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[March Climber]

Edit: Guys, this is about the business side of things, not the personality side.



Definitely worth listening to when anyone here gets the chance. It's his very first topic of his video titled "Let's talk about it".

He considered the site of Giantbomb a failure the minute they switched their parent company back to the one that owned Gamespot, which is CBS.

It only got worse and worse behind the scenes from that point, as they were dealing with the constant shuffling of seats higher up at CBS which led to infighting, lack of funding, them attempting to change Gamespot to be as Giantbomb-like as possible (so that they could eventually remove them), and finally them asking 'why do we pay two websites that do the same thing' once Gamespot had become more proficient at everything Giantbomb had innovated in (like video-first content and personality-based content).

He says it felt equivalent to an indie wrestling company (ECW, TNA, etc.) branching away from WWE and forming a separate company because 'fuck that company and their policies' only to sadly get absorbed by WWE again and slowly get gutted.

Edit 2:

Nextlander latest podcast goes deep an hour long on what happened when they were there.

Took me a while to find the video. Someone else uploaded it to youtube so I'm not sure how long it will stay up:



Starts at 7:30

Around 29 minutes in Nextlander repeats the same talking points above from Jeff's side: CBS issues and the move to CBS being a bad idea, along with CBS absorbing giantbomb for their personality-based content as they saw it as the futuristic way of doing things back then (and they were right), and using that purchase as a way to help Gamespot mend (post-GB exodus) back to a good spot and grow as a company, which some would see as them attempting to eventually replace GB with Gamespot.

According to Nextlander, they were slowly sinking based on money allocation and production costs (as CBS was siphoning money on their side and utilizing GB's marketing budget on things that weren't GB-related), and Alex was the first one to shoot the 'resignation' shot, which made Brad and Vinny follow suit even though Vinny still saw hope and tried to negotiate with CBS. They left and tried to convince Jeff also, but he stayed at GB for a bit longer due to having a kid (amongst other reasons).

 

[Sebastian1295]

This is going to sound really really harsh but i'm blunt so here it goes. Giant bomb failed because the people that grew up with giant bomb did so when they were kids/teens and thought it was cool and they used giant bomb for there source of gaming news etc. Now that the kids/teens have grown up into adults and more platforms have opened up to discuss gaming news etc they realized that they out grew giant bomb and didn't care about it or need it anymore.


Jeff grubb can hype himself up all he wants but his giant bomb videos got like 7k views most of the time and he was doing like 1hr videos which is awful and isn't going to keep the lights on. His personality isn't entertaining at all in a video format and him and his co-host bring 0 to the table in terms of entertaining content to justify sitting there and wasting 1 plus hrs of your life weekly on bad and boring content. Alot of giant bombs stuff was bad/boring and i didn't find any of the personalities of giant bomb entertaining in the least. Giant bomb failed because the long ass podcasts they made weren't entertaining and they don't have entertaining hosts to keep people engaged on there content.

 

[March Climber]

This is going to sound really really harsh but i'm blunt so here it goes. Giant bomb failed because the people that grew up with giant bomb did so when they were kids/teens and thought it was cool and they used giant bomb for there source of gaming news etc. Now that the kids/teens have grown up into adults and more platforms have opened up to discuss gaming news etc they realized that they out grew giant bomb and didn't care about it or need it anymore.


Jeff grubb can hype himself up all he wants but his giant bomb videos got like 7k views most of the time and he was doing like 1hr videos which is awful and isn't going to keep the lights on. His personality isn't entertaining at all in a video format and him and his co-host bring 0 to the table in terms of entertaining content to justify sitting there and wasting 1 plus hrs of your life weekly on bad and boring content. Alot of giant bombs stuff was bad/boring and i didn't find any of the personalities of giant bomb entertaining in the least. Giant bomb failed because the long ass podcasts they made weren't entertaining and they don't have entertaining hosts to keep people engaged on there content.

