Hello! It is time for accepting culpability. The news is: I do need extra time to complete the translation on my big ongoing Translation Project.
The first reason is predictable and unentertaining: I did underestimate the amount of work required to finish things up, and the amount my professional work would take me away from the project. I will emphasize again that I am the holdup here and that the delay is my fault. I apologize to everyone involved and everyone waiting.
The second is an emergency that's eaten up my April and much of my May. In brief: about a year ago, I had an issue with someone giving me unwanted attention (referenced briefly here). Well, there was an unexpected sequel to that last month, and the response from the local authorities was just...abysmal. It took further legal intervention to get things straightened out, and the problem has had an impact on my living situation, as I'm not getting the support from the authorities I need on this. Addressing the issue has taken a good deal of the time and energy that would've gone to the project for the past several weeks.
So that's the upshot. To provide some evidence here that forward progress is being made and that I'm not just faffing about, I'm going to aim to post an progress update every two weeks here until completion. I'll warn you that the first update may not have much, as I have to wrap up the Current Difficulties, as well as take care of some reviews re: file formatting I was supposed to do at the start of April when issues arose.
Again, I apologize; I should have better news in the weeks to come.
No, I've never heard of this podcast before - not a sin in itself; I'm writing on a platform of which even fewer, far fewer, have heard - but the "first crack," as Gerstmann calls it on BlueSky, at his post-killing-of-the-corpse commentary until, presumably, his show on Tuesday is this interview. Which is frustrating, because the fellow running the podcast clearly was not prepared for this to Be It. He does just let Gerstmann speak, which is perhaps the best thing he could have done, and he puts the discussion right at the top of the podcast. He doesn't ask any interesting questions, though (or, really, any questions at all), and the main event, the founder and raison d'être of the site commenting on it being put out of its misery, is sidetracked by commentary from a freelancer the brand hired in its undead days (and it's worthwhile to have a recent viewpoint from within the corporation, but, you know, they're not why we're here) and by, man, we've got to move on to talk about this Titanfall news!
But the ten minutes of Jeff talking (starting at 10:00 in the podcast) is worth listening to, and the takeaway is, well, in the title. Gerstmann seems, in retrospect, to have considered Giant Bomb to have died the moment it was sold. The keynote bit is Gerstmann's memory of engineer Dave Snider* pulling him aside the day Giant Bomb was sold to CBS and telling him to remember moving forward that once you sell something, it's no longer yours, and Jeff reflecting that he never really internalized Snider's words but now feels he should have. He remarks that after parting ways from GameSpot and founding Giant Bomb to do things differently, "the very idea that we had to sell it to [GameSpot]...it's a failure of the original concept."
He describes the GameSpot takeover as the death knell for Giant Bomb receiving any funding from a parent company, as any resources Giant Bomb would have gotten were instead funneled to the larger, better-known GameSpot. (The money Giant Bomb's project proposals would have made wasn't considered enough for execs to invest in them - "we had to fight for scraps against executives who had no idea why we were even there.") He calls the Giant Bomb website "a series of missed opportunities" (he seems in particular to lament the diminishment of the wiki, on which he claims he worked for far into many nights) and claims in regard to the owner finally killing the brand that there's "a disgusting relief to it" - "there wasn't a moment in the last five years where it wasn't going to go any way other than this."
As mentioned, Jeff calls this bit just a "first crack" at his feelings. I do think it's unfortunate, though, that Gerstmann evidently looks on what I imagine most consider the defining creative project of his career as a failure due to corporate frustrations. It's difficult to exaggerate how foundational and inspirational Giant Bomb was for LPs, gaming coverage, and podcasting & video creation in general, and they made a lot of good content that entertained and informed a lot of people and got them through difficult times. I completely understand why Gerstmann feels frustrated, but that's going to be his outlet's legacy, not the corporate garbage.
There's a lesson in the podcast for the diehard fans who drown out everyone on the various forums and swear allegiance to the brand, regardless of who's behind it: Gerstmann talks about one major goal he had for Giant Bomb was to leave the creators who joined it "better [when they left] than when they came in" - that "it was never about the brand, because, like, who cares," that "it's about the people." But they will never learn this.
(The show host tries to put a happy face on events by citing all the social media tribute posts he's seen in the wake of what happened and claiming that Giant Bomb's true "legacy" was its "community." Jeff: "Heh heh - sure.")
