Board 8 > Giant Bomb Topic 2020-2021

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yeah, it feels like it's going to be tough to find someone young and creative enough to want to be in this business but not do their own thing with the massive amount of options that are available.

Giantbomb has felt like a launching off point for many careers into streaming or other types of journalism, or at least a pitstop along that path, and that's great but it also kind of sucks to see people coming and going all the time. Was definitely not expecting Ben but at the same time I admittedly haven't watched a lot of their content this year other than the podcasts I've caught live and Alex's drumming streams almost every week. I follow them all on Twitter and Instagram, though, so I feel like I can at least pretend to think I know how the last year has been.

Funnily enough I was just starting to gear up for GOTY stuff too and then I came across the news.

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Im sure there are plenty of relative youths who grew up on Giantbomb type stuff and still see some value in the idea of being part of a legitimate website with a salary and a preexisting fanbase. They only need to find two or three new people.

as a fellow 30year-old like Ben, Id prefer that stability to the pressure of being a solo content creator
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So is THIS why Going Rogue was limited to 13 runs??

I'm happy for Ben, but this definitely sucks for GB and GB West specifically. West definitely needs some young blood in there, and Jan's great but I'm not sure if he's enough.

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And I don't know if Ben is leaving to be a solo streamer? From what I understand his reason for leaving are:

- burnout from covering games as a job versus enjoying them freely
- massive mental health toll since taking the job (people to this day are vile to him about things he can't control)
- wants to "fuck off into obscurity forever" / away from the public spotlight

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yeah this isn't about Ben moving on to a "better" job in the industry or striking out on his own, this is him not wanting to be a public figure anymore

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So GB is down 3 positions now and to be honest i wouldn't expect Jan to last another year either. This website is going to get pretty weird when the old crew just keeps getting older but stays and the young crew keeps getting replaced with a younger one. There was already a pretty noticeable gap with Jan, Abby and Ben with the rest of everyone and when the positions are probably intro jobs it will only widen.


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Yeah I wasn't saying Ben was doing that, more that the majority have.

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hockeydude15 posted...

So GB is down 3 positions now and to be honest i wouldn't expect Jan to last another year either. This website is going to get pretty weird when the old crew just keeps getting older but stays and the young crew keeps getting replaced with a younger one. There was already a pretty noticeable gap with Jan, Abby and Ben with the rest of everyone and when the positions are probably intro jobs it will only widen.

They just need to continue to cycle another twenty years and then they can pass it off to all of their kids!

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hire me giant bomb I need a job

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Wow! Didn't see that coming. Ben wasn't my favorite staff member but he did some good stuff like Mahjong Mornings recently. What are everyone's favorite Ben content?

So who's left on staff:
West: Jeff, Brad, Jan, Jason, Rorie
East, Vinny, Alex, (Bakalar for Beastcast)

I would say that East in particular is looking pretty thin but I'm not sure that really matters at this point with everything being virtual.

I feel like there were a lot of GB fans whining years back about how the "new kids" (whomever that was at the time) were taking up too much time from the "main" GB crew (i.e. Jeff, Vinny, Brad). Guess we're gonna get to see how that works out...

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Boy I really hope they get some new hires soon.

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MoogleKupo141 posted...

Im sure there are plenty of relative youths who grew up on Giantbomb type stuff and still see some value in the idea of being part of a legitimate website with a salary and a preexisting fanbase. They only need to find two or three new people.

as a fellow 30year-old like Ben, Id prefer that stability to the pressure of being a solo content creator

Yeah Im 100% in this boat, I just cant imagine going solo would be preferable to having a squad you can rely on.

This is nuts, man.


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I will say, Dan has been killing it on Twitch. Obviously he had the benefit of a pretty large existing fanbase, but his stream is very much nonsense reminiscent of old GB. I do wonder how long itll hold his interest, but he does still seem excited about it.

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although I just watched Ben's goodbye and I totally get it.

He's always seemed less than comfortable in front of the camera and microphone and stuff, but unlike some other people leaving to just do the same but on their own, I really respect his decision.

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Really loved the Ben and Abby era, it's a kick in the nuts to see he's leaving. It really sounds like the non-video game parts of the job have been rough on him. Going to miss him but if this is what he needs to do, nothing but support.

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Wowwwww 3 people leaving in 1 year span?? It always seemed like such a dream job...


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Its not that shocking that so many people leave in a short period of time. Weve had periods where multiple people left close together. It is worrying that nobody has been hired to make up the gap.

It makes sense that these people would leave. Dan got his dream job, Abby wanted to move on from her first job and got an opportunity with the purchase, and Ben was tired of public life. We just really need some new blood now.

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Oh I've assumed, since Abby's departure, that they're not gonna hire more people. They haven't mentioned looking, even once, in a long time, as far as I know?

It's possible they only didn't want to mention it, because people get annoying about it and try to recommend people.

But even so, I would think they would still mention it once, accidentally. They love mentioning things accidentally.

~

Does anyone else kinda feel emotionally betrayed when this happens? I mean, it's a fucked up way to feel, totally not fair at all to expect these nice people to stay at a job like this forever. But, I can't help it...

Come to think of it, maybe that's exactly why someone would want to leave a job like this.

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Eh the pandemic and then sale of GB and others probably made hiring someone really hard/impossible last year. I wouldn't be worried about it unless Jeff came out and said something along the lines that they were only going to hire 1 person or restructure things that the current crew is good enough. But considering they at least have a new office in San Fran already and I think Vinny said something about probably having an actual studio for once in NY I would expect them to hire at some point. My expectation would honestly be we hear something soon about the hiring process starting and like June/July when they actually come in.

