So I posted this a while back, but we bought a house. Anyways today was the day of the walkthrough and my wife and i took a video tour of the house. I'll put it here so you jerks can see too!

So a note on gen y and home ownership (at least in America). If you think home ownership means nothing, I'd switch off now. But if you do agree, or can tolerate disagreance, I think home ownership is pretty great for a number of reasons. And lately I've been reading alot of articles about how gen y is suffering from our parents' collective help. That is to say, post college financial assistance from parents is holding us back. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But one thing this article adressed was that maybe this has put out any fire under us gen y-er's butts for building wealth. This, if true, is terrible. I think it's a load of horse-shit, and that people my age are still interested in building wealth. In any case, I'm doing my best to do my part, and so should you!

That being said, i'm (I think) on the old end of gen-y. Which means I came into the working economy just before things went pear shaped. I do consider that lucky (virtually no prior planning is to blame for this fortune). But I can appreciate many people are still scraping by after college. That truly sucks. But if you can, do your part and buy a house or a car or a dinner or something. Invest in your 401k. Pay off your credit cards. Plan for the future. And buy more pens, guys.

Edit: the aforementioned part one

So I was thinking about what it must feel like to be a 16-30(something) year old if we were really thrust into a video game. Specifically what must the experience be like being who we as people actually are thrust into these non-speaking pseuedo-macho roles. Here's what I have (part 1):

The Chronicles of Jimbo, Introduction

Jimmy was just walking along the street when, boom. Motherfucker, a rock fell from the sky. A rock, Jim thought, well shit I could pick that up. So Jimmy bent over and picked up that rock. The rock was smooth, round, and weighed about four pounds. Which is crazy to think that the rock that just fell from the sky landed in front of Jim and not on Jim, making a Jim pancake.

Well, fuck it, Jim thought and threw that rock into an oncoming car. Lucky for Jim the car was being piloted by a massive robot on his way to kill the president. Jim really didn’t know, and was beginning to freak out, seeing as how he just killed a man, when a crowd of press and onlookers converged upon him. Yay the savior, they yelled. You saved us all, they yelled. Have my baby, the yelled.

Jim raises his hands to speak but before he does the Fucking president rolls up in a giant limousine and holds a press conference, giving Jim the Medal of Honor for his good deeds. Jim begins to speak, to ask the President what he did to garner this great honor, but before he can speak a secret service agent walks up, unholsters his pistol, hands it to Jim and gives him a set of keys with a black horse and the word “Ferrari” stitched into them.

Son, as the new protector of our great nation you may have my weapon and this car. I know it isn’t much, but we’ll be able to get you more as you go along.

Get you more, Jim thought, what the fuck are these guys talking about. Before he knew it Jim was whisked away into his car and before he knew it he was turning the car on and heading to the pre-programmed GPS coordinates in the car’s navigation system.

And not just an old one, a new one infact. Here's what we saw today when we went to visit the lot:

I'm excited ya'll. Yeah. We're moving to WV (from MD), but I'm mostly ok with that. Actually totally ok with that. Anyways, we bought a house and did our part to help out the economy, so there's that!

Ok, so re-watching Lost has given me a lot to think about. Mainly the things that have weighed most heavily on my mind as I've watched have been the identity/role of Locke, and the religious/metaphysical nature of the Island itself. Now before I talk more, I'd like to offer up an initial apology. I frame a lot of the way I view religious ideas and allegorical identities in western Christian mythos. I do not think this is entirely accurate to any (if actually existent) allegorical content of Lost, but it is easiest for me to use terms and parallels based in the Christian mythos. You might not like this, and find better parallels in other religious faiths, or other metaphysical views of existence. Feel free to correct/adjust what I say to that end. For me this re-watch is both a re-connection with the characters and a deeper unraveling of the nature of the world of Lost.

