Saving Games Journalism With Giant Bomb

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Coolzone Media.

Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zittron.

As a reminder, you can now buy shirts, hoodies, and even mugs in our merchandise store. There's a link in the notes.

God damn it give me money i need you to wear the shirt for me today i'm joined by the new owners of gaming site giant bomb jeff backelar jeff grubb and dan reichert fellas welcome to the show it's pronounced

okay all right yeah okay

i definitely on an interview a few days ago missed my own name and missed better i was like

better off shit and that sowski my producer regularly hears these things so that's always fun but congratulations by the way. So walk me through, Dan, perhaps walk me through what happened.

So there was some filing in and out from Giant Bomb, and then you guys kind of took it over.

Yeah, so

it's interesting.

I started the longest ago in like 2014. So in terms of how the recent stuff went down, I think the Jeff's here.

Fellas, tell me if I'm wrong. I feel like you maybe have had some more time on the phone with lawyers.
You did. I like watching this guy sweat.
Let's see. Exactly.

I just wanted to make sure I I didn't. I'm not like, oh, yeah, I did all this work.
You know, it's like, no, I just kind of fell into this.

No, Jeff and Jeff left Fandom, our previous parent company, and as part of the deal, were able to buy Giant Bomb and are bringing in, you know, me, Jana Choa, our long-time producer, and our good friend Mike Benatti, who has been trying to be full-time at Giant Bomb for a long time.

And he completely skipped full-time and went straight from contractor to co-owner of the website. That's Rocks.
Yes. Yes.

So, yeah, long history of corporate ownership and, you know, dating back to 2008 and, you know, four different owners, basically. And now I guess we are the fifth group.
Nice.

So what is the new structure? So you guys are all the owners. You're going to be doing the same kind of games journalism you're already doing.
I know that the YouTube channel went offline.

Is it coming back? Yeah. Yeah.
We were streaming to YouTube just right before we came here. Yeah, we were doing our Barboy Club show.
So

right now, the structure looks like: are we getting all the stuff from fandom that we need? And they've been very helpful in that stuff, but it's like just kind of getting the keys to everything.

And then there is a whole other process of us getting a business started because this wasn't like us necessarily buying the business. We bought a lot of assets.

So we have to start our own business to sort of take these things on and make it make sense.

So, in parallel, while we were goofing off, while Mike was playing Rascal for the PlayStation 1 for our game where we show where we play bad games.

Backlar was still working in the background, making sure that we'll have a bank account and stuff like that.

But as far as the overall idea of what this company looks like, yeah, it's going to be us kind of taking it all on ourselves, kind of splitting it up evenly amongst us and just getting to work and investing our time and seeing a payoff because now it's all on us.

It's weird as well because it's like both one of the most depressing times in games journalism history and one of the most encouraging because the amount of layoffs are horrifying but you and aftermath have really come out of well i don't want to say nowhere because it's been quite public and chaotic you you kind of seem to be building a new model for journalism writ large yeah i well yeah i think like the thing that the lesson everyone learned they learned like 10 years ago where uh the the sort of like contemporary understanding of uh games media or really any media you know for that covers some sort of entertainment uh is probably not compatible with what a corporation would need out of that in terms of like revenue expectations and just, you know, filing in in a way that makes sense.

And that's fine. And I think,

you know, what this, with the, with the Aftermath experiment and all these other sort of independent journalistic entities have sort of shown is that this can work

with a private sort of consideration of ownership as opposed to, you know, just just having it be another asset in the corporate media portfolio. Right.

That, and I think the value that these types of entities present make a lot more sense under the guise of private ownership than they do, you know, under the umbrella. So

yeah, it kind of feels as well like games journalism gets pulled in very hard by these big private equity. I'm not specifically referring to any of them, just to be clear.

These large entities buy them because I imagine they're traffic drivers and there's always news and there's always kind of search traffic coming in from games and

guides and stuff like that. Yeah, these things have been honed to be SEO, you know, sort of machines for a long time.
The people who have been in charge have once understood that to be very important.

Now, of course, like Google has made things very complicated for a lot of sites that built their sites in one way, and now they have to shift and no one really understands the way the winds are blowing.

But yeah, that traffic means something to someone for sure. And that's why you see something like a Polygon becoming the target of a Valnet.

I guess the public understanding is Valnet approached Vox Media about Polygon and asked them about it like some time ago. And they've been trying to make this happen since then.

Vox wasn't necessarily shopping around, but it became the target of that because it does have this traffic. It has this built-in.

If you search for something, there's a good chance Polygon is going to serve it to you in the video game space. And yeah, so

these kind of equity firms, they spot this and they want to extract that value. It means bad things for the actual people working at these sites almost universally every time.

