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Gaming Podcasts: A Thread about Listening to Others

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Hunting Huber, Kyle's parting gift to the Allies! First episode already up for Patrons! 

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On 12/06/2020 at 3:54 PM, Julius said:

Woo, more Kyle after his bit during the pre-show last night!

You know, a few days after watching the video, and I find myself agreeing more with him every day. I can't unsee "PS5 Lump" now that he pointed it out. The Ratchet and Clank thing is also spot-on, including the alternate title he gave. After a couple of months without him, I almost forgot how good he can be at this sort of comedy/critique.

Whatever he does next, I really I hope Bosman keeps making these occasional takes.

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Some friends and I are starting a D&D podcast. It's the guys from FRUK (aka @ReZourceman and friends) and a few extras. We've only got a teaser at the moment, but we've just recorded a few of our character intros, so will have an intro episode ready very soon. I was excited before, but now that I've heard the intros (I'm the editor), my excitement has grown even more.

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Not sure if this is the place to post this, but I think it should be interesting to all podcast enthusiasts:

Ian and Bloodworth talk about the lectures/talks they watched at GDC 2020. Lots of good stuff to go through. Topics include destructible environments, progressive soundtracks, history of women developers, and others. The one I personally found more fascinating was the preservation of old classics (feat. Digital Eclipse, who I've previously praised in the past for their excellent work with the Megaman and Street Fighter collections).

Take a listen when you can, it's good stuff.

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Easy Allies Patron Party later this month, heck yeah!

Worth watching just to see Blood not wearing his glasses :p

Edited by Julius

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On 04/08/2020 at 11:29 PM, Goafer said:

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Some friends and I are starting a D&D podcast. It's the guys from FRUK (aka @ReZourceman and friends) and a few extras. We've only got a teaser at the moment, but we've just recorded a few of our character intros, so will have an intro episode ready very soon. I was excited before, but now that I've heard the intros (I'm the editor), my excitement has grown even more.

Should probably post an update on this.

We've now uploaded all our character intros and we're 3 episodes deep. We release a new episode every Wednesday.

We're also lucky enough to have a talented artist and musician on board, so we have some awesome artwork over on our Twitter and Instagram, as well as every episode featuring a musical recap of the previous episode.

I'm biased, but I'm super proud of what we've done so far, plus we've had some great feedback from listeners, especially non-D&D players.

Edited by Goafer
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Colin's Last Stand is levelling up!
The first few mins of this video are goddamn hilarious. Especially when he picks up the Switch. @Hero-of-Time, I know you listen to SS, so you'll appreciate the little references.

I still listen to Sacred Symbols every week, despite having no interest in PlayStation. I Love the chemistry Chris and Colin have and their "industry" takes, which always makes the podcast a fun listen, even if you aren't PS centric. 

A new Xbox podcast, which is not really of interest to me, but good to see Colin's business going from strength-to-strength after being basically blacklisted from the industry. Shows just how talented and hard-working he is that he's managed to build a second company from the ground up. Massive respect to the man. 

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Thanks for the heads up, @Nicktendo.

Hiring ACG is a massive get. His reviews are outstanding and I really want to see what the reaction is to this over on Era. ACG is well respected over there, as both a member and content creator, and I imagine people will quickly turn on him now that he's working with Colin.

As you said, it's amazing what he's been able to achieve, especially given how some publishers treat him, which I find very unprofessional. His success is a big middle finger to those who stabbed him in the back, something that still irks me to this day.

What I like about this success story is that Colin stuck to his guns. He followed his main gaming passion (PS) in a time when countless others have pivoted to covering whatever generates clicks. How many YouTubers moved to covering the Switch when it became the hot product for a channel? Loads of them. How many started putting up clickbait videos with idiotic thumbnails? Again, lots of them. Colin never done any of this. The fact that he's brought in others to cover the Xbox shows that he's not willing to just fake it and instead let those who know what they are talking about go at it.

I have enjoyed the addition of Justin to the podcast. Him playing and loving Japanese games gives the show that extra bit of perspective. I've always found the best gaming podcasts are the ones that have a good mixture of people playing and knowing different things. It's why I fell off RFN because it felt like there was only James who played anything and had the knowledge to back it up.

I'm hoping these additions/changes don't effect or change the brand to the point where I stop listening. A lot of the changes EZA made pushed me away from them and looking at their numbers it had the same effect on other people.

