This was a nice interview. As someone who has followed Jeff's work for a long time none of this is altogether new, but it was a nice personal look at Jeff and his career, and how he got started. Great listen.

Nice! Thanks for sharing this.

Very cool.

Who is this Jeff Gertmann?

I'm probably overthinking it, but there were parts of the podcast that made me think the date wasn't a coincidence.

I miss the On the Spot days.

Every time I hear the story of how GB got together, I'm so impressed with the way everything lined up. Imagining the early days of Giant Bomb without Brad, Ryan, or Vinny seems so impossible.

This is nice and all, but I feel like I would have learned more from Brett than this Gerstmann fellow.

I'm looking forward to hearing all about this anime man.

Great interview. I did not know that Jeff was once the president of a small island nation.

Great interview, always inspiring to see someone just do what they love and build stuff they didn't even dream about. I see giantbomb as the origin of the "lets play" youtube movement i don't remember anything like that until the quick looks started, and going subscription based was a brilliant business move in of itself in the games coverage space.

Glad it's finally here!

@oursin_360: I think GB was influential as all hell, but it wasn't really the origin of the modern youtube lp

The idea of a guided narrative gameplay had been around message boards since at least usenet and I remember a lot of the early Dwarf Fortress love was because of stuff like that. Plenty of RPGs had similar bits as people found ways to mix role playing and playing a CRPG (I have memories of a controversial Divine Divinity thread where they edited the ending cinematic to imply Lucien killed Damian)

And the idea of taking Games Journalism in that direction had been kicking around. Kieron Gillen (formerly of Rock Paper Shotgun, lately of Marvel Comics) famously wrote his "manifesto" that basically argued games journalism should be closer to travel writing than objective number reporting. I am oversimplifying it and it is well worth a read, but that definitely predates even a lot of what was being done at Gamespot and was largely a way to codify thoughts a lot of different outlets were having at that time.

But, like with most things: There is no one origin. Giant Bomb are definitely pioneers. But calling them the origin is fairly disrespectful to a good chunk of the old guard.

Danny always does quality stuff. It'd be neat to see a whole documentary on GB from him.

Just found this searching for other giantbomb stuff. I really need to send some Patreon cash Danny O'Dwyer's way. I've heard this story in pieces here and there before, but this was a well put together narrative whole.