I know that this forum has it's qualms about the personality side of giantbomb, but Jeff goes more into the business-side of everything here.

Basically, with how he described everything, things were fucked either way. It gives context as to why the original crew jumped ship, and it makes it more sad for those who stayed because they were on a financial sinking ship.

He wanted Grubb way sooner including a few other talent that would have helped back when the old crew was still there, but things kept getting put on hold by CBS when it came to any deals or funding.

Edit: To make this clear for the thread, Jeff is not simply going over recent events. He is literally going through how things went down way back, post-Comicvine to CBS move, in detail, to explain the entire slippery slope to why things happened recently. That's why I think this is worth listening to/watching.

 

[Sebastian1295]

I know that this forum has it's qualms about the personality side of giantbomb, but Jeff goes more into the business-side of everything here.

Basically, with how he described everything, things were fucked either way. It gives context as to why the original crew jumped ship, and it makes it more sad for those who stayed because they were on a financial sinking ship.

He wanted Grubb way sooner including a few other talent that would have helped back when the old crew was still there, but things kept getting put on hold by CBS when it came to any deals or funding.

Edit: To make this clear for the thread, Jeff is not simply going over recent events. He is literally going through how things went down way back, post-Comicvine to CBS move, in detail, to explain the entire slippery slope to why things happened recently. That's why I think this is worth listening to/watching.

I do appreciate the video link and your thoughts on it plus a summary so i will be watching it. And ya it sounds like a disaster that was inevitable tbh and i do feel sorry for the people this affected. And i'm not surprised that CBS screwed everything up because it seems like anytime you switch companies it's bound to be a disaster most of the time sadly do to higher ups not knowing wtf they're doing.

 

[calico]

He considered the site of Giantbomb a failure the minute they switched their parent company back to the one that owned Gamespot

As a supporter of the site since they started it, I felt the same. It was like... so what was the point of any of this?

That said, it did entertain people for years, so it probably shouldn't be viewed as a total failure. Jack may drown at the end of Titanic instead of reaching America, but he still got to smash Rose.

 

[Sebastian1295]

As a supporter of the site since they started it, I felt the same. It was like... so what was the point of any of this?

That said, it did entertain people for years, so it probably shouldn't be viewed as a total failure. Jack may drown at the end of Titanic instead of reaching America, but he still got to smash Rose.

 

[March Climber]

As a supporter of the site since they started it, I felt the same. It was like... so what was the point of any of this?

This is the one part of their past I feel needs further explanation, as it wasn't fully stated why they chose CBS and if CBS was literally their only way out financially.

Who knows maybe Jeff might go back around to this next week to answer follow up questions.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Yup, Jeff just doesn't understand that the market grew up around him and over him. Giant Bomb was special back in the day because it was the only show in town.

 

[MagusMajul]

when I was a teenager I used to look up to him and the gamespot crew, now I realize they are just big fat pathetic man children. Why dose a man need paternity leave anyway? thats for women, pathetic soyboy. Especcialy Alex navaro. The only one form Gamespot who ever made something out of themselves was Greg Kasavin

 

[Spukc]

when i was a teenager I used to look up to him and the gamespot crew, now I realize they are just big fat pathetic man children. Why dose a man need paternity leave anyway? thats for women, pathetic soyboy. Especcialy Alex navaro.

 

[nkill20]

The death of E3 is the death of Giant Bomb.

 

[phant0m]

This is going to sound really really harsh but i'm blunt so here it goes. Giant bomb failed because the people that grew up with giant bomb did so when they were kids/teens and thought it was cool and they used giant bomb for there source of gaming news etc. Now that the kids/teens have grown up into adults and more platforms have opened up to discuss gaming news etc they realized that they out grew giant bomb and didn't care about it or need it anymore.


