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Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

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Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#121

Post by LordDragonfang »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #15
CM30 wrote: post #2

Oh god this is worrying. Fandom has already made Wikia an absolutely unusable, ad ridden nightmare, to the point many communities set up their own wikis to avoid dealing with it. I hope they don't apply that same monetisation to GameSpot, GameFAQs, etc. Otherwise those sites will die almost overnight.

I casually end up on a fandom wiki every now and then. What's the main criticism?

Here's the justifications the Runescape wiki admins used for forking to a new site a few years ago, and things have only gotten worse since then:

https://runescape.wiki/w/Forum:Leaving_Wikia#Why%3F

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#122

Post by runevault »

ubertaco wrote: post #8

I wonder if any internal rumors of this were part of the sort of "exodus" from Giant Bomb a while back. Even Gerstmann left and is now just doing his own thing solo.

I would be shocked if the Nextlander crew knew a year out. Jeff MIGHT have heard something around the time he left/was ousted (no clue which).

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#123

Post by ryanwaggoner »

My first job after college was back in 2006, working as an associate product manager at GameSpot on this flash-based download manager. Another era, lol.

I only lasted a year before I jumped into working for myself as a freelance developer, but I learned a lot at that job. And my favorite part was that I got the job because I posted my resume on Craigslist and my manager found it and called me to interview. I had basically no relevant experience or anything, and I'll always be grateful to him for taking a chance on me.

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#124

Post by RheingoldRiver »

kweingar wrote: post #104

Something I’ve always wondered: Why don’t fan communities host their own MediaWiki instance? I don’t imagine that the storage/bandwidth/compute needs of a niche fan wiki would be cost-prohibitive. Then you could completely avoid all of Fandom’s ads.

MediaWiki is pretty technically challenging to self-host. It updates frequently and the updates are nontrivial to do especially if you have a large userbase. Also, if you want an extension like Cargo, SMW, DPL, etc, that lets you query data from one page to another, your server demands will go up a lot and hosting can get quite expensive.

There's a new competitor though for gaming wikis that's started hosting some forks & some new original wikis, https://wiki.gg/.

Disclaimer: I was a contractor for Fandom until they terminated me in August this year (I ran their esports wikis including Leaguepedia).

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#125

Post by astrange »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #82
thrillgore wrote: post #59

Wow. WOW. I didn't think Red Ventures was this quick to exit the market. This is not a good sign for the future of game journalism. Disclaimer: I worked at CBS Interactive/ViacomCBS Streaming during the original properties sale to Red Ventures.

Game journalism has been dead for a long time. No one who is serious about games pays any attention to it, and they routinely mock everyone in games journalism, making constant comments about "journalist mode" that plays the game for you, etc, because they hold them in such low respect. Beyond that it seems like half the articles coming out in "games" journalism these days seem more interested in pushing specific pol…

> making constant comments about "journalist mode" that plays the game for you

This is a bad criticism because it’s about Dean Takahashi, whose actual problem is he’s just kept around to give softball interviews to CEOs to make them feel good, but nobody actually noticed this so just remember he can’t play Cuphead.

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#126

Post by giantrobot »

delecti wrote: post #32
giantrobot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. On mobile I can't get images to display without disabling my ad blocker. 5. Despite nominally being Wikis the Fandom wikis have effectively zero Wiki-like intrapage or interpage navigation. I remember the likes of Wookiepedia and Memory Alpha before they got Fandomed. They are sad ghosts of what used to be very good fan oriented Wikis. Fandom is a dumpster fire and I wish them nothing but ill fortune.

> 5. Despite nominally being Wikis the Fandom wikis have effectively zero Wiki-like intrapage or interpage navigation. The site mechanically sucks, with all the ads, needless videos, comment sections, "related content", etc, but this one is up to the writers to do. It's not Fandom's fault if writers don't integrate wiki functionality more thoroughly. I personally never even noticed Wookiepedia or Memory Alpha switchi…

I should instead say "when Wikia switched to Fandom". Wikia used to be pretty standard MediaWiki instances. Then they moved the format to a more custom layout until they became the absolute trash Fandom layout of today.

