Like a lot of people, Giant Bomb was a huge part of my gaming diet for years. I really loved them, and they sounded like a bunch of friends - of which I was somehow included - talking about games, the way people used to before social media took over and everything became a grift.
But, they lost their way after Ryan Davis died. Abby and Ben were hideous hires who added absolutely nothing to the show, and they dismissed any criticism of Abby as gamergators swarming her, rather than acknowledging that they'd fucked up, she knew absolutely nothing about games, and she was there to the detriment of everyone around her.
The point at which I left them behind was the GOTY deliberation where Abby essentially forced 'Dream Daddy' into the top 10, based on absolutely fuck all other than her repeated claims that it was 'very good' and 'cohesive'. It was a run of the mill VN - the idea that it was a better game than Nier Automata is utterly laughable. But, Giant Bomb went along with it as though this was entirely fine and normal. For me, it shattered my trust in them - if they aren't willing to defend gaming as an art form, and were willing to capitulate that quickly to clear nonsense, why bother with them at all? This was all compounded by Gerstman's ridiculous statements on Kingdom Come: Deliverance - claiming that they were not reviewing it because 'the audience isn't interested' was so transparently a piece of ass-covering to defend whatever it was in them that needed to uphold the Klepek/Walker political position that was already infecting the rest of games media.
But, really, the thing that killed them slowly is the thing that is killing all of criticism. The idea that people should be paid for their 'opinions' is a dying model. Ultimately, if you're not invested in the personalities of these people, who gives a shit what any of them think? Is Brad Shoemaker REALLY more qualified to declare a game 'good' than anyone else? We aren't living in an age where opinions are at a premium, and they are offered by eminent experts in their fields - Kael and Ebert in cinema, for example. Opinions are now a dime a dozen, coming at you from every direction. What makes THESE opinions worth anything? Nothing. That's what.
So, they leaned into the 'personality' stuff. And, they've certainly got huge traction by building an audience around the people, rather than the opinions. But, that's not journalism. That's social media. And in a media environment that is saturated with people desperate to be social media stars through Youtube or Twitch, Giant Bomb's act became stale and increasingly irrelevant.
I like Gerstman quite a bit, despite his ludicrous buffoonery over the years. My hope is that if GB continues, or he builds something new out of the wreckage, he's able to capture some of that economy of expertise - rather than just opinion for the sake of it - and returns to actual journalism, rather than pursuing social media cred, and ass pats from his woke buddies in the San Francisco gaming industry. But, I have my doubts that it will happen.
They did make my drive to work infinitely better back in the day though, so I have to thank them for that.
