Better Offline - Saving Games Journalism With Giant Bomb

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Dan Ryckert, Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb, the new owners of gaming website Giant Bomb, to talk about the hopeful, independent future for games journalism - and media at large.http://www.giantbomb.com/joinDan Ryckert: https://bsky.app/profile/danryckert.comJeff Grubb: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bdacp2cmuuyawx553cv2spdyJeff Bakalar: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tyuqlcnoqijzqor53ka2a7o2 YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.You can also order a limited-edition Better Offline hat until 5/22/25! https://cottonbureau.com/p/CAGDW8/hat/better-offline-hat#/28510205/hat-unisex-dad-hat-black-100percent-cotton-adjustable --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 Bacallar, Jeff Grub, and Dan Reichert. Fellas, welcome to the show. It's pronounced his Gittron. Okay.

All right. Yeah. Okay. Most people get, I definitely on an interview a few days ago, missed said my own name. And this said better. I was like, Zayzeb, better off shit. And Matt Osseske, 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, um, I, 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 and things like that. I like watching this guy's sweat. I just wanted to make sure I didn't. I'm not like, oh, yeah, I did all this work. You know, it's like, I just kind of fell into this. No, Jeff and Jeff left fandom, our previous parent company.

And as part of the deal, we're able to buy Giant Bomb. are bringing in me, Janicea, our longtime producer, and our good friend Mike Manati, who has been trying to be full-time, a giant bomb for a long time. And he completely skipped full-time and went straight from contractor to co-owner of the website. That 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 White 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, well, Mike was playing Rascal for the PlayStation 1 for our game where we play bad games,

Bacchlar was still working in the background, making sure that we'll have a bank account and stuff like that. But as far as like 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 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 kind of seem to be building a new model for journalism writ large.

Yeah, well, yeah, I think like the thing that the lesson everyone learned, they learned like 10 years ago where the sort of like contemporary understanding of games media or really any media, you know, that covers some sort of entertainment 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 aftermath experiment and all these other sort of independent journalistic entities has sort of shown is that this can work with a private sort of consideration of ownership as opposed to, you know, just having it be another asset in the corporate media portfolio, right? And I think the value that these types of entities present make a lot more. sense, right, 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 by 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. Yeah, these things go, have been honed to be SEO, you know, sort of machines for a long time, the people who have been in charge from 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

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 to be 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 now. 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, maybe antiquated is not the right word, but it's certainly a traditional sort of like media and, and publisher relationship and power relationship. I worked for a newspaper. I worked in print.

I worked for PC zone and CBG. Right. Yeah. And let's be honest, we're not that old, right? Like, we're, you know, we're 99 years young. Exactly. We sit in, 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, you know, the founding of Giant Bomb in 2008 because it was four guys that broke off from GameSpot, you know, more traditional web-based gaming media and form this very personality-focused thing, you know, 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 YouTubeing and getting big. It kind of straddled the line from the beginning. I admit one of the saddest things to me was watching PC's own collapse. It was the magazine I worked out,

the Games magazine worked out 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, but fuck Future. I don't know what they're 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 like back when that was happening in 2008, when EGM and One Up was collapsing, it's like it had the One Up 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 a customer-supported a way of doing things

on the other hand. And that really would have taken off for them. Instead, they, by the 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 IHart Radio, I mean, it works great because it's cool zone media. And IHart 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 Aftermast is doing really interesting stuff that I feel is going to be

I feel like Giant Bombs can be very like 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 Ludo narrative dissonance There you go Yeah Oh fuck Like the start of Polygon press reset type stuff.

Yeah. Explain that for the listeners because it sucks, but they should know. You talk about the Polygon thing or specific? 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 game spot stuff. It was just, you know, we were parroting press releases and it's like news stories were basically like, there's a new box art for a.

Assassin's Creed. How many guns does your game have? Yeah, exactly. You're getting 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 realize 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 Gita, especially over there, has written like very long-form, thoughtful, emotional pieces. I think that that's what's, I want to say, missing because it's happening. But that's what makes game journalism great. You can have stuff that 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. Oh, my God. 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 because 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 be 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 like someone like me broken 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 Grub might be the best I've ever seen at balancing both Like he does the daily news show on giantbom.com And we'll cover the serious 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 do think Grub is uniquely qualified to do both ends of that. Yeah, and I enjoy them both.

