Saving Games Journalism With Giant Bomb

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/join Dan Ryckert: https://bsky.app/profile/danryckert.com Jeff Grubb: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bdacp2cmuuyawx553cv2spdy Jeff 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 https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 1:19Speaker 03

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:23Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 1:38Ed Zitron?

  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 Bakalar, Jeff Grub and Dan Reichert. Fellas, welcome to the show. It's pronounced Zitron. Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay. Most people get, I definitely on an interview a few days ago, mis-said my own name and mis-said Better. I was like, better off shit. And Matt Asowski, 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.

• 2:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, so.

• 2:25Speaker 05

  Um, it's 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.

• 2:39Speaker 06

  No, this is good. I like watching this guy sweat.

• 2:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. 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, were able to buy Giant Bomb and are bringing in, you know, me, Jana Choa, our longtime producer, and our good friend, Mike Minotti, who has been trying to be full time at Giant Bomb for a long time. And he completely skipped full time and went straight from contractor to co-owner of the website.

• 3:13Speaker 06

  That rocks.

• 3:13Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:25Ed Zitron?

  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?

• 3:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were streaming to YouTube just right before we came here. Yeah, we were doing our Light 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 one for our game where we for our show where we play bad games, Backlar was still working in the background, making sure that we'll have a bank account and stuff like that. But as far as like

• 4:20Speaker 06

  the overall like idea of what this company looks like, yeah, it's going to be us kind of taking it on all on ourselves, kind of splitting it up evenly amongst us and just getting to work and investing our time and seeing a payoff because now it's all on us.

• 4:33Ed Zitron?

  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, you kind of seem to be building a new model for journalism writ large.

• 4:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, I will. Yeah, I think like the thing that the lesson everyone learned, they learned like 10 years ago where the, 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, 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, with the Aftermath experiment and all these other sort of independent journalistic entities has sort of shown is that this can

• 5:36Speaker 07

  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? That, 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.

• 5:59Ed Zitron?

  Kind of, 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 buy 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.

• 6:17Speaker 07

  And guides and stuff like that. Yeah, these things have been honed to be SEO, you know, sort of machines for a long time. The people who've been in charge 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, that traffic means something to someone for sure. And that's why.

• 6:43Speaker 06

  You see something like a Polygon, uh, get like becoming the target of a Val now. I guess the public understanding is Valnet approached Vox Media about Polygon and, uh, and asked them about it like some time ago and have been trying to make this happen since then. Uh, 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, uh, with the

• 7:24Speaker 06

  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.

• 7:36Speaker 07

  Yeah. It's also, I think it's important to, 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 influencer 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 certainly a traditional sort of like media and, and publisher relationship and PR relationship.

• 8:04Ed Zitron?

  I worked for a newspaper. I worked in print. I worked for PC Zone and CBG.

• 8:08Speaker 07

  Yeah. And let's be honest, we're not that old, right? Like we're, you know, we're

• 8:14Ed Zitron?

  99 years young.

• 8:15Speaker 07

  Exactly. We sit in

• 8:16Ed Zitron?

  This industry, maybe.

• 8:17Speaker 07

  We sit, we sit in this very weird sort of like, uh, uh, uh, 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, um, a small slice of, of sort of institutional knowledge, right? Where, where you can kind of like leverage that in a way that not a lot of people have that sort of insight from, from both sides of the fence.

• 8:42Speaker 06

  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 formed 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 nineties and things like that. It wasn't just, you know, some kids that started YouTube and getting big. It kind of straddled the line from the beginning.

• 9:08Ed Zitron?

  I admit, one of the saddest things to me was watching PC Zone collapse. It was the magazine I worked at, the games magazine I worked at 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 bought them. Fuck Future. I don't give a shit.

• 9:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:29Ed Zitron?

  What they're gonna do to me.

• 9:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, and they repeatedly kind of do that stuff to people. So yeah, fuck them for real. Uh, real quick on that, like, I remember thinking like, uh, back when that was happening in 2008, when EGM and One Up was collapsing. It's like, had the One Up Yours podcast kind of lasted a few more years, they all could have easily just transitioned that into a, a podcast with, with ads for one thing, and then a direct to a customer supported way of doing things on the other hand. And that really would have taken off for them. Instead, they a lot of those guys had to go kind of filter into working in the, the corporate side for making games.

