Giant Bomb

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the previous week!

First, join me in wishing Dan a very belated Happy Birthday! As many of you already know, he's in the process of moving, which is why some of the site's normal programming has been delayed or pushed a week. That said, there was a new Game Mess Mornings on Thursday and Friday as well as a Unprofessional Fridays trailer recap show on Friday the week after the site's fantastic Not E3 2023 coverage.

Speaking of the site's Not E3 2023 coverage, here are some handy links for those of you that may have missed some of the big events.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am happy to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the week.

How are we all enjoying Giant Bomb's coverage of NOT E3? The first Talk Over of Summer Games Fest and Giant Bomb @ Nite event were AMAZING! And, as of this posting, we have two more nights of guests as well as the Xbox show on Sunday.

Instead of doing the normal site-related news, I thought I would use this Spotlight to give thanks to all of the people that made the site's NOT E3 content possible.

First, many thanks to Jan for being the man behind the scenes that makes all of video content possible. Even when there might be audio or video hiccups, we all know he's busy working on them so we can fully enjoy the nonsense the staff are up to.

Thanks to Jeff Grubb for scheduling all of the guests and reaching out on the Giant Bomb Discord regarding how the Giant Bomb @ Nite events were formatted in the past, so that he could best tickle our nostalgia while also letting him do his own thing.

Thanks to Windbag for the hilarious transitions between segments. If you're an old school GB fan, you remember waiting hours before the next panel of guests with nothing but a wait screen and music. These breaks are quick AND entertaining. Also, thank you to Dan for tapping into his toolbox of tricks to make every day be a chaotic and hilarious event.

Special thanks to Emma Fyffe and Bailey Meyers at Fandom for making the set for Giant Bomb @ Nite from scratch! They took a massive burden away from the Giant Bomb staff as they planned this bevy of content and deserve props for that.

Finally, many thanks to the guests that add to the fun and the moderators that are ensuring a fun and safe time during this eventful weekend. We're all in this together, so let's enjoy the show.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the latest community creations from the previous week.

"Not E3" begins THIS WEEK! As the staff get ready to head down to L.A. in the coming week, get ready for some awesome in-person event coverage.

As I already mentioned last week, Grubb is scheduling an in-person gathering similar to what the site did in years' past. Over on the Giant Bomb Discord, Grubb said that he plans to book 50ish people to attend this year's Giant Bomb @ Nite event with groups of four to five. Wait for the site's weekly programming schedule to see which conferences and streams they plan to talk over and when the night-time events will be done.

Speaking of last week, I mentioned I would be having an online meeting with a Fandom rep about the state of the site and that indeed happened. What I can report is that there should be a new thread on how to report bugs and site issues that reviews how to make bug reports more actionable without overwhelming users.

Likewise, we should have a new thread wherein anyone can immediately report when Infinite goes down or is not working as intended. The issues with almost everything now appears to be related to a cookie conflict with the site's One-Trust policy. Fandom views the current workaround of enabling "Performance Cookies" as not a long-term solution.

Finally, Tamoor was on the Real Time Strategy to talk about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. If you are interested in giving it a listen, click this link.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the previous week! Well, June is almost here and that means "NOT E3" is right around the corner!

I guess I have forgotten to mention on the Spotlight, but Grubb and Jan have been busy planning things for the site during what would normally be E3. Grubb is already scheduling an in-person gathering event similar to what the site did in years' past. And Jan found the old couch! Over on the Giant Bomb Discord Grubb relayed that he plans to book 50ish people to attend this year's Giant Bomb @ Nite event with groups of four to five. It should be incredibly exciting and expect more details SOON!

The site video player issues are almost resolved. The site engineers are aware there are still some of you that are having issues, but thanks to all of the information you have all shared about the Cookies, they think they know what to do next. That said, the same advice as before still holds for those of you that want a quick fix so you can watch videos on the site.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week! We have notably more positive site-related news this week, especially regarding the video player, so, let's jump right into it.

Another site refresh hit went out this week. Hopefully it has resulted in even more people being able to watch videos on site. If that is not the case, the workaround I described last week is now confirmed to work on all browsers where videos are not playing, and not just Chrome. That work around is:

1. Clear all cookies
2. Click on "Show Purposes" OR "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" at the bottom of the site
3. Enable "Performance Cookies" only.

