Clownfish TV: Audio Edition
IGN Shuts It All Down?! More Gaming Journos Laid Off!
IGN bought Dicebreaker a few weeks ago, and is shutting the whole thing down already. This means more (tabletop) gaming journalists are getting laid off. But it won’t stop there. Blogs are dying weekly thanks to Google AI search. And the salt will flow... ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 The gaming journalism industry is facing layoffs and closures due to low ad rates and a lack of profitability, leading to uncertainty for journalists and potential rebranding of gaming journalism websites. 00:00 IGN’s acquisition of Dicebreaker leads to shutdown and layoffs, as low ad rates cause websites to close and journalists to lose jobs, with increased attacks on YouTube, podcasters, and fans expected. 02:35 Gaming journalists facing layoffs and controversy due to clickbait tactics on YouTube. 04:14 IGN Entertainment shut down several gaming websites, including a tabletop gaming site, possibly due to lack of profitability, but Dungeons and Discourse is recommended for tabletop gaming news. 06:16 IGN buys and shuts down Dice Breaker, leading to layoffs for gaming journalists due to decreased ad revenue. 08:57 Geek journalism jobs are scarce as digital media outlets focus on profitable topics, leading to layoffs and potential rebranding of gaming journalism websites like IGN. 11:12 IGN shutting down, laying off gaming journalists, YouTube channel inactive for 3 weeks, Dice Breakers struggling to monetize due to low ad rates during pandemic. 13:16 IGN’s board game journalism site shuts down, leaving a gap in industry reporting, while questionable decisions by Wizards of the Coast and new D&D classes are discussed. 16:09 Interest in nerd culture is declining due to mishandling of franchises by corporations, leading to layoffs in gaming journalism, but the speaker remains committed. About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer’s point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Games #TTRPG #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech
The world's most exciting podcast, "Home of Borders, Language, Culture," and here he is, New York Times' best-selling author and National Radio Hall of Fame inductee Michael Savage. I'm Michael Savage, host of the Savage Nation podcast, "Home of Borders, Language, and Culture." Be here, or be nowhere, the Savage Nation podcast. Catch the Michael Savage podcast on all podcast platforms every Tuesday and every Friday. Hey guys, this is the audio edition of Clownfish TV. If you guys are unfamiliar with Clownfish TV, please check out the video versions of these episodes on the Clownfish TV YouTube channel and also on the Clownfish Gaming YouTube channel. Please subscribe for more podcasts. Check out D-Res, that's our other podcast. The episode will begin in a couple of seconds. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) Hey guys, welcome back to Clownfish TV. This is neon. I am not here with geeky sparkles in this video, but I'm gonna talk about gaming journalist getting laid off. Now, not those gaming journalists. We're gonna talk about tabletop gaming journalist getting laid off. It has come to my attention that Dice Breaker is shutting down. Dice Breaker is a pretty well known tabletop, role-playing game fan, website, news organization, media outlet, what have you. They got gobbled up by IGN about a month ago, exactly a month ago. And they're already laying people off. I think we're gonna see a lot of this happening this year, a lot of this happening this year because I can tell you as someone who owns multiple websites, the ad rates are the worst they've been in 15, 20 years. They're absolutely terrible. And a lot of these websites were just kind of eaten by to begin with. Some of them were being propped up with venture capital. You know, a lot of media organizations would go out and buy more websites to add to their portfolio. So they had the proper vertical of websites, whether it's like, you know, gaming or entertainment or politics or whatever it is, you know what I'm saying. And all that venture capital is run out. And Google has tossed a hand grenade into search. Now Google is giving you AI-generated snippets and a lot of people are not scrolling beyond that. They get their answer at the top of the page and that is it. And they don't care. They don't care where it comes from. They're not gonna click out to your website. They do not care. So we're gonna talk about this. There's gonna be a lot of vitriol. There's gonna be a lot of blaming. There's gonna be a lot in... Look, it's been going on for the last couple of years now, but geek journalists are losing their jobs in droves. You know, entertainment journalists are probably the most disposable in the field right now. And they always kind of have been. This is coming from somebody who started as a journalist, right? So I can say this. Entertainment journalists are usually the first ones to get cut. And we're gonna see a lot of these websites shut down this year into next