• 10:03Ed Zitron?

  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 iHeartRadio, I mean, it works great because Call Zone Media and iHeart leaves us alone fairly, but people complain about the ads. It's like, have you tried starting a fucking podcast? And it isn't cheap. So it's, it's just a frustrating but great time because Aftermath's doing really interesting stuff that I feel is gonna be, I feel like Giant Bomb's gonna 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?

• 10:39Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 10:40Ed Zitron?

  New games. I remember that. I remember when people were talking about that.

• 10:44Speaker 06

  Let's talk about that Ludo narrative dissonance.

• 10:46Ed Zitron?

  There you go.

• 10:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Oh, fuck. Like the start of Polygon, press reset type stuff. Yeah.

• 10:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. What, what? Explain that for the listeners, because it sucks, but they should know.

• 10:56Speaker 06

  Uh, you talk about the, the, the polygon thing or specifically? Go ahead, Dan.

• 11:01Speaker 05

  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 gamespot 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 Assassin's Creed.

• 11:19Ed Zitron?

  How many guns does your game have?

• 11:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Oh, 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 realized 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.

• 11:32Ed Zitron?

  But 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, Gita especially over there has written like very long form, thoughtful, emotional pieces. I think that that's what's, I don't want to say missing because it's happening, but that's what makes game journalism great. You can have stuff where it's 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 again, Zona, the Skyfall movie tie-in game.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  Activision and Bond game, yeah.

• 12:04Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 12:25Speaker 05

  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 being like, I don't know how the fuck to do that. But I can tell you if Never Dead is any good. So, but I think there's room for both because like, someone like me broke in 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, there are important stories to tell. And I think, you know, to give Grub 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 GiantBomb.com and will cover the serious stuff and layoffs

• 13:09Speaker 05

  and then just kind of issues facing the industry. But then he'll also, you know, dress up like Bubzy and play Bubzy 3D for Black Club, you know, so I do think Grub is uniquely qualified to do both ends of that.

• 13:20Speaker 06

  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 like 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 mattered 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 enjoy that aspect of my job.

• 13:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and CVG used to have this kind of yellow, it was, 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, like 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 was, I think it was one of the first MMO, like real MMO reporters in England, Ollie Welsh as well.

• 14:32Speaker 06

  Oh, sure. Yeah, that's Ollie.

• 14:34Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 14:48Speaker 06

  I mean, the real sad thing with Polygon is they didn't make any of those mistakes. When people saw the layoffs, they're like, oh, 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.

• 15:11Ed Zitron?

  Plant Rocks.

• 15:12Speaker 06

  He is just, 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 are letting them do it right. It's just like, even when that happens, you, there's that buzzsaw 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.

• 15:31Ed Zitron?

  It's fucking Vox. I didn't know they were profitable.

• 15:33Speaker 06

  Yeah. That is so infuriating. It was a successful business, I think is how I would phrase it.

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• 17:47Ed Zitron?

  It's so fucking stupid, because I feel like these outlets could on some level, maybe not a ton, print money. Like, they... There are tons of gamers who love reading stuff. Sure, like, it sounds like Polygon had a sustainable operation. IGN is insane. I don't know, I don't know how many people work at IGN. IGN breaks on my phone. I don't know if you've tried to look at an IGN guide. Sometimes I... If you scroll too fast, it just goes, "Snap, sorry, mate." Yeah, I mean...

• 18:15Speaker 05

  I've seen so many sites now, it could be a recipe for...

• 18:18Ed Zitron?

  You're gonna have to play Ragnarok on your own.

• 18:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. It just goes to the top, or pops up a thing, and you accidentally click the wrong thing. Yeah, I hate that.

• 18:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, the internet sucks now. It really does.

• 18:26Speaker 05

  This is not an IGN problem, as much as it is like the internet.

• 18:29Ed Zitron?

  Someone should do a show about that.

• 18:30Speaker 07

  A lot of those, a lot of those sites are not, there's, 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 Frankensteining creation of like, you know, sort of meshing it with other properties that sit alongside as sister companies, and you're just never gonna 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, 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

• 19:14Speaker 07

  sites, they are just this, you know, a Voltron creation that doesn't really allow for that amount of, of agency that, you know, I think the spirit of all those sites wants to be.

