Jeff Gerstmann finally explains all regarding the fall of Giantbomb

People just watch their favorite youtuber now. Giant bomb went Uber woke. They are competing with multiple gaming sites for the "modern audience". Something has to give
 
GB was ahead of its time and then behind the times. All within 7 years. 2008 to 2015.

Vinny built a nice product in Gb east Until Red Ventures VP thought that they could grow it. Then next lander formed.

Jeff never got a chance to fully rebuild but it would have been an outdated business from the go because Gerstmann has no business sense.

I actually do like this new iteration of GB and now that it's privately owned I will support it.
 
Looking forward to listening to this. I guess it's like how Vince McMahon hired the NWO guys back just to "officially" disband them in 2002.

Edit: Seems like they were sold one too many times. No one but whiskey media understood the site.
 
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RIGHTS ABOUT 8.8

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Scrubbed through this video a little bit. Just curious about it from a sociological sense. This guy is so far down the "games journalism" rabbit hole he can't even objectively look at his situation. That entire industry is not coming back unless we end up in another 0% interest rate era. Even then, you need a technological revolution happening at the same time. (broadband proliferation, active console war to talk about and the change from SD to HDTV). Just a perfect storm for the advertising industry to have billions of dollars they needed to find a home for. That birthed what we hilariously call "games journalism". Not to mention that type of traditional advertising is dying quickly. No one watches commercials anymore. Magazines don't exist. There is no other market for games journalism. Consumers alone can't sustain it on the scale these old companies like Giant Bomb work at.

If Jeff takes 3 other personalities to start a new content business, they're going to need no less than $500k per year just for salary. You can add 50%+ to that if they're living in California. So he needs $41k a month to cover salary. Assuming there are no editors or production team. That breaks down to about 8,000 paid subs at $5 per month. If they go back to making Giant Bomb style video content. These numbers go way up. You need a building. You need a production team. Cameras, editors etc. Mad Catz isn't coming through that door with a million dollar sponsor deal to save them in this era.

Trying to bring this dinosaur back to life is just going to cost a lot of people a lot of time and money. Only way to make money on content now is lean and mean. Honestly, YouTube personalities already have that covered. Hope this fella put some of that golden era money away. He looks like he's still at least 10-15 years away from retirement.
 
Men_in_Boxes said:
I don't care about watching streams either but I'm no longer interested in the wider gaming landscape anymore so I can't listen to anyone talk about games I won't play.

I want to hear about 5 - 10 games a year and it seems to be more effective to find streamers comment on those games rather that shuffle through all the bloat of a podcast like Giant Bomb.
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So true. 15 years ago I was playing every major release that came out. Like 50+ games a year.
No way I could do that today. Or even want to with the current output of titles the last few years.
 
simpatico said:
Scrubbed through this video a little bit. Just curious about it from a sociological sense. This guy is so far down the "games journalism" rabbit hole he can't even objectively look at his situation. That entire industry is not coming back unless we end up in another 0% interest rate era. Even then, you need a technological revolution happening at the same time. (broadband proliferation, active console war to talk about and the change from SD to HDTV). Just a perfect storm for the advertising industry to have billions of dollars they needed to find a home for. That birthed what we hilariously call "games journalism". Not to mention that type of traditional advertising is dying quickly. No one watches commercials anymore. Magazines don't exist. There is no other market for games journalism. Consumers alone can't sustain it on the scale these old companies like Giant Bomb work at.

If Jeff takes 3 other personalities to start a new content business, they're going to need no less than $500k per year just for salary. You can add 50%+ to that if they're living in California. So he needs $41k a month to cover salary. Assuming there are no editors or production team. That breaks down to about 8,000 paid subs at $5 per month. If they go back to making Giant Bomb style video content. These numbers go way up. You need a building. You need a production team. Cameras, editors etc. Mad Catz isn't coming through that door with a million dollar sponsor deal to save them in this era.

Trying to bring this dinosaur back to life is just going to cost a lot of people a lot of time and money. Only way to make money on content now is lean and mean. Honestly, YouTube personalities already have that covered. Hope this fella put some of that golden era money away. He looks like he's still at least 10-15 years away from retirement.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for better or worse, trying to cover video full time games as a company just is not economically viable anymore.
 
simpatico said:
Trying to bring this dinosaur back to life is just going to cost a lot of people a lot of time and money. Only way to make money on content now is lean and mean. Honestly, YouTube personalities already have that covered. Hope this fella put some of that golden era money away. He looks like he's still at least 10-15 years away from retirement.
Click to expand...

Jeff wasn't arguing that it should be brought back to life. He was basically saying this was inevitable because of the realities of business. He's now out on his own with a Patreon subscription and doing just fine. So are the guys at Nextlander. I get the impression they're all making more money than they were when they were working for CBSi.

And to your point, they all know and agree with everything you just said. That doesn't mean it's not sad to watch the industry you've spent your whole adult life in evaporate and everyone you worked with move into different fields.
 
We only miss Ryan because the dude died before everyone went crazy in the woke bubble. He would be far worse than Jeff and others going full "everything is offensive and we need do better".
 