And that's why this other model of us coming and being like, we're going to own it ourselves and we're going to have a direct relationship with the

audience. That kind of is the only ground to retreat to at this point.

We are either going to keep having this stuff because we're all in it together, as hokey as that sounds, or we're just not going to have it at all. Those are the options.
Yeah.

It's also, I think it's important to call out that like there does exist a type of person that I think we all sort of slot into in this Goldilocks zone that has sat on both sides of the sort of influential divide where, you know, we all began our careers in a very kind of like

I don't know, maybe antiquated is not the right word, but a certainly a traditional sort of like media and publisher relationship and people working friendship. I worked for a new zone.

I worked for print. I worked for BC Zone and CVG.

Yeah. And let's be honest, we're not that old, right? Like we're, you know, we're 39 years younger.
Exactly. We sit.

We sit in this very weird sort of like,

like I said, this Goldilocks zone where we're like, we understand what came before, what happened during, and now what's after. And I think that very uniquely positions

a small slice of sort of institutional knowledge, right? Where you can kind of like leverage that in a way that not a lot of people have that sort of insight from both sides of the fence.

And that goes back to the founding of Giant Bomb in 2008, because it was four guys that broke off from GameSpot, more traditional web-based gaming media and formed this very personality-focused thing, like kind of in the early days of YouTube, gaming personalities and things like that.

But it did come from that, yeah, institutional knowledge, people that had worked, you know, E3s dating back to the 90s and things like that.

It wasn't just, you know, some kids that started YouTubing and getting big. It kind of straddled the line from the beginning.
I admit, one of the saddest things for me was watching PC Zone collapse.

It was was the magazine I worked at, the games magazine I worked at in England. And in a different time, I think they would have come together.
We would have come together and done something.

But 2008 was when that happened. I was moving to America as well.
But that was Future Publishing Bought and fuck Future. I don't give shit.
Yeah,

what are they going to do to me?

And they repeatedly kind of do that stuff to people. So yeah, fuck them.
For real.

Real quick on that.

Like, I remember thinking back when that was happening in 2008, when EGM and 1UP was collapsing, it's like, had the One Up Yours Yours podcast kind of lasted a few more years, they all could have easily just transitioned that into a podcast with ads for one thing and then a direct to

customer supported way of doing things on the other hand. And that really would have taken off for them.

Instead, they a lot of this guys had to go kind of filter into working in the corporate side for making games.

The problem is with podcasts is, as you well know, like monetizing them is very difficult. I mean, people complain about the ads here.

Being under iHeartRadio, I mean, it works great because CoolZone Media and iHeart leaves us alone fairly, but people complain about the ads. It's like, have you tried starting a fucking podcast?

It isn't cheap. So

it's just a frustrating but great time because Aftermath's doing really interesting stuff that I feel is going to be, I feel like Giant Bomb's going to be very classic gamer stuff, like creative, but still very much about the games.

And Aftermath is doing that plus what would have been called derisively new games journalism

way back when. God, do you remember that, fellas? Yep.
New games.

I remember that. I remember when people were talking about that.
Let's talk about that Ludoo narrative dissonance. There you go.

Yeah. Oh, fuck.
Like the start of Polygon, press reset type stuff. Yeah.
Yeah.

Explain that for the listeners because it sucks, but they should know.

You talk about the Polygon thing or specifically.

Go ahead, Dan.

Oh, it's just like games media going back to like, you know, EGM and Game Informer, like the magazines of the 90s to like the early, you know, web-based IGN GameSpot stuff.

It was just, you know, we were parroting press releases and it's like news stories are basically like, there's a new box art for Assassin's Creed. How many items does your game have? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. You're going to have more levels this time? Like that type of stuff.

So it's like, that's why I, even back when I started, never considered myself a journalist because I realized it's just like, okay, I'm just kind of reporting on silly things here and giving a score to a game and things like that.

I think that there's something marvelous about that with games journalism.

It's why there's, because I don't like Aftermath, they'll write, and Guito, especially over there, has written like very long-form, thoughtful, emotional pieces.

I think that that's what's, I don't want to say missing because it's happening, but that's what makes game journalism great.

You can have stuff where it was just like, I played something, it stunk to shit, it made me angry, I want to kill someone, but I love it because it's got this one tiny, like there was, I remember reviewing a game, Zona, the Skyfall movie tie-in game,

Activision and Bond game, yeah. Remarkably tight gears of war clone.
And I remember being like, this sucks, but I love it. That's great for gaming as well.
But then the very deep emotional stuff.