The last two steps on that checklist seem to be what is helping most people. As I said last week, the engineering team does not view this workaround as a permanent solution. If you are still not able to watch videos even after enabling these Performance Cookies or do not wish to, please drop a comment here.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

First, let's address the elephant in the room: the on-site video player. As most of you are now aware, the video player is working for a majority of people. Increasingly, the issues associated with the video player and even podcasts appear to be a conflict with on-site cookies. The current workaround is:

1. Clear all cookies
2. Click on "Show Purposes"
3. Enable "Performance Cookies" only.

Be aware that there was a full-site refresh that should have done this to all accounts, but there seems to be a small portion of accounts where this did not happen. If you are on mobile and want to fix the issue, scroll to the bottom of the site, or anywhere where you can find this, and find the "do not sell my personal information" button at the bottom. After clicking this, select performance cookies.

If none of these steps help AND the site-wide refresh did not fully address the problem, please drop a comment here. Everyone reading this should note that the engineering team does not view this workaround as a permanent solution and will be having multiple meetings this week and next to devise a permanent solution. Also, this does not appear to work for everyone and as such the tickets you filed in previous weeks will still be treated as high priorities.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

For the past few weeks, the introductions of these Spotlights have reviewed information from Fandom about the state of the video player. This week is no different.

On May 3, a fix dropped for the on-site video player and it was recommended that viewers also try clearing their cache before attempting to watch videos. This fix worked for some, but not everyone. If things are still non-functional, report that the update did not help you and indicate the browsers you have used and the operating systems you have tried those browsers on.

Every comment in that thread has been logged as an IT support ticket. As a result, Fandom classified the issue with the video player as a massive priority. On May 4, the Fandom engineering team pushed an update to force a "refresh" of everyone's cookies. If you are still unable to use the on-site video player, continue to send emails to support@giantbomb.com or add comments on the forums. Again, include the browsers you have used and the OSs you have used them on.

I know several people have come forward to say that using the video player on Firefox or Safari seems to be working on new and old videos. However, still there are many of you still struggling and I want you to know efforts are being made and your comments and emails are being read. It's slow, and I know seeing the same problem over and over again is frustrating, but people who care are working on the issue. And, as I said last time, you have a right to feel angry or frustrated.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am happy to be your host once again as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

If you have been heeding my previous Spotlights, then you should know that this weekend marks the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run, the community-run spring charity drive. For more details, just scroll down.

Before we get into the video issues, there's a bit of good news that comes from Jeff Grubb. Giant Bomb plans to ramp up its coverage of games in the form of Quick Looks in the near future. To help in that, you can expect to see fellow co-workers and friends of the site from Fandom Gaming and GameSpot take up prominent roles in those Quick Looks. This is going to help the site bring more of the same high-quality coverage you want to see. For example, Giant Bomb didn't get a Jedi Survivor code until after the review embargo, so they brought in Tom Caswell from GameSpot to help. Please, be kind and civil and do not be a jerk.

With the video player, there have been multiple tickets filed, the lead engineer has been notified, and the entire team has been working on the issue. They thought that they had fixed the issue, but it appears that does not appear to be the case. Feel free to file a comment in here. Continue to send in emails to support@giantbomb.com and keep dropping comments in the bug reporting threads. As Dylan put it, we want as much ammo to show that this is a priority.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week!

I'm not going to beat around the bush this week, but this edition is PACKED TO THE GILLS WITH ART! So, let's jump directly into the site-related news without any preamble.

Don't forget that THE GIANT BOMB STORE IS BACK! If your order exceeds $75, the shipping is FREE. For those of you ordering internationally, because the supplier is based in the United States, please allow 7-10 business days for shipping of all apparel, and feel free to report incredibly ridiculous shipping and handling charges to support@giantbomb.com. Keep in mind, non-apparel orders will ship quicker.

