Has GB ever talked about how or if they get any type of compensation from doing their videos from outside sources? Obviously they get paid from views, subs, ads on the site, covering "hot" topics to drive traffic, etc.
No. They're employees and get paid a fixed hourly or annual amount. If their content was commission-based then there would be a lot more free content on the site covering "hot" trending topics like Fortnite and stuff they hate. Which Jeff would never stand for! The CBSi sales and marketing team might get commissions, but they're not directly connected to the crew and don't have direct control over the kind of content they choose to produce.
Sometimes the crew will do a "Quick Look EX" with developers of a game, and this could be viewed as (unpaid) promotional material, but the crew ultimately decides if they want to do it or not, based on their actual interest in the game itself.
Premium memberships are the site's main source of income, followed by ad revenue. Jeff has talked about this in the past. You can also see for yourself that the site is focused on producing premium content (at least when they want to push membership sign ups during a sale) and not on super trendy subjects. In fact, a lot of their content is kind of obscure (e.g Garfield games form the mid 2000's!)
So to me it would stand to reason without being told that there would most likely be a decent possibility that people could offer compensation to have excitement drummed up about their product, be it a game, physical product (like with product placement, talking about them and so on), etc.
PR teams are always trying to do this, but nowadays it's mostly aimed at social media "influencers" and popular YouTubers or streamers. Ads on the site are of course paid for, but again I don't think the crew has any direct control over that, and this has no influence on the type of content they decide to make.
However, there are other non-compensation based ways to influence their coverage. The most obvious is free stuff. The crew is constantly getting free codes for games from both big publishers and small indies in the hopes it will get them interested and help generate free publicity for these games on the podcasts and/or quick looks.
Abby even said on the last beastcast that the developers of House Flipper sent her a free code. So that probably got her interested in the game when she might have otherwise passed it by. She's also new to all this and might be a little more susceptible to outside influence. Jeff, on the other hand, being a veteran of the industry is much more wary and jaded about games in general. So it seems getting free stuff all the time has it's trade-offs, since it removes any real monetary considerations from your judgement, which can be good or bad.
Nothing personal, but I would always take gaming website coverage with a grain of salt because they just don't view or experience games the same way the "average gamer" does, but this doesn't mean their opinions are invalid, and the "average gamer" or "influencer" is also not immune to corruption. So this should really apply to all types of coverage to some extent.
I think the key is to just always have a critical eye and a diverse collection of sources to judge from (gaming websites, steam user reviews, etc.) when looking at any game. Then it doesn't really matter what is influencing the coverage you see because you can ultimately make up your own mind about it.
Kind of like we wouldn't call an Uncharted game a "Doom-like". Not all shooters are Doom-likes, not all adventure games are Zelda-likes, and not all run-based games are Rogue-likes. We wouldn't call an RTS a Civ-like, because that wouldn't make any sense...
..."Run-based" is a much better descriptor of what people actually mean when they describe a game like Eldritch, Nuclear Throne, FTL, City of Brass, etc.
Uncharted would never be called a "Doom-like" because it's a third-person adventure game! "Doom-likes" are of course first-person shooters. Great, another person that doesn't understand the term they're using :p However, I completely agree with the overall point you're trying to make here and also agree that "Run-based" is a much better term.
That fact that people still argue over what qualifies as a "Rogue-like" and have even splintered the genre into "likes" and "lites" (in some vain attempt to protect their precious "genre") only demonstrates how absurd the whole thing has become.
I think this is all a consequence of the "genre" not maturing past it's initial inspiration for some reason (e.g. "Doom-like" to "FPS"). Which seems quite bizarre, but I think it's because it's all mostly a fad.
"Rogue-like" elements are nothing new. Many of the earliest video games had them before that game even existed! But eventually games got more and more "cinematic" and linear. When people started revisiting older game design concepts, Rogue just kind of became this central reference point and inspiration. Probably because it's stood the test of time and is fondly remembered.
However, I think any game specific genre term like "Rogue-like" is inherently bad because it's use will always anger purist/loyalist to the original, and greatly discourage any innovation or evolution of the so called genre.
"Gotta have a shop!"
"Why?"
"Cause it's a rouge-like! Duh."
"Gotta have a hunger mechanic too!"
"Why? What's the point of that in a first-person shooter!?"
@gamerpigeon: My thoughts exactly. I assume they were playing on xbonesxs. So isn't there some kind of builtin game streaming there? I know Jeff has a setup for xbox game streaming in any case. Guess he just didn't do it here for some reason. Oh well. Still a bummer.
Five minutes in and Jeff and Vinny are goofing around having lots of fun, but I can't see any of it because it's just Abby's perspective. Went to YouTube, hoping Jeff streamed it on his end, but I guess he didn't. ? Maaannn This sucks.
Also is Dan racist to games lol He said "doesn't like what certain games look like because of where they came from" what?!
Well...
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Disturbing pattern of behavior, but at least Dan didn't say something blatantly racist like "PCs play games better than consoles." I don't know what I'd think if Dan turned out to be a closeted PC supremacist.
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