So here goes season one reflections. I've been struggling with who Locke is on the island early in the show. I haven't though he was the same Locke that existed before the island but at the same time I haven't thought he was the man in black yet either. On reflection, and having watched the whole first season, I think Locke on the island early on is the same Locke before the island. It's more important (to me, at this point, I think) to identify who Locke represents (pre-death). I have arrived at a suggestion, and this will sound weird, so bear with me. Locke is the anti-christ. In certain ways I think he is a naive re-imagining (not by the writers, but Locke himself is more naive then the traditional anti-christ), but all the same, that's what I think he is. Here's why. Locke is a spiritualist. He is fascinated with the Island because of it's 'mystical' powers and pursues the understanding and achievement of those powers without the benefit of a moral compass. He is not pursuing moral good or gain when he begs Jack to let the monster take him, when he gets excited over the monster's appearance, when he views Boone's death as a sacrifice. In certain understandings the anti-christ is not an immoral being, but rather an amoral being. If the christian savior is the representation of good and morals, then the anti-christ is the representation of not needing either. That's (I think) a bit of a different paradigm than some might argue the anti-christ is, rather than being distinctly evil, the anti-christ is focused on power without morals. In that vein, Locke is the anti-christ. He is not immoral, (bad or evil) he is amoral. The pursuit of spiritual power for Locke has nothing to do with good or evil, but the power itself. This would also be why the man in black uses Locke's body later in the show. He's a perfect catalyst for the anti-christ in full power. That is, in the absence of morals an immortal being can be terribly evil (destroying anything) because spiritual power is no longer associated with moral good. This is also why I've been confused about who Locke on the island is early on. Put another way, Locke is the man in black, but without the power and immortality. He is a mortal version of the immortal man in black.

This brings me to a question of what the island is. Currently i'm forming a theory that the island is this world's garden of eden. Jacob and the man in black are somehow the guardians (in charge of keeping it hidden). However, Jacob is so perfectly good (absence of evil, naive) that he wants to re-populate the island. So he comes up with complicated events that can circumvent the hidden nature of the garden of eden (if we stick with the christian creation myth here the garden of eden was hidden by god and he had angels set to guard it) to repopulate it. Jacob and the man in black are most likely not God himself, but rather more like Hercules and Achilles. Lesser deities. I'm thinking because they're lesser deities neither understands the why of the island being hidden. And Jacob, in his goodness and naivety, wants to re-populate the island. And the man in black doesnt, because he thinks people will destroy it.

Anyways, I know I framed this all in western chrisian mythology (except the deity thing, because I'm thinking the spiritual side of lost's universe has many gods), but that's the easiest set of terms I have available to use. Maybe there's a better more nebulous term for the anti-christ I could use, and same with the garden of eden. But going into season 2, this is where I'm at.

So Fucking Lost. That fucking show. Actually alot of shows, but now that show. First I finally got around to watching season one of Downton Abbey. I highly recommend that show.

Its nothing more than a Sunday Soap (or whatever the fuck that and Mad Men are considered) but it's a goddamned good show. The high points for me are the period piece nature of the show, covering nobility in early 20th century England, and the upstairs downstairs shtick. I cannot have enough upstairs/downstairs in my life. It's good and engaging and a little funny all at the same time. Ok, so go watch that damn show. If you're an Amazon Prime member you can watch season one for free right now and apparently season two by the end of July. So what are you waiting for? Get off your ass, (or don't, just use your sex-station and watch it on your TV) and watch the Damned show.

And now in which I discuss some Lost: I decided months ago to re-watch Lost. I then took a break after watching the first three episodes, but have picked back up with a flurry. I'm not sold that Locke is ever Locke. From the start. If anything I'm formulating the opinion that there are either 2 or 3 'lockes' during the show, but that in any case flashback Locke is never the island Locke. At any point. Discuss. I'm also already dreading my decision to re-watch because the episode where Charlie dies is already playing out in my mind (as is my reaction, losing my shit because he dies). Also the Jack-Kate-Sawyer thing heavily weighs on my emotions while I watch this show.