Over on Discord, many were asking Jeff Grubb about possibly de-platforming from Twitter since only verified accounts will be able to create polls. It was confirmed that the Game Mess Morning polls will be transitioned away from Twitter in the future. However, Grubb and the staff feel that the community on Twitter will outlast Elon. That said, community members should continue to feel safe and welcome to bring up the topic if new events should compel the site to do something more dramatic.

Several community members have noticed that some of the older podcasts are not downloading correctly or at all. If you notice specific episodes of the Bombcast that will NOT load correctly, drop a comment over here! The message from Dylan, the new community manager, is that this has been mentioned to the engineers and a ticket has been logged and is a higher priority. If things don't get better by mid next week, drop in new comment.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week!

The staff have returned and have recovered from their DreamHack convention appearance. If you missed any of the livestreams, here is a review of what has been posted thus far, and I am going to include stuff the staff recorded while in route to the event. Also, as you can see in a Tweet by Dan below, there's still more stuff to come!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

First, as many of you already know, the site was a bit quiet as many of the regularly scheduled programs not airing. That's because the Giant Bomb staff travelled to San Diego to attend the DreamHack convention. If you missed the livestreams that featured the Giant Bomb staff, don't worry, as most of them will be on the site shortly.

In the meantime, maybe consider the return of The Power Bombcast which discussed WrestleMania 39 or the The Super Mario Bros. Movie Spoilercast! In the future, be prepared for the live Voicemail Dump Truck and fun coverage of Universal's Super Nintendo World!

GB Chat and the Twitch channel will be up during DreamHack for segments that feature GB, GameSpot, and Fandom employees. Please keep things civil in both channels and be aware that your conduct will be observed and moderated if necessary.

Finally, I want to thank all of you for dropping kind and supportive comments in the last Spotlight when I announced it was both @marino and I's 13th anniversary as moderators on the site. It means a lot, and it was incredibly touching to see some usernames I have not seen in a while. With all of that in mind, let's jump into the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host. E3 2023 is officially cancelled! While the convention itself had seen better days, there's no doubt that the last handful of years of E3 prior to the pandemic created some of the best content the site had generated. I can confirm the staff had been planning to host an L.A.-based interview show in conjunction to E3, but we'll have to wait and see if some version of that is still going to happen.

The good news is that Giant Bomb is returning to the convention circuit sooner than that! Way sooner in fact. If you plan to be in San Diego from April 7-9, you will have the opportunity to watch Jan, Grubb, Dan, and Fandom personalities host in-person panels! In fact, the Giant Bomb-led panel will be a LIVE Voicemail Dump Truck. They're asking that all call-ins be gaming related, so, keep that in mind if you plan to call in.

Tam and Lucy were presenters for the video game BAFTAs! If you missed the stream, here's a link to the Twitch VOD. Plenty of fun moments have come from the event and it's worth checking when you have three hours to spare.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

Every edition of the Community Spotlight has a slight theme and for this one, it's clearly site-related news. There's a lot to review and if you missed some of these announcements or updates don't blame yourself, so, let's jump into it.

Last week, Giant Bomb hosted a Town Hall meeting in the Discord and answered a handful of questions from the community. During this, Dan, Grubb, Bakalar, and Jan discussed how the site's budget is growing, they are interested in hosting community-oriented streams that Rorie once hosted, and the direction of the site overall. For example, the missing chairs for existing shows will rotate as they have and Mike Minotti is being paid for the air-time he's providing for Giant Bomb.

Speaking of the Discord, the bot in charge of the Premium Channel on the Giant Bomb Discord has gone haywire. The result is that the Discord removed the Premium tag from some folks who are actually premium. If that is the case, head on over to bot-linkdump and run the /Premium recheck command to get it all fixed up. If that doesn't work, DM a mod that is available.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again your host as we look back at the most notable community-created works and site-related news from the previous week.

However, before get into that, let's talk about the big piece of news many of you are still talking about. Last Friday marked the final day Matt Rorie was an employee on Giant Bomb. As stated during Episode 780 of the Bombcast, he is leaving to work for an "unprecedented opportunity" that he was offered by a long-time friend. Rorie is leaving the site on good terms and has no ill-will directed at Fandom. This was his choice and you'll find out what the future holds for him in two weeks as he spends the next week visiting his mother.

