Hey Duders! More Than A Few Words I Wanted To Share

So, here we are. I frankly don't care where you stand on the spectrum of thinking the site turned a new leaf or was lurching on life support when it comes to the last three years of Giant Bomb. Almost everyone who has helmed, co-hosted, or directed a show or program on this site deserves massive credit for their hard work. Every video to have graced Giant Bomb during these last handful of years had a passionate author or editor who wanted to entertain or educate, sometimes both, and did so on such a large platform. We can all agree that doing so requires guts and courage, traits laudable in all walks of life. More importantly, those standing firm here, caught in an awkward limbo, or transitioning to something different deserve your support and compassion. Follow them where they go or end up and enjoy everything they make. How you support these people may change, but even if it requires an extra three or four steps, they deserve it. It's getting harder to say that, as gaming journalism maintains its pulse using Patreon bucks and crowdfunding platforms like an IV drip. Nonetheless, if you have anything to help all of these people, please oblige them.

When Brad, Vinny, and Alex left, I affirmed that I would stay on the site until the bitter end; I would at least try to be the last person to comment on a video or the last author of a new forum topic. I said the same when Jeff Gerstmann left and again when both rounds of Fandom-led layoffs happened. And when I look at what's left now, I realize why I keep making those statements; there's nowhere else to go. Yeah, people have left and gone on to bigger and better things. Patreon, Discord, Twitch, YouTube, yadda yadda. Some former users have even pursued careers within the gaming industry after showcasing and sharing impressive works within this community. I will likely not be joining them. It required then, and still to this day, a hustle and willingness to engage in work or hobby-related grinding I cannot do anymore. Even as I write this, Giant Bomb as a site is approaching its twentieth anniversary. As that anniversary looms, even if it becomes a hollow anniversary when it reaches us, I have come to terms with the fact that I'm not young anymore. I need more than a hope of a promise that boils down to a coin flip when it comes to finding work in the world of writing about video games. So, there's nowhere else for a lot of us to go. There's no new "home" quite like this one.

The Bombcast was always there; maybe it will continue, but man, I went through things with every incarnation of the crew that graced that podcast. Breakups, deaths, moves, firings; you name it, I went through it, and the rock that was Giant Bomb and the Giant Bombcast was there. I think that's what scares me about the future. It's not that I will miss the content or podcast or any individual, though I will. I needed this, and I'm pretty sure there are still many more that need this right now or will need this in the future. And now, well, things are changing and moving, and current events will likely mean the loss of a safety net and a place to grow, a place to have a digital footprint and show maturation.

To a degree, my struggles to comprehend everything happening right now are a sign of my age, and it's hard not to view this as another signal that the world is passing people like me by. For millions, a Twitch chat is home, and for millions more, the same sentiment applies to Discord. Then there are people like me who don't enjoy fumbling through upwards of ten to twelve reams of text with non-overlapping "friends" and communities. I show my age in saying this, but a Twitch chat that resets and erases everything I said for hours upon end isn't a community, nor is it a "home." It is an escape, and there is a difference. I also struggle to call Discord home. I have friends on Discord, but I already feel at capacity following the five I participate in regularly. It's hard to follow any thread or interaction, and even when you do get pinged, it requires endless scrolling. Homes are about instantaneous interactions; they are things that do not feel like dissertation research projects or searches. Everyone here reading this wants something that isn't fleeting, something stable and "real." But the reality is, time and time again, that's sometimes not enough for the powers that be; you need more than a community to keep the lights on. There are only a few gaming sites left, and most are SEO content mills where you can barely feel the human element, even in their front-page game reviews. And worse, no one is making forums anymore, and if you even ask about blogs or user-created threads, the few remaining figureheads in the hobby will tell you to create a WordPress these days.

You have to be the one to pick up the memories of the past and hope you can rekindle the magic. You. But man... I'm getting old, and I know you are, too. It's weird sometimes to be told that I was one of the most iconic users on the site. Users have told me in the past that they have memorized my suit-wearing avatar and enjoyed it being a fixture on the forums or in comments and how seeing me triggered their nostalgia. It happens so often, you see. Someone emerges from the woodwork and asks me, "Hey, ZombiePie! It's been ages! How have you been?" That sort of response doesn't come easy. I mean, I must have done something right because you all tolerated me for almost twenty years and never once asked that I be burned at the stake. Regardless, I don't know if there's even a foundation that exists for me to ever do that again or to get even a percent of that magic again.