Lost delivered me through a dark time. I think I've said that before, and anyways for me there are a lot of emotions wrapped up in this great re-watch of mine. So far so good, but in many ways watching this show is like listening to your therapists tapes of your sessions. Kinda skin-crawly weird. So this brings me to wanting to soapbox/talk a bit about games and all that. I'm 27. I'm on a second marriage with a second kid and I have a pretty good idea how things progress for the next twenty or so years of my life. More or less ballpark but I kinda see where things are going. I've learned a shitton about myself and the world in the process of royally fucking things up for so long, and few things get to me.

So here's the thing. On the one hand, subject matter is subject matter. I remember I used to feel like I had to look away from the TV screen when a pair of breasts would show up in a movie. I've kind-of gotten past that. Breasts are breasts are breasts. Think about it for a minute and the stigma (extreme positive or extreme negative) kinda dies away. They're cool, and there there. So that's that. And when it comes to violence and sex in my games, it's kinda like movies to me. Sometimes it's too much. Sometimes it's not. I almost walked out of Crash. The first time I saw a History of Violence I walked out (both times with someone else, who was very uncomfortable). I've not gone back to Crash because I kinda don't like the whole 'cop uses his power to cop a woman' scene. I've watched A History of Violence and enjoyed it. Not enjoyed the weird stair-rape-sex scene, but enjoyed the story, enjoyed the themes and message of a Man living a world barely chained to civility.

On the other hand you have attitudes and perceptions about all this. You have this idea that everything is 'fine' on this very basic level. You have this idea that not everything is 'fine' on this same basic level. And on the one hand you have people who think things are 'fine' and would rather the other camp just shut their mouths about it, and on the other hand you have people who think things aren't 'fine' and want to be more vocal about it. My education was in Philosophy. As far as I'm concerned, the truth to this particular matter is quite elusive. It may be that our acceptance or nonacceptance of violence, sexuality and/or violent sexuality is entirely subjective. I'm not chained to this notion, but I'm fairly certain our ability as humans to properly work out the truth of this matter is beyond our collective moral and intellectual capacity.

There's more or less one thing I feel like everyone can do better in this collective argument however. It's the mud-slinging. Let me list some things that are not true. Women who are feminists are not sluts. Men who value feminists are not gay. Men who enjoy pornography or boobies or whatever-the-fuck are not pigs. Women can enjoy those things to. Men, in fits of depravity, can talk about wanting to have sex with someone in open ways that would seem abnormal except when you consider they're depraved. Women can do this to. While on a forum, a woman posting something to the effect of "I'll suck the dick of the first guy who replies" might garner lots of replies, men in the real world would not quite dig this. Similarly, Women don't appreciate these kinds of open sexual advances, except (almost always this is true) in a trusted relationship. Words like fuck and slut when used in a sexual context are pretty damn insulting, and most of the women I've ever known don't like the word Fuck for sex. It tends to turn them off. What am I getting at here? Chill the fuck out everyone. I think Ryan's twitter comment about not manufacturing a boogey man is totally appropriate. Don't manufacture a boogeyman. Don't be myopic about what there is to find in video games that also exists in other media types. I think comments expressing shame on people posting hyper-nasty things on the internet in response to Women attempting to raise awareness is equally appropriate here. Seriously. To use @Sweep 's words "Grow Up." I don't know if you meant it in this context as well as game design (and I'm damn lazy), but grow up people. a) there's a way to discuss shit and b) there's a way not to come to an agreement on shit.

Now that being said, I have a daughter. She's young which makes me glad for the moment. But if in the future the hyper-agressive response women got on these issues weren't just relegated to forum comments and threatening emails and shit, I'd cut your dick off. I'd sooner do hard time protecting my daughter then let any fucker dick her around. That's just food for thought. In other words, context is everything.