If there is some solace from this disappointing news, Rorie has maintained that he will continue to participate on the site through the forums and Discord, but in a reduced capacity when he can. However, there's no denying his loss is still very much that, a loss that likely cannot be fully replaced. In between his efforts to handle site tickets and customer service, he also took time to interact with the community. I, like many of you, probably had more interactions with Rorie than any other staff members on Giant Bomb and can confirm that the man you saw on camera was the man he was in-person; an absolute delight.

So, if you have not done so already, please consider dropping a comment in the thread thanking Rorie for all he has done on and for this site. Also, Rorie took Luchadeer for his years, but the old Giant Bomb couch still lives on.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week. This time we have a well-rounded assortment of works to review as well as some hilarious Dan-inspired things to enjoy.

For those of you that have been reporting episodes of Game Mess Mornings not appearing on the site or even in you podcast feed, the issue should be resolved. Likewise, some people are seeing black screens when watching old premium videos! If this issue is impacting you, drop a comment in the bug thread about the issue and feel free to read about and try some work-arounds. For example, try clicking the three buttons at the bottom of the player and Go To GB Player.

Finally, thank you all for your patience while Jan was out with COVID. He's still recovering but was able to process and work on many of the video processing requests many of you made the past week. If you notice any videos that are still not on the site, feel free to drop a comment here or in the Discord.

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week. This time we have an incredibly well-rounded edition of the Spotlight that has a little bit of everything while people get excited for Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Atomic Heart.

However, many of you are still having issues with the new video player as well as the video encoder. As mentioned last week, the embiggen and fit to window options are in the works, but we don't have an ETA at the moment. The design and bug team are working with the tickets that Rorie is filing on your behalf, so, continue sharing your issues with the video player and the current API.

On a related note, timestamps on podcasts and videos on YouTube are rolling out slower than expected and this is not due to Giant Bomb no longer valuing timestamps. This week, Jan, who does most of the timestamps, had things that ate into the worktime he normally uses to make those.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

After a delay due to recent events, the Giant Bomb Community GOTY 2022 Winners have been announced! If you want to see how the community vote stacked up with the staff GOTY awards, or just like this feature, drop a supportive comment in the article!

Dylan Host, the Community Manager of Safety for Fandom’s Community Safety team wants to introduce himself! What's his job and when should you contact him? Some people are confused as to how their overlaps with Rorie's and, as they say in the write-up, they are happy to respond to any comments you drop their way.

This next note is a throwback to those of you that have been on Giant Bomb for a while. Drew Scanlon and Danny O'Dwyer have a new episode of their F1 podcast available. Give it a listen if you want a fun rundown of all the upcoming events for the season and other news connected to F1! Likewise, Grubb's off-site Game Mess Patreon is nearing the 250 patrons mark and thanks anyone who joins.

Finally, if silly but fun stuff like this does not sell you on why you should join the Official Giant Bomb Discord, then I don't know what will.

Intro: Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting week here on Giant Bomb.

Last time I wrote I said we were close to re-launching the store and…we are still pretty close to doing so! I apologize for the delays here. The ownership of the store has been transferred to my account and all of our merch from Social Imprints is being shipped to our new store partner. Untangling all of the merch and getting it rung into inventory will take a bit, but we are still planning to launch with the seven shirts from last summer - hopefully less busted this time, but the samples are great! As well as those, hopefully we can unpack some of the merch from our inventory shipment When we do launch I’m going to have to ask for your patience in getting up to speed - I’ll be handing all your store code and 10% off discounts manually, I assume, so please as always drop me a line at the support email address and we’ll try to get you sorted.

Hey everyone! These are the results of the community GOTY - the results of which (resultingly) have been resulted below. This year, 712 of you submitted a top ten list, for a total of 5854 votes (not everyone always puts in ten games, which is fine!) on 500 different games. Wow! Amazing!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.

Well, I guess an explanation is in store from me on why things on the forums are the way they are this week. As many of you probably noticed, a spammer bumped about 200+ threads and articles. The spammer has been banned and nuked, but you as you can see, my articles continue to clog up the forums. The issue is being investigated, but it appears anything posted by staff members might have some kind of immunity against reverting threads to their normal spots. This is not intentional, and the engineers are working on identifying why this is happening.

