Got excited for a moment there because I thought it was May 26 of this year and not next lol.
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My time of diligently following Giant Bomb probably really ended when the Beastcast ended in 2021, but I think my real reverence for the whole thing is definitely rooted firmly back in the Ryan Davis years.
Anyway I dunno. Itās really easy to brush off what Giant Bomb does now as āguys on a couch playing gamesā becauseā¦thatās what it is, but you also gotta remember that in 2008 or 2009 or whenever, that was pretty novel! Some guys putting up uncut video of gameplay was sort of the flip side of the coin to like, GameTrailers reviews talking about bugs or something in a game and actually showing them.
Iām sure there were people on Ustream or Justin.TV or whatever doing similar stuff, just not with this sort of production behind it. Or fervor, given how Giant Bomb was born out of the crewās sort of disgruntled solidarity with Gerstmann getting shit canned by Gamespot for his negative Kane & Lynch review.
Anyway, there was a real sort of chemistry to the crew that I donāt think ever really came back when Ryan Davis passed away. Bringing in Dan (who I find exhausting but hey whatever) injected some life into things, and I think the East Coast crew of Vinny, Alex, Austin and especially Abby did a lot to recapture that sort of energy (Ben was cool, people hating on Ben and Abby suck, they were great, they still are great).
(Also yeah, articles were maybe never the siteās strength - Jeff brought on Patrick for news and Austin for more editorial stuff, and I guess Patrick did get to break that story about the Xbox One price drop + dropping Kinect, but those endeavors fizzled pretty quick for the video stuff they usually did)
I wound up just following the east coast crewās stuff until that ended, and thatās when I fell off. As for what branched off - I find the Nextlander stuff a little dryā¦I love Vinny though. Jeff Gerstmannās solo podcast is about the only one I listen to anymore, but without anyone to bounce off of he tends to repeat some of the same anecdotes ad nauseum (if I hear the 20 minute color blindness option rant again I might lose it).
Anyway, I guess what Iām getting at is that itās a shame the site has finally come full circle, ripped apart by corporate overlords that it was built to escape. But I havenāt followed the site itself in a very long time, so I dunno, this is mostly nostalgia talking I guess.
Oh well 
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My main positive takeaway of Giant Bomb was their live shows, which had this sorta public-access/no rules mentality that was very enjoyable, and the siteās community itself and wiki.
What people say about them bringing in this new awful age of games coverage as content with personalities at the center is essentially true. They carried with them a lot of baggage from Gamespot, having the same misguided mission of covering as many games as possible, even if that meant said coverage often felt supremely lacking and surface level. Their own opinions of games tended to be frustratingly vanilla most of the time as well and I remember several instances of just finding their whole understanding of the industry or more niche areas of it (and outside of it) to be really limited.
It sucks they were also essentially the center of the universe for this stuff. I would of enjoyed hearing more voices than just this handful of guys who seemed mostly passionless about games themselves (or at least burnt out from years of already working in the industry) and more there to hang out instead. I must admit I did eventually stop using the site for this exact reason, it was liberating to escape that echo chamberā¦ Still Iāll miss occasionally watching a livestream where Vinny would be super imposing stupid stuff on-screen while Jeff played and gushed about some obscure arcade game or somethingā¦
Watching Nextlander or Jeff Gerstmann on his own sorta demonstrates how little each of them actually have to say critically or otherwise about gamesā¦ It really was more enjoyable with the goofy production values that I suppose you get when wasting some wealthy personās investment money on a studio space and cameras/lighting setupsā¦ Again, not to make excuses, but I was young at the time so my perspective was pretty limited thenā¦
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Giant Bomb is/was fine, I guess
Iāve learned to spiritually empathize with them having spent the past 5 years having to fuck with a Tricaster. the Tricaster is both incredibly approachable and powerful while being a tempermental box of pure evil and I feel for Vinny and Jason having to interact with one until they mercifully got to switch to vMix
anyway media writing is dead
you wonāt see anything else great until all the writers and commentators and such in a field do their own Defector-styled spins on things and we loop back around to content being propped up by a subscription model (although ironically this is what Giant Bomb was and the reason why GB was still what is was while being owned by CBS was because CBS saw the site was profitable on subs and went ācool, keep on keeping onā, which seems like an insane idea)
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i was never an especially fastidious follower of giant bombs weekly podcasts or streams and would just pop in on the odd occasion, but iāve always found jeff gerstmann a unique and interesting voice within the mainstream games media. i will give giant bomb as a whole credit, especially during their peak popularity, that even if the taste of most of the big personalities of the site was largely middle-brow, there was always a lot more genuine thoughtful critique given towards aaa productions than anyone else of a similar profile was giving at that time. a shame to see them go, but this kind of a second or third end of the site given all the major departures over the last few years.