• 19:27Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and I think that, 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, immediately kill them.

• 19:39Speaker 07

  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're like, you always have it spot on, and it 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, that's the next ship that came into the harbor filled with ghosts and we're just gonna 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.

• 20:09Speaker 06

  And you're, you're familiar with, familiar with the Tony Ochs Pro Skater uh games, right? So I was watching, uh, I was trying to read a story on Kotaku the other day. I can't remember what it was about. Uh, but it did, it took me to a video instead and there was a man talking over the video and he kept calling it THPS. 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, I'm listening to an AI voice. Uh, of course I am, of course I am.

• 20:33Ed Zitron?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 20:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. Cause he did it every time in the same THPS, THPS.

• 20:38Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. No one says that.

• 20:39Speaker 06

  No one says that. Uh, so I'm just like, that's of course, that's, they all think they're gonna be able to do that. That's the story. We're gonna have to keep telling over and over about what's happening with all these uh websites and these uh 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, when they experience that, right? Cause the one thing about games and I, Stephen Spawn, who is an accessibility expert in the space, he, he used to tell me like, why do we, why do I wanna 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. We have a connection. I mean, you said the one thing you could bond over with people, with video games. It's, 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 gonna blow up in their faces. They just don't know it yet.

• 21:25Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. And I actually think it could go the other way though. Which is as we get more independent gaming outlets, I think the, there could be real success there because I think that that's what people want to, like, there is a definitely a degree of hunger for when is a game coming out in the same way that people Google when the Super Bowl is coming.

• 21:43Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 21:44Ed Zitron?

  When the Super Bowl is coming out, when the Super Bowl is 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 gonna 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 CVG mag was always so rude.

• 22:23Speaker 07

  It was, it was, it was utility. You were doing utility work, right? As opposed to personality work.

• 22:28Speaker 05

  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, you always turn around. But I remember I went to like a Xbox One pre-launch event thing and I played Rise: Son of Rome. And I remember 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 you press the red button, then it's, it just sucks.

• 22:50Speaker 06

  They're calling it Microsoft snack.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  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, can't have this much like opinion in a preview. It's like, I think I can. This seems like it's gonna kind of suck, you know?

• 23:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's no, no rules there. I remember when, uh, Mark McDonald over at EGM, uh, said he played Two Human and said, it's gonna be terrible. And Dennis Dyack like, like insisted on coming on their podcast and talking to him about it and like scolded him for doing that for a preview and said, you're gonna regret everything you said when you played the final version.

• 23:30Ed Zitron?

  Or ruin the day that you insulted Two Human.

• 23:33Speaker 06

  I don't think, I don't think he ruined anything.

• 23:35Speaker 07

  No, there was no ruling.

• 23:37Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ. Uh, but this is, even this conversation is what is fun about games journalism. Cause 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 PCZ, we had like Log, Steve Hogarty, Will Porter. We had all sorts of like fun, fun other people like Ryan, all the people from the mag who just yell at you. And I think that, and actually, I'm curious to 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.

• 24:20Ed Zitron?

  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 being.

• 24:27Speaker 07

  Well, I'm curious to hear where you think like the friction primarily lies.

• 24:32Ed Zitron?

  I think what it is, is that 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, it's 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 has 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, 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.

• 25:10Speaker 06

  Sure. I mean, that's, that's absolutely been my primary thought that pops in my head throughout this entire experience is we really are in this together. And that, 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's been super supportive and helping us out and giving us pointers and stuff like that. The guys over at Nextlander have been pointing out, like, Dan was on Jeff Gersman's show yesterday. It's like, we did realize pretty quickly, uh, when Greg Miller did take that team, Kind of Funny to go independent, that there isn't that real competition. Like, there is, the more people that care about the kinds of, 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, slightly different take on it.

• 25:55Speaker 06

  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 I'm coming into it with, uh, I'm gonna like, reference a book that I haven't read yet, but I saw the interview on Daily Show.

• 26:09Ed Zitron?

  Can you do that?

• 26:10Speaker 06

  I'm probably gonna, I'm probably gonna 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.

• 26:54Ed Zitron?

  And they were never part of it.

• 26:55Speaker 06

  And they were never part of it. Exactly. So we just got to focus on the ones that are there. Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of people who are right there, ready to to listen again. We just got to like, let them know it's cool in here again.

