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Giant Bomb #8 | It's a Hit!

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The thing is, no one cares when content mills like Kotaku and the like hire new people. When Giant Bomb gets to hire their first person in like three years people actually pay attention.
 
Myggen said:
The MRA section of Reddit and 4chan got involved.
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I thought Jeff hired Dan because they wanted to talk about Stewart Pain all of the time.

Vf9Kb9U.jpg

Zaph said:
Shortly before the announcement of the hires, a prominent critic and fan of of the site brought attention to the fact GB has no female employees on staff. This put a lot of eyes on the upcoming announcement. When the news came it was two straight white guys, some people were vocally disappointed with it. It didn't help that Polygon and IGN had apparently also just hired two straight white guys.

The critics, for the most part, were thoughtful and well reasoned. They understood GB is a small site with few editors, but its influence is very far reaching, becoming a bit of a bastion for the industry.

At that point, Giant Bomb got caught in the middle of a war between the critics and so-called 'anti-SJWs' from 4chan and Reddit. It got ugly, GB's community was (IMO) unfairly blamed, and Jeff had to step in.

One day, maybe not in our lifetime, respectful, critical discussion will be able to happen on the internet. Today is not that day.
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Critical discussion needs good writers for it to work on the internet. Most people are not good enough to convey emotion though writings never mind debate.

Wouldn't Giantbomb be able to get around an issue like this by allowing guest or freelance editorial content?

Let different sides of a debate ongoing with a video game issue have a platform to express their opinion? Take a problem like this and try and fix it within the constrains of Video Games.

The closest they have come to something like this is with the Nights/Yoshi stuff. I'm not talking about giving nuts a platform but putting a constructive spin a issue.
 
Fox318 said:
Wouldn't Giantbomb be able to get around an issue like this by allowing guest or freelance editorial content?

Let different sides of a debate ongoing with a video game issue have a platform to express their opinion? Take a problem like this and try and fix it within the constrains of Video Games.
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Patrick has expressed interest in doing that a number of times, but it's contingent on budget. It took this long to get budget for new hires and expansion, so I don't expect it soon, sadly.
 
hamchan said:
Nothing to do with Patrick. A lot to do with twitter giving the worst people on both sides larger voices to speak with than they deserve.
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Patrick gets alot of pressure from one side to be nice and thoughtful about that all the time yet also alot of pressure for being nice and thoughtful about that at all. I'd like to think from his actions that he's a release valve from the ugly fringe on that end, but he's by default the lightning rod for the ugly fringe on the other end.
 
ultron87 said:
I really hope you're not being serious.
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no I was, and not trying to be offensive - I don't know what her name or job title is. The only time she has been on camera was once talking about booking travel and then bringing the free beers around a few times. I am sure she has other jobs, I just don't know them.

Point was that CBS games division as a whole likely has close to 50% women (if you count all the software engineers, admin, accounts, marketing, ad sales, etc) it is just on camera/editorial that is lacking diversity.

SummitAve said:
I think what he meant was that CBSi, including GB, has plenty of female employees.
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thx, it did come out a bit garbled :D

SatelliteOfLove said:
Patrick gets alot of pressure from one side to be nice and thoughtful about that all the time yet also alot of pressure for being nice and thoughtful about that at all. I'd like to think from his actions that he's a release valve from the ugly fringe on that end, but he's by default the lightning rod for the ugly fringe on the other end.
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The only problem with Patrick was that it was considered, by some, as hypocrisy that GB is seen to be pushing diversity a lot and then did not follow through with the hiring decision. The mistake people made was that Patrick is the only one really writing those articles and GB lets writers express their own views. Patrick didn't have final say - if much of any - on hiring though. Not to say Jeff and the others are not pro diversity - just pointing out why ppl were calling hypocrisy.
 
ab.aeterno said:
Patrick has expressed interest in doing that a number of times, but it's contingent on budget. It took this long to get budget for new hires and expansion, so I don't expect it soon, sadly.
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Problem is, it might also be a complete waste of budget. Jeff has said many times how much more traffic video brings compared to text. Remember that Skylanders article and video Jeff shot in his bedroom? I think Jeff used that as an experiment - he said the video ended up dwarfing the article in views. Videos are also much more valuable for advertisers because of pre-roll - this is something EiC's have to consider.

It's a problem I would love to see much more women and minorities address by moving with the times and start creating more video content. Youtube, which is open to anyone, is also mostly straight, white males. During the drama there were lots of complaints by people saying XYZ were perfectly qualified...because they spent 5 years at a print magazine. What use is that? Stuff like Patrick's video essays are a great way to get your content out there and be more commercially viable. Same with Anita Sarkeesian - get your message across with video examples. Learning how to use Premiere takes a day.
 
ab.aeterno said:
Patrick has expressed interest in doing that a number of times, but it's contingent on budget. It took this long to get budget for new hires and expansion, so I don't expect it soon, sadly.
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They could just highlight community blog posts.

Maybe start with an issues that doesn't relate to society and politics like: Does the annualization of sports video games lead to a better product?

I'm sure you could get some good responses and its a topic area where the Giantbomb staff really isn't qualified to answer.

Antiwhippy said:
Poor matt rorie.

Always forgotten.
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Who?
 
For the podcast I wonder if they'll have Jason on again this week or if it was a one-off thing to introduce him as one of the new hires.
 
popo said:
no I was, and not trying to be offensive - I don't know what her name or job title is. The only time she has been on camera was once talking about booking travel and then bringing the free beers around a few times. I am sure she has other jobs, I just don't know them.

Point was that CBS games division as a whole likely has close to 50% women (if you count all the software engineers, admin, accounts, marketing, ad sales, etc) it is just on camera/editorial that is lacking diversity.
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This is all irrelevant to the complaints. It was never about it being tough for women to get jobs in admin positions or in marketing or whatever at a game related company. The complaints were specifically about Giant Bomb's current lack of diversity in editorial roles and how it demonstrates the larger problem of institutionalized sexism that makes it extremely difficult for women to get jobs in those roles even if at no point during most hiring processes is someone thinking "Well we certainly aren't hiring a woman for this, ha hah!"
 
ultron87 said:
This is all irrelevant to the complaints. It was never about it being tough for women to get jobs in admin positions or in marketing or whatever at a game related company. The complaints were specifically about Giant Bomb's current lack of diversity in editorial roles and how it demonstrates the larger problem of institutionalized sexism that makes it extremely difficult for women to get jobs in those roles even if at no point during most hiring processes is someone thinking "Well we certainly aren't hiring a woman for this, ha hah!"
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It is relevant to the question of why Rorie's hiring didn't cause a stir though, which is what I was replying to.
 
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