I won't post this to the forums, because that makes sense and I don't know what to put in here for now, except hey if people want to go with this guy's (@ninja)  meeetup plan, I will halp organize.  Anyways, post here if this is your area or whatever.\
 
My suggested areas:
Baltimore/Columbia MD
Northern VA (reston/dulles area) 
Montgomery County/Frederick County MD (Frederick County is least likely, though that's where I live)
Wash DC (Not as likely because suburbia is far friendlier for people to get places to (esp in cars)
 
Edit 1: if you feel you live in the Was DC metro region of the US and want to come but hate the locales I've listed, this is just my suggestion list.  upon re-reading I realize there's alot of areas we could do and alot of was people like myself could be flexible if needed.  Anyways- just don't turn away because you don't like what I listed as suggestions.

Today, to commemorate me remember that goddamn Mountain Dew Rock song from Mellow Gold, I'd like to revel you in tales of two albums you need to go fucking buy right now:
 Mellow Gold, Beck and As Good As Dead, Local H.
You will of course recognize the following three songs as soon as you buy these albums:
Bound For the Floor, Local H
Eddie Vedder, Local H
Loser, Beck
 
But once you've gotten past that, lets talk about the real songs.  The ones worth listening to.
 
Up first: High-Fiving MF.  I'll refrain from just fucking posting the entire lyrics here, because they're pretty damn good.  Fucking damn good?  Anyways, I'll list out some topics this song covers:
Stonewashed jeans
High Five's, and motherfuckers
Commercialism
Bad Music
Bad Hair
Fat-asses
Steriods
Monster trucks.
That's the first verse. This song will challenge your thoughts of how often the word Fuck should be used in lyrics.  Fully challenge it.  It's also kind-of a hard rocking song.  
 Up Next: Fritz's corner
The first time I heard this song it was on a mix tape a friend of mine's half brother made for him.  A poorly labeled mix tape I might add.  We thought it was maybe a NOFX song.  I come to find out a couple years later that nope, this is a Local H song.  What's it about, pants you ask?  Sex.  Being horny and fairly lazy in the midwest in the 90's.  It's also about long segments of singing without much music to speak of.  That's what makes this song so good.  The rhythm and words along with the general sense of late 90's angst.  Go listen, you won't regret it.  I think.
 Freze Dried (f)lies and Lovey dovey are also pretty damn good, but for now go buy and I'll move on to mellow gold.
 
Mellow Gold.  Otherwise known as Beck's best album imho.  Why?  Because this album is FUCKING absurd.  Songs referencing trashpiles like dildos poking into the sky. Songs like Mountain Dew Rock (Fucking with my head), songs like Soul Suckin' Jerk- quite possibly the best whateverthefuckkindofmusic this is. 
Some gems from that song:
 "Puke green uniform on my back, I had to set it on fire in a vat of chicken fat"
"I tried to explain I was only tried to get warm ... too bad better bite the bullet hard slut.  I didn't have no teeth so I stole his gun..."
 
Ahhhh, yea.  Then Truckdriving neighbors downstairs.  Music about the people who would sell today's midwestern youth all their meth. 'nuff said. 
And finally, to wrap this up, "mutherfucker"  If nothing else, listen to that song.
 
Obviously, I'm consistent as fuck, and won't do another music blog, so enjoy!

I promise (promise, for actual) that this is not borne out of drug use.  It’s possible at some point my thoughts were clarified by alcohol, but not now, and besides, when I drink I usually don’t spend time in contemplation. In other words, I am not writing some sort of drugged-out essay and hope you can see that.

The basis for me wanting to blog on this is kinda stupid.  It’s a thread on reddit I found called ‘describe your glitch in the matrix.’  Alot of crazy more-like ghost stories than reality gliches to be found there, but some of the connected dreaming and quantum ‘glitch’ stories had me thinking.  So lets talk (broadly) theories of reality for a moment.  More specifically, theories behind possible realities.  For example, there’s on some order of the infinite things that could happen as I’m writing this.  I could stop now and think this is all dumb.  The next key I press could shatter, could shoot off its hinges.  My fingers could pop out of joint, for no particular reason.  In other words, the reality where I sit here and type this thing up is a pretty narrow slice of all the possible worlds.  

