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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

#211

Post by bluefirebrand »

rchaud wrote: post #200
blast0rama wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do we all need another t-shirt for [thing]? My drawers are full, my walls are covered in art. What next?

The problem is that most Youtuber/Patreon/Twitch creators are extremely lazy when it comes to merchandise and just clicks a couple of buttons to spin up some template logo t-shirts on BigCartel or someplace. Looking at merch from the music world, I believe there's a market for would pay for merch that's thoughtful and creative like a mini-book, custom playing cards or posters that do a deep dive on something that str…

> Looking at merch from the music world, I believe there's a market for would pay for merch that's thoughtful and creative like a mini-book, custom playing cards or posters that do a deep dive on something that streamer is interested in.

Maybe so, but all of that stuff is expensive to produce and create, music has big publishing companies that build this stuff.

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

#212

Post by Yhippa »

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…

> How can good content be monetized in a way that allows it to remain independent and not succumb to warping its content to feed that monetization? How can it be audience driven instead? Is such a thing even possible? Right now good monetization strategies beget bad content. There's got to be a better way than cobbling together five platforms under a Patreon account, giving all of them 10-50% along the way.

I wish there was a frictionless as possible way to pay content creators per consumption of their content. For example content creators could set a price in a podcast app per episode or maybe a bulk deal if I bought a "season". Don't make me think too much about paying and I'll gladly consume.

I am not a huge fan of signing up for a Pateron and setting up how to ingest the content. I don't mind paying to read an article but I don't want a huge yearly subscription. Give me the chance to pay you right then and there and my poor impulse control will do the rest.

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

#213

Post by belthesar »

tpxl wrote: post #187
belthesar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer to peer non-realtime video distribution has a pretty core fundamental flaw in that users are only seeding when they're watching. Users are likely to stop watching a video if it doesn't interest them, if something else comes up, or more importantly for this conversation, if there's a technical issue that prevents smooth playback. When a user stops watching for whatever reason, they leave the swarm. If a client ha…

What are your thoughts on Popcorn time? That was quite successful even among non-technical people. Is the difference people were keeping their torrent client (ie PopcornTime) open all the time, providing seeds, which doesn't happen with a webpage that you just close? Is the solution a 'RSS reader', but for P2P videos?

You've hit the nail on the head. A set-top box that would keep a torrent active through normal seeding configurations out of band of the client worked wonders, because your ability to participate in the CDN wasn't determined by code you loaded in the player. You also have that it was targeting longer form content (>10min), so even if that was being shipped through these web based P2P clients, a person committed to a TV series or a movie would suffer through slightly more buffer jank.

Even then though, your average content viewer has different standards. We're opting for 1080p/4K content over the much more common smaller feeds. Netflix loads the first few segments of even the most esoteric content not in your local ISP cache in 100's of milliseconds, users flit from YouTube video to YouTube video randomly, and scroll TikTok like we used to scroll through the Twitter firehose back in the hey-day of the PopcornTime. More content is consumed on mobile devices than set-top boxes, which brings power and data constraints, both from metered data and with networks that are both highly latency variable and not tuned for upstream bandwidth, that make participation in a P2P swarm not ideal.

While content protection is certainly a core tenant of why content is centralized, if the big players at YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, et al, haven't figured out a way to shirk their highest cost center in lieu of putting it on the backs of someone else even cheaper than ISPs without causing a substandard consumer experience with P2P, then you can be darn sure that this is a tough nut to crack.

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

#214

Post by Macha »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #208
Macha wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if they push their GUI editor and their GUI editor makes it hard to interlink, arguably that does make them part of the problem.

I mean, it’s the same VisualEditor that’s used across MediaWiki sites, including as the default on Wikipedia. How is it only a problem on Fandom?

I was surprised by this claim, as I didn't remember them being the same. And I checked, as a logged out user, on a wikia site and on wikipedia, and...

No, they're not the same by default.

Wikia/Fandom defaults to a WYSIWYG editor, linking is a 4-click process.

Wikipedia has a toolbar atop a wiki code view. It does offer the option of a WYSIWYG editor, but it is _not_ the default. Linking is [[some article title]].

I'm a logged out user on both sites, so it's not a preference I've set.

