Not even close

Okay, so this might be easier to put out if I don't try to make it into something. Apologies if it makes little sense.

As he was, so he shall be

Tuesday July 14 2009 - I think that's the first Giant Bombcast I listened to. It was about California Extreme, and I had just returned home from a year in Paris. In my final few weeks there, I was reading up on Jeff Gerstmann, and found out that the whole Gamespot thing had happened, and that Giant Bomb was a new site he had founded with a bunch of other ex-Gamespot staffers, including one Ryan Davis. I had no idea who Ryan Davis was.

Today that seems like such an alien idea.


Since that Tuesday, I have listened to every single Giant Bombcast that has been released. In the few years of my life where a lot of things started to make a lot less sense, every week I could count on one thing: a place in time where I could stop for a few hours and listen to a bunch of people talk about games. A bunch of people who soon became weirdly like a group of friends, only who didn't know me.

I still think that listening to the Giant Bombcast turned me into a better listener overall. Unable to ever chime in or contribute, I learned to better stop and pay attention to what people were saying. Isn't that stupid? I think I'm really stupid.

Through Giant Bomb, I started to learn about the industry from the inside. I came to know of people like John Drake at Harmonix, and John Vignocchi at Disney Interactive. I learned of people not called John, too, like Leigh Alexander. For a website that didn't ever aim to be the most informative, Giant Bomb taught me a ton. Now, as I'm finding my feet in the industry myself, I'm ever grateful for Ryan and the rest of the team. I simply wouldn't be here without them. In the last year, I have met a few of the crew, and was fortunate enough to pitch them a question at their most recent PAX East Panel. I think Ryan shot me down. I am honored to have been so lucky.

Today the website is still here, but one of its founding members is not.

I'm not even that involved with the GB community. I used to post a bit on the forums, but not enough to be anyone of note. The weird thing is that this seems to be true of so many. So, so many people today are talking about how much they love the site. Other writers, other journalists at other game websites are talking about how great the site is. It was only in the last year or two that I got to realize how popular it was, to be honest. Giant Bomb always felt small. It felt local.

Today I feel like I lost a friend. And we were not even close.