dig it up as it is now. Recently I've become a fan of Patrick's Spookin' with Scoops, but if I don't visit the site daily I risk missing the video completely. It's far too easy for quality content to drown in the sea of trailers and guest podcasts in the site's current design.

The wiki search being worthless if you don't know the exact title of the game is my biggest gripe.

Most of the problems come from Dave being way too overambitious, spending months on stupid little details when basically the whole site is broken. A guy spends his whole life making websites, you'd think he'd know better than to make such a mess. Then he blamed it on incompetent coworkers who hadn't worked on the original Giant Bomb, released a broken mess and took off. Now I just know he's out there laughing. Heck, he probably gets a notice every time someone makes a search on Giant Bomb, just so he can have a cheap laugh.

Huh. I actually agree with all of these points. Shocking.

Oh really? I saw that in the schedule, without looking closely, I just assumed it was for the 3DS version or something. That's weird.

EDIT: How much traffic do they really get from stuff like trailers? That's not at all why I come here, and I wouldn't miss them for a moment if they quit posting that shit. It'd probably help clean up some of the clutter in the videos library. Also, give them a little more wiggle room in the cloud, I'd imagine. At very least they could have that stuff all in a separate place.

What? When has he blamed anyone for anything?

Hover over Options in the search box and check Articles to search for Worth Reading or Videos for Worth Playing.

You're not wrong

You're right despite your incorrect spelling of the site's name. Maybe with the Gamespot redesign mostly complete, maybe the engineers can get back to fixing bugs and improving this site.

I fully agree. They should implement a folder for UPF as well.

Aye, things are a pain in the ass to find. To the point that it's often easier to find the old giant bomb content your looking for places other than the site, which is lame.

Really need to Rank, wait is there a ladder system here now?

Yup, Giantbombs search for the forums is god damn shameful, plus the mods lock new threads cus an old one 20 pages deep exists and you're like WTF? It's dumb.

You have literally no idea what you're talking about.

@clonedzero said:

I feel like this is maybe a bit of an exaggeration. We generally lock threads to prevent discussions from getting overly fragmented (multiple threads discussing the same thing) or to put a stop to threads that have spiralled out of control. In the former, most of those threads are typically about some fresh new scoops and end up getting created within a few minutes of each other.

If you have some constructive criticism on how we could improve that process though, feel free to let us know.

@doe3879: Okay, now it's off your chest. Feel any better?

Yup. The search function was shit on the old site, it hasn't improved much. The video sorting is an absolute mess too. Hope they can do something about this now that the GS redesign has been completed.

Navigation and categorization could be better

@korwin: @sanj: @jace: @elbon: Someone needs to watch Scoops' TEDx talk.

@grissefar said:

@grissefar said:

The site is surely worse than before the last update, the search is really poor at suggestions, the video player is total crap to the point that I have not used it since the update, and yeah, the way they organize things is pretty poor.

We also lost achievement tracking, and quests though I was not huge into them are something that was a cool addition, on top of that there used to be a lot of talk about adding cool new features to the site which was always something to look forward to, but now, I don't hear so much as a peep about any of that sort of stuff.

These are the largest reasons why I have not subscribed in a couple years, however I am sure that fixes are now in the works, I just wish they were more vocal about them.

Edit: Also what the hell is with the lack of notifications!

Alexis and his team were working on the Gamespot website after they did the redesign and didn't have much time to iron out the kinks, but if I recall correctly Alexis said they were planning on improving the website soon.

I think you need to watch it first.

Yes, I feel better now.

And sorry about all those typo and non nonsensical sentence structures. I did wrote it all in one go. English being my second language didn't help and I had never used the word "rant" in my life, only heard it from podcast and other audio/video forms.

Glad to see I'm not the only one feeling this way.

Agree with all of this. I also wish they would bring back the list of your GB friends showing their latest activity. I just want to click on a list of everyone I follow and be able to see their most recent status/blog post/etc. Instead I have to go into a list and click on individual users. I've really lost touch with what people are up to since the site redesign because there is no way to see at a glance what is going on. It rather defeats the purpose of following people.

Yeah, you're right. The video organization and back cataloging on here is poor and does a disservice to the numerous features this site has put out over the years. I really hope we get something more comprehensive and Giant Bomb-centric when they get around to updating it again.

Another problem with search is trying to find specific bombcasts. If you don't know the date of the bombcast that you're looking for then you're shit out of luck. You'll get better luck opening the iTunes podcast directory and doing a search there.

You're not wrong, the broken search function is one of this site's biggest problems, probably just as bad as the lack of a style guide for the wiki 5 years after it launched.

There are definitely certain search functions that could be improved.

you can't be serious.

Well I guess it's easy to criticize when you clearly have a grossly oversimplified understanding of something.

5 years of amazing stuff, all fairly well organized and archived, and people still complain. Go count cracks in your ceiling.

+1 on some of the criticisms. Mainly categorisation and grouping of articles and ESPECIALLY videos. I got into discussion with a dude here and I was CONVINCED there was a Naughty Bear quick look or a video that featured Vinny + Jeff playing it. I could not find it at all, but I'm certain it happened. So it's probably lost in one of the UPFs or Happy Hours that sadly a) weren't archived b) aren't linking to Happy Bear. Videos near multiple games linked to it.

Does search ever work on a website? I don't think I have ever, in all my years on the internet, found a website where the search function worked. It's one of those things I just assume NEVER works, no matter where I am.

I will never understand why it is, or has become, the norm to throw expletives around when trying to discuss a problem or concern. Let me try to teach you uneducated fellas a little writing 101:

1. Describe the problem

2. Offer a solution

Say Thank you, and how you can be contacted. You would be surprised on how many positive and constructive replies are returned. It works for me, but what the fuck do i know.

@me3639: Let me try this out.

1. Describe the problem: Sudden exposure to the phrase "you uneducated fellas" can cause a critical overload in the parts of my brain responsible for handling pretension. Darkness overcomes me. The music of the Old Ones fills my ears.

2. Offer a solution: Murder-suicide is my gut instinct, but I admit it needs a little workshopping.

Thank you. You can probably just post a response here if you want to find me. I'd appreciate some constructive replies, and alternative solution suggestions.