* - Snider seems to be a more foundational character in Giant Bomb than one might suppose from the on-screen talent; I have more to say on this, but in the meantime, see this post Snider wrote on the perpetual difficulties of monetizing Giant Bomb (with a supplement allegedly from fellow GB engineer Rick Reynolds), and the show to which Gerstmann invited Snider the week after said post.)
Reminders for those mourning the supposedly-impending "death" of what's calling itself Giant Bomb nowadays:
- This is the infamous tone-deaf text post by which Giant Bomb announced the departure of the founder of the site, Jeff Gerstmann, likening its makeup to SNL's rotating cast and effectively saying that people didn't matter. It also failed to mention the small detail that Giant Bomb had fired him.
- Voidburger defended the wording of this announcement vigorously on social media. This did not prevent Giant Bomb from laying off Voidburger a few months after that. I mention this not as a callout but as a demonstration of how little what called itself "Giant Bomb" after Gerstmann's departure cared for its people, even those who defended its worst decisions.
(Since this is the extended edition of this post, I'll also note that the other party hit by that layoff was Jason Oestreicher, who was fighting a battle with prolonged medical complications at that time.)
I know the diehards in the forums insist that it's toxic to maintain loyalty to the people who made a creative endeavor and that it's the Giant Bomb brand that deserves fan loyalty, not the people who once made it great. But a brand is a concept—a marketable asset of a corporation. Corporations have none of the loyalty that the diehards demand you show them, and brands have no creative power. A brand did not make any of the entertainment or art that you loved. What is allegedly on the verge of death is no more Giant Bomb than I would be a Beatle if I bought the trademark and named myself George Harrison.
Support people, not brands. One can make a few arguments for when Giant Bomb died, but it was most certainly dead after Jeff was fired.
(That goes for those who would lose work with the supposedly-impending closure. If you stuck around and liked what they did, do what you can to support their future endeavors.)
Jeff Gerstmann's NES ranking project - where he plays a handful of NES titles for a half-hour to an hour or so each in an effort to work his way through the entire library and rank it based on his experiences - has been a highlight of my week ever since he launched it a few years ago. It's brought a spotlight to underappreciated or to-me unknown games and has inspired me to try out, replay, or put a mental "to do" stamp next to several titles. It's also been neat to go to the various reaction threads post-episode and read everyone's takes on or memories of a given title. (If you're new to it, this fan page, which features an up-to-date ranked list complete with links to each ranked game's segment, might be of more use than Gerstmann's playlists.)
I should note that Gerstmann's opinion, though he's well-played and usually an interesting listen, had little to do with my choices. Sometimes it helps: I really enjoyed the proto-emoji match-three or four or six or seven unlicensed puzzle game Krazy Kreatures, which offers friendly visuals and demands a satisfying level of quick thinking and which Jeff liked as well. It can be tough to know how a puzzle game handles without hands-on experience, so personal impressions are a big boost there. But one of the other games I played to completion, for example, was LJN's Jaws, a sea-themed shoot-'em-up with a friendly aesthetic. It has dumb, Atari-level score attack-ish gameplay but breaks it up into bite-sized chunks with level-by-level objectives and a simple power-up system. Runs amount to a comfortable 30 minutes or so, and the dang thing can be completed, capped off with a smile-you-SOB confrontation, which gives a feeling of satisfaction. It's extremely simple, and Jeff ranked it as appropriately middling, but it shows how very primitive gameplay can be more enjoyable married to fun graphics and mechanics just a little further up the evolutionary ladder. It's the type of curiosity that's not remarkable enough to merit extended conversation or accolades but which might pique your interest for a few painless runs if, say, someone's playing it for a ranking project.
Seeing some titles again sparks personal memories that prompt reexploration - such as Mickey Mousecapade, one of those games, like Rygar and Wizards & Warriors, that everyone on the playground just knew for no discernible reason and that enjoyed a healthy life on the rental circuit despite lacking a point of marketability (Mickey Mouse didn't have widespread popularity in the 80s). I wanted to put it to bed again to see if there were anything to the damn thing after all these years (no, not really). Sometimes I want to try out a title for myself that Jeff seems to have given short shrift, such as the action RPG Conquest of the Crystal Palace, which looks polished and seems to have a good deal of thought behind its mechanics and friendly, Clash at Demonhead-ish visuals - and, well, this very post was spun off of a forthcoming write-up of my feelings on replaying Final Fantasy after Gerstmann panned it to hype up his own childhood favorite of Dragon Warrior. The upshot is: I've been using Jeff's project from a variety of avenues to discover titles I would like to play myself, and to seek out opinions and memories from other players, not just Jeff.
