TurtleFish

There's always going to be lag in Zoom, and that's going to disrupt the spontaneity. For the longest time Jeff G. seemed to hold the position that the podcast, live or recorded, had to be done by people in the same room to keep it natural. I know the pandemic forced their hand regardless, but, gawd, I miss the half game journalism / half improv scene stuff of the early years. But, that's not going to change regardless of where or how they record.

The problem with the live Bombcasts isn't that they're live -- the problem is that, by the time they started doing live Bombcasts, it was a significantly different cast, creating a different vibe. I don't think it would make a difference if they went back to recording live to tape. (Especially now, since the cast is completely different. I'm not saying it's good or bad -- it's just different.)

They do every other show live -- why would being live on the Bombcast be any different than any of the other live shenanigans they've done?

Big marketing difference between a surprise live stream of people playing Warlords vs something that looks like it’s being positioned as the spiritual successor to the Big Live Live Show…

@nodima said:

Sure, but that’s a pretty major change of mission statement. The original purpose of Giant Bomb IMHO, was free games coverage, with the ability to support the website above and beyond by purchasing premium.

What you’re describing is a mission statement of we produce content about stuff that’s game adjacent, and for the most part you have to pay for it.

The thought “Man if you can’t afford $50, go somewhere else” is missing the point. It’s the fact that you now have to spend $50 to get value, as opposed to maybe buying merch or putting up with the ads to show your support and still getting to see stuff. It’s a big change in the way content is offered.

Personally, I understand the need for monetization, somehow. I’ve worked in the information website game, as a senior I.T. guy; I’ve got very personal knowledge of trying to balance cost versus eyeballs versus revenue and knowing what happens if people get it wrong. I deeply sympathize with the Faustian bargains you sometimes have to make. As such, I really want to give Jeff(s) and Co time to figure it out. Six months is an eyeblink for something like this.

But I also think it’s perfectly valid to state “this is not what I signed up for”, because, this isn’t. These are two different websites run with two different philosophies that happen to share the same name. The king is dead; long live the king.

Money corrupts. As soon as you crank large amounts of cash into the equation, you attract the type of people that will do anything to make money, and it all goes to hell. So, the whole "couple of people, great game, millions of copies" never existed, except as a nostalgic dream.

However, if you want to look at the history of computer game development, and you lower your sales target from millions of copies to thousands of copies, I think from the late 70s until the late 80s (not the Atari's and Nintendo's, but the Apples and Commodore 64s and the Spectrums and a horde of other computers I'm forgetting) I think you'll find game companies where it was about the game. This is the era of classic Microprose and SSI and even early EA.

Hell, to dip back into console gaming, remember Activision got it's start as a rogue company from Atari -- a bunch of Atari cartridge coders who's big demand was to get credit for the games they wrote.

But all that being said - I don't mind a little nostalgia. It can have its uses as a motivational tool, or as a pleasant distraction from current day issues, as long as you don't get too stuck up on it.

They've already made poor choices. :) The lawsuits are probably the only thing keeping them going, plus the fact that there are (hopefully) still people within CIG who actually still dream the dream.

But, even if Star Citizen turns out to be the most amazing game ever made -- who's going to trust Chris Roberts with money with another project when it might be 10 or 15 years before you see returns?

Pretty much this.

The big question is whether you bought the card from Amazon directly or with the Marketplace. In my experience, you can get somewhere with Amazon (it's not easy because it's a gigantic corporation with all the issues that implies, but, you can do it), but, if you're dealing with a Marketplace seller, it's a real crapshoot -- so much so, I don't buy anything from a Marketplace seller unless I'm prepared to lose my money completely.

Good luck.

I suppose the most damning thing about the saga that Star Citizen and CIG has become is that until I got to the disclaimer, all of it seemed plausible in my brain. You could have included launching crypto and relocation to Cyprus for tax haven status and I wouldn’t have blinked.

FWIW, the only show I really watched on TechTV/G4 was X-Play. I liked the goofy irreverence as a counterweight to all the 'serious' game journalism at the time. Remember, this was the early 2000s so You Tube wasn't a thing yet, and most websites who were experimenting with video were doing it in tiny MPEG clips or putzing around with RealMedia, and video games were still considered a cultural niche, if not outright moral panic BS. (Eff You, Jack Thompson)

So finding something on TV (even extended cable) that talked about video games, and didn't take itself too seriously? Amazing. (Admittedly my sense of humour can be pretty weird, so I don't know if the stuff was really funny, or just tickled my sense of the absurd -- but I still think Passion of the Christ 2: Judgement Day is hilarious, 20 years later.)

But fast forward 20 years, and you can find goofy games coverage and opinion hot takes everywhere, out to extremes that nobody who cares about advertising can go -- so the niche is gone. Beyond nostalgia (which for me lasted about an hour), I'm not sure what G4 can do to stand out from the crowd.

Going to a real arcade was a special treat - usually I got to play whatever machines were in the mall hallway once every few weeks. I would usually get 50 cents or a dollar. This was the early to mid 80s though, so everything was 25 cents per play.

I remember the shock the first time I saw a 50 cents per play machine - if only I knew then what the future had in store…. *goes off to buy some loot boxes* :)

This, except flipped.

One year has already gone by? WTF?

At least there are signs now we'll eventually get to a new normal that resembles the old normal, as opposed to Nov 2020 when we were wondering if we could vaccinate people in time to avoid a mutation from killing us all.