• 27:07Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, 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. I, that was just the assumption I made, which was incorrect, clearly.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, not what I've heard from anyone that I've talked to. Yeah.

• 27:25Ed Zitron?

  Sucks because I was originally, I, they talked to me at the beginning of Polygon. I was in PR at the time. They're like, do you want to come over here? I was like, no, I must stay at a job I'm unhappy at.

• 27:35Speaker 06

  They were too big probably in the beginning, for sure. But they definitely kind of figured it out over time.

• 27:39Ed Zitron?

  Oh, no, no, they, no, they genuinely, they wanted me to do PR. I think it was Justin McElroy. 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 like

• 27:59Speaker 07

  I still think there's a semblance of that and

• 28:01Ed Zitron?

  There is, but it's not like compared to getting a massive funding announcement in tech or like a breakthrough in technology.

• 28:07Speaker 07

  Sure, sure, sure. Like a partnered embargo thing. I mean, yeah.

• 28:12Ed Zitron?

  There's still competition.

• 28:13Speaker 07

  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 terms with that in a way that will satisfy what we need this thing to do?

• 28:34Ed Zitron?

  No, no one has the answer to that.

• 28:36Speaker 07

  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, uh, you know, kind of lends you to why, you know, things like this wind up happening.

• 28:50Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  Oh, that went to we gotta take those pictures of us frowning, guys.

• 29:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:08Speaker 06

  Frowning based organization.

• 29:10Speaker 07

  I gotta work on my pointing.

• 29:11Ed Zitron?

  Like the, uh, the, and this is, this is a reference as well, just to any listeners. It's like Uber driver sucked me off. And it was like the Rob Wissman picture. Anyone who doesn't know what that is, I swear it's not just me talking about it.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  But my favorite is, uh, The Undertaker got a podcast not too long ago and seeing The Undertaker do YouTube faces is very, very funny.

• 29:31Speaker 07

  Hell, yeah.

• 29:31Ed Zitron?

  That's so special.

• 29:33Speaker 07

  It comes for everyone.

• 29:34Ed Zitron?

  But we need the opinion, like, we do actually need the opinion back. It's just the gaming online. I feel like I got lost proper out of Nam sometimes because it's like gaming online was like, oh, you don't like fucking Sonic and Mario? I will kill you.

• 29:48Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 29:49Ed Zitron?

  You you insult Bubsy the Bobcat?

• 29:53Speaker 06

  I will.

• 29:54Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I can and I have.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  I'll do it again.

• 29:58Speaker 07

  The you know, fanboyism is a currency for sure. And I think like 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 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's 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.

• 30:53Speaker 01

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• 32:07Ed Zitron?

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

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• 32:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were asking that question, like, where's the Lester Bangs of video game journalism? That was part of that new game journalism thing. And it's like, it did happen. It was probably Dunky. Like, it's probably, it's probably one of these like a big YouTuber. He's like, just kind of does funny talking over gameplay. And he's got a pretty good eye.

• 33:09Ed Zitron?

  And Yahtzee probably thought he was.

• 33:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, but yeah, and I mean, Yahtzee's definitely part of that lineage, for sure.

• 33:15Speaker 07

  Hundred percent.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  Angry video game nerd. The first gaming YouTube guy I saw, yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 33:21Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and I liked Yahtzee'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.

• 33:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, Yahtzee's still kind of doing his thing. I think he's over at Second Wind now, which is a Patreon-backed thing. It's, yeah.

• 33:36Ed Zitron?

  It's, and I think that every time the ground is ceded away from personality, it is kind of fitting 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.

• 33:50Speaker 07

  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 are just like, oh, I like, 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 gonna be okay. So whether whoever it is is the target online, you know, that's how that strategy goes. And logically, it works for people.

• 34:34Speaker 06

  They're super naked about it. This, like, in this past week, there was one of these creators who was, and someone like, screenshot it and posted to Blue Sky or whatever, uh, him complaining that his videos he 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.

• 34:56Speaker 07

  This was my whole business.

• 34:58Speaker 06

  Yes, he's like,

• 34:58Ed Zitron?

  My whole life was harassing someone.

• 35:01Speaker 06

  Explicitly saying, woe is me, I'm not making money from harassing this person anymore. It was one of the most insane things I've ever seen.

