Sad state of GB in 2022

The Fire-Escape Cast is conducted entirely digitally and not in-person. Maybe you are not as anti-Zoom as you make?

Fire Escape is as much of a breath of fresh air as a fart in a windtunnel.

Good if you wanna hear Mary talk over everyone and to hear Dan be Dan, but it's the exact same podcast you've been listening to for decades- Except they shill relentlessly for their own brand.

Alright folks, this should be enough to know this is just a dirtbag troll. Let us stop feeding him.

A common problem with creative endeavors that get big is how fans somehow claim ownership of the product. I suppose that's the trade-off of actually being successful with your creative project, which is pretty rare. Oh well.

love it when cowards with burner accounts come to whine and rabble rouse

I just tried their pizza for the first time, and while it's not exactly my favorite, I'm quite fond of it and will definitely have it again.

While I think Murderdeathmill needs to let it go and move on at this point. All of the OG members accept arguably Jason and Rorie are gone. This website is never going to be what it was. The GB of Jeff G and Ryan Davis is gone and has been since they've agreed to go corporate in order to make a living, as keeping up the site themselves was proving to be difficult. With that said, having the GOTY discussion on Zoom with its own internet issues is kind of bad, but what can you do. As people say these days: It is, what it is.

And besides, they're just going to pick a game all of them say they like without any complaining, and call that game GOTY. They've been doing this for some years now. Not the actual debates that made this feature fun during the old days. I miss the Brad filibuster. The Alex sarcasm. Vinny wanting to relate with everyone's personal choice, and Jeff G's cold blooded, your game sucks and my game doesn't approach. Good times. Austin Walkers Invisible Inc. gambit is still a thing of GB legend.

Maybe a more general problem with fandom. See professional sports. They're all on the team.

im urging you to simply make new memories

@av_gamer: Jason and Rorie, neither of whom were "OG members." Rorie came over after Screened folded and Jason has as much claim to being an "OG" as Dan.

Not saying your point is invalid, but rather making a larger point about fandom.

i don't understand the issue with goty at this point ( maybe i missed something i'm about a month behind on podcasts cause games came out). honestly goty talks were always podcasts and of all things i would say those discussions are arguably the least impacted by having it online. don't get me wrong last yr felt a bit underwhelming but i'm just gonna blame the games n the fact that so many ppl were no longer here. i think this yr could be at least as good or better with the mix they have. n sure we don't get that fun in person who knows what that used to happen on videos but for the goty discussions itself it should be fine.

Well said, sums up my feelings on the matter as well. I've a bit of empathy for anyone still railing against reality, but... it's reality at this point. Way too many factors militate against holding on to what is effectively nostalgia in 2022.

Interesting to track the loss of the debate aspect over the years as well, definitely what made it so great for me in the past, though I know people had issues with it.

I think the debate vanishes partly because less in the room appear to have played the same things. Not to bring it back to remote working but there's something to be said about office consoles they'd dig into on a regular basis. I mourn the death of the promo disc, I really do.

How is this thread 9 months old. I swear it doesn't feel that old. Where the hell did the time go?

Yeah the GOTY debate was fine when it was 4 people and those 4 people largely played the same games. When the number of staff taking part in discussions doubled and many of them played different games with little overlap, the entire debate part became somewhat pointless and frustrating because it ended up with there being people arguing against games they either barely played or hadn't played and had no intentions of playing.

It stopped being fun listening to the final portions of GOTY because Gerstmann or someone would shoot down a game quickly without listening or would stonewall a game other staff thought was amazing because of personal gripes (Gerstmann and Outer Wilds comes to mind).

If you haven't listened to Nextlander's GOTY podcasts, they're probably worth it just for the discourse on GOTY itself. It's really obvious that for those 3, the GB style of GOTY had completely worn out its welcome. They (especially Vinny) were not into the idea of tearing other games down just to make their pick sound more appealing and were tired of it being a common thing to do during discussions.

Yeah, much as I have loved and continue to love GOTY podcasts, I agree with the above. And FTR, Brad used to be part of the problem, too. He would constantly say "You're crazy" or "That's crazy" if ever anyone didn't agree with him when usually he was the only person championing Game X, which everyone else on staff had legit complaints for.

I love a lot of the past convos—the Austin Walker/Invisible Inc. year is a fave, as is the year of the Stardew/Thumper/Hyperlight alliance—but in general I prefer the less caustic approach. Because this shit isn't life or death, and because some of the arguments, by the end of the original crew's time, were more about tearing one game or person down than actually making salient arguments. (I remember Ben being especially bad at just complaining about a thing without having much to actually say, but then he rubbed me the wrong way more than any other staff member in GB history.)

Look, I'm honestly on the side of the so called 'complainers' at this point.

I was happy when Dan came back, and had been watching a lot of the new content, when it finally hit me. I'm more often annoyed than I am enjoying. It really became acute when during Eternal Darkness with the "Sanity Effects". Which was a joke that was old 10 minutes into the first episode. Once Dan learned he could do the high pitched voice, I was done. Not just with that specific series, but with Giant Bomb as a whole.

Oh I know what you are thinking. Very originally, you are going to point out I'm posting on the forums. Yeah. I am. I check in every once in a while. The first couple episodes of Grubsy 3D were pretty fun! ...Till yet again the voice actress joke was run into the ground within the first 10 minutes of the episode because Dan doesn't understand comedic timing, and rather, focuses on quantity over quality. And I say this as someone who was subscribed to his personal streams from before he even started his pandemic streaming.

My advice? Move on. Nextlander has nice, relaxed streams. Vinny is as funny as ever. Jeff's content, while running a little too long at times, is fantastic. (Just remember to not look at the chat. It's an absolute nightmare)

Check in on Giant Bomb every once in a while. Laugh or Don't. Old Giant Bomb is never coming back, but you can see the seed of it elsewhere. With any luck, those seeds will blossom.

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