Slag

@sparky_buzzsaw:

Backloggd is just kinda ok for discussion. It's basically intended to be gaming's Verizon of Letterboxd. So it's got good list functions and reviews, but there aren't many commenters or discussions too much. I think that's what not having the Blogs and forums does. People seem to be only on there when they have new thoughts to share, so I don't feel like it's a daily check in like GB was/is at its best

(it's built off of IGDB's wiki, which kinda makes me feel like a cheater haha. Man I miss when GB's wiki was the default standard everywhere).

The trick to Discord imo is to get into servers that have like 10-30 people active. The big ones are just miserable, too much stuff happening it becomes unintelligible and no meaningful engagement. But ones of that smaller but active size are kinda like a group text or book club, but also ones you where might be able to find a pick up game. It's a different beast but necessarily bad

@sparky_buzzsaw:

Hey Spark ole buddy, glad I happened to stumble across this! I appreciate the shoutout! You are too kind man

I don't think I knew you were a civil servant, that explains a lot actually haha. You have to be a pretty caring person to do that kind of work right. Elected too! holy toledo. what was campaigning like for you?

as for me

Can't say I'm on GB much at all these days, still love everybody here but eventually I was getting too frustrated waiting for years overdue improvements and basic maintenance to the wiki/forums etc. So I moved on. At some point it became more upsetting than fun. I think in many respects it would have been easier for me if I didn't know what GB had (2009-2011 ish) and could have been

There still really isn't a great GB replacement out there and maybe there never will be, old GB was really dang special. The best I've found these days is Backloggd (although Infinite Backlog has cheevo tracking like GB used to). I'm active there but to the same degree I was here.

And while Backloggd has the list and review functionality close-ish to what GB had (and also the critical mass of users. It's active!) , it doesn't have the blogging community or forums... So it doesn't really full scratch the itch

Congrats on 10k posts man, you are certainly one of the bedrock guys that has made this community the great one it always has been!

It's hard to know what to say here that already hasn't.

This is such a profoundly bad, cruel and short-sighted decision by GB's new owners. I don't know why spent so much money to buy a great asset just to kneecap it to point where their ability to produce content is crushed. By trying to "save money", all ownership did was guarantee far larger losses. The goodwill torched here, is likely incalculable and frankly may not be recoverable now...

Jason and Jess, thank you very much for all you did here. I hope you quickly find employment that gives you the value and stability that you've earned. Jason, thanks for all the awesome moments I have no doubt you were instrumental to showing us from the crew. I feel especially robbed of your work Jess, I felt like you were just beginning to have a chance to showcase what you can do, but I absolutely loved the energy and passion you bright to the site when it really really needed it (and it still does)

And to remaining GB crew, I deeply feel for you all and hope you know that the community is with you even if you see all these cancellations. The community just doesn't have a lot of tools at its disposal to make their feelings heard by ownership.

@zombiepie

ZP, just wanted to log in and say thank you for doing justice to this very special game

I feel like I (and many others) sung its praises to you years ago when you were first rolling on this blog series, and I think you were understandably a little skeptical that 6 could be worth the over the top hype some give it. But I'm glad you've finally gotten to experience it now yourself and see what many of us old time FF fans see in it.

It's been cool to see you drill so deeply into all these games. You frankly catch a lot more than I ever did
Your series is easily the best on the FF IP I've ever read and I'd like to thank you for writing them. I don't often post these days, but I always read what you write. Looking to your Lightning Returns journey, when you are ready

@bisonhero:
Almost sounds like one of the Endless games.

could it be one of those?

maybe Endless Space?

@zombiepie You're a good one ZP. Really nice piece and I really appreciate the sentiments you expressed. You're one of my favorite reads and people I've met here

It's funny, the "community" is actually why I more or less left and will likely go back to lurking on the forums etc. To be clear by community, I mean the community functionality on the site, not the people in it. The people in it, like yourself and some other names I know in this thread, have always been my favorite part of GB. It is afterall, why I came here in the first place. Liking the personalities was a bonus for me.

I see Jeff leaving and the manner in which he seems to have left and I figure the community I came here for is doomed. He was the biggest visible staff champion of the wiki, quests, achievement tracking, blogs etc. Without him here and the seemingly new focus on Discord, the website itself doesn't even seem to rate as an afterthought. I can't help but figure at some point, it's going to be retired by RV. They don't really need all this stuff to run a video site, and personality content drives the bus financially. No hard feelings from me, it probably makes sense from a profitability/time mgt standpoint.

So I actually feel pretty good about the future of the video and audio content for GB, I really like the new hires and I think Bakalar has laid out a good vision for the site. Losing Jeff really sucks and he's irreplaceable, but they did really well hiring a good new core.

But unless I see some real sustained engineering focus on the website, I doubt I return to consistent activity here. Too many folks have moved on and the features/functionality etc haven't kept up with the times. I'm just not going to invest anymore time and effort into the wiki, lists etc if I don't feel confident it's going to last. They are fun to do, but they require a fair amount of time to do right.

And I dunno when Jeff was here, I also felt like I was contributing to a larger effort for the benefit of all gamers. I'm not convinced of that with the current ownership. Maybe they will, they never talk about it though if they intend to.

I'll definitely keep reading your spotlight for as long as you do it though! And you'll run into me on your streams and other places I'm sure. Thanks for all you've done for the community over the years! You and some of the other mods have kept this place going for so long and made it a fun place to be. And hey maybe with all the new staff, it's not a bad time for the userbase to refresh itself too. And let old gaming fogies like myself move out of the way for a new generation :)

Well now we know why it happened and what's going to change.

I do think in the future @rorie (and really any GB staff or whomever made the decision), that you never ever should materially change a service that people are actively paying for without an explanation and opt out prior to the change. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Doing it this way caused unnecessary speculation, hurt feelings and reputation damage to GB. It's just not a good way to treat your subs, likely caused you all many headaches and not consistent with what I think your personal and company values are. Frankly I think you are fortunate that blowback wasn't far worse.

That being said, I'm glad we now know why you made the changes and I think your reasoning makes sense.

I liked it a lot.

Made me a feel a lot better after that weird ass news article tbh. Made it clear to me that whatever happened behind the scenes, the crew misses Jeff as much we do.

and it was amusing on its own merits

Some dang good gets. Lucy and Tam are super under-rated. Bout time GB actually secured talent from Gamespot. They need to do whatever it takes to get them fully over here from there.

Old GB is definitely gone and this place will never feel the same to me, but if you had to reboot the irreplaceable cast, they did it about as well as you possibly could.

Man, never thought I'd see the day.

you're the man Jeff, utterly one of a kind and utterly irreplaceable. I hope we see you somewhere else in games media. You're still a threat and still needed

I'm really at a loss for words tbh