And I think that it's what lends itself to exactly what you're doing, which is this kind of, let's get together, let's make something about our hobby and our job and whatever.

And the in-between part can be giant bomb. Yeah, I think there's very much room for both.

Cause I remember like when Polygon was starting in like, you know, probably like the 2013, 2014, whenever that was, and they were very much, you know, banging the drum of like, we are doing serious games, journalism and telling human stories.

And it's going to be this emotional, deep stuff. And I remember looking at that and being like, I don't know how the fuck to do that.

But I can tell you if Never Dead is any good.

But I think there's room for both because someone like me broke in because I wanted to work with a bunch of dorks and talk about video games and now make videos about video games.

But then there are important stories to tell. And I think, you know, to give Grubb some credit here, I think Grubb might be the best I've ever seen at balancing both.

Like he does the daily news show on giantbomb.com and will cover the series stuff and layoffs and just kind of issues facing the industry.

But then he'll also, you know dress up like bubsy and play bubsy 3d for play club you know so i i do think grubb is uniquely qualified to do both ends of that yeah and i enjoy in both i definitely remember growing up being uh like reading egm or or uh game players and being like man the people who are in this magazine they have a lot of personality and they clearly fill every page with that and i i i like know these people by name now i kind of know what they're what they're into and i built a real connection with them and then you know that then that would actually lead me into some of their real reporting on stuff that mattered to them, especially in EGM and then like Next Gen Magazine later.

And I just remember like really enjoying both sides of that a lot:

games are silly and stupid. And wouldn't it be fun if we took that seriously? And I really enjoy that aspect of my job.
Yeah, and

CVG used to have this kind of yellow.

It was, I don't know if you ever physically read an issue of Computer Video Games magazine, it's British and all, but they had this middle section that was in like almost like yellow pages style.

And it was just rambling shit.

It was beautiful it's like games genuinely like i i was a blueser up until like two years ago and like games were the one thing that i could bond with people over because it didn't require you to be anyone like i played a shit ton of everquest i was i think it was one of the first mmo report like real mmo reporters in england ollie welsh as well legend oh sure yeah shots alley but it's like and one of the leftover polygon people it's just

What pisses me off about all this as well is it doesn't seem that hard to run a games journalism outlet well. You just don't hire so many people and make them do 11 stories a day.

I mean, the real sad thing with Polygon is they didn't make any of those mistakes.

When people saw the layoffs, and they're like, oh, that's a lot of people.

It's like they were successful and profitable and could have kept growing, but they had a very sort of like moderate take on, okay, yeah, we could, but let's just keep all this sustainable.

And a lot of that goes down to the leadership of Chris Plant, who I just admire so much. Plant rocks.

He is just, he's got such a good head on his shoulders, and it just filtered all the way down through Polygon. So it's like they were doing it right.
And even Vox was letting them do it right.

It's just like, even when that happens, there's that buzz saw that's going to show up and be like, we're going to rip this thing apart and find a way to make more money from it. So here's some money.

It's fucking books. I didn't know they were profitable.
Yeah, it's so impurious. It was a successful business, I think, is how I would phrase it.

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Privacy starts at the source.

It's so fucking stupid because I feel like these outlets could on some level, maybe not a ton, print money. Like they...

There are tons of gamers who love reading stuff. Sure, like it sounds like Polygon hadn't a sustainable operation.
IGN is insane.

I don't know.

I don't know how many people work at IGN. IGN breaks on my phone.
I don't know if you've tried to look at an IGN guide.

If you scroll too fast, it just goes, nah, sorry, mate. Yeah, I mean, I can actually.
You have so many sites now. It could be a play for Ragnarok on your own.
Yeah, yeah.

It just goes to the top or pops up a thing and you accidentally click the wrong thing. Yeah, I hate that.
Yeah, the internet sucks now. It really does.
This is not an IGN problem as much as it is like

a show about that.

But

a lot of those sites are not.

It's tough to really say that they all have agency in a way that

you want, right? And I think everything becomes this Frankensteinian creation of like,

you know, sort of meshing it with other properties that sit alongside as sister companies. And you're just never going to have that organic

feeling. I do think you're right.
I think the Polygon example is good because it was sort of like this semblance of like, oh, this does feel sort of vacuum sealed off in a way that

works and everyone there, you know, really doing a tremendous job.

But for the most part, whenever you see a lot of these massive behemoth legacy media sites, they are just this, you know, a Voltron creation that

doesn't really allow for that amount of agency that, you know, I think the spirit of all those sites wants to be.

Yeah.