Jeff grubb can hype himself up all he wants but his giant bomb videos got like 7k views most of the time and he was doing like 1hr videos which is awful and isn't going to keep the lights on. His personality isn't entertaining at all in a video format and him and his co-host bring 0 to the table in terms of entertaining content to justify sitting there and wasting 1 plus hrs of your life weekly on bad and boring content. Alot of giant bombs stuff was bad/boring and i didn't find any of the personalities of giant bomb entertaining in the least. Giant bomb failed because the long ass podcasts they made weren't entertaining and they don't have entertaining hosts to keep people engaged on there content.

You ain't wrong, but the problem isn't that their audience grew up, it's that they failed to stay engaged with them or generate new audience.

Their video content suffered massively when Drew left. No offense to Jason, he did a fine job but it wasn't the same.

They needed to switch to streaming and engage with stream chat - a GB channe live on Twitch and YT that's got one of the personalities on a lot of the time, a moderator handling chat & questions, etc. Then a video editor to cut up highlights and drop clips on YT.

I mean christ, fucking Asmon's 3 and a half hour stream of Expedition 33 has 400k views in 8 hours, and that's just on YouTube. Plus all his content on clips channel gets hundreds of thousands of views. Yes he has mods & editors but there's no set, no production budget. It's all just shot in his house.

Their last problem is all of their personality hires sucked after Dan went to East.

 

[bender]

This is going to sound really really harsh but i'm blunt so here it goes. Giant bomb failed because the people that grew up with giant bomb did so when they were kids/teens and thought it was cool and they used giant bomb for there source of gaming news etc. Now that the kids/teens have grown up into adults and more platforms have opened up to discuss gaming news etc they realized that they out grew giant bomb and didn't care about it or need it anymore.

I don't really agree. Ryan passing naturally took a lot of wind of their sails and even before then, no one they hired on starting with Patrick really meshed all that well (I have bias here as I couldn't stand Patrick during his 1Up days). Dan was probably the best addition just for his energy and work ethic, but It's easy to find his personality grating. And there were some really questionable hires after Patrick, Austin, and Dan that mostly ended up being dull at best and annoying at worst. Jeff and Ryan just had great chemistry and energy and the only thing that came close to that was Vinny and Bakalar, but I'd also say the Beast split also contributed to the downfall of the site as it separated two of the most beloved personalities.

At any rate, it's all rather sad. I started listening to gaming podcasts with GamingSteve and stopped when the cracks started to show at GiantBomb. Nextlander's content is terrible and as much as I admire Jeff for doing one man shows, those just aren't entertaining to me anymore which is ironic considering how much I enjoyed GamingSteve back in the day.

 

[rm082e]

I've been listening to the original GB guys since they started podcasting back in the GameSpot days. I followed them when Jeff got fired and he and Ryan founded GB. I was super excited to see Brad and Vinny join them a few months later. I listened and watched for years, even after Ryan passed. I appreciated Dan and Jason coming on. Vinny starting GB East was weird, but I was happy to see he didn't leave. I kept listening to their podcasts until Brad, Vinny and Alex left and started Nextlander. I signed up for their Patreon and have continued to follow them over the years since. I did the same for Jeff when he left. Every Tuesday when I come downstairs to make lunch, I put on the new Jeff episode. Same for Nextlander on Thursdays.

I didn't stick with Giant Bomb after they left because to me, GB was always about those guys. I wish Grub and Dan and Jan all the best in whatever they do going forward. I'm surprised and impressed they managed to keep it going this long after Jeff left. Hats off to them for the work they put in.

Also: Nextlander talked about this situation at the end of their most recent episode. Vinny and Brad provided some insights along the lines of what Jeff shared.

 

[Deerock71]

Girthmann ate all the profits.

 

[AJUMP23]

Nextlander with Vinny Brad and Alex spent about an hour on all the stuff they did while there too this week.

Any time stamps for this?

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

RIP Ryan the site passed with you.
<>

 

[Hugare]

It failed cause it produced personality-based content and the personalities there sucked

Its as simple as that, really.