For more context on why The Spotlight in particular seems popular with spambots, this has been an issue for years. For example, search "Giant Bomb Community Spotlight" on Twitter and be amazed at how many bots retweet these articles. As things stand, we are banning and nuking bots when they appear as soon as possible.

In terms of something you all can do to help the site get back to "normal," I have an idea. As you view this edition of the Spotlight, when you see a blog or thread you find exciting, please, drop a comment in support of that blogger or drop a relevant on-topic reply in the thread. If we can get even a handful of people to do this, the amazing things everyone posted and created will finally return center stage, which is what they deserve in the first place.

Finally, Tamoor ended up guesting on an episode of Nextlander's movie podcast to talk about Demolition Man. To give this podcast a listen, consider joining Nextlander for $10 a month! With that out of the way, let's jump into the Community Spotlight!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we look back at the latest great works from the Giant Bomb Community.

Many thanks to everyone for working through all of the hiccups with the new video player, and if you are still experiencing issues with the player, feel free to drop a comment in the official bug reporting thread. Known issues include videos starting muted, no saved positions are saved, and there is no longer a red progress bar anymore. This is a company-wide video player, but the Fandom engineering team are taking input from the Giant Bomb community in an effort to improve it as best they can. If you wish to have moment-to-moment updates on how the video player is improving, feel free to join the Giant Bomb Discord and drop a comment in the "Site Tech Issues" channel.

For those asking about why the 02/10/2023 UPF archive is not on the site, Jan and company are still getting accustomed to the site's new encoding method and they will have to delay the site archive for a bit. For now, catch the VOD on Twitch. Encoding issues are also the reason why recent features have been slow to hit the site.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the past week. This week seemed to be the week when everyone announced the shuttering of their multiplayer battle royale and/or live service games, but there's plenty to discuss about the site and its incredibly active community.

The site recently debuted a new video player and the site would like your help in ironing out any bugs or site issues! Get the details on what this means, and feel free to share your input in the thread. Some features, such as the Embiggen™ option, are still being reworked, so don't assume that the loss of certain features or options are permanently gone.

Likewise, if you are experiencing issues with the site API, we have a new bug reporting thread for that as well.

The debut of this new video player coincided with other production issues and hiccups throughout the week. Video and audio versions of the latest Power Bombcast should be fixed. Titling and description issues with Game Mess Mornings as well as GMM being broken in the RSS feed should no longer be an issue. With all of this in mind, send some good feelings and thanks to Jan.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Monday morning/afternoon Rorie’s Roundup of things happening on Giant Bomb. I was going to do this weekly but, well, the last couple of weeks have not been great! Sorry for the interruption in service but hopefully I will be able to pick these back up on a weekly basis going forward. Note that Friday Night Forkin' was mistakenly left off the schedule above but it is going forward on Thursday night! And we'll have a Community Co-Op Corner on Friday at 4 PM Pacific!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week. Obviously, the site is still processing the loss of Jess and Jason from last week. As a friendly reminder, it is strongly encouraged you do whatever you can support those impacted by the layoffs that hit Giant Bomb and GameSpot and if you need some help, here are some links:

Giant Bomb

• Jess on Twitch - https://twitch.tv/voidburger
• Jess on Patreon - https://patreon.com/Voidburger
• Jess' Linktree - voidburger.com
• Jason on Twitch - https://twitch.tv/unastrike
• Jason on Twitter - https://twitter.com/unastrike
• Justin on Twitter - https://twitter.com/megaberrycrunch

For those that really took the loss of Jess/Voidburger hard, be aware they were on an episode of noclip's podcast that you can give a listen. If you want to learn more about what they think the future holds for them or what they think of the current state of games journalism, it's a necessary listen.

The Giant Bomb staff are aware that the Programming Schedule & Show Notes on the front page needs to be updated. The good news is that Rorie is hoping to get back to the weekly roundup posts on Mondays going forward.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I am you host, @zombiepie. That first sentence has never been difficult for me to write, but it sure was this week. As most of you already know, Jess and Jason were laid off as part of sweeping layoffs that hit virtually every site in the Fandom network. Other names impacted included Mat Elfring from GameSpot and Justin Vachon who was the Giant Bomb and GameSpot's lead brand designer. Some truly talented and wonderful people who are now gone and that's gut-wrenching.