And I think that,

like I've said earlier, they're kind of the obvious victim of any kind of acquisition partner because it's just you can turn them into a slop shop and immediately kill them. Immediately kill them.

Right. And that's what the internet's allowed for, right? And I know that's like, that's what I read, what you say.

Like, you, you always have it spot on, Ed, is like that is like we are just sort of like willfully watching the death of everything and calling it out and just being like, yeah, that's the, that's the next ship that came into the harbor filled with ghosts, and we're just going to watch it continue on its way down to its next port of call, and that's it.

It's just this parade of dead websites and dead internet. And you're familiar with the Tony Ox Pro Skater games, right?

So I was watching, I was trying to read a story on Kotaku the other day.

I can't remember what it was about, but it took me to a video instead, and there was a man talking over the video, and he kept calling it THPS. THPS.

And I'm like, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before. And then it's like, oh,

I'm listening to an AI voice. Of course I am.
Of course I am. Oh, interesting.
Okay. Yes, because you did it every time in the same tone.
THPS. THPS.
Yeah, no one says that. No one says that.

So I'm just like, that's, of course, that's, they all think they're going to be able to do that.

That's the story we're going to have to keep telling over and over about what's happening with all these websites and these equity firms coming in here. And I mean, of course, I get turned off.

I think most of the audience probably does get turned off when they experience that, right?

Because the one thing about games, and Steven Spahn, who is an accessibility expert in the space, he used to tell me, like, why do I want to play video games? He's like, it's a currency.

It's a social currency where I play something and I get to talk to someone else about it. And we get to share something.
We have a connection.

I mean, you said the one thing you could bond over with people is video games.

I think we all get that at the very fundamental level.

And so these corporations trying to find a way to take that out of there so they could save some money is obviously just going to blow up in their faces. They just don't know it yet.
Yeah.

And I actually think it could go the other way, though, which is as we get more independent gaming outlets, I think that there could be real success there because I think that that's what people want to like there is a definitely a degree of hunger for when is a game coming out in the same way that people Google when the Super Bowl's coming.

Of course. When the Super Bowl's coming out.
When the Super Bowl's happening. There we go.
I do watch sports. I did a Super Bowl episode.
But I think

no one actually reads these outlets just to learn that. They want...
a gamer who has played a shit ton of games who has a good voice to say, I like this or I'm worried about this.

And I think the worst of games journalism has been when that's been dragged out of it.

And even when like we were doing, it was very early days of the website for CVG, when we'd have to write shit and just be like, this game's coming out. It's going to be like this.

And I wouldn't say we weren't allowed to have character, but it definitely wasn't encouraged, which is strange because the CVG mag was always so rude.

It was utility. You were doing utility work, right? As opposed to personality work.

That's kind of how it worked with the old preview system with magazines is because you weren't supposed to, since the game wasn't out yet, you know,

you could remain. But I remember I went to like an Xbox One pre-launch event thing and I played Rise Son of Rome.

And I remember just thinking, it was like, I think the headline I used was like, oh, it's as fun as dialing a phone number because it's just like waiting for something to turn red.

Then you press the red button. Then it just sucks.
Calling it Microsoft Snack. Yeah, yeah.

So I remember I wrote that and it was like, it had a negative tone. And the game was about to come out in like three weeks.

And it's like, and I kind of said, like, this seems like it might suck in the preview and I remember like both like comments and stuff and people at work being like whoa whoa whoa can't have this much like opinion in a preview it's like I think I can this is gonna kind of suck you know yeah there's no no rules there I remember when uh uh mark mcdonald over at egm uh said he played too human and said it's gonna be terrible and dennis dyack like like insisted on coming on their podcast and talking to him about it and like scolded him for doing that for greeting and said you're gonna regret everything you said when you play the final version we're rude the day that you insulted two humans.

I don't think you ruin anything.

There was no ruin.

Jesus Christ.

But even this conversation is what is fun about games journalism. Because even a shit game, you have the kind of horse trading, like, shit.
Do you remember that terrible preview?

I do genuinely miss this about games journalism. Like, it's the one, it's probably I miss it more than the writing about the games.

Because back at PC Zone, we had like Logs, Steve Hogarty, Will Porter.

We had all sorts of like fun other people like Ryan,

all the people from the MAC who just yell at you. And I think the, and actually I'm curious your thoughts about this.

I think what this industry also needs to do is rebuild the solidarity because it was quite, there was quite a lot of it in 2008. It feels like it's kind of drifted.

And I feel like that's, it's something in tech media I want to do too. I want people to come back together and realize it really is us versus them, them versus us.

