Giant Bomb Forever

On May 1st the news broke that Giant Bomb, beloved videogames coverage website, was seemingly destroyed by its own parent company Fandom. While it appears it will continue as website you can visit, it doesn’t seem like it will have any meaningful connection to the past. Remap Radio had a good Emergency Podcast that reflected a lot of people’s feeling on it.

For years, Giant Bomb was my favorite videogame website. When the website launched in 2007 it was the first I time had ever been excited about a website launch. The Bombcast became my favorite podcast, only to later be supplanted by the Beastcast, the podcast by the Giant Bomb East crew.

Giant Bomb was the first place I’d go to learn about a game. Watch a Quick Look, an Unprofessional Fridays, or a sometimes even a review. But they weren’t just informative, they were fun and funny. It almost felt like hanging with your friends. And things like Unprofessional Fridays, the Charity Streams, and the Holiday videos really felt like that. And their deep dives into things, such as playing through the entire Mass Effect or Mega Man series or their This is the Run series where the try to beat a game in one run over and over until the finally did, had a weird completionist appeal to me. Giant Bomb wasn’t just my main videogames coverage website, it was main source of Entertainment on the web for years.

In truth, after Jeff Gertsmann left, and then Brad Shoemaker, Alex Navarro, and Vinny Carravella left as well, I felt like it wasn’t the site I loved anymore. I stopped my Premium membership quite some time ago and haven’t even visited the site in over a year. It was no longer for me anymore, but the new staff were still out there, carrying on the legacy. And now all of that is completely gone. Or at the very least seems like it will be minimized to the point of meaningless.

Giant Bomb and their staff have had a huge impact on games coverage. They weren’t the first to do Quick-Looks but they had a massive influence on Youtube/Twitch Let’s Play channels. They were not the first videogame podcast by a mile, but I have to imagine that things like their E3 podcasts – where game developers sat down on the couch with them have had repercussions throughout the industry. The Blinking White Guy Meme is from a Giant Bomb video.

It’s weird that so many people are that affected by the changing of a website, but it meant a lot too many people. For some reason “dudedragsbench.com”, a nonsense phrase from a skate. demo playthrough is ingrained in my head forever. That and many other funny things that happened over the years.

Luckily, fans have been backing up Giant Bomb for a while, so maybe it will live forever. https://duders.zone/

What’s also very depressing is so many of sites like Giant Bomb have already been dismantled. Many talented, respected, and well-loved people have had to then try to do something on their own. Create their own community supported website, video channel, and/or podcast. And while it’s great to support the creators you like directly, there has to be a limit right? I already support Nextlander (Brad, Vinny, and Alex formerly of Giant Bomb excellent endeavor) and Dropout!. I can’t really afford to support anyone else’s Patreon. That’s what was great about Giant Bomb and other sites, you could support multiple creators at once. But if you’d like to support the former Giant Bomb crew, see below (though some are technically still employed by Giant Bomb? Not very clear).

Jeff Gertsmann – https://www.patreon.com/cw/jeffgerstmann

Vinny” Caravella, Brad Shoemaker, and Alex Navarro – https://www.patreon.com/nextlander

Dave Snider – https://www.davesnider.com/

Drew Scanlon – https://www.drewscanlon.com/

Patrick Klepek – https://remapradio.com/

Austin Walker –https://bsky.app/profile/austinwalker.bsky.social

Abby Russell – https://bsky.app/profile/ybbaaabby.bsky.social

Ben Pack – https://bsky.app/profile/packbenpack.bsky.social/post/3l5nuk6pvee2v

Jason Oestreicher – https://bsky.app/profile/unastrike.com

Jess O’Brien – https://bsky.app/profile/voidburger.bsky.social

Jeff Grubb – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBMPaqi9mfzRag1m7rKT1Ig

Dan Ryckert – https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:atfb6n576jpwvruofcpcqd45