Jess is an amazing person and highly talented video producer and their absence is a huge loss. She provided endless laughs and smiles as well as a steady supply of Giant Bomb content that got everyone through some incredibly tough times.

Jason has been a rock for the Giant Bomb community and their presence was something to look forward to for nearly ten years. Others have already thanked them for their mentorship and genuine kindness and I will join them.

Mat Elfring is a name that many in Giant Bomb community today may not remember. But, for those that were here long enough to recall the Whiskey Media days, you may recall them being a regular Comic Vine fan prior to rising up to become a face that welcomed you whenever you logged in.

The latest designs from Justin Vachon were amazing and they brought a new sense of freshness to Giant Bomb and GameSpot on the front page and elsewhere. I loved everything they made and wish them and their future endeavors the best.

Support these people.

Hey folks, and welcome to the inaugural issue of what I guess we’ll call the Rorie Roundup for those of you who have some serious time in the GameSpot / Giant Bomb ecosystem. This is intended to be a weekly recap of what’s happening behind the scenes (and sometimes in front of the scenes!) here at Giant Bomb. I chose the picture above because I have been playing a lot of Returnal, which may become a relevant factoid to the Giant Bomb homepage if I finish up something that I'm working on.

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created content from the previous week.

With GOTY now fully in the rearview mirror, which I hope all of you use on a regular basis when driving, the site is getting back into the swing of things. Dan is back after a bad bout of COVID and that means Grubb's torturous journey into the world of Bubsy 3D has returned! There was plenty of news to mull over thanks to Ubisoft, WWE, and Wizards of the Coast, but I am getting ahead of myself, so, let's jump into the site-related housekeeping.

News

Earlier this week several people have reported issues with the site's video player. As seen in the thread, the issue should be largely resolved, but some are still saying there's a little bit of jank when using the video player. For example, one person is saying they still have to *middle-click* (open in new tab) before the normal video will play. If that or any other issues are plaguing your experience on the site, please click the link and file a report.

As mentioned last week, if you are a part of the Giant Bomb Discord and are a premium member, find the comment from Bakalar about Fandom looking to conduct interviews by "Giant Bomb Superfans." Fandom wants YOU to tell them what you'd like to see on the site and why you still enjoy what's going on here.

Welcome to a jam-packed edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight brought to you by the wonderful year of 2023! Your host, as usual, is @zombiepie! After a short break to give everyone plenty of time to enjoy the holidays and the 2022 GOTY staff lists on the site, I'm glad to help usher you into a new year with plenty of community-created goodies.

This edition of the Spotlight is genuinely packed to the gills. So, I'm not going to waste your time this week. All I ask is that to hundreds or thousands of you that read or use this feature, please consider checking out at least one or two of the community-made lists or blogs on the site and tell the author "thank you" or "good job." Let's try to start 2023 on as positive a note as possible.

News

This week was a slow one for Giant Bomb and that's due to a handful of unforeseen circumstances. First, Dan caught COVID and his infection was an especially bad case with him needing to be off camera while recovering. The hope is that all of the normal programs will return during the week of 1/8/2023, which includes the return of Grubsy. Arcade Pit also needed to take a break last week due to unexpected issues.

If you are a part of the Giant Bomb Discord and are a premium member, find the comment from Bakalar about Fandom looking to conduct interviews by "Giant Bomb Superfans." Fandom wants YOU to tell them what you'd like to see on the site and why you still enjoy what's going on here.

Finally, as mentioned during UPF and as part of Jess' Twitter thread commemorating her first full year as a Giant Bomb employee, she's officially engaged with her partner. Feel free to wish the two of them the best in their adventures together.

What’s up my gamers? This year I invited my son to participate in the GOTY fun because there’s no one to tell me I can’t. That’s right folks! Nepotism, babyeeeeee!

In reality, his opinion is of increasing relevance, where mine is just… also here.