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@Happenstance do you still listen to Giant Bomb? I haven't for a long time now but I seen that another member is leaving. Is there something going on over there? Is the podcast just not a draw anymore?

Edited by Hero-of-Time

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4 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

@Happenstance do you still listen to Giant Bomb? I haven't for a long time now but I seen that another member is leaving. Is there something going on over there? Is the podcast just not a draw anymore 

No I haven’t for a while as I wasn’t a fan of the new members like Abby or Ben so I’m actually really happy they’re both off.

They’ve said before that GB isn’t really a place where you can progress with your career as there’s nowhere really to move up in the structure of the site/company so younger staff like Abby/Ben/Dan/Austin/Patrick need to move elsewhere eventually, nothing that indicates a problem I’d say. GB has probably just become one of the bigger stepping stone sites to get people noticed elsewhere and learn from people like Jeff. As far as I know the site itself and the podcast are still pretty stable. They brought in premium subscriptions years before things like Patreon so they’ve got a steady and regular stream from that and their podcast numbers have always been high.

Personally I don’t think their output is worth it anymore and I stopped paying about a year ago. I’m hoping that these staff leaving will give me a reason to go back to the site but unfortunately it wasn’t the only issues I had so I dunno.

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Thanks for the info. 

Good to hear that there doesn't seem to be any issues over there. Even if I no longer listen to it. I think it would be a shame if Giant Bomb went under. I did enjoy a lot of the old guard's banter.

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1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Thanks for the info. 

Good to hear that there doesn't seem to be any issues over there. Even if I no longer listen to it. I think it would be a shame if Giant Bomb went under. I did enjoy a lot of the old guard's banter.

Some of their older content is still some of my favourite video game stuff on the internet and I regularly go back and watch it. Bought a months premium sub late last year and basically downloaded a couple of terabytes worth of their videos to put on my Plex server.

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Kyle Bosman is back with a new show and a Patreon: Delayed Input

Enjoyed Bosman at Home, and feel like this has a Final Bosman vibe to it, so look forward to seeing how this shakes out! 

Edited by Julius
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Man, that video is just pure unadulterated Kyle. Heck, I saw that ending (or at least its tone) coming from a mile away.

Good to see him producing stuff again!

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15 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

@Happenstance have you seen the GiantBomb news? Looks like it’s pretty much done now.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next but the site has been on it’s last legs for a few years now. Not sure where they’ll go though after this. Ginny probably has a good enough CV to get a job behind the scenes broadcast editing or something, Alex could maybe get back into game PR I guess. Brad is a more difficult one to figure out, maybe he’ll want to transition back to writing more instead of on camera.

Either that or Jeff announces he’s also leaving in a few months then they launch yet another website. Maybe they were unhappy with the buyout.

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10 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next but the site has been on it’s last legs for a few years now. Not sure where they’ll go though after this. Ginny probably has a good enough CV to get a job behind the scenes broadcast editing or something, Alex could maybe get back into game PR I guess. Brad is a more difficult one to figure out, maybe he’ll want to transition back to writing more instead of on camera.

Either that or Jeff announces he’s also leaving in a few months then they launch yet another website. Maybe they were unhappy with the buyout.

 

 

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It's actually just hit me and now I'm really sad 😥

That site might be a shell of its former self but for years it was my absolute favourite thing on the Internet.

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This reads to me like they are now targeting a younger audience. You would never see a place like Giant Bomb use the word “creators” previously. Makes me wonder if this is the direction Red Ventures wanted to take the site in and Brad, Vinny and Alex weren’t interested. It’s definitely not something I am. The draw of GB was always that it was a bunch of friends/industry veterans who had been in the business for years and could talk about all that stuff. Yes the cynicism from some of them got worse over the years but for the most part it was just a nice change of pace from the overly hyper youtubers that have crowded the space now.

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I read a comment this morning that I think is spot on.

Quote

It feels like games media as a "corporate" business really is on life support at this point. All the magazines are dead, the blogs on the last gasp of ad revenue, and the studio set "office" work of video games media is just unsustainable. E3 is dead. 

The industry has basically transitioned entirely to individual streamer/influencer/youtubers. Game publishers and developers don't need the IGN, Giant Bomb and GT of the world anymore. They can communicate with their audience directly through their own content published directly on YT or Twitch and they can give early access codes and previews directly to content creators.