And we take that for granted.  I do.  In most of the ‘possible worlds’ I can think of (speaking just in terms of the possible outcomes of my immediate surroundings, ie affecting only me and my time-immediate (right now) actions) there’s one that has me finishing this an an inifinte number that have me stopping or being stopped from finishing this essay.  And 99 times out of 100 I’ll actually set out and finish the thing I’m doing.  I’ll sucessfully drive home from work for 99/100 days in a row (in all likelihood 100/100, but who knows).  I won’t choke on my food 99/100 times that I take a bite.  Things like this.  Things which if you were to try and draw a combinatorics tree, the least likely outcome is the one we’ll experience 99/100 times.  

So think about that for a minute, and that maybe we’re taking reality for granted.  If you think that maybe those other infinite possibilities actually manifest themselves as some sort of alternate reality, but which actually exists in some sense, then you may also believe that there is some sort of ‘meta’ space (yes borrowing terms from my late college classes because that’s easy and stuff) in which all of those realities co-exist.  Perhaps not unlike the way a length of rope or yarn contains many threads.  

That spatial separation of threads idea also includes an assumption.  Like a length of rope is keyed to points along the length (inches, cm’s) the rope like meta structure is keyed to points in time.  The x-axis of this universe would be points in time.  Which I think you could safely reach the conclusion that this is a pretty rudimentary view of the structure of the meta universe that holds all possible universes.  For example, as I write this maybe I take a break to go do something (bathroom, eat, talk to someone) or maybe I don’t.  And in all those possible universes things won’t be keyed to each other along a x-axis of time.  And in that view, I’m not sure there is a way to conceptualize (in our minds) how this meta-universe might actually exist.  This is much in the way you can’t draw four dimensional equations on a blackboard, because you can synthesize the 3rd dimension on a 2-d graph, but on a static object you can’t draw a fourth axis, because at each point on the 4th axis, the rest of the graph would look different.  In other words, I’m saying our minds are blackboards and you need computer screens to properly visualize things.
All that being said, even in the rope example, you can imagine how complex the structures of reality must be that things continue to work in an ordinary fashion for each of the thread universes.  If the overriding structure that keeps the threads separate broke for even a second, all or a portion of all the existent universes would feel something.  And if you try to think of the meta-universe as being something more complicated than a rope, where individual instances of a universe were not necessarily time connected to parallel universes, the structure of control in the meta-universe grows to unimaginable complexity.

That whole line of thought just kind-of impresses me, that things then happen in an expected manner so often.  Reading some of the things in that glitch-in-the-matrix thread, there’s some crazy stuff people have to say.  I don’t know how much of that I buy.  I’m kind-of a rational, sober being, and I tend to expect and experience reality in a fairly normal way.  I really want to press that home here, I don’t use drugs and never have.  This isn’t a “I’m high and want to contemplate the universe” blog.  This is me imagining the potential complexity to the universe actual (meta-universe) and how crazy that is that our thread of the universe remains normal, or as expected.

I do experience de-ja-vu.  I’ve always thought of it as a very mild form of a memory storage problem in my brain.  Occasionally something will happen and for 30 seconds or so at a stretch I’ll be anticipating everything that happens just before I observe them happening.  I’ve always figured what was happening was my brain was storing observations in the wrong order of ‘memories’ for a brief moment, and I get confused.  But thinking of the universe as a complex set of individual universes, not bound by time, isn’t it possible that those are the small hiccups in a system so complex, it could never work flawlessly?

So I have begun a journey. Of watching, no experiencing, the entirety of Lost again. And I want to write about it. Not in an episodic format recap type of way (though I suppose an occasional recap will happen). You can find those anywhere. I want to use my writing style (stream of conscious) and write as I re-experience Lost.

Some notes:

I did not originally plan to watch Lost. It began airing while I was in college and I really didn't pay attention to TV at the time. I came to the show somewhere around season 3-4 and went back to re-watch things from there. I'm starting with the pilot, obviously.