The cool guys have either left or died, unfortunately, and the people who replaced them sucks

 

[Bigfroth]

Giant bomb E3 @ Nite live shows were the best.

 

[Nocty]

It failed cause it produced personality-based content and the personalities there sucked

Its as simple as that, really.

The cool guys have either left or died, unfortunately, and the people who replaced them sucks

that is pretty much it indeed. At least, for me. I stopped watching because the guys I watched for were all gone.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Finally we can learn what actually happened. Listening to this as time allows.

 

[Sgt. Pinback]

I liked Giant Bomb. Then, Abby Russell spent their end of year awards show telling me that 'Dream Daddy' was a better game than 'Nier Automata', and nobody told her to shut the fuck up. Then, Gerstmann said that they wouldn't be covering Kingdom Come: Deliverance, because there was 'no interest'.

Then, I decided - correctly - that they were making stuff that I had no interest in, as I thought that it was fundamentally stupid. So I stopped listening, cancelled my premium subscription, and that was that. And, everything they've done afterwards has been awful. I can't dedicate three hours a week of my rapidly dwindling life to listening to Jeff ramble on endlessly about energy drinks. It's like listening to someone talking to themselves in an asylum cell.

 

[LegendOfKage]

I just want to know two things. Was there a point in the Whisky Media days when the site was both profitable and successful? And what changed after that point that eventually made them think selling the site back to the Gamespot parent company was their only option? That's the only part of the downfall that I'm actually interested in, because the rest seems pretty obvious. Does he address that part?

 

[MrCunningham]

Giant bomb E3 @ Nite live shows were the best.

Oh shit, dawg! Did you know that the first E3 was held on May 11th to 13th all the way back in 1995? May 11th 2025 is the 30th anniversary of E3. I almost want to make a thread about it if I have the time, but i'll leave that door open for anyone else... give me a heads up in a PM.

almost 30 years ago... this happened...


RIP and tear, E3. True end of a era.

I still have this issue of GameFan Magazine BTW... Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg were both at the first E3.

 

[KaiserBecks]

Haven't listened to anything from GiantBomb in years. The decline started when Ryan passed away. Not that he was the central figure, but it just wasn't the same. GiantBombcast, Weekend Confirmed, Comedy Button….the 360/PS3 era had the best podcasts. No idea if there's anything out there today that comes close.

 

[March Climber]

Yup, Jeff just doesn't understand that the market grew up around him and over him. Giant Bomb was special back in the day because it was the only show in town.

Their video content suffered massively when Drew left. No offense to Jason, he did a fine job but it wasn't the same.

They needed to switch to streaming and engage with stream chat - a GB channe live on Twitch and YT that's got one of the personalities on a lot of the time, a moderator handling chat & questions, etc. Then a video editor to cut up highlights and drop clips on YT.

I mean christ, fucking Asmon's 3 and a half hour stream of Expedition 33 has 400k views in 8 hours, and that's just on YouTube. Plus all his content on clips channel gets hundreds of thousands of views. Yes he has mods & editors but there's no set, no production budget. It's all just shot in his house.

I use to enjoy Gamespot/Giantbomb back in the day and even still listen Gerstmann occasionally but the harsh reality is that there was just way less competition 15 years ago for personality-based gaming content compared to now. You are not just competing against 10 other websites now....it's a shit ton of youtube and twitch based personalities/channels.

I don't believe this was due to parent companies bad decisions so much as it was the changing nature of the internet and increased competition.

They tried to make changes but they weren't being funded for it. In what many consider to be their 'best era' they were already teetering on being in the red financially. Jeff wanted to do even more free shows and subscriber shows but they didn't have the right amount of crew nor funding.

Regarding the 1% uber successful solo streamers like asmongold, they did things very differently than studio offices like Giantbomb. Until asmongold had editors he had to spend his own free hours after already streaming, to edit videos and post the content, which meant (like many solo streamers out there) he had zero free time for himself to do anything.