It's gotta be so frustrating for those guys to have been grinding out this industry for so long and this new wave of streamers/content creators just completely ate their entire audience. GB and EZA both have ~260k subscribers. Gameranx has 6M, Jackfrags has 3M, Girlfriend Reviews has 1.2M, ACG/SkillUp/Jor/etc all have something in the ballpark of 700k. Their videos all get hundreds of thousands of views.... the average GB video gets ~10k, same goes for EZA (Though their review videos do a little better). It must be so disheartening for them.

It's so sad to see this happen. The likes of the Giant Bomb crew and EZA are full of guys who've helped craft this industry and now they are being pushed aside for any Tom, Dick or Harry who makes a stupid thumbnail or begs for clicks and likes on their Let's Play videos.

Clearly my age is showing but I'd much rather listen to a discussion about games from industry veterans than watch a Lets Play from an influencer. At least with the likes of the GB crew you knew they weren't being paid off by a publisher to be all nicey nicey about their game. I imagine most of these influencers are quite happy to sell their souls to get publisher backing and promote a random game. This actually came up in this weeks Sacred Symbols episode when discussing whether these types of people should be hosting the likes of E3.

Edited by Hero-of-Time
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It’s something I find myself thinking about a lot with this kind of stuff. The way staff from places like GB worked their way into and through this business is so much different than the way youtubers do now and they understand a lot more what they should and shouldn’t do. A youtuber is most likely going to be really excited if a publisher offers them a load of free stuff or wants them to stream their game for marketing and they think all they have to do is put #ad on their video and they are covered.

I don’t really have any youtuber gaming channels I watch anymore because to be honest I don’t particularly trust them. I remember Jesse Cox going on a rant once about how he didn’t need to disclose when he’s been paid to cover something because it didn’t matter.

Even places like Kinda Funny where I like a lot of their hosts, they do so many #ad streams that I don’t trust their opinions on stuff. I watch their channel for their In Review series on movies and tv and that’s it.

People may have had issues with the corporate side of the gaming press over the years but I definitely prefer it to what we have now and GB, given what caused it to for, in the first place was always the first place I went for honest opinions, even if they clashed with my own.

 

Im in the middle of download all the Bombcasts and Beastcasts, just on the off chance that something happened with them down the road. I already downloaded all my favourite GB videos last year so I’m sorted there. 

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Oh yeah, the current major media outlets are absolutely on life support right now.  Youtube & Twitch have basically decimated the podcast, and long-form editorials & critique have basically been fully absorbed by the Youtube influencer culture.

But this is how media always goes.  First we had magazines, then they were killed by website media, now website media is being killed by Youtube & Twitch.  The outlets that are able to adapt & re-invent themselves will survive, while the rest will inevitably get left behind in the dust.

Take Eurogamer for example.  Digital Foundry on Youtube is now FAR more popular than the website that it spawned from; hence why they're now starting to introduce the DF Direct video series.  Ironically though, even the likes of IGN & Gamespot (despite being pioneers with video content; and currently sitting at a whopping 15.4 million and 4.61 million subscribers respectively!) are struggling to keep up with the new wave of Influencer material now.  We might hate the clickbait, fake, attention seeking content that Influencers are putting out? But this is unfortunately what the market wants right now.

Problem is that the Youtube/Twitch market is basically fully saturated now; it's basically a racket, where newcomers don't stand the smallest of chances now, and even mid-sized channels with 500k-1 million subscribers are struggling to stay relevant (and on top of that? You're at the mercy of Google/Amazon if you want to survive).  Giant Bomb are, unfortunately, lucky to have survived for as long as they did.  There just isn't room for you as a media outlet on Youtube/Twitch unless you're already operating above a certain subscriber threshold.

Tough world.

Edited by Dcubed
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I think the thing with Giant Bomb’s YouTube numbers as well is that they did have their own website and own player which for years was the main way people watched their videos. Another big thing was that they were ahead of the curve with their premium subscription service which always did really well for them. They’ve said before it was one of the reasons they were an attractive purchase for cbsi initially and what let them stay relatively autonomous in comparison to the other sites from Whiskey Media which kind of just got enveloped.

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One of my favourite Easy Allies videos in a long time: the EZX Bonus Food Reviews. 

No surprise here that Don steals the show, but I was surprised by just how natural Brad was. Would love some more stuff from them like this, it's nice to get a bit more variety, especially when I think the Allies have struggled more than most other places since starting to work from home as they don't get to bounce off each other, this was very cosy!  

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