Harlock said:
We only miss Ryan because the dude died before everyone went crazy in the woke bubble. He would be far worse than Jeff and others going full "everything is offensive and we need do better".
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www.giantbomb.com

My Worst Moment

Ladies and gentlemen, during tonight's Lantern Run, I made a terrible mistake with my language, one that I immediately recognized as hurtful, embarras
www.giantbomb.com www.giantbomb.com

You might be right lol
 
Harlock said:
We only miss Ryan because the dude died before everyone went crazy in the woke bubble. He would be far worse than Jeff and others going full "everything is offensive and we need do better".
Click to expand...
You're right, it would be more sane to randomly bring up culture war issues in a thread that has nothing to do with it, while attempting to decipher and measure how woke a deceased man might be.
 
Harlock said:
We only miss Ryan because the dude died before everyone went crazy in the woke bubble. He would be far worse than Jeff and others going full "everything is offensive and we need do better".
Click to expand...
Maybe but Ryan was the most anti woke of them
 
Hudo said:
I hope I'll live to see the day when Youtube will get made irrelevant as well.
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I get it but the vast majority of video playback on the web absolutely sucks compared to youtube....even still to this day. On the rare occasion I'm on a website or something trying to watch a video and the page is basically crashing because of shitty optimization I'm like holy shit where's their youtube channel.

As annoying as youtube ads are I'd still take Google's optimization over going back to how it was.
 
sharp weiner said:
GB was ahead of its time and then behind the times. All within 7 years. 2008 to 2015.

Vinny built a nice product in Gb east Until Red Ventures VP thought that they could grow it. Then next lander formed.

Jeff never got a chance to fully rebuild but it would have been an outdated business from the go because Gerstmann has no business sense.

I actually do like this new iteration of GB and now that it's privately owned I will support it.
Click to expand...
GB was a personality driven site. It could have gone on forever because people didn't like it for the technology or business model but because they liked the people on it. It's really not a typical gaming site and shouldn't have been treated as such.

I think Sacred Symbols is the same way now.

calico said:
Rhymes with maggot 🙀
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lmao

2012 was also when woke started gaining steam, that's a very 2012 mea culpa.
 
diffusionx said:
GB was a personality driven site. It could have gone on forever because people didn't like it for the technology or business model but because they liked the people on it. It's really not a typical gaming site and shouldn't have been treated as such.

I think Sacred Symbols is the same way now.


lmao

2012 was also when woke started gaining steam, that's a very 2012 mea culpa.
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i stated to notice it in 2013 when they were bitching about this.
www.polygon.com

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www.polygon.com www.polygon.com
 
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Jeff has 9k Patrons! Holy shit. Read his Doom review. Like all the others I've read. It reads like a 7. They liked it but had some gripes and overall had a mild feel. Then the score at the end is a 9/10. I'd imagine that supplements his income as well…
 
I think it is cool that the current crew are now the owners of Giant Bomb.

Voice Mail Dump Truck has been my favorite entertainment podcast for a while so happy that is continuing.

Mike Minotti is weird as hell and has great chemistry with the other Giant Bomb crew.

simpatico said:
Jeff has 9k Patrons! Holy shit. Read his Doom review. Like all the others I've read. It reads like a 7. They liked it but had some gripes and overall had a mild feel. Then the score at the end is a 9/10. I'd imagine that supplements his income as well…
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He gave Doom: The Dark Ages a 4/5 or 80%

I continue to be impressed how entertaining and capable Jeff is talking about games for hours by himself.

Nextlander is pretty dull and I follow them less than Jeff or Giant Bomb these days.

I stopped playing games consistently about 8 years ago but still enjoy following news
 
Hope they survive as independent , they are better than the most You find on social media this days...personally don't folllow any gaming You tuber but they are better than Yong Yea, the UK "guy" that changed sex that uses a hat, that used to have an Spin doctors intro, the other bald guy that used to kiss a roster figure, his channel was called like "Tech review US/América", or Even Angry Joe.

I prefer GB than those kind of channels.
 
Did Grubb lose a shitload of weight? I know the hair is shorter, but I went to the website and I didn't even recognize him. lol
 
I don't know this Jeff guy or why he's popular in gaming but everytime I see one of his videos it makes me laugh. He just looks like some middle aged man who said one day "I'm going to start a gaming podcast", woke up from bed, say down in front of his laptop, and started recording videos.
 
mayham2199 said:
I don't know this Jeff guy or why he's popular in gaming but everytime I see one of his videos it makes me laugh. He just looks like some middle aged man who said one day "I'm going to start a gaming podcast", woke up from bed, say down in front of his laptop, and started recording videos.
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he has been in videogames for over 30 years.
 
mayham2199 said:
I don't know this Jeff guy or why he's popular in gaming but everytime I see one of his videos it makes me laugh. He just looks like some middle aged man who said one day "I'm going to start a gaming podcast", woke up from bed, say down in front of his laptop, and started recording videos.
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He was famously fired from Gamespot back in the day for not giving a good enough review score to Kane & Lynch. A classic moment in games journalism.
 
MagusMajul said:
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
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Paternity leave is fantastic. What are you talking about?
 
calico said:
www.giantbomb.com

My Worst Moment

Ladies and gentlemen, during tonight's Lantern Run, I made a terrible mistake with my language, one that I immediately recognized as hurtful, embarras
www.giantbomb.com www.giantbomb.com

You might be right lol
Click to expand...

So saying "faggot" was his "worst moment?"

Yeah, he probably would have been insufferable had he made it to 2016.
 
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