The airing (and my watching of) Lost spanned a marriage, a birth, a divorce, a period of horrible solitude, a new relationship and re-marriage. For me, the relationships and sense of weight given to them made the show for me. The mystery drew me in but it was the relationships that had me on edge.

It's impossible for me to watch the pilot episode without getting choked up a bit. When Jack and Kate meet for the first time, the paths they go down, it's all a bit much for me emotionally. I still don't think I've fully 'processed' the initial post-island interlude and what happens with Jack and Kate. For me, that portion of the show came during the worst of times, and in many ways I was what Jack was for that part of the show. And unlike in the way I fantasize how my life could have been, it's inevitable that Jack's going to go down a rabbit hole. And hit things pretty hard.

Of all the characters on the show I identify with him so much. Maybe it was his trip to the bottom coinciding with my trip to the bottom. Maybe it's the feeling that the father-shaped hole in Jack's heart is really a longing for relationship. One that stays just a longing because the motivation that father shaped hole provides drives Jack away from people eventually.

And on a closing note, as I have finished the pilot, part one, I wanted to observe that I see some Tolkien overtones in the way this show is rolling out the story. A tragic main character who leads everyone, a group of people who are relatively unfamiliar with each other banding together, Sawyer as Boromir, brooding from the start. Maybe I'm misreading. But that's the point here. I'm not re watching to recap. I'm re watching to absorb, to think, to react, to experience.

Edit 2: I have changed my analysis below. I think it's still a takeaway that GB and WM were balanced more on a knife's edge than not. What I changed were the rent assumptions and pay assumptions. Rent was off by a factor of 12 and pay may have been super low, so I changed the way that works. Also I made my spreadsheet more copy and paste friendly for scenario analysis. I put in scenarios showing what happens if advertising revenue cuts in half (by pageview decline or the rate being cut in half) to represent possible realities. Sorry for the initial gross inaccuracies. This is still painting in broad strokes but at least this might be closer in the realm of reality.

EDIT: So some of my analysis below is inaccurate. Salaries are too low, rent is too high and possibly (imho) I wasn't conservative enough about advertising revenue. In any case I will update later, but my spreadsheet is more or less updated. On advertising, take what's in my spreadsheet and cut the revenue per 1000 views per month and cut it in half. You'll see WM isn't making money anymore then.

Before I get started, one of these is linked below but here it is for reference, my google spreadsheet and the text of the document below. Both are viewable but not editable for what I feel like are obvious reasons. This is not 'is this good'/ 'is this bad', this is an argument for necessity.

Ok so I think it’s important, or maybe necessary to make the point that amidst all this talk about the acquisition we talk some hard (totally educated-ish guessed) figures. I think when talking about money the key factor in this change was not getting Jeff/Ryan/Brad/Vinny/Etc paid, so much as ensuring the website would be around for something like the next 5-10 years.

I have created a google doc spreadsheet (public, not editable) to ‘back up’ some of my claims here. Link

So lets walk through the numbers. A good ‘average’ salary number to start out at is probably $40k annually. Or not, in my updated scenario spreadsheet, I’ve made an updated assumption. This is that 11 of the 30 major players make on average 80k per year and the 19 other employees make on average 60k per year. You want to do a 1.5 multiplier to account for benefits besides pay (health, dental, 401k, etc). Also I listed out ‘named’ employees and figured there’s probably that many that I couldn’t remember so I counted the ‘whiskey’ head count at 30 people. That’s a yearly salary burn rate of $1.8 $3.3 million dollars. No chump change, but just part of doing business also.

Ok so the next ‘major’ cost is rent. I did some searching and based on that really crappy searching I worked out they’re probably working with 6000 square feet in that basement office. The going rate per sq feet per month in San Francisco (as far as I can tell) is something around $60 per sq foot per month. per year. That is yearly rent of 360,000 and a yearly rent cost of about $4.2 million. So far our non-website burn rate is at like $4.3 Million/year.