My experience doesn't seem to be typical, though. Ranking projects like this used to refer to their results glibly as "scientific," and while that used to be understood commonly as a joke - since, you know, rankings are by definition opinions and therefore inherently unscientific - both the rankers and their audiences seem to have come to take this label seriously. For example, I remember one YouTube commenter on the Little Nemo ep lamenting that since Jeff didn't like the game, his own experience was considerably dimmed, with another commiserating about having the blindfold of nostalgia (any positive feelings about a game from one's own past experience are inevitably labeled as "nostalgia") lifted and seeing the light of objective truth that was Jeff's indisputably-correct opinion. That was an early ep, and this has problem only gotten worse with time: on both the subreddit and the ResetEra thread, most of the personal takes and memories I mentioned enjoying have been crowded out with tired jokes bleating the "science!" meme and rigid insistence that Jeff's experience is the only valid one.
(An aside: People in hobbies such as gaming are extraordinarily bad in noting when a joke has run its course. Most seem convinced that if it's the 512th time a joke has been made, that just means it's 512 times as funny.)
Part of this attitude, I think, is just audience identification with the streamer's opinion. Identifying with and agreeing with a streamer's frustrations in playing a title, or championing the things they champion, is considered a basic show of support - just common courtesy. It's born of a pure feeling, the desire to support someone whom you like and who entertains you, but I don't think it's wholly healthy (you can enjoy somebody's content and not agree with every single thing they say, you know - and you're not obliged to give voice to every point of disagreement). Plus, it seems to be carried to an extreme nowadays: to take watching the streamer's experience of the game as equal to hands-on experience, to defer to the streamer to a degree that their experience is taken as the only experience. Obviously, you can learn a good deal about a game by watching it, and as observed here, most if not all of us have titles out of which we've gotten a great deal of enjoyment solely through LPs and such. There are many ways of enjoying a game - watching tournaments or challenges, chat votes on in-game decisions, watching others (be it chat or streamer) react to the developments of a familiar title - that can be had only secondhand. I think it's also good to keep in mind, though, that in most cases, watching isn't a 1:1 substitute for playing and engaging with a game yourself, and engaging with a title yourself, with an open mind, can also be valuable. (I am again reminded of the Obscuritory article on the trouble with getting people to attempt to engage with games on their own terms instead of automatically engaging on them with contempt and as fodder, prima facie ludicrous and contemptible, for derisive incredulous react material. Unfortunately, I'm not finding the exact story I recall, but this article, and this linked story by game dev Nathalie Lawson, cover some of the points.)
Another part of it, I think, is particular to the current moment, where it seems more common to equate having tastes or opinions that are different from those of one's friends with insulting them. It's a particular danger with Gerstmann's project, as the diehards who populate the discussions of material from Giant Bomb alumni are particularly strident in this mindset. (Frankly, it was encouraged by Giant Bomb in its dying days, when the personalities were on edge from numerous, then-unvoiced offscreen stresses and would take it out on the fans, who then would blame the negative among them for their heroes' irritation and encourage lockstep fealty. It wouldn't help, since the real problems were offscreen, but it led to a vicious cycle of blame, where more and more fans were driven away by imagined slights and failure to adhere to impossible behavior standards until only those diehards were left.) For example: How many Mega Man 2 vs. 3 forum battles have you read in your lifetime? Well, read this: perhaps the first message board discussion of the topic ever in which most everyone pretends that no one likes 3, that everyone hates it and it's never had any supporters ever. This is all because Jeff believes that no Mega Man games at all - in the original series, the X series, the portable titles - should have been made after Mega Man 2.
I seem excessively negative toward Gerstmann's project and the attitudes of absolute correctness I perceive, I suppose. I do think it's been a net positive. I also think, though, that it'd be better if more viewers were open to playing the games themselves rather than parroting "science!" memes.
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