I'll likely have a go at it, don't get me wrong. Too much of my heart has been poured into writing about random games and gaming news over the years, and I refuse to let any of it disappear before I turn to ash. But that doesn't fix my problem. My issue of having a "home" remains. Will reposting and backing up my blogs give me peace of mind and maybe pick up a few followers on WordPress? Sure, but the exercise will largely be me shouting into the void of darkness. That's what it looks like and feels like. I've started to dabble into the world of streaming. I'm streaming on Twitch semi-regularly and have begun posting archives on YouTube, but I have predictably tapped out at a modest level. I missed the mark by over five years, and that's probably all I will get. Unless I can learn to edit videos into ten to twenty-minute video essays and change my voice to approach something appealing to the average YouTube denizen, I'm stuck where I am. It would be fine if there was something more to it than posting videos for the sake of it, but there probably isn't. Still, even on the pre-eminent video-sharing website YouTube, you'd be hard-pressed to say organic commenting and community building is what it once was ten years ago. Bots have taken over, and be honest, how many times do you watch a video and not take the time to write an authentic response? It's all the time now, and that was unheard of even when Giant Bomb pivoted hard to live streaming five to seven years ago. YouTube and most streaming sites stopped being about community building ages ago, and it shows.

I ended up reviewing everything I wrote on this site, and you'd be amazed at how much of it isn't very important. Sure, I think I "got there" in finding my voice, and there are essays I will try to save, but everything dating back to the first four years of the site's existence? You had to be there to "get it," and there's no reason to keep it archived or preserved in any capacity. To borrow an observation a close friend of mine also made, sparky_buzzsaw to be exact, the best part of this exercise has been reading over some of the interactions I have had over the years and reaching out to people on a whim in hopes I could get one last update on how they were doing. One became a doctor in the UK; one gave birth to their third child; Tom, formerly from AnimeVice, teaches writing at UCLA; Tony of ComicVine fame is back to teaching math in Northern California; Claude remarried; Coonce became a tech bro and lost thousands on NFTs; Sparky_Buzzsaw is an author; Sweep is still in the film special effects industry; the list goes on.

You see, the interactions I had here over the years were more than just random words typed out on the internet; they translated into something special and authentic. We all grew up together, worked to make things together, and made a home together. I can't help but look at the way the internet has shifted and feel like social media and live chats have taken away digital homes and replaced them with something aberrant and impermanent, thus depriving so many of room to grow and develop the relationships I fostered thanks to Giant Bomb.

And I don't know about you, but I don't know where to go. I know which Patreons to support and how many bucks to send them. But who's creating a new website welcoming others to talk shop and spitball ideas? The options aren't great unless you feel like rolling the dice with the internet's darkest corners, and the best option after that is to accept the prospect of talking to an audience of zero for six months until maybe your follower count tops out at fifty. That's the scary part. It's an uncertain future we all face. Not only is all of this happening under the backdrop of the single worst political climate I have ever seen in my lifetime, but people's ability to put food on the table is also getting harder. The number of sites to use as resources to glean properly sourced information? You can count them on one hand these days, and with how fractured the landscape is, it feels impossible to keep track of everything. Yes, there will be streams to enjoy, Patreons to support, and clips to laugh over. But what are we doing when we want to talk after the lights go out and the streams end? Man, I like doing this; I enjoy sharing ideas and speculation with you all, even after it dwindled to ten to fifteen of you.

I have another fear as I gear myself for what I think is the inevitable. This worry is a looming crisis. What about Patreon, Twitch, YouTube, and Discord? What makes them immune to the tendencies leading to this current tailspin? With Patreon and Discord, I think we are just a few months away from them ruining the "sauce." And then what? Patreon has been driving people to its app, which takes a greater cut from creators, and Discord just hired a former suit from Activision-Blizzard to lead things. Even finding the safe places and communities that want to welcome you with open arms? Browsing and surfacing those places on the web is apparently impossible with Discord and Patreon. And even if that wasn't the case, I don't think you and I can pass around the same $5 to $10 bill forever. There's not enough money to go around between you and me to support gaming journalism, and even if we could, could we, or the people now working independently, run a news desk like Polygon or a programming schedule like Giant Bomb?

But those might be musings for a different occasion. As I said when I penned an essay when Jeff Gerstmann left Giant Bomb, some of you are bound to leave and never return. Many are bound not to see this last plea of mine. There have been so many times in this website's history that I wish I could have had one last genuine and earnest goodbye before someone left. And I want, if anything else, this rambling essay to be proof that I tried to tell you all how much you meant to me and how much you meant to this site and community. All of you.

Nonetheless, to everyone leaving, and I'm not going to tell you to stay, I implore you to think about making "homes" instead of just chats and soapboxes wherever you go. Think about how important "this" was and how powerful a tool it was in making you, you, and helping you during your darkest moments. You can play a massive positive role in helping people grow as you did here. I do believe that. I didn't become a public school teacher without thinking and believing that.

Now, to those looking out into the horizon and ready for what comes next, go out and be. Just be. Whatever you do from this point forward, just go out and be. And if you find that new somewhere that feels like "home," feel free to share.