• 35:08Speaker 07

  You turn it into a conspiracy and you say, oh, I've been shadow banned, algorithms against me because I'm telling the truth.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  Of course, of course, yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 07

  You know what, all these creators seem very, very happy too.

• 35:18Speaker 06

  That's the one thing about it. Yeah, they all seem very okay.

• 35:21Speaker 05

  A good line of work.

• 35:22Ed Zitron?

  Very normal and happy with their life.

• 35:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 35:25Ed Zitron?

  They don't seem to like games.

• 35:28Ed Zitron?

  They genuinely don't seem to like playing video games on the computer or console.

• 35:32Speaker 06

  Nope. I mean, they could just do it and they always choose not to.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  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.

• 35:42Speaker 06

  That stuff is a little bit of low tide right now. I mean, 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 videos telling me all the things that uh all the ways that feminism was ruining video games. Like I can 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 and and seeing stuff in like the next generation will be a little bit more cynical about that going forward, I think. Uh but it's always gonna be there and they're always gonna be trying to, it, the reality is, they do it and they get rewarded.

• 36:25Speaker 06

  The the algorithm's built to reward them. It's gonna keep happening no matter what, as long as that's the case.

• 36:29Ed Zitron?

  See, what always pissed me off about that, other than all the hate and the 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 mess. Put aside the made up sexism or made up misandry. It's all bullshit, not even gonna humor it. I don't know. Look at the fact that NFL has given one 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.

• 37:01Speaker 06

  And they did that right when there was good competition and they're like, oh crap, we better lock this down.

• 37:05Ed Zitron?

  And they did.

• 37:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:07Ed Zitron?

  Yep, they did, they did. And that feels like some, I'm not saying there should be a hate campaign against anything, but maybe if you're gonna do one, choose an actual giant company doing horrible shit.

• 37:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, they they, it's because they don't care. They're, 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 and accessible. I don't, I think, uh, you know, an expose about that is is is uh, is like, uh, sort of boring in in a way to to, you know, where.

• 37:36Speaker 06

  It leads, 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 gonna help them with them trying to sell this idea that you're isolated because the feminists want you isolated. Yeah.

• 37:49Ed Zitron?

  You're right, yeah, because you're isolated because the system, the system you're within has kept you separate from people that are walkable cities. Right, there is content to antagonize, you know, it's woman.

• 38:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's it.

• 38:01Ed Zitron?

  Like that, it all comes to that.

• 38:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, in our space, it's women, in uh, you know, common politics, it's immigrants, it's it's, yeah, always the scapegoat.

• 38:09Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, well, as the son of a woman and an immigrant, I think, no, um.

• 38:15Speaker 06

  As the father of daughters.

• 38:16Ed Zitron?

  As the voice, the line from Spider-Verse as well as like as the 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, guys, when the bad stuff happened, I was definitely like, games journalism is fucked. Like this is just like Polygon, everything just like looking 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.

• 39:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I think everyone likes that. It's it's because it's a good story. It's 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 seemed to not have any realistically happy, you know, turnout.

• 39:22Speaker 06

  And then 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.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  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 were always passionate and everything, but now it just really feels like we're free to to directly make this stuff the audience wants.

• 39:48Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 39:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, but I think you're right. I think 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

• 40:01Speaker 06

  He does believe in ghosts, though.

• 40:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, obviously, but but I think like on a long enough timeline, you have, you know, doors that open that allow the the the sort of like spread of a thing that people kind of want to put their energy into and have that, you know, proliferate in a positive way. And I think, you know, on a lot, like I said, on a long enough timeline, like,

• 40:23Speaker 06

  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 have 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.

• 40:52Ed Zitron?

  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 Coolzone 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. I has a question, though. So it's just you, how many people are you right now? So it's you, three and a few others, five people. Are you going to be bringing on others? Are you going to be bringing back any of the original G P 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.

