My absolutely favorite time in Giant Bomb was when Xbox Game Room was a thing and Jeff would trick hosts into seeing whatever releases they put out for it that week.
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right itâs like he wants to communicate why these games are important but then doesnât have the language or the critical angle to like bridge the gap. itâs too far from modern game design that none of his
fallback contemporary analysis works so it comes off as like nostalgia that heâs mostly incapable of imparting to other people.
maybe that comes off a bit meaner than i intend because i do generally like the dude idk haha
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God the weekly eShop releases updateâŚI miss thoseâŚ
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no itâs so true though, youâre not wrong!! thatâs my misgiving with so many of those guys in general.
when i read like⌠this
http://harmonyzone.org/text/monsterparty.html
itâs just like being hit with so many more ideas and observations that go so many other places in a realm that usually has so little of that. admittedly itâs kind of dense for the layperson to engage with, but itâs a shame that that kind of observation in general is not more valued.
i guess thatâs the realm that like all those younger Lore Youtubers like Pyrocynical are trying to tap but doing a shitty version of though.
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the only vidcon media i really feel inclined to consume is on the metas around specific titles at this point, trusting that the best pundits will put their commentary in a wider industrial/academic context where appropriate
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I am retroactively on board with this
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yes, saints row 3 is so much better than skyrim
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Yeah this is very much the paradox of Jeff Gerstmann, haha. Thereâs definitely a bit more to him than your average one of âthese guysâ but he also exhibits the same tired critical lens (or lack thereof) towards games. What @Gate88 said is pretty accurate I feel, like you can sense he definitely has more interesting thoughts and feelings on these things but just struggles to articulate it probably. You could maybe imagine an alternate timeline where he pursued the writing end of things more than the video stuff⌠Might have turned out better given what has become of Giant Bomb!
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if Jeff wasnât an absolutely insane person who cares about the bizarre nothings living on the margins of questionable decisions, we as a society would have lost âSTANGER THINGSâ with the Miiverse
anyway,
look Iâm all saying the shitposting if NBC rolls a horse girl ad is going to be wild
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Valve has been working on a secret version of Deadlock away from prying eyes of the closed beta. they awoobified Ivy. they added more characters. who knows what else. very funny that the Deadlock community went too hardcore so valve had to go back to private mode. I know itâs common in games itâs just funny, probably too hard to run a service game and also develop at the same time.
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Chrono Trigger remake allegations making the rounds based on a recent interview
https://fxtwitter.com/Wario64/status/1918363467528200199?t=jtakdRbcclKmlQcKhHTNnQ&s=19
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I guess most of the DQ remakes turned out pretty good⌠this might be okâŚ
I think Giant Bomb was clever to identify that âfriends shooting the shit while something is on tvâ was a useful games metric for their audience & that they were uniquely positioned to find the form for it. (web-based video-centric startup when youtube had a 10 minute limit)
Most people now donât really do the standalone single pre-recorded unedited ~40 minutes of couch buddy style gameplay per game. And the stuff they pivoted to late was basically catch-up with streamers/the same personality stuff as anywhere else. I think of it a less like, competing with journalism or taste-making, and more like Siskel & Ebert or Red Letter Media or MST3K or any of that stuff that gen x makes sure i hear about even tho i dont care. An affable group of mostly white guys whose opinion doesnât need to be discerning if you find them pleasant or funny or whatever. And if you donât then its abrasive & annoying in addition to having offensively mindless taste.
I liked it! And for hte time i did, no regrets. because it made a younger me laugh. 
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One of the things about Jeff Gerstman thatâs always bugged me is that heâs often brought up what he feels his job is, and what he feels the job of a games journalist is, and that is to prevent someone from wasting their money on a bad game. It bugs me because that doesnât line up with Gerstmanâs behavior to my eye, so much of his career is built on showcasing âbadâ games and addressing the banality of good games. But he always says the exact same line, like he decided on that answer a long time ago and figured it didnât need to be reappraised.
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Itâs definitely the job of the games âreviewerâ and I think that is the extent of what is referred to as journalism often in this context. Like you are there to provide a consumer guide, maybe be entertaining along the way, not much more. I personally think itâs why I think digital foundry has replaced this definition since it basically does this in a far more thorough and technical way than an enthusiast appending one of four different scores to radically different games all the time.
The kind of investigative journalism that some crowdfunded documentary channels and Jason Schreier does is a bit more rare and not always entirely for the consoomer.
Is Jason Schreier the only person that we have in our immediate recollection that does this? He is always the reference point and he basically just investigates and calls out bad practice, he just happens to be a context expert.
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well because I think there was always this understood thing where journalists mostly also want to be culture writers at least some of the time and jason was the only one who was boring enough to literally just do investigative journalism
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The guy I used to spend over 100 hours making pizza with a week once called me âthe Jeff Gerstmann of the Midwestâ and to this day I am not sure how to take that
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I loved this bit because my best friend was obsessed with them releasing Sunset Riders on Game Room and had a similar meltdown when they didnât. I still think about getting fucked out of Sunset Riders to this day.
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jeff gerstmann was foolish enough to add me on Playstation and once I made a NO JEFFS ALLOWED party chat and literally invited him to it 50 times and he didnât join so at least he knows how to listen
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Jeff Gerstmann is a Mr. Do truther and for that I donât think he can be completely be trusted
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