Gamer_152's Adventures in Internetting

It’s Sunday 12th September and while last week brought Giant Bomb and the gaming world in general plenty of news and previews in the form of PAX 2010, for most Giant Bomb users this week has been an even crazier affair. I know I’m going to have very fond memories of the mind-blowing 11 hour madness that was the Big Live Live Show Live (and after-party live stream) for a long time to come. My personal favourite moment of the live streaming was having my question about Bastion answered in great depth by Greg Kasavin to 14,000 viewers. I’ve checked the archived footage many times over to ensure that I’m not insane but upon mention of my username Greg can be seen smiling and saying “Sweet, him” (it’s at about 1:46:25 in part 3 of the archived footage). I don’t know what kind of messed up, backwards dimension we must be living in for Kasavin to recognise my name, but in general it was great to see Greg just sit down and get to talk about developing Bastion, it looks like a really promising game. I must say I’ve always had a great appreciation for what all of the people at Whiskey Media do but after this week I feel more respect for those guys than ever. Bravo Whiskey team.

This week I’ve put a lot of my gaming time into Red Dead Redemption and everything I’ve said about that game before still stands, but one of the aspects which has consistently jumped out at me about RDR is the quality of the dialogue, it really is some of the best I’ve ever heard in a video game. In just about every conversation I enter I feel there are so many lines which in other games could be picked out as major quotes, yet seem to just be the general banter of Red Dead. (Note: The spoiler tag below contains spoilers for Red Dead Redemption).

While I rarely use this blog as an opportunity to praise other video game websites I feel that this week I must make an exception. I’ve been a long-time reader of the website Hawty McBloggy, a site dedicated not only to its founder’s love of Halo, but also to all sorts of awesome creations made by individuals with a love of games, from video game-themed cakes to custom PC and Xbox case mods. Part of the charm of the site was that far from getting itself caught up in all the mainstream video game news of the time Hawty McBloggy instead aimed to feature the funniest and most creative homages to video games that could be found. It had a friendly, tight-knit community and in its lifetime received about 10.9 million views, but all of the great content on that site was put there through the work of the site owner BS Angel. This Thursday BS Angel announced that she had taken a job working at 343 Industries and that the life span of Hawty McBloggy had come to an end. I’ll miss what was a relatively little-known but very unique website. However, of all the people out there I feel that BS Angel is one of the most deserving to work at 343 Industries and I hope they can put all of her talent to good use.

Finally you may notice that there has been a bit of a squabble on the forums this week over the subscription service Whiskey Media are now offering on the site. I must admit upon hearing about the splitting of the Bombcast into two separate parts I wasn’t happy but the quote I keep coming back to was Ryan Davis saying “ We're doing what we feel is necessary to keep this gig going”. It looks like thanks to Whiskey bargaining with the users the Bombcast split probably won’t go ahead anyway, but as a company backing a number of effectively independent sites while trying to keep themselves as ad-free as possible, Whiskey have a tough job keeping them all running they way they are. To those who think this is the end of Giant Bomb or some kind of horrible change to the site I’d like to remind you that all the awesome personalities, services and content that Giant Bomb have offered are still here. With groups like Giant Bomb and Whiskey Media who try so hard to cater to their fanbase it’s hard to believe that they could be demonised the way they have been by some but mark my words, Giant Bomb is going to continue doing fantastic things for a long time to come and before long this community will be back to normal.

So, on that happy note I’d like to say thank you for reading and bid you adieu. Good luck, have Batman.

-Gamer_152

P.S. I’m amazingly excited for Halo: Reach right now.