It's why not everyone is built for streaming and many more people end up giving up and leaving due to this.

Thankfully for him he didn't have a wife and kids to worry about like the Gb Crew, so he could no-life things in a way that benefit his growing career. He also was one of the few mainstream WoW-focused content creators years ago, who did a good job of presenting things easily for the casual WoW audience, essentially making him close to being the Maximillian of WoW, amongst a few other popular names.

However, from saying all of that I want to reiterate, studio situations with multiple staff are much different than solo streamers.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

This is going to sound really really harsh but i'm blunt so here it goes. Giant bomb failed because the people that grew up with giant bomb did so when they were kids/teens and thought it was cool and they used giant bomb for there source of gaming news etc. Now that the kids/teens have grown up into adults and more platforms have opened up to discuss gaming news etc they realized that they out grew giant bomb and didn't care about it or need it anymore.


Jeff grubb can hype himself up all he wants but his giant bomb videos got like 7k views most of the time and he was doing like 1hr videos which is awful and isn't going to keep the lights on. His personality isn't entertaining at all in a video format and him and his co-host bring 0 to the table in terms of entertaining content to justify sitting there and wasting 1 plus hrs of your life weekly on bad and boring content. Alot of giant bombs stuff was bad/boring and i didn't find any of the personalities of giant bomb entertaining in the least. Giant bomb failed because the long ass podcasts they made weren't entertaining and they don't have entertaining hosts to keep people engaged on there content.

Personally I disagree. I watched/listened to Giant Bomb from 2012 until around the time that Jeff left, and it was entirely due to the personalities. I don't think the vast majority of Giant Bomb fans went there because it's where they got their news. They went there because they enjoyed watching/listening to Ryan, Jeff, Brad, Drew, Vinny, Alex, and then Dan.

Their entire brand was built around personalities and long form content which wasn't popular back then at all. They did something that nobody else did, but once everybody started doing the same thing they weren't as unique and new people had too many options.

if you didn't care for the crew then yeah obviously it wasn't going to be interesting to you.

 

[GoldenEye98]

I use to enjoy Gamespot/Giantbomb back in the day and even still listen Gerstmann occasionally but the harsh reality is that there was just way less competition 15 years ago for personality-based gaming content compared to now. You are not just competing against 10 other websites now....it's a shit ton of youtube and twitch based personalities/channels.

I don't believe this was due to parent companies bad decisions so much as it was the changing nature of the internet and increased competition.

 

[Schmendrick]

Why dose a man need paternity leave anyway? thats for women, pathetic soyboy.

Please tell me that I`m missing a /s here somewhere?

 

[Cert.in.Death]

Never was into Giantbomb, but Gerstmann has always been an OG homie.

But the political/business side of media organizations is awful. This is what happens when you sell your ownership away.

 

[calico]

RIP Ryan the site passed with you.
<>

<>

 

[March Climber]

Please tell me that I`m missing a /s here somewhere?

He makes a lot of edgy posts so I'm not sure. If someone posts something overly ridiculous I try to just assume it's a joke.

 

[EverydayBeast]

 

[adamsapple]

Thanks, bookmarked. Will check it out later.

<>

 

[GoldenEye98]

Giant bomb E3 @ Nite live shows were the best.

E3 diminishing and eventually going away was another thing that probably didn't help. That was the one thing that would still get them a lot of views in the later years.

 

[Zimmy68]

I used to love listening to the Giant Bomb podcast but when they, mostly Gerstman, spent the entire time shitting on AAA games and spending all the show's time on some indy game I will never play, I gave up.

 

[BennyBlanco]

It's crazy that Jeff by himself is way more entertaining than Nextlander. Alex is such a whiney bitch. I listened to most of this the other day and it all makes sense. But there is definitely bad blood between Jeff and those other guys. They regularly do stuff with all the other ex GB people and never even talk about Jeff.