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It made no sense to hire people during a pandemic, that's why they haven't talked about it in a very long time

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In fact I think Jeff mentioned not wanting to hire during the pandemic.

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Epyo posted...

Wowwwww 3 people leaving in 1 year span?? It always seemed like such a dream job...

It still probably is a dream job on some level, but Dan found his way to a different dream job by joining WWE, Ben realized he doesnt want to be an on-air kind of guy, and Abby was just too young to commit to a thing forever.
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Ben started out strong, but I quickly lost interest in most of his content by 2020.

`I won the bet that Jan is the last to survive that wave of hires

I do wonder if it means Giant Bomb is going to be smaller under their new ownership, maybe back to how it used to be before they tried to have two offices, especially with most of it being online now.

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Giant Bomb should hire a vtuber.

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In my case Ben lost me 100% with Kingdom Heartache

Like it's fine if you drop the series after 2 or 3 episodes because you're not enjoying the game, but the actual content of those videos seemed extremely lazy and below the standard of what I expect from giant bomb

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Once theory I've read that seems kind of plausible is that Red Ventures slashed wages or benefits in such a way to make continued employment untenable. Would explain why the recent departures feel like layoffs without actually being such. Although it does sound like Ben has something else lined up, but is being really cagey about saying what it is for some reason
ninkendo posted...

In my case Ben lost me 100% with Kingdom Heartache

Like it's fine if you drop the series after 2 or 3 episodes because you're not enjoying the game, but the actual content of those videos seemed extremely lazy, mean spirited and below the standard of what I expect from giant bomb

I thought Kingdom Heartache was fine for what it was. If you want to talk lazy, mean-spirited and poor quality, you can't do any worse than Burgle My Bananas. What an absolute farce that was. That series should have never happened.


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The some reason is pretty clearly wanting to be private, his whole reason for leaving. Theres nothing especially unusual about any of these departures. The actual question mark is around hiring.

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Once theory I've read that seems kind of plausible is that Red Ventures slashed wages or benefits in such a way to make continued employment untenable. Would explain why the recent departures feel like layoffs without actually being such. Although it does sound like Ben has something else lined up, but is being really cagey about saying what it is for some reason

Ive seen a different, more positive theory that theres just an opportunity for employees to take some kind of severance when the company gets sold, so its a good time to get out of you were planning on getting out anytime remotely soon.
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I mean, I don't think there needs to be any kind of ulterior motive behind Abby and Ben's leaving beyond their stated reasoning. I think the move to RV might have had some influence in their timing, maybe, but beyond that I'm not so sure.

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DeepsPraw posted...

Once theory I've read that seems kind of plausible is that Red Ventures slashed wages or benefits in such a way to make continued employment untenable. Would explain why the recent departures feel like layoffs without actually being such. Although it does sound like Ben has something else lined up, but is being really cagey about saying what it is for some reason

He pretty clearly said his reason for leaving is he wants out of the spotlight, lol so the reason is that.

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GotY is gonna be wierd this year. Sounds like most of the staff didn't actually play, or at the very least didn't finish, almost every major release of the year.

If it was going to happen any year, regardless if circumstances, probably no better than this one. I liked FFVII and Demon's Souls, as well as a few others, but the only game I truly cared about was 13 Sentinels.

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@UshiromiyaEva Whats a better way to play 13 Sentinels, doing one chapter at a time for each character, or just playing all through a characters story until you hit locks?

Also good news, Im fairly confident it will hit the top ten.

Anyway, this has been a good year for most if not all of them playing the big games, though maybe a terrible year for them finishing them. But they did play them all!

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My real answer is whatever you're feeling, there's no wrong way to play 13 Sentinels as long as you're playing all of it. You really can't mess yourself up by playing one character's story mode too much before hitting another.

Personally, I played a character until I filled in their set of question mark blocks in their current set of paths, then switched to the next character, even if I hadn't technically hit a lock.

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GOTY starting now.

Is RoboCop undead?

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I'm not complaining about talking about GotY, but please no spoilers on the final lists please, I'm at work and can't watch.

If THEY spoil anything, feel free to let us know <_<

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Oh shit they're going back to the 'classic' format, meaning straight into categories and not a 3 day recap.

You love to see it.

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my Ben and Abby sacrifice at the alter to bring back the old format worked


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I went from not caring about GotY to caring instantly.

Will have to wait for the upload though.

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Its only two categories today, but in terms of volume of discussion looks like there will be a ton.

Also all posts about what they are discussing should be spoilered.

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Boy there were a lot of amazing looking games this year! An hour and a half in and they still have six games left.

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This is really fun!!! Giant Bomb is back!

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Honestly "Best Dad" seems like a total filler/joke category. I really hope they do more categories today. They used to do 4 a day

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The number of categories is largely irrelevant. There were a load of five minute filler categories and they made up categories on the fly to hit an arbitrary target number. Id rather ~10 categories of the quality (and length) of this last one to 20 with 10 filler categories.

Best Dad sounds like a lot of fun given the games of this year.

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they spent 2+ hours on best looking so yeah, thats why you only get a couple categories today
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Also frankly, judging by the last almost-decade in video games, the only surprising thing is that it took them this long to have a Best Dad category.

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(this is not a spoiler, this is just me expressing a wish before results are chosen) top 3 dads should be Hades, Barret, and Tony Hawk

Im very invested in this
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Unironically one of the best GotY category discussions ever

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I am loving every moment of this day 1

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the filler categories are always my favorites honestly

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Maybe I worded that poorly. "Best Dad" was a fun category and I like the less serious ones, I just wish there were more.

Honestly I don't care about the perennial music and story categories. I would prefer 3 one-hour-long fun categories over 1 three-hour-long "serious" category

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