So let me get my list out of the way so that we can take a look at his, which was hand-written and scanned for your viewing pleasure.

10. NORCO

Wow, a point-and-click game that had me engaged in the year 2022. What kind of ass-backwards bizarro world are we living in? NORCO had its hooks in me out of the gate, because that game gets down to business immediately and drops interesting exposition from the second you hit start.

Plus, I’m a sucker for retrofuturism and robots– mostly because I’m a shallow one-dimensional idiot and only one flavor of cyberpunk dystopia speaks to me anymore.

10. Evil West

So you hit the punch button and hold it down to launch the enemy, then you jump up and Superman-punch them into an environmental hazard–killing them. Then, you’ll lasso the tick in front of you, drag them in, punch, Superman, repeat… this all feels pretty good.

Hey all, 2022, huh? I cannot lie: this one was a rough one! We said goodbye to Jeff Gerstmann, we got sold to the fourth company that has owned Giant Bomb while we were still trying to figure out how to extricate ourselves technologically from the second company that has owned us, and Jesus Christ those fucking shirts. Editorially things are going well, but from a behind the scenes point of view, it’s definitely been a lot of lurching from emergency to emergency. Combine that with taking maybe 3 days off all year long, and you have a recipe for limping across the finish line of 2022! And as soon as 2023 starts, we get to do it all over with Fandom! So far they have been a very fun company to work for, but I can't stress enough that switching to whole new HR/benefits/expense reporting/contractor systems has been A LOT to deal with lately. Working on it! Gonna get that store back up as soon as I can in 2023!

Baby’s second GOTY at Giant Bomb! Wow! It’s happening!

Honorable Mention: Save Room

Hey man, this is cute. It’s a bunch of puzzles based on the Resident Evil 4 briefcase inventory system. It’s a bunch of em, it’s cheap, it’s something I didn’t know I wanted so bad, but I did.

Honorable Mention: Tinykin

If you take Pikmin and Chibi Robo and subtract the time limits and stress, you get Tinykin. It's a really lovely game with tight controls and satisfying collectibles. It also manages to have rather sprawling levels that don’t feel overwhelming, due to its usage of speedy and logical traversal via silkworm rail grinds. Each level has a great sense of momentum and a flow that just feels good. It’s a bit shorter than I was hoping – about 6 hours – but it was a very pleasant time overall!

I’ve never written a Giant Bomb top 10, but I’ve definitely always taken inspiration from the many lists I’ve read on the site over the years. It’s always a strong reminder that game tastes are varied and also that more stuff comes out than any one person could ever play. With that in mind, I’d like to give you a snapshot of my year with 10 or so games that were great for me.

10. Mario Strikers: Battle League

I know a lot of people weren’t happy with Mario Strikers, but the game had almost everything I needed from it. Very few people complain about the mechanics of recent Mario sports games because, on that front, they are almost always solid. And in the case of Mario Strikers, the core soccer (or strikers, as it’s called) action is nonstop fun with space for strategy and mayhem. I wish it had better online support, but it’s still one of the best sports games of the year.

You know what’s wild? This whole year! I’ll spare you the whole spiel about the ups and downs, but here are a couple big milestones for me this year:

• Hit five years at Giant Bomb, this is officially the longest job I’ve ever had!
• I am the host of the Giant Bombcast
• My partner and I have a dog now!

From the bottom of my heart I want to thank y’all, the community. Whether or not you’re premium, whether you only watch older videos, whether you’ve been here from the start or for a little bit, or whether or not you occasionally check in from time to time; thank you. You all are the reason we can keep doing this. We’ll always make sure that you have a little home at the little corner of the internet.

Also wanted to give an additional shout out to the following homies: Jean-Luc, Matt Shipman, Evil Uno, Broadway Alex, Justin Vachon, Mike Minotti, Jesse Vitelli, Kam and Nate, all of the GB staff, Abby, Ben, Michael Higham, my partner, and last but not least Dave Bautista.

Now for the list:

10. Immortality

It's the time of the year when everyone reveals the games they love the most from the past 12 months. Naturally, this comes in the form of articles where they eloquently write about what each game stirred in them and why they believe it will be remembered for years to come.

I will not be doing that.