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I think whatās most interesting about him is heās one of a very small collection of people who has consistently worked in the industry for many, many years and so has a certain level of insight thatās kinda rare from someone in that field. He always seemed like the most informed member of the staff. Whenever there was some bullshit videogame thing pop up in the news, heād usually have some example on hand of some similar bullshit thing that had happened in the past. Heās also pretty funny. Depending on how itās channelled, his cynicism towards the industry and certain videogames could be either refreshing or infuriating, haha.
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Iāll never forget him going down fighting trying to get Saints Row The Third to win Game of the Year over Skyrimā¦
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I used to commute three hours a day and the Giant Beastcast was good filler then. Not sure how I found it. I probably googled āvideo game podcasts.ā
This eventually led to Dan Ryckert playing one of my Mario Maker levels on a stream, which is the only time I can think of where someone publicly enjoyed a thing I made. I downloaded it for posterity.
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It was pretty depressing to hear from Gerstmann that for a good while CBS was apparently on the verge canning them until Ryan Davis passed and the enormous outpouring that followed from people online was actually what got a suit at CBS to realise that they might be worth keeping around. Of course, while many exciting plans were then made about the future that only lasted until said suit left the company a few months later and after that they were allowed to simply keep existing and not much else.
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New Pixeljam.
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I started watching Giant Bomb sometimes in the lates 2010, probably close to 2020. I think it might have been their playthrough of Contradiction: Spot the Liar (the vide was already old by that point), where they did a quick look of this FMV adventure game, were so enamored by itās goofy spirit that they kept playing past the end of their recording of the quick look, and then proceeded to play through the entire game.
By this point live streaming games had been normalized, and they themselves would say they were not game journalists or anything close to it, so I just approached them like any other group of streamers. But they had really good comedic chemistry (though I leaned heavily towards the GB East crew) while have the history inside the game industry to give them way more cynical and grounded opinions on games and industry news. It was nice to have a group of people whoās to things like Shenmue 3 and FF7 Rebirth announcements being an eyebrow raise and going āreally?ā when other game outfits had people jumping on their chairs and tables crying. But they also definitely benefited a lot from bringing in newer, younger voices with Abby and Ben and Jan, who bring exposure to lots of other kinds of games that the older GB crew typically would never had.
They had a really good knack for coming up with neat show ideas that would layer on some fun gimmicks on top of the typical letās play format. Things like Steal My Sunshine (where they imposed a game show structure on top of playing Super Mario Sunshine), The Exquisite Corp (where they took turns playing the same save file of XCOM: Enemy Unknown), and 13 Deadly Sims (where they ran a sims world with sims based off the GB Crew and then worked to kill them in specific ways). Even so, ultimately a lot of this was them just chatting and hanging out while playing game. So the comedic chemistry is really what made it all work.
A lot of it starting falling part during COVID, where they lost their routine and schedule and their group streams became more erratic, for understandable reasons. Then the eventually ownership and staffing changes. I think their content was really rocky up until recently. Post COVID and with constant staff changes, the site for a long time felt like it couldnāt get its footing again with a content schedule and an identity. Quick Looks, where they play and check out new games, was one of the main video pipelines but went away semi-permanently at some point, turning into just an occasional thing.
Since its a personality focused endeavor, the change to Jan Ochoa and Jeff Grubb leading the charge, then bringing in people like Tamoor, Lucy, and Mike Minotti, meant the site was essentially a completely different thing at that point. They still had issues with getting out a consistent and meaningful amount videos for a premium subscription site, but I felt like things really started coming together around the time they started Blight Club, where they punished each other by forcing them to do full playthroughs of bad games. Thatās the first show in a long time that felt like it channeled same kind of energy as lots of the older shows, and they started getting up lots of other videos and podcasts regularly going as well.