Well, I'm curious to hear where you think like the friction primarily lies

i think what it is is that so many people have been hired fired hired fired so many people have left games journalism gone into pr

and then the people that own these companies have stopped even being the classic like fortune as fortune future or dennis publishing it's the people so you've always had ign as this kind of thing over here this juggernaut

and then remote work to an extent as well has done it too it's just there's less events when people are meeting i don't even know how we fix this, but it's something that I'm very big in in tech media at least, trying to bring people together and being like, hey, look, it is really us versus the largest corporations in the world.

Sure. I mean, that's absolutely been

my primary thought that pops in my head throughout this entire experience is we really are in this together.

And I mean, when I say us, that we're in this together, I am thinking about the other people who are in this creator-driven space.

So kind of funny has been super supportive and helping us out and giving us pointers and stuff like that.

The guys over at Nextlander have been been pointing out, Dan was on Jeff Gersman's show yesterday. It's like, we did realize pretty quickly

when Greg Miller did take that team, kind of funny to go independent, that there isn't that real competition. Like

the more people that care about the kinds of ways that we talk about video games, the better for everybody.

And people can bounce around between these various sites that have a slightly different take on it. So we keep growing that space.
It's good for everyone. So how do we turn that into something?

And it's like, definitely,

I'm coming into it with, I'm going to like reference a book that I haven't read yet, but I saw the interview on Daily, the Daily Show. I'm going to do it.

I'm probably going to, I'm probably going to misrepresent it, but it was like moral ambition was the name of the book.

And it was this idea of you should, in the system that we have, have ambition to try to do big things, cool things, try to go make money. That's fine.

But when confronted with a fork in the road about, hey, I could do this or I could do that, in that moment, go with the one that feels the most morally correct with you.

And like now we're in this moment where it's like we could hunker down and try to make as much money for ourselves as possible.

But clearly, the right choice is let's work with everyone, get everyone sort of moving in the same direction, get people feeling good about this space again.

And then maybe we can kind of heal some of that riff that you're talking about a little bit. I don't know.

We're not going to be able to get back to people who are reactionaries that have turned to right-wingers on YouTube.

And they were never paused. And they were never part of it.
Exactly. So we just got to focus on the ones that are there.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And there's a lot of people who are right there ready to listen again. We just got to let them know it's cool in here again.
Yeah, and I think we need to get back to

a lot of smaller teams. I think that because

I'm actually really glad you corrected me. I thought Polygon was that they grew too big.
That was just the assumption I'd made, which was incorrect, clearly.

Yeah, not what I've heard from anyone that I've talked to.

Sucks because I was originally,

they talked to me at the beginning of Polygon. I was in PR at the time.
They're like, yeah, do you want want to come over here? I was like, no, I must stay at a job I'm unhappy at.

They were too much probably in the beginning for sure, but they definitely kind of figured it out over time. Oh, no.
No, they genuinely wanted me to do PR. I think it was just McElroy.

And it's, I think that the future is going to be lots of smaller ones. I think the games as well, there is less competition because it's not like scoop heavy.

I guess you could play a game first, but at that point,

you're just, you played the game.

I still think there's a semblance of that.

And there is, but it's not like compared to getting a massive funding announcement in tech or like a breakthrough technology, sure, sure, sure, like a partnered sort of embargo thing.

I mean, there's still competition, certainly, but you're right.

Like, there's like uh, everyone is small, that's what the landscape is, and it's the reckoning of corporate media having this realization of like our competition is 30,000 small independent creators.

And how do we, how do we, like, come to terms with that in a way that will satisfy what we need this thing to do? No one knows how to answer that. Yeah.

And the answer is no one knows how to do it because probably there is no answer. So that realization, that epiphany, which I think everyone has to have for themselves at one point in their life,

kind of lends you to why things like this wind up happening.

And I think that there's also the problem of all of these big entities buying things and draining all the personality out is it's replaced all the personality with people on YouTube that post pictures of themselves frowning and saying the Dragon Age has got woke in it or whatever.

Oh, that reminds me. We got to take those pictures of us frowning, guys.
Yeah,

I got to work on my pointing.

Like the,

and this is a reference as well, just to any listeners. It's like Uber Driver sucked me off.
And it was like the Rob Wisman picture.

Anyone who doesn't know what that is, I swear it's not just me talking about that.

My favorite is The Undertaker got a podcast not too long ago, and seeing The Undertaker do YouTube faces is very, very funny. Hell yeah, that's so special.

It comes for everyone, but we need the opinion. Like, we do actually need the opinion back.
It's just the gaming online.

I feel like I got the last dropper out of NAND sometimes because it's like gaming online was like, oh, you don't like fucking Sonic and Mario? I will kill you. Yeah.

