this video was really good (please watch it), and i think articulates a ton of thoughts i've had about the site, while also talking about things from a historic perspective. there's a solid part at the beginning that talks about the wild corporate histories of GB ownership, as well as gaming publication ownership, which puts a lot of stuff into perspective. for instance, talking about how insular the site was pre-Austin Walker, and how insular a lot of the opinions expressed about games coverage from core founding crew is/was.
it's now made me think about if you could recapture lightning in a bottle and make something similar, even if it's not Giant Bomb, and I think the biggest hurdle is lacking a physical office, and really lacking the window dressings of "professionalism". something that i get from this video and my own thoughts about GB is that one of the things that really worked was that they had professional dressings, but they were doing "unprofessional" things. they had a nice office, access to The Industry, nice equipment, and all this "professional" stuff, but they were doing "unprofessional" things in that environment. using a tricaster, a piece of professional broadcasting equipment, to goof around on a Friday/Thursday afternoon while playing games in a nice professional office with professional coworkers and getting paid to do it all. it's sitting in a nice podcasting booth, with all your professional coworkers, asking "bat or knife" or talking about energy drinks, all while you're supposed to be talking about video games. it's the appeal of "what if i got paid to use the nice conference room with the cool professional tech at my 9-5 office job to play Skyrim with my coworker friends", and that's what's missing from the current iteration.
and it makes me wonder how much any of that is possible nowadays, right? on Patreon money, could you rent out an office space and hire a group of other people you like to work with or are friendly with? on Patreon money could you have the trappings and aesthetics of corporate professionalism, but produce goofy shit? idk! seems way too expensive to make that a reality!
