timoneous

Watched Casablanca for the first time on Saturday for our movie podcast. It was surprisingly deep, yet easy to follow. It's not the traditional romance or love story you think it might be. Fascinating that it came out during WWII as the story revolves around war refugees. Episode comes out Wednesday.

Before that, we did John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum. It's like the filmmakers said, "Remember The Matrix and how cool that was? Let's ditch all the existential bullshit just do the cool shit for a whole movie". Loved it. Can't wait for more.

Check out the show here

I fell off hard after I hit around Level 50 and had to start dealing with the dungeons that scale to 3 levels above where you are. I really enjoyed it up until that point and wish it handled its late-game difficulty better.

They initially said there wouldn't be any staff lists or guest lists, but then they all decided to do a staff list after the site top 10 was decided. Certainly would have seemed out of sorts for them to not have individual Top 10s considering there have been staff lists every year for over a decade. With everyone on staff being pulled in multiple directions with other parts of their job and their side hustles, I understand why it might have been difficult to wrangle.

The thing I worry about is the viability of the site itself. It costs a lot of money to host all this video and I feel like the archive isn't safe. There has been such a shift to Youtube and Twitch where they are able to monetize more and there is virtually nothing here to incentivize a Premium membership purchase. So how can they support all of these people and the site itself when they have fewer and fewer people watching and subbing to them now than a lot of other much smaller operations?

I want to see GB succeed, but the fact that half the staff has other side gigs makes me feel like they're not bought in. Like, Dan still does his streams and get subs there plus Fire Escape, Grubb has his other podcasts/Youtube/Discord channels, Jess does a bunch of side stuff with other sites and her semi-husband and Tam and Lucy split time with GS. I'm not saying everyone needs to work 60-80 hour weeks on GB content, but jeez...I don't feel like I really even need to come to the site anymore if this is going to be the output.

And I don't need the hour+ long QuickLooks that we used to get, but having a steady stream of even little videos like "Hey, this is my streaming setup" or "Here's my collection of x" or just some more personal stuff. We're already basically invited into everyone's home by way of them streaming from home. Let's get to know these folks more. I watched the Jan/Ben video where they went to the Amazon Go store yesterday and it was great! No games needed. This has always been a personality-based product and it needs to continue to be that.

I think it's a little too early to judge the knife change yet. I've played RE4 on five different consoles and probably finished it at least 10 times on both normal and harder difficulties. While the knife is essential for the higher level playthroughs, I trust that Capcom knows what they're doing when it comes to the introduction of this mechanic and possibly others.

I would go as far to say the the knife almost breaks the current game in some ways. If you want to be stingy with ammo, it's a great way to conserve if you know how to use it right. Makes it fun in it's own way, but it's not the intended method.

In retrospect, Giant Bomb's success has also been a curse. The guys said it themselves, back in the Whiskey days, GB was the one site that was keeping that place afloat with the money they were bringing in with the premium subs. If it was just GB and it was owned outright by the "founders" from the start, they would be on the Kinda Funny business model by now. But since Patreon as a platform wasn't a thing in '07-'08, they had to rely on old business models. Really makes me wonder where things would be now if GB was spun off on its own when Whiskey went under.

The last retail game I paid full price for is the PS5 remake of Demon's Souls on launch day. I was able to secure a Disc-based PS5 and Xbox Series X preorder and I figured, hell, I was already spending $1000 on consoles, might as well have something new to play on it...plus, I was super pumped about the game itself.

Since then, the only games I've spent money on have been smaller, download-only games like Rogue Legacy 2 or retail games that were either used or discounted. So for almost 2 years now, my hobby has subsisted on a diet of smaller, sale-priced games...and Game Pass.

It's a wonder how this has happened to me, but it's kind of shocking how little money I've spent based on the number of hours I've put in. Now, for context, I am 37 and I'm married with no kids. I work a full-time, work-from-home corporate job and my wife run a movie podcast that puts out 2 hour-long episodes per week (Link to the show). I turn on either of my systems pretty much every night to at least do my daily rewards check-in. So, whatever free time I have I'm usually playing something when we're not working on the podcast.

Looking ahead at the landscape of games, there's really only one game that is tempting me to buy at launch and that's the Resident Evil 4 remake. But based on the recent history with Capcom and their retail games, it's likely I could wait a little while and pick it up at a pretty substantial discount.

And since I haven't mentioned it yet, I do have a Switch but it tends to collect dust. Nintendo's history of rarely discounting their 1st-party games tends to limit what I buy for their system, but on occasion I will pick up a game or two. I think the last one I got was the Link's Awakening remake last year, but again, at a discount. I was suckered in to buying the 3D Mario All-Stars at launch simply because they were touting it as a limited run. I typically use my Switch on the occasion I take a plane ride somewhere and play the NES/SNES included with their online service. Like with most of their other consoles, I buy a Nintendo system to play Nintendo games.

So, that all being said, my question is this: Who is paying full price for games anymore?

Are they kids spending their allowance on new games or are they just all paying for V-Bucks and such?

Are they people who jumped into the digital-only consoles and are at the mercy of the monopoly that is PSN?

Are they the kids on Twitch who aren't big enough to get a free code from the publishers and want to get in on the hype of a new release?

Or are they normal work-a-day people who don't pay attention to the industry and don't follow a guy like Wario64 for their hot deals?

With all of the talk about raising the price of new retail games to $70 and the specter of monetary inflation hovering over this industry and others, it's not affecting me in the least bit. I come to a site like Giant Bomb and others to keep up with the happenings of the industry and be entertained at the same time. I like hearing about the buzz of new games, but I don't need to run out and get every shiny new game to keep up. I've never been able to keep up. Even the people employed by this website can't keep up with everything and this is what they do for a living!

As I sit here approaching the fall of 2022, I am content with my Game Pass subscription, my backlog of games I got for cheap or free (thanks PS+ and Games with Gold) and the occasional impulse buy for something fairly new on sale. As Playstation builds up their higher tiered PS+ plans, they might tempt me into joining their ranks as well, but their policy of not including 1st-party games might keep me on the sidelines. This hobby of mine has been with me pretty much my entire life and I see no end in sight. I'm glad it has matured along side me and not become exclusionary considering my elder-millennial status.

What say you?

Having a year pass by since those 3 guys left and seeing that the site is basically still be in the same spot creatively as it was back then is the thing that concerns me. In fact, the reasons why they left are that much more apparent in that this acquisition has seemed to stifle the GB crew's output. I understand why they initially went out and contracted some content to fill a gap and that work has brought us excellent semi- and permanent additions such as Grubb and Jess respectively. But the contract work wasn't meant to last. This is a personality-based website and it needs people to produce content. I find myself drifting back into the archives these days to feel the nostalgia of days long-past. Back then, I felt like I knew what this site was about and the direction it was going. Now I'm not so sure.

That's a long-winded way of saying this: I love Giant Bomb. I have always loved Giant Bomb. I just don't like it right now.

Hades (since it came out on Game Pass this year)

I chose my real name, but my license plate says PATINKIN.