Yep. You, you insult Bubsy, the bobcat?

I will.

Yeah, I can and I will. I have.
I do it again. I mean, you know, fanboyism is a currency for sure.
And I think like that argument of position, as much as it sucks, right, is a thing that

probably too many people are finding the worst things about themselves and placing it into the energy of that discourse online.

And, you know, I think that's what probably, you know, separates, for my personal taste, what I want to watch and what is out there. And I think,

you know,

the fact that you, you know, I think like personality is another form of currency that is a thing that is all but lost in a lot of larger you know media outlets that's that is a thing you can't replace that is a thing that ai is not going to replace that is a thing that uh you know has to be genuine

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Yeah, we were asking that question: like, where's the Lester bangs of video games journalism? That was part of that new games journalism thing. And it's like, it did happen.
It was probably Dunkie.

Like, it's probably

one.

Oh, he's like, big YouTuber. He's like, just kind of does funny talking over gameplay.
And he's got a pretty good eye.

Yahtzee probably thought he was. Yeah, but yeah, and I mean, Yahtzee's definitely part of that lineage for sure.
100% angry video game nerd. You know what I mean?

Even the first video game nerd YouTube guy I saw, yeah. Yep.
Yeah, I, and I liked Yahtzee's original stuff. I really don't want to look what's happened since.

It's one of those things where I hope nothing bad happened. Yeah, you know, Yahtzee's still kind of doing his thing.
I think he's over at second win now, which is a Patreon-back thing.

It's uh, yeah, it's and I think that every time the ground is seeded away from personality, it is kind of feeding into the right-wing type people, though, because the right way, it isn't like you get a bunch of clicks just for being nice or loving stuff.

Right.

It's very easy. I think it's very easy for people who are able to make that pivot into

hate currency and hate juicing, where they're just like, oh,

I can easily...

hate on things and use that as ammunition and weaponize this, and that becomes my primary mode of revenue generation.

I can pick a target, juice it for all it's worth like a cancer, and then move on to my next victim.

And as long as I'm able to like just, you know, jump onto the next melting iceberg, I'm going to be okay. So whether whoever it is is the target online, you know, that's how that strategy goes.

And tragically, it works for people. They're super naked about it.

This, uh, like this in this past week, there was one of these creators who was, and someone like screenshot it and posted the blue sky or whatever, uh, him complaining that his videos he does about one individual woman video games journalist no longer get very many hits.

For months and months and months, he's like, this was my whole business. Now I'm not making any money.
This is my whole business. Yes, he's like, my whole life was harassing someone

explicitly saying, woe is me. I'm not making money from harassing this person anymore.
It was one of the most insane things I've ever seen.

You turn it into a conspiracy and you say, oh, I've been shadow banned

algorithms against me because people are true shit. Of course, of course.
Yeah. You know what? All these creators seem very, very happy, too.
That's the one thing about it.

Yeah, they all seem very okay. It's like a good line of work.

Very normal and happy with their lives. Yeah, they don't seem to like it.
They don't get for that.

They genuinely don't seem to like playing video games on the computer or a console. Nope.
I mean, they could just do it and they always choose not to.

But you get to look at everything through the lens of like, okay, what's the angle on getting people pissed off about this? And that sounds exhausting and miserable.

That stuff is a little bit low tide right now. I mean, that stuff did pop off again in the last few years, but it didn't last as long.
Everyone kind of saw through it. And now you are seeing

people who were probably pretty young and impressionable in like 2014 when the original Gamergate stuff was happening talking about, man, I wish I just didn't click on that one video telling me all the things that all the ways that feminism was ruining video games.

Like I could see now that that was a bad choice in the path of my life. I wish I wouldn't have done that.
I wasted years. And it's like these kids are growing up and seeing stuff.

And like the next generation will be a little bit more cynical about that going forward, I think. But it's always going to be there.
And they're always going to be trying to.

The reality is, if they do it and they get rewarded, the algorithm is built to reward them. It's going to keep happening no matter what, as long as that's the case.

See, what always pissed me off about that, other than all the hate and the getting people angry and the attacks on journalism, on top of all of that,

they don't seem angry at the fucking games companies who are actually making the real mistake. Put aside the made-up sexism or made-up misandry, it's all bullshit.
Not even going to humor it.

I don't know. Look at the fact that NFL has given one company, Electronic Arts, this one game, Madden, and it has been bad for 15 years.
It has been the same game for the last three.

And they did that right when there was good competition, and they're like, oh crap, we better lock this down. And they did.
Yeah. Yep, they did.
They did. And that feels like something.