When Wikia was more standard MediaWiki layout both sites were extremely usable. The Fandom trash styling makes both very difficult to navigate now. They're unusable without an ad blocker.

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#127

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

rickreynoldssf wrote: post #77

I'm an Ex-Engineering Manager at GameSpot & Giantbomb at CBS (2013-2016). All the stuff Dave mentioned was very much the same when I was there. The unit was always in trouble losing money quarter after quarter and focus was always on the ad sales. E3 was the biggest time for revenue and it was stressful in the lead up to it hoping we'd sign enough to keep things going. It got progressively worse each year. Towards th…

> GameFaqs should probably go back to its original owner.

I remember when that sale first happened and the owner announced everything would stay the same. He would be running things, his stance on advertising wouldn't change, and so forth.

I'm not sure if anyone actually believed that, but from what I recall the original owner (forget his name) said he was making $80/year and the stress levels were way too high. No one was shocked when he left.

What I'll tell you is that I used to be a huge fan of gamefaqs and I still visit it from time to time, but after gamespot bought them I started using them less and less. I don't know that it was anything specific they did to the site, it may have simply been me changing through life. But I do know I used to frequent the GD&P (Game Design and Programming) boards over there and they're basically a ghost town now.

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#129

Post by tootie »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #114
snide wrote: post #21

OG founder of Giant Bomb / Comicvine / Whiskey Media here. I was also at CNET during the acquisition of Metacritic and helped build large portions of Gamespot and TV.com. I'm 10-years removed from these properties so I feel OK talking about them. The sad reality is the Internet publishing is dead and as a business that business is nearly impossible to operate if you have any moral compass. In its place we have variou…

I think subscription-based instead of ad-based is the only way to monetize good content. It doesn't scale nearly as big (which is why companies like Meta will never go for it) and won't make any unicorns, but that's OK. An ad-based model will eventually pollute the platform no matter what esp as companies try to extract as much revenue as possible from it.

Subscriptions is what you see all the top tier journalistic sources pivoting towards as hard as they can. But to the sites who based their business on casual users coming in via SEO/Social it will never work. Arguably that's a good thing because it will end the bane of clickbait. But the cycle of clicking news links off of reddit or facebook is already locked in to too many consumers minds. The daily paper newspaper consumption seems ancient to young consumers. Good journalists need to be able to reach all the audiences immersed in social media, but also get them to form a habit of visiting their site directly regularly. Newsletters is a big help, but not a magic solution. Paywalls are popping up everywhere, but it's a real speedbump to acquisition.

Re: Fandom Acquires GameSpot, Giant Bomb, GameFAQs, TV Guide and Metacritic

#130

Post by kingaillas »

criddell wrote: post #90
TylerE wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix has gone completely down the shitter in the last decade. Ruined the UI, got rid of all the good content and replaced it with C-tier series that get canceled before concluding anyway. Oh, and have basically doubled prices. I canceled a year ago and haven’t missed it in the slightest - and I had it back when it was still dvds by mail.

Netflix has consistently made the cut for me to keep it. I'm happy as long as my household uses it 6-8 hours each month. Same goes for Hulu and HBO Max. Other streamers I find myself starting and stopping as I find stuff to watch. For example, I've started and stopped Disney twice. The first to watch Mandelorian and the second to watch Get Back. It's one reason I really like subscribing through Apple. Subscribe-unsub…

I'm the same as far as Netflix, they have enough "good enough" shows for me to keep them around. I figure if I average ~2-3 hours a week it is still worth it.

Yes some of their new shows are... not to my liking (hey, maybe somebody out there really loves Warrior Nun but I stopped after a few episodes) but several are (Shadow and Bone, Witcher, Umbrella Academy, Ozarks, Cobra Kai, Lupin) I'm looking forward to future seasons, or finishing the series (in the case of Ozarks).

HBO Max might fall into the season-subscription category for me, where I take it 3-6 months a year. And maybe Disney+ too except I've got a large backlog there.

Anyway, the behavior change for me is to watch a show sooner rather than later. I was working my way through Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Hulu and reached season 6, taking a break for a few weeks, to return and discover the remained of the episodes are tied to a live TV subscription. Not sure if some license deal expired in time I took a break after season 5, or if it was always like that (however, I don't think so).

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