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

#215

Post by diob »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #170
diob wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see too much wrong with Patreon. I support a variety of things I enjoy using it, and the folks who I support get to do what they love while giving me content I love. Maybe we need some Patreon competition? I don't know honestly.

Patreon's fine and lots of people make a living with it, but it can be a tough sell. The rewards rarely make it worth it (sorry, I get no use out of the Drawfee discord), so you have to be willing to part with $5-10 a month for something you'd otherwise be getting free. That's an unjustifiable expense for anyone who doesn't have money to spare.

Yeah, but I'd argue those who don't have money to spare aren't going to have it for whatever alternative we propose either.

Right now I'm paying $50 a month (highest tier) for a group of writers / comedians I really love, and I don't see an alternative to Patreon that would allow me to support them at that level. I don't get anything extra out of it beyond knowing they can support themselves.

I think there are probably those with money to spare, but it's probably like the prisoner's dilemma and they don't want to be the one's contributing if others can get it for free.

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

#216

Post by mynameisvlad »

Macha wrote: post #214
mynameisvlad wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it’s the same VisualEditor that’s used across MediaWiki sites, including as the default on Wikipedia. How is it only a problem on Fandom?

I was surprised by this claim, as I didn't remember them being the same. And I checked, as a logged out user, on a wikia site and on wikipedia, and... No, they're not the same by default. Wikia/Fandom defaults to a WYSIWYG editor, linking is a 4-click process. Wikipedia has a toolbar atop a wiki code view. It does offer the option of a WYSIWYG editor, but it is _not_ the default. Linking is [[some article title]]. I'…

I said it’s the same VisualEditor. As in, it’s literally the same extension. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisualEditor I never claimed the defaults are the same. VisualEditor will likely become default on Wikipedia at some point in the future, as it’s an opt-in feature. And it can be turned off on Fandom, which I’m sure core contributors are likely to.

As a platform, Fandom provides the same visual editor that is provided by MediaWiki. That was the claim.

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

#217

Post by Macha »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #216
Macha wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised by this claim, as I didn't remember them being the same. And I checked, as a logged out user, on a wikia site and on wikipedia, and... No, they're not the same by default. Wikia/Fandom defaults to a WYSIWYG editor, linking is a 4-click process. Wikipedia has a toolbar atop a wiki code view. It does offer the option of a WYSIWYG editor, but it is _not_ the default. Linking is [[some article title]]. I'…

I said it’s the same VisualEditor. As in, it’s literally the same extension. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisualEditor I never claimed the defaults are the same. VisualEditor will likely become default on Wikipedia at some point in the future, as it’s an opt-in feature. And it can be turned off on Fandom, which I’m sure core contributors are likely to. As a platform, Fandom provides the same visual editor that is…

No, you claimed that the visual editor was the default on wikipedia.

> I mean, it’s the same VisualEditor that’s used across MediaWiki sites, including as the default on Wikipedia.

I mean, I guess you could claim technical correctness if Wikia was defaulting to a non-visual editor, but that's going on a wild tangent and the opposite of the real situation

I'm not sure how the opt-in visual editor on wikipedia being the same as the default editor on wikia would disprove the claim that the visual editor's more difficult linking would cause people using the default experience on wikia (wysiwg editor) to link less compared to those using the default experience on wikipedia (source editor) with it's less sidelined linking experience.

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

#218

Post by delecti »

NoGravitas wrote: post #155
delecti wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Really? Because I found the transition of Memory Alpha switching to Fandom extremely jarring. Maybe it will improve after WWIII and First Contact, when profit ceases to be a factor.

I truly can't remember even noticing a difference. I didn't even realize it had ever been hosted anywhere else until this thread.

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

#219

Post by gofreddygo »

snet0 wrote: post #55
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 the hard, honest answer is getting people to pay for things. Netflix, Prime Video, etc. have leap-frogged TV in terms of audience enjoyment by optimising for being a good product that people will pay for. The hard thing is getting people to recognise the options in front of them: pay for the thing you enjoy, or have it slowly turn to shit as it desperately morphs to optimise for ad money. Patreon is in a simi…

> instead of "pay for the damn videos you've enjoyed for the past year", which might be necessary right now

Maybe start showing customers estimated cost of what they got for free ? Maybe a sticky header with "You watched 84 hours worth $173" next to a "Donate now" button ?

I 1000% agree with the idea of having to pay for what I consume. Not many agree with me.

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