I'm not saying there should be a hate campaign against anything, but maybe if you're going to do one, choose an actual giant company doing horrible shit. Yeah.
Yeah.

It's because they don't care. That's not what they're interested in, right? Like that is not the story for them.
The story has to be deeply personal and accessible. I don't, I think,

you know, an expose about that is

like.

sort of boring in a way to you know where it leads you to the thing as always it's like oh the whole capitalist system right

these are all symptoms symptoms, and that is not going to help them with them trying to sell this idea that you're isolated because the feminists want you isolated. Yeah.

You're right. Yeah, because you're isolated because

the system you're within has kept you separate from people. There aren't walkable cities.
Right. There is content to antagonize races.

It's woman. Yeah, that's it.

It all comes back to that.

In our space, it's women. In common politics, it's immigrants.
It's always the scapegoat. Yeah.
Well, as the son of a woman and an immigrant, I think, no,

the father of daughters.

Always the line from Spider-Verse as well as

the son of a mother and the father of a daughter.

But it's, I do have hope. Seeing Giant Bomb do what you do, guys, when the bad stuff happened, I was definitely like, games journalism's fucked.

Like, this is just like Polygon, everything just like, look at it, just was

very dark about it.

But, like, actually, I feel like there is an independent wave happening and there are so many like amazing creators like uh lucy james of course former giant bomb she's amazing i only found her work fairly recently it's like you've got all these amazing creators out there gaming is becoming more mainstream and i think that there is genuine hope here there's genuine mainstream interest

it's just a question of cracking it Yeah, I mean, I think everyone likes that story.

Because it's a good story. It's a good story with, you know, I don't want to call it a happy ending, right? But a very like, you know,

a positive way, a positive outcome of a thing that seemed to not have any realistically happy, you know, turnout. And I think that it came from like the fact that the audience was so excited.

It's like, oh, you know, they wanted that thing to keep going. We were able to keep it going.
It's like, yeah, you can match that up and make that make sense.

And it feels like that should be a business. And we all agreed.
Yeah. Yeah.

And the tone of our conversations internally, you know, you go to a month ago versus how we're talking now, which is like, oh my God, it is a world different.

We've got optimism and, you know, we were always passionate and everything, but now it just really feels like we're free to directly make the stuff the audience wants. Yep.

Yeah, but I think you're right.

I think you're right about an independent sort of wave happening because I think, you know, I don't, I'm not a big like fate or or, you know, destiny person, but what I am is that.

He does believe in ghosts, though. Yeah, well, obviously.
But

I think like on a long enough timeline, you have, you know, doors that open that allow the the sort of like spread of a thing that people kind of want to put their energy into and have that proliferate in a positive way.

And I think,

like I said, on a long enough timeline,

odds are, I do think that's going to break through the surface and come out in a way that makes everyone happy. And I think that is a bit of what happened with our story.

And I can be super jazzed about that, especially

in the manner it did. I would like it not to have had to happen so quickly.
I wish maybe I had another week or two where Grubb and I could have landed this plane. But

yeah,

it is definitely

a bright future in that regard, for sure. Yeah, and it's, I also think that,

I don't know, personality is profitable. I think that there's real, it requires patience, which private equity does not like.

But like Koolzo Media, we've done pretty well giving people a runway to not fuck up, but learn what you're doing. I feel like you guys have an advantage.
Here's a question, though.

So it's just you, how many people are you right now? So it's you, three, and a few other, five people. Are you going to be bringing on others?

Are you going to be bringing back any of the original GB people who haven't been there? Like, what's the plan to expand if there is one? Because it isn't a problem if you haven't.

I mean, the reality is, like, Backlar is right, this stuff came together so fast that we don't really have insight into what like our own personal financial futures look like with this thing.

We have an idea. We feel pretty okay about about it, but it's

like, you know, we're going to keep pushing to try to grow because as fast as we can grow or as many people as we can get to support it, we can then begin to look at doing other things of bringing other people on.

But

it is scary.

We want to try to figure out as much as we can on our own so we could be solid. And then all of the growth can just make sense naturally after that.

It wouldn't be, like, I mean, guys, I couldn't imagine ever having more than 10 people. Like,

it's like, like you said, like, we haven't even seen the first dollar yet. You know, we have no idea what to expect in terms of this.

And like, even though we were a small outlet under the corporate umbrella, you know, there was a freelancer fund and budget and things like that.

So we were able to bring people on and pay them regularly and things like that. And just the business realities of it, you know, the Jeffs here definitely looked into it a lot and we don't know yet.