I went to Amazon and did a really rough estimate of website costs and came out to $10,000/month. That’s hosting 10TB of data, half that redundant and about 10x the 10TB in traffic. I have no clue if that’s accurate or not, but that’s my best guess. That comes out to a yearly burn rate of about $120k, pretty small compared to rent+salary, which makes me suspect the number but there we are. Annual burn rate about $4.4 million.

No lets talk revenue. Other than capital investment (which I’ll get to) Whiskey seems to have about 10000 subscribers, at a rate of $50/year at a total annual revenue of about $500k. That doesn’t even pay the salary guys, just FYI.

I did some guesswork on the advertising and here’s what I have. Whiskey has about 46 million monthly page views. At a revenue charge of $10 per 1000 page views (a mildly educated guess) you get a yearly ad revenue of $5.52 million. Add in the subscribers and you have a yearly revenue of about $6.02 million.

Lets talk about advertising for a moment. GB counts for about half of the pageviews whiskey gets. If you count just that against all the costs then GB operates losing 250k per year. Alternatively, if you think that the $10 per 1000 pageviews rate is high you also end up with GB losing 250k per year. My first scenario now has GB making 2.5 mil or so/year. There’s two ways to look at this. On the one hand WM may have been doing well enough that long term capital investment is possible (in the form of CBS for GB). On the other hand, my advertising estimates may not have been conservative enough and GB is still burning through capital.

Lets talk the shortfall. That’s a yearly shortfall of $220,000. Round it down to 200k for ease of my maths here. So Whiskey may have been losing money to the tune of 200k/year. I would suspect that this is a historical low number. But for ease of my maths, lets suppose Whiskey always lost this exact amount of money. Let’s suppose Whiskey/GB was seeded with something like $500k. If that seed money was used for nothing but making up shortfalls (it wasn’t) GB would have run out of money in mid 2011. As it was also used for other things they may have run out early 2010/late 2009. I believe they got a new round of venture investment back then maybe to the tune of 1 million (I think). If you put them on the 5 year plan from January 2010, that works out running out of investment capital (again assuming the investment only covered the short) by 2015. Which means, since the capital was most assuredly used to pay other bills and buy supplies (as my financial workout covers none of that) they’d run out of investment money, and begin to not pay bills way before 2015. Maybe later this year. Who knows.

So now lets look at the financials of now. The $10/1000 page views rate I came up with seemed to be for a small website with little ability to sway advertisers. I’d imagine that a large company like CBS works out individual ad deals at a revenue rate of way more than that. Even $20/1000 page views makes GB instantly profitable. Also, as far as losing money goes Whiskey is right now burning something like a million every five years. This is large potatoes to a small investor group, like I imagine they had. I did some searching and CBS’s Free Cash flow for 2011 was 1.4 billion. Yes, with a b. Billion. That means burning through a million in losses every five years is now almost nothing. Also, my calculations included rent. GB moving to the GS office means that CBS as a whole (GS is probably a similarly miniscule part of all of CBS) takes no rent hit. If you wipe out rent from my spreadsheet, GB instantly makes something like 4 million annually. Thats a huge swing. You may want to halve the advertising as my page views count was for Whiskey. GB works out at about 18 million monthly page views, if you change around things that gets you to GB being a profit center of about 740k/year. That’s still a pretty hard (and good swing).

So look. Here’s my point. All of this should go to demonstrate that the 5-10 year viability of Giant Bomb and Whiskey Media was in question without the financial backing of a much larger company. Without that and another 1-2 million in investment from venture capitalists, they’d probably be shuttering their doors by 2015, if not sooner. With they may only be delaying the inevitable. Plus that’s not how Venture Capital works. You fund a start up, watch and help it grow, then you find them a home in a more stable financial environment. Like what happened yesterday.

And here is my other point. Not to ‘get rich’ as I think alot of you assume, but merely to ‘have a good retirement and stable income’ are pretty damn good reasons for the guys at GB to want larger financial backers. This provides them the financial surety of a company that has been around for 84 years or so. CBS won’t be going under anytime soon, and by proxy neither may the GB guys be going under anytime soon. Get rich or no, that’s a welcome prospect for these guys.