I definitely remember growing up in like reading EGM or game players and be 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 know these people by name now. I kind of know what they're into. And I built a real connection with them. And then, you know, that would actually lead me into some of their real reporting on stuff that matter 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 of games are silly and stupid and wouldn't it be fun if we took that seriously. And I really enjoyed that aspect of my job. Yeah. And CVG used to have this kind of yellow. 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. I was a loser 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 think it was one of the first MMO, like real MMO reporters in England. Ollie Welsh as well. Oh sure, yeah, that's Ali. But it's like, and one of the leftover polygon people, it's just what pisses me off about all of 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, they're going to go, 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'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 Voxers were 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. That is so infuriated. It was a successful business, I think, is how I would phrase it. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV, who now have covered Dancing with the Stars, traitors, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge. That is the point of this show. I'm just going to remind you.

I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like it? Like what was just because we? Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion in the 50th season from the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate pleas of finalists

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Like they, there are tons of gamers who love reading stuff. Sure, like, it sounds like Pollygon hadn't a sustainable operation. IGN is insane. I don't know. I don't know how many people work IGN. IJN breaks on my phone. I don't know if you've tried to look at an IGN guide. Like the site?

If you scroll too fast, it just goes, nah, sorry, mate. Yeah, I mean, you can have so many sites now. It could be a recipe for... Rackneralk on your own. Yeah. Yeah, it just goes to the top or pops up a thing and the 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 it is like... I should do a show about that. A lot of those sites are not... There's...

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 the, 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 then 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.

You like 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 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. Ed, you're familiar with the Tony Oxprose. 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. 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.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, because you did it every time in the same. THPS, THPS. Yeah, no one says that. No one says that. So I'm just like, of course, 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 Stephen Spahn, who is an accessibility expert in the space, he used to tell me, like, why do we, 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. and we have a connection. I mean, you said the one thing you could bond over with people, 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 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 the Super Bowl episode. But I think the, 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 CBG 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, like, the old preview system with magazines, is because, like, you weren't supposed to, since the game wasn't out yet, you know, always turn around. But I remember I went to like an Xbox One pre-launch. event thing, and I played Rise, Son of Rome. And I remember I was 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 he pressed the red button, then it just sucks. They're calling it Microsoft Snack? Yeah, yeah. And so, 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, we can't have this much, like, opinion in a preview. It's like, I think I can. This is like it's going to kind of suck, you know? Yeah, there's no, no rules there.

I remember when Mark McDonald over at EGM said, he played too human and said it's going to be terrible. And Dennis Dyack, like, insisted on coming on their podcast and talking to him about it and like scolded him for doing that for a freedom and said, you're going to regret everything you said when you play the final version. Or rue the day that you insulted two humans. I don't think he rude anything. No, there was no ruling.

Jesus. But this is, 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 Hogotty, Will Porter. We had all sorts of like fun other people like Ryan.

All the people from the mag who just yell at you. And I think the, and actually I'm curiously of 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. Yes.

Well, I'm curious to hear where you think like the friction primarily lies. I think what it is is the, 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 as 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 tech media at least, trying to bring people together and be 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, he's been super supportive and helping us out and giving us pointers and stuff like that.

The guys over at Nextlander have been pointed out, like 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 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 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 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 like AM radio. And they would never pause. And they're never part of it. Exactly. So we just got to focus on the ones that are terrible. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And there's a lot of people who are right there ready to, to, to, you know, 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 the, 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. It sucks because I was originally, they talked to me at the beginning of Polygon.

I was in PR at the time and they were like, yeah, do you want to come over here? I was like, no, I must stay at a job. I'm unhappy at. They were too big probably in the beginning, for sure, but they definitely kind of figured out over time. Oh, no. No, they genuinely, they wanted me to do PR, I think. It was just the Macalroy. 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 just, you played the game. I still think there's a semblance of that.

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 embargo thing. I mean, yeah. But there's still competition. Certainly, but you're right. Like, there's, like, 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 turn? terms with that in a way that will satisfy what we need this thing to do. No one has the answer to 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 like for themselves at one point in their life, you know, kind of lends you to why, you know, 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 went to, we got to take those pictures of us frowning guys. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I got to work on my pointing. Like the, uh, the, and this is, this is a reference as well, just to any listeners.

It's like Uber driver suck me off. And it was like the Rob Wisman picture to anyone who doesn't know what that is. I swear it's not just me talking about it. But it is my favorite is, uh, The Undertaker got a podcast not too long ago. and seeing The Undertaker do YouTube faces is very, very funny. Oh, 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 norm sometimes because it's like gaming online is like, oh, you don't like fucking Sonic and Mario, I will kill you. Yeah. Yep. You insult Bubsey, the Bobcat?