• 41:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, the reality is like, Backlash 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 an idea. We feel pretty okay about it. But it's 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. And so we want to try to figure out as much as we can on our own, so we could be solid. And then all of the growth can just make sense naturally after that. It wouldn't be, like, I mean, guys, I couldn't imagine ever having more than 10 people.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  Oh, God, right. It's like, like you said, like, we haven't even seen the first dollar yet. You know, we, 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, definitely looked into it a lot. We don't know yet, but yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 07

  I mean, I'm, you know, I'm very, 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, Patreon or independent thing that needs, you know, direct support to sustain itself. And, you know, I, I kind of, I kind of throw that argument away. I think it is truly a rising tide situation because you, you know, the, the, the independence allows for collaboration in a, in a really positive and organic way. And I think, I think a lot of people who, who tell that them, themselves that story, whether they're, you know, involved in the business or they are on

• 43:19Speaker 07

  the audience side of that are really not seeing the forest for the trees and, and understanding like, no, you like, 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 like exposing yourself to the people who, even if it's someone who just very slimly overlaps in that Venn diagram, um, you know, that is the best endorsement you can get. And I think there's, you know, to, to your question, Ed, of like bringing on new people, like I, 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, is a limitation of just what, you know, the business

• 44:02Speaker 07

  is able to bring in. But I, you know, I don't think that means that in, 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.

• 44:20Ed Zitron?

  Are you going to do any, uh, event stuff, live stuff? I realize all of this is very new, but what are you thinking? And it does not need to be specific.

• 44:28Speaker 05

  We announced at PAX East, uh, the timing worked out crazy. Like, you know, signatures were signed like the day before, uh, the PAX East, we were able to do this big announcement. And in the future, we've always loved doing PAX. Giant Bombs always had a big presence at 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,

• 44:51Ed Zitron?

  Probably not.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  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.

• 45:03Speaker 07

  Well, Ed, you're gonna bring us out for CES, right?

• 45:05Ed Zitron?

  In January? I don't know how the hell I'm gonna get you there or where you're gonna sleep, but if you have to be in town, I'd love to have you on because that CES has become like the fucking solidarity fest. If anyone like, we're gonna, we're extending CES to two hours per episode to two a day. Like, we're gonna have tons of people on. I, 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 fuck nuts used to hang out. And I say that with deep adoration of said fuck nuts, me being one of them. But it, it's just, I think that any independent listening to this needs to know that this, like,

• 45:48Ed Zitron?

  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.

• 45:55Speaker 07

  Mm hmm. Yes, without a doubt. Yeah, I'll do the, uh, the, you know, we're gonna try to do GB at night at Summer Game Fest and things like that. It'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, it's very cathartic. It's like, oh yeah, we, you, 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 is sending down. So other people can maybe just have a chance to grab a foothold on something. And, uh, yeah, that's been important to me for a long time. So I'd love to keep doing something like that.

• 46:39Speaker 07

  And you're right, that, to me, that's the only path forward for, for getting new people into these spaces.

• 46:45Ed Zitron?

  Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, where can people find you other than giantbomb.com?

• 46:51Speaker 07

  Now, let's hit giantbomb.com/join if you want to become a member and support what we're doing. Join. Yeah, that's, we'll give you all the information there. But other than that, I'm grub.wtf on Blue Sky, and that's where I'm mostly posting these days.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  Yep, I'm danreicher.com on Blue Sky, danreicher on Instagram.

• 47:08Speaker 07

  Yes, I am Jeff Bacalar 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 shackles 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.

• 47:31Ed Zitron?

  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 rerecord. It's going to be the same one from when I was a weird man that was unconfident in my podcasting ability. Thank you.

• 47:54Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.weseyoured.app to visit the Discord and go to r/betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For 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 podcasts.

• 48:59Speaker 01

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  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or hardened circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist

• 50:26Speaker 02

  about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair, paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 50:35Speaker 06

  You name it, they got it. But apparently, somebody over there said, you know what's missing? Screaming like a maniac about a rookie card on your couch. And we love them for that. Because Underdog now has RIPS. You get a digital pack, starting at just five bucks. You check the live odds, see which grails you could pull, then rip it open to reveal a real, physical card. And the grails are no joke. They have cards up to $125,000 in value, and plenty to pull. From football and basketball to Pokémon, with new, limited edition packs dropping regularly. Even cooler, you can decide to keep the card, and Underdog will ship it straight to your home. Or sell it back instantly at 100% of its fair market value. And the cash goes right in your account. No listing it online, no stranger lowballing you in the messages.

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• 52:05Speaker 06

  Message and data rates may apply. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 J.P. Morgan Chase & Company.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.