Sunjammer

Hi all, been a subscriber since one could subscribe, been a fan since Gamespot days and Arrow pointing down etc, business funk days. Yo what up.

Seriously, what is up these days? I dig the whole shows idea, I dig the new faces even though I miss the old crew (they're still around though, so that's cool). I really should be liking this a whole lot more than I actually do, because I don't think this website is even close to up to handle the new format. It's just an absolute mess of just... stuff? Reams of old and new things coexisting in a way that makes it look like Giant Bomb is just some weird gamer youtube of random shenanigans.

I know it's not long ago that a major redesign was done, but it's necessary again. This thing needs a radical dose of simplify dat shit, because it's got about a dozen things too many going on right now for it to work as intended.

Much love <3

This reminds me of being in a startup meltdown, when that final pivot happens that breaks the faith and dang near everybody leaves.

This is sad stuff. I've been a member since day 1 and the arrow pointing down days, and followed the team from Gamespot to here. It's one of those things where you feel like you know these dudes even if you never really did. The dissonance is real. I'm firmly in the adult realm now and this has been a refuge for what felt like "my generation" heh. Weird. I'll miss them all dearly.

I hope everybody finds their way to the good harmonious place that they deserve after all this hard work keeping us all entertained. End of an era, in more ways than one.

I understand ads as an important part of the internet and getting paid for your work one way or another, so I don't use adblockers. But I do stop going to sites that feel abusive, and GB right now is getting close. It seems careless and it makes me really worried.

So I've been a premium user for years and recently a credit card renewal made my subscription lapse. This has given me my first period of using the GB site as a free user and it's been a real doozy in the ad department. Practically every other page load if not every page load i get a fullscreen ad I need to dispel. Has it been this way for a long time or is this a new thing? Because it's actively making me want to not open the site ever.

I also noticed on the videos uploaded to youtube the ad interval is pretty intense (by GB standards). We're talking 10 ish ad breaks for a 40 minute quick look alone. This feels new, too. Now I'm obviously down with this content needing to be paid for somehow, but this doesn't strike me as a "Jeffy" way to do it so I'm currently operating under the assumption CBSi has a gun to someone's head. In either case I'd just like to chime in and say "this is shitty" and "too much" and "probably not going to win you any new subscribers". Cheers.

@wemmick: I know this might be unreasonable but it would be cool to see this List™ pinned somewhere so we can stop complaining about the same things over and over. I'm sure you're tired of it too. Personally this site is basically not usable anymore since my subscription lapsed, because the free experience is a almost porn-site-intrusive with popup ads. I'd assume your intent is to make free users want to go premium but badgering them with a truly bad time, obscuring content and community instead of showcasing it and inspiring curiosity and commitment, is not going to work.

I'm sorry to say but this redesign doesn't work. The carousels are irritating to use and the layout is a weird mix of giant tiles and fidgety lists. It feels like a mobile first approach gone sideways.

Sidenote, it's odd how hidden the community and wiki feels now.

Hi guys, please forgive me for doing this. I've a question that's itching the inside of my skull something fierce and I'd really appreciate some counter-thoughts. In other words, please school me. Civilly ;P

When is cultural appropriation okay? The other day I was thinking about Día de Muertos, which is and always has been a super rad tradition, both superficially and at depth. Is it okay to adopt this as a celebration if you’re from a different culture? What about cooking? There’s amazing Native American food, Vietnamese food is incredible, and I grew up head over heels in love with Italian cooking. What about words? There are ways to express certain things in English that can’t really be done elegantly in my native Norwegian, and English itself appropriates words from other languages to do the same. This chain of appropriating expression is, at this point, core to how I express myself. But how are these things not appropriating foreign culture?

My interpretation, as of now, is that the power dynamics of me being a white dude mean I racially carry some stigma of being “a conqueror” and therefore me integrating culture of “the conquered” as my own affirms my "conqueror" status. That’s my understanding. But my actual gut feeling, aligned to my moral compass, is that loving and appreciating something is not deprecating of its origins, but celebratory. Conversely, it seems bizarre to me to segregate culture, literally the color of our entire species, into camps. I feel all culture should be archived and documented and remembered and shared, and appreciated as part of the great work of our species. That we should keep it all in little racially defined display cases and shame each other for wanting to touch it seems like doing the thing itself a disservice. Who really stands to benefit here?

I’ve had colossal arguments with people over this stuff in the past so I’m assuming I’m in some ignorant minority. I just hate the idea of dividing our species into ethnically or culturally defined enclaves and doubling down on our differences, when the light of any culture does nothing but bring color to those adjacent. I just don’t understand this isolationism, and it's made me really weary of taking part in some things that I love or want to learn more about, and that makes me sad.

Is my definition completely off?

@jonny_anonymous: I don't think you understand the nature of The Expanse being on Netflix. It is a brutally unfavorable licensing deal that treats Netflix viewers as third rate.

That makes me super happy to hear :)))

Hi all

I'm curious about how one would go about provisioning custom arcade machines for something like a bar or a club, and then in a form that could be easily reconfigured to fit events like tournaments or themed nights. Building MAME boxes is clearly a direct path to this but it's also going balls deep in abject piracy and I want no part in that.

Is there legroom out there in this post-arcade era for ROM licensing that makes provisioning MAME legal in any form? Ideally I would like to purchase licenses with bounds like "number of concurrent cabinets" but given how the rights holders for some of the games I would like to run are difficult to track down, how does this work?

Appreciate any and all thoughts/pointers here.