But

yeah. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm very, I feel like there was a time where people

were sort of like, oh, another one of these? Like, oh, how, how can the market handle another, you know, Patreon or independent thing that needs, you know, direct support to sustain itself?

And, you know, I kind of, I kind of throw that argument away.

I think it is truly a rising tide situation because you, you know, the, the, the independence allows for collaboration in a, in a really positive and organic way. And

I think a lot of people who tell

themselves that story, whether they're involved in the business or they are on the audience side of that, are really not seeing the force for the trees and understanding.

No,

look at how YouTube creators and Twitch streamers and all these people help each other grow.

It is all about genuine collaboration and audience sharing and like exposing yourself to the people who, even if it's someone who just very slimly slimly overlaps in that Venn diagram,

you know, that is the best endorsement you can get.

And I think there's, you know, to your question, Ed, of like bringing on new people, like I don't think there's really ever a situation where we wouldn't want to collaborate with anyone.

Obviously, having someone on in the full-time capacity is a limitation of just what, you know, the business is able to bring in.

But, you know, I don't think that means that in no way we wouldn't be open to really exploring all kinds of stuff with people. I mean, that's the point, right?

Like that is what we talk about when we say we're in this together, as you said, right? Like that is the spirit of that.

And if we don't do that, well, then we're not holding up our part of the bargain. Are you going to do any event stuff, live stuff? I realize all of this is very new, but what are you thinking?

And it does not need to be specific. We announced at PAX East, the timing worked out crazy.

Like, you know, signatures were signed like the day before PAX East when we were able to do this big announcement. And in the future, we've always loved doing PAX.

Giant Bombs always had a big presence at PAX and would love to keep doing that.

You know, whether it makes sense to like, you know, unless we're getting like flown out for something, like, are we going to pay to send the whole crew out to Gamescom or something like that?

Like, probably not. Probably not, especially not this early on.

But like, you know, a lot of times places will offer to, you know, fly you out for preview events or these bigger, you know, conferences.

And yeah, we would, when it makes sense, we will definitely do that stuff. Well, Ed, you're going to bring us out for CES, right? In January?

I don't know how the hell I'm going to get you there or where you're going to sleep, but if you have to be in town, I'd love love to have you on.

Because CES has become like the fucking Solidarity Fest. If anyone, like, we're going to, we're extending CES to two hours per episode to two a day.
Like, we're going to have tons of people on.

And I just think that that's what the indies can do for each other. I'm not even saying, like, put me on.
I'm just saying that acknowledging and working together on this shit is actually how

better stuff will be done. Back in the old days with Dennis and Future, all those fucknuts used to hang out.
And I say that with deep adoration of said fucknuts, me being one of them.

But it's just, I think that

any independent listening to this needs to know that this, like, the allies are the people doing this independently, too.

Not to say people at big outlets aren't, but it's like, we only have each other. Yes.

Without a doubt. Yeah, I'll do the,

you know, we're going to try to do GB at night at Summer Game Fests and things like that. That's a lot of work right now because it's less than a month away and this all kind of happened real hot.

We're doing our best. But, you know, for that, you know, GB at night is this thing where we just have our friends come sit on a couch and I interview them and we do like six segments a night.

And the whole idea is just about like getting cool people from the industry into the same room together so we can just talk this stuff out. And it's, it's very cathartic.

It's like, oh, yeah, we, you do come out of that feeling more connected and like, oh, there, there is one of the ladders up, or there's one of the ladders someone else is sending down.

So other people can maybe just have a chance to grab a foothold on something. And yeah, that's been important to me for a long time.
So we'd love to keep doing something like that. And you're right.

To me, that's the only only path forward for getting new people into these spaces. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Where can people find you other than giantbomb.com?

No, let's hit giantbomb.com/slash join if you want to become a member and support what we're doing. Join.
Yeah, that's we'll give you all the information there.

But other than that, I'm grub.wtf on blue sky, and that's where I'm mostly posting these days. Yep, I'm uh danreikert.com on blue sky, dan reikert on Instagram.

Yes, I am Jeff Baccalar pretty much everywhere. And yeah, you know, like,

that's another good thing, right? Like, we're, you know, we can kind of serve people wherever they are, right? So like, it doesn't matter where you're looking for us.

We don't have this kind of like shackle around us where we can only do a thing here or there. And, you know,

it's a lot more accessible now, which is awesome. Thank you so much for joining me, guys.
And thank you, everyone, for listening. You can find me at google.com.
That's where I live.

And you will now hear a message that I will never re-record. It's going to be the same one from when I I was a weird bear and was unconfident in my podcasting ability.
Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski.
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