I have written extensively about each of the games in my list on the internet, so if you want to read what I have to say about them, you're just a Google search away. This is Giant Bomb and, somehow, I’m now a member of the team. Before we carry on I just want to highlight how unbelievable that statement is—it would give young me an actual breakdown. I always dreamed of working at GameSpot, but Giant Bomb felt so out of reach that I didn’t even let myself fantasize about it. I can’t express how wild it is that I’m now here, doing a list as a member of the Giant Bomb team. And that means I can express how I feel about the games on this list how I want, because this is Giant Bomb, baby! AND I AM ON THE TEAM.

Anyways, I have chosen to do my list through the beloved medium of gifs (not pronounced jiff, eat my ass gif maker person that keeps saying otherwise, you’ll never convince us). Not just any gifs, though: anime GIFs.

Anime is a wonderful medium that has made me feel all kinds of things. For every game, there is an emotion; for every emotion, there is an anime; and for every anime, there is a gif. Enjoy.

Wow, it’s my first ever Game of the Year list on Giant Bomb dot com! I’m equal parts honored and intimidated* to write one of these, partly because I don’t really like to be perceived and partly because 2022 has been an absolutely cracking year for games, and it was very hard to choose a top ten.

This year has been a whirlwind, simultaneously going by in the blink of an eye (it feels like yesterday Tam, Jan, and I were shooting Summer Game Fest vlogs on the mean streets of LA) and dragging its feet (I’m specifically calling out the slug days between December 19 and 22). Time may not have any meaning any more, but if there’s one thing I’m proud of this year, it’s that I can finally call myself a member of Giant Bomb (instead of a brandmate), and I can’t wait for all the fun and weirdness that 2023 will undoubtedly bring.

Here’s my list!

10. Stray

I have a cat. I spend a lot of time talking to my cat, taking cute pictures of my cat, and taking my cat to the vet (it’s not her fault, she has hot girl tummy problems). So yes, the cat game has squeaked onto my top ten. I thought it was adorable, and also gave me this very funny video of Peanut.

As I sat down to write this, I realized that this marks a decade of putting together my yearly top ten list for Giant Bomb. That includes a few years before I started working here, a few years after I left, and now—hey, I’m back! And as usual, my list is a mix of bigass AAA games and fun indie stuff. I guess the throughline for all of them is that they’re games where you do a bunch of shit instead of listen to or read a bunch of shit. Anyway, here’s my ten!

10. Cult of the Lamb

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we ease into the Christmas weekend. Despite the site rounding off its GOTY content last week, we have plenty of community-made goodies for you to enjoy. For one thing, we have a slate of GOTY blogs and lists from your fellow community members that are all worth a read while you wait for the staff to come back from break. Speaking of which, we have a handful of news items that are incredibly important, so, let's get into it now!

News

In case you missed it last week, here's a link to the VODs for Giant Bomb's video coverage of GOTY:

• Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2022: Day 1
• Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2022: Day 2
• Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2022: Day 3

Community 2022 GOTY voting has begun as well. If you experience any issues with community voting, feel free to drop a comment in the bug reporting thread. Likewise, we now have a thread where you can post and embed any of your 2022 GOTY lists! Feel free to post and discuss what you have on the site if it is any way shape or form connected to GOTY.

Welcome to a very GOTY-themed edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the week. As said in the introduction, this week is all about surfacing staff and community GOTY goodness. If you or someone you know posted a GOTY list or blog that I missed, feel free to drop a link to it in the comments and I promise to get it on the next Community Spotlight! With that in mind, let's get into it.

News

Obviously, the big news is that the site dropped three days worth of GOTY content last week for everyone to watch and enjoy. If you somehow managed to miss these streams, here are the archives:

• Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2022: Day 1
• Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2022: Day 2
• Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2022: Day 3

Community 2022 GOTY voting has begun as well! If you feel like diverge from the staff in their final rankings of games released in 2022, then send in a vote for the community pick. If you have any questions about voting or experience any issues or bugs when trying to send in your vote, here's the thread for that. In general, don't worry about games that came out in previous years or were only in Early Access. If you liked it, vote for it.

Pictured: What many are calling a lock for GOTY???!?!