I will. Yeah. I can and I have. I'll do it again. Fanboyism is a currency for sure. And I think 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 is a thing you can't replace. That is a thing that AI is not going to replace. That is a thing that, you know, has to be genuine. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter.

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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. was probably Dunkie. Like, it's probably, it's like a big YouTuber. He's like, just kind of does funny talking over gameplay. And he's got a pretty good eye. Yatsi probably thought he was. Yeah, but yeah. And I mean, Yotsie's definitely part of that lineage for sure. 100%. Angry video game nerd. You know, like a YouTube guy I saw. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I, I like Yatsi'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, Yatsi'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 seated 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. That's, yeah. 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. In this past week, there was one of these creators who was, and someone like a screenshot and posted the blue sky or whatever, him complaining that his video, she 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 was my whole business. Yes, he's like, it was harassing someone. It was explicitly saying, well, 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 over the algorithms against me because I'm telling the truth. Of course, of course. Yeah.

You know what? All these creators seem very, very happy to. 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 life.

They don't seem to like games. They genuinely don't seem to like playing video games on the computer or console. Nope. I mean, they could just do it and they always choose not to. You have 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 of low tide right now. I mean, with 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 video is telling me all the things that all the ways that feminism was ruined 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 it reality is

if they do it and they get rewarded, the algorithms 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 they're 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... 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 kind of,

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. 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, they, 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 think, you know, an expose about that is, is, 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 is causing. These are all symptoms. And that is not going to help them with them trying to sell this idea that you're isolated because the feminist want you isolated. Yeah. You're right. Yeah, because you're isolated because.

because the system you're within has kept you separate from people. There aren't walkable cities. Right. There's content to antagonize you. 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, yeah, always the scapegoat. Yeah. Well, as the son of a woman and an immigrant, I think. As a father of daughters. As the line from Spiderverse as well, as like, as the son. 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, 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 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.

It's a, 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 seem to not have any realistically happy, you know, turnout. And it came from like the fact that the audience was so excited. It's like, oh, you know, they wanted to that thing to keep going. We're able to keep it going. And so, 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're always passionate and everything. but now it just really feels like we're free to directly make this stuff the audience once. 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 sort of like spread of a thing that people kind of want to put their energy. energy into and have that, you know, proliferate in a positive way. And I think, you know, on a long, like I said, on a long enough timeline, like 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, you know, 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 Grub 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 Cool Zone 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. There's a question, though. So it's just, how many people are you right now? So it's 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, Bacchler 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 a, we have an idea. We feel pretty okay about it. But it's, uh, like, you know, we're going to keep pushing to try to grow because as fast as we can grow or as many, 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's, it is scary. It's what we want to try to figure out as much as we can on our own so we could be solid. And then all the growth can just make sense naturally after that. It wouldn't be,

I mean, guys, I couldn't imagine ever having more than 10 people. Like, right. It's 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 Jeff's here.

I definitely looked into it a lot. And we don't know yet. but yeah i mean i i'm you know i'm very uh i feel like there was a 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 uh patreon or or independent thing that needs you know direct support to to sustain itself and you know i i kind of i kind of throw that argument away i think it it is truly a rising tied situation because you, you know, the independence allows for collaboration in a really positive and organic way. And I think, 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 like, 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 exposing yourself to the people who, even if it's someone who just very slimly overlaps in that Venn diagram, that is the best endorsement you can get. And I think there's, you know, to your question out 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 there's 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 and we're able to do this big announcement. And in the future, we've always loved doing Pax. Giant Bombs always had a big presence of 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 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 a 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 fucknots, me being one of them. But it's just, I think that any independent listening to this needs to know that 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 fest 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 could just talk this stuff out. And 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 ascending 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 I love to keep doing something like that. And to me, that's the 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? Now, let's hit giantbom.com slash join if you want to become a member and support what we're doing. Yeah, Jay, that's, we'll give you all the information there. But other than that, I'm grub. Dot WTF on Blue Sky, and that's where I'm mostly posting these days. Yep. I'm Dan Reichard.com on Blue Sky, Dan Reichard on Instagram.

Yes, I am Jeff Backelar 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 was a weird band that 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 Mattos South, You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matersowski.com.

M-A-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at E-Z at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's Your Ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to R-S-Better-O-Line to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy

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