 

[MrCunningham]

But the political/business side of media organizations is awful. This is what happens when you sell your ownership away.

Typically, it seems to go like this:

"We bought popular video game news/ reviews/ pundit outlet to make our corporate portfolio look more diverse"

*lays off staff. Let's the brand go dormant*

Or (in GiantBombs case... )

*forgets that they ever made the purchase, lets site continue running as usual*

"we re-evaluated our purchases, and it turns out that 'video game outlet' no longer fits out corporate structure"

*Lays off staff*

And/ or

"Sells remainder of the branding and assets for peanuts*

 

[mitch1971]

Why dose a man need paternity leave anyway?

Oh I don't know...
Maybe to enjoy his newborn child, help his wife.

 

[Black_Stride]

Gamespot?
Personality based content?

Im not trying to be funny.
But who are the personalities at Gamespot?
I even went to their Youtube channel and I was like all these cats seem like losers and their view counts are pretty low for a channel/company its size.

 

[zaga]

I had a Giant Bomb membership and I am a supporter of Jeff's Patreon. Still a big fan. But I agree that he spends too much time talking about energy drinks. They really can't be good for him…

 

[BennyBlanco]

Gamespot?
Personality based content?

Im not trying to be funny.
But who are the personalities at Gamespot?
I even went to their Youtube channel and I was like all these cats seem like losers and their view counts are pretty low for a channel/company its size.

Only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Mary Kish and Danny Odwyer who both left years ago

 

[March Climber]

Gamespot?
Personality based content?

Im not trying to be funny.
But who are the personalities at Gamespot?
I even went to their Youtube channel and I was like all these cats seem like losers and their view counts are pretty low for a channel/company its size.

Gamespot was the larger, more recognizable trending company and heads at CBS treated them as the golden boy their gaming media over everyone else.

It didn't matter if they didn't have personalities at the time, CBS would have wanted Gamespot to either manufacture or hire said personalities so that they could dump GB to the curb.

Their bottom line was that they didn't want two similar companies to be paid doing the same exact thing.

 

[rkofan87]

going to watch this later might resub love the guy but his trump rub me the wrong way but i think as was too harsh.
ps gb was for me was the bomb cast and the premium stuff sad its dead but it was dead dead when we found out that they were not coming back to the office after covid was about done

 

[Barakov]

Girthmann ate all the profits.

 

[Quantum253]

Giant Bomb was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, back then, you needed a large media company to invest (or own a majority) of your small site to have any financial traction in being self employed (let alone a team of people).
Now, the subscription models/Twitch/working directly with ad companies, a lot of these smaller companies are able to thrive.
I think that digital print is going the way of physical (newspapers/magazines/etc). Most people want bite sized video (tiktok) and longer streaming content(Twitch/Rumble/YouTube).
I find it odd that the personalities that made these amazing sites and content can't make a comeback in today's market (which i would think would allow them to have more control over their content, and not rely on being bought by large media companies).

 

[BennyBlanco]

Gamespot was the larger, more recognizable trending company and heads at CBS treated them as the golden boy their gaming media over everyone else.

It didn't matter if they didn't have personalities at the time, CBS would have wanted Gamespot to either manufacture or hire said personalities so that they could dump GB to the curb.

Their bottom line was that they didn't want two similar companies to be paid doing the same exact thing.

Which begs the question, why buy them in the first place? Only thing GB had going for it was premium subs, which was entirely because of the personalities. The wiki aspect of GB was always kind of half assed and felt superfluous.

 

[TexMex]

I still find it odd that Jeff doesn't speak to basically anyone. Definitely feels like there is bad blood there. I know they all want to do their own thing, but they've all been on each others content, and other peoples. Except Jeff. The only person I've seen collaborate with Jeff since the blow up, is Ben.

 

[TexMex]

Welp

 

[P:axMagellanic]

It was the Ryan and Jeff show.