Iāve never been one to get attached to internet personalities but I assumed if there were ever people I should I have been sad to see split up, it would be Giant Bomb. But when Brad, Vinny, and Alex left it didnāt actually hit me in any emotional way; I just accepted it as the regular passage of times and peopleās lives. So I guess thatās good for me, in a way. Giant Beastcast and itās associated random talk podcasts were mainstays for me, so Iām glad Nextlander has their āNever Been a Better Podcastā to bring that GB East crew back to together monthly. Thatās always a pleasure to listen to.
Also I never spent any of my free Giant Bomb store credit each year on any t-shirts or merch.
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Iāve still got my Giant Beastcast mug, that I think if I used for coffee would probably give me heart palpitations. That thing is huge.
Edit: may as well post this, which has Ryanās best laugh in maybe all of their videos
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it would be funny if they pushed grand theft auto back to update whatever trump jokes they wrote in fuckin 2018 or whatever
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And it had been previously announced for Switch 2 as well.
Itās not really clear from their site
but the way the info is arranged there, possibly the PS4 version wonāt have a couple modes the other versionsāor at least the PS5?ādo, specifically
T.T.ļ¼TIME TRIAL), where you compete one-on-one against a rival car to achieve the best time.
Additionally, a DX version featuring support for an H-shifter and clutch is also included.
But again, that isnāt completely clear from the site.
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i liked gerstmann mostly because he had this kind of old man āi like what i like and that aināt gonna changeā energy. itās like contrarianism but with enough load bearing non-sequiturs to keep you guessing.
when he plays classic games thereās a removed appreciation for them, even though it feels like heās generally not having a great time playing them.
i think i would tune in occasionally for that novelty of someone who had a few aspects of my personality but then diverged heavily enough to be interesting. it was actually pretty rare for me to agree with his opinions, but that did help me solidify some ideas about what i liked and why i liked it.
havenāt really seen much of his solo stuff. honestly sounds kind of exhausting to me if he has no one else to bounce off of.
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Itās not quite my thing but Gerstmannās current stuff seems to be
https://www.twitch.tv/jeffgerstmann
Jeez he even has a particularly baffling tumblr:
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tbh what made me reconsider Jeff Gerstmann is seeing he was the mod on Vektroidās twitch channel and seemed really into her music. i admit seeing a Game Guy of that age who really seemed to like this music by a trans woman surprised me a bit lol.
i sometimes will skim through his NES stream vids even though it brings me back to the same realm of retro guys of that age who are obsessed with games of that era but donāt seem to ever have anything that interesting to say about them. tbh seeing so many of those sort of guys is part of what made me start writing stuff about games to begin with, as like an antidote to that. i just wanted people to have like an actual sense of imagination when talking about those games.
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Listening to this now, itās good stuff.
Edit: please donāt forget Jeffās most important ongoing life mission - ranking every sugar-free energy drink
Edit 2: this is still the funniest ranking, though Jeff sounding like he may need to go to the hospital during the podcast he reviewed itā¦ranking earned.
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i think jeff gerstman can feel like a negative grump a lot of the times on the old pods but he gave me the courage to say and agree, as a die hard wrestling fan, that most pro wrestling videogames were and are bad and control like shit
i really dug into giant bomb the most when i had an office desk job where i could just watch them do the mario party party or play really weird FMV games. it had the āguys sitting on the couchā thing but i felt fairly aligned with a lot of their perspectives, and, crucially, had a very even keel tone and voice (save for Dan) which kind of helped blend into the background (as opposed to at the time, the rise of the Lets Play Youtuber with the āYoutuber Voiceā.) if i had a passing interest in a game, i can see them do a playthrough or something and get a sense on if iād like it or not. The whole Contradiction series was so good to me that i ended up playing the game myself with my wife and now weāre deeeeeeeeep into the Wales Interactive FMV games to play together, all because I saw it on a random Giant Bomb.
it was a shame when it all fell apart a few years ago and itās a shame that itās finally falling apart now. i hope everyone who is affected is able to get back on their feet and i hope one day Jeff and Ben will reunite to do another version of Ranking of Fighters
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