year. And we've seen so many shut down already and it's gonna get really, really bad. And they're going to ramp up attacks on YouTubers. They're gonna ramp up attacks on podcasters. They're gonna ramp up attacks on fans. Some of them, not all of them. Some of them are okay. Some of them aren't completely unhinged, but I think there's a lot of jealousy, anger, resentment, bitterness, a lot of these people, I think, thought that they were gonna work at these outlets forever and retire with a watch. And I don't know what planet you've been living on, but that has never been the case in content creation. But, yeah, it's nice to dream, I guess. We're gonna talk about this. And just everything is completely upended and people are going to start eating each other. And we're already seeing it. Lots of people fighting. Social media is a disaster right now. Fandoms are a disaster right now. We did a video talking about Star Wars fandom yesterday and it's just like God. And I think a lot of it is being magnified, exacerbated by the stress of this scene right now for a lot of people. They're not gonna be working in fan content and they hate YouTubers. They do, they hate people like us. And it's not just because of what we say. A lot of them don't even know what's in our videos. They just don't like our thumbnails. Like seriously, I've gotten into it with people before. I'm like, okay, so what about the video, didn't you like? Well, your thumbnail and your description, I'm like, yeah, but what about the video? Did you watch the video? Because sometimes you just gotta play the YouTube game to get attention. But it doesn't mean that's actually what's in the video. I'm just saying, if you were good at this, you wouldn't understand it. But anyway, we're gonna talk about this. Just the whole damn thing is imploding at this point. So before you're into it any further, and I've gotten into it pretty far already, please subscribe for more pop culture, news, views and rants. Yeah, so just to walk it back to May of this year, gamesindustry.biz, VG 24/7, Eurogamer, rock, paper, shotgun, and dice breaker got acquired by IGN Entertainment. They were all part of the gamer network. And we have other groups out there, gamers group and whatever group that giant bomb belonged to that was owned by Paramount. They got sold off dirt cheap. And people knew that layoffs were probably coming. I don't think they thought they were gonna come this quickly. And I'm honestly surprised that dice breaker is one of the first sites that they shut down because there aren't a lot of dedicated tabletop gaming websites out there. They really aren't compared to video game sites. Now, it could be because tabletop gaming has a fraction of the audience that video games have. But it is surprising that this was kind of a unique thing and you guys are choosing that one to shut down first. I mean, they do cover tabletop games on other websites, ICV2 covers the business side of it. But I don't think there were a lot of sites out there that cover the fan side of it so much. Maybe it's just not profitable. Maybe they're not getting enough views. Maybe tabletop gaming has become D&D for so many people. And I have to give a hat tip to Michael Hovermail who told me about this. He actually watched a video by Dungeons and Discourse and I highly recommend her channel. She does very, very good work. She does more polished stuff than I do. I just react to news as it happens and it's not just tabletop gaming, but she does all tabletop gaming and she's very good at it. And it's a very good channel. So I definitely recommend that one if you're interested in more tabletop news. But Michael is actually working with us on Adventure Engine. Michael and his company, they're working with us on Adventure Engine. We've been working on it for about a year and a half. I wanna say year and a half, maybe two years. We've been kind of back and forth. It's been slow going. We both have things going on in the real world and with other business obligations. But yeah, we're kind of just creating our own system and it's not gonna be OSR. This one's not OSR. I think that the hovermails are working on something that's more in line with more traditional tabletop but on their own. But the one that we're working on together is Adventure Engine. And it is kind of, I guess, an idealized version from where I'm sitting of what people think D&D is, but it actually isn't. Now what we're not gonna be doing is a lot of theater kids stuff. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. There's some craziness going on in D&D. But yeah, we're gonna be launching this. God, maybe a year from now? I don't know, next year, probably next year or sometime. We're play testing right now. But I'm encouraged. I think a lot of people are gonna like this. Again, I have no illusions about competing with Hasbro, mega conglomerate Hasbro. But I would be thrilled if we had a few thousand people playing this game system. So we'll see what happens. Anyway, let's talk about this. Yeah, so IGN bot Dice Breaker. They're shutting it down already. I don't know where the news broke. It might have broke on Reddit. But here are some of the tweets. This has come from Matt Jarvis, the EIC. He said, "Unfortunately, I am being made redundant following the recent gamer network IGN buyout and will no longer be the EIC of Dice Breaker after this week." The good news is that means I can come work for you full-time or freelance ops, all of interest, thread for the rundown. Wow, that's kind of like, I mean, I admire his Moxie. I admire his willingness to put himself out there. But like a lot of people I'm seeing it in the animation industry and in comics, they're like, "Hey, I'm looking for work. I'm looking for work on social media," which I would hire some people, some more people. But we had to lay people off. And it killed me to do it, but the ad revenue is just not there. We're down to just a couple of writers, and they're the writers that have been with us pretty much since the beginning. And we had to lay some other writers off, and I hated doing it, but it is what it is, right? This is Alex Mahin, Mahin, senior staff. I am being made redundant for my role as senior staff writer for Dice Breaker as of this week. It's devastatingly sad to say goodbye to the best stage of my life yet, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, unfortunately, this is very, very common. I don't know where a lot of these people are gonna go. I'm gonna be honest. I think that geek journalism jobs, whether it's video games or comic books or movies or whatever, I think they're fewer and further between, now because a lot of digital media outlets are focusing on things they think makes them more money. And that would be politics, world news, whatever SEO clickbait they're chasing after, and not necessarily geek stuff, right? Cat's out of the bag now, says wheels. So might as well announce that I've also been made redundant. Geez, no idea what IGM will do with the brand in the future, but if you haven't already been able to tell from the multiple layoffs, Dice Breaker, as you knew it is no more. Yeah, sometimes they just buy the domain. That's the truth. Sometimes a company will come in and they will just buy the domain and that is all she wrote. They'll turn it into something else. They'll turn it into like a Shopify store or something. You can buy dice, I don't know. This is coming from board game and wire. Dice Breaker's future remains unclear as silenced site makes editor and chief senior staff writer redundant after IGM takeover. Read the full story here. This was like a week ago. Let's go out to this one from board game wire. Dice Breaker's future remains unclear as silenced site makes editor and chief senior staff writer redundant update 61324. Dice Breaker had a video, Michael Whelan and video producer Liv Kennedy have also confirmed they've been made redundant. Site's final permit staff writer, video producer Maddie Cullen has not commented on her own job status, but Kennedy tweeted on June 13th to say that Dice Breaker was over. There's been no official update from IGM about the redundancies or the site's future. Board Game News website, Dice Breaker has made its editor and chief and senior staff writer redundant following three weeks of silence on the website and wake of its parent company's takeover by IGM. Jarvis, who has been the EIC almost since the inception of the site in 2019 email contributors today to announce that his last day will be Friday and to apologize for his unavailability during his redundancy process, saying he's been as frustrated as you with the silence. Mahin, Mahin, Mahin, took to Twitter today in the wake of Jarvis's announcement to confirm she'd been made redundant. Site's YouTube channel, which has 108,000 subscribers, has received no new uploads in the past three weeks. Let's go out and see if they've got anything. This is about a week ago. - Nope, looks like a month ago is last time they updated. - Yeah, IGM's just killing these websites 'cause it's competition, right? 'Cause you can go to IGM for game news. So, Dice Breaker's launch in 2019 was something of a watershed moment for the tabletop game industry. Okay, so that's interesting. I thought Dice Breaker was around longer than that. That's, we're on the five year mark and that's usually when companies decide whether to commit to the bit as they say or pull the plug on the business endeavor. And they had the unfortunate timing of getting sold now when the ad rates are at a historic low. So, there really isn't any incentive to keep the site and business. I'm sure they were making pretty good money during the pandemic. A lot of people were making really good money online during the pandemic and those days were over. I mean, we had two or three years where ad rates were the highest I've ever seen them. Like, they were through the roof and then it just all crashed. I mean, it crashed hard. I can't even tell you guys. I mean, we lost, I wanna say 90% of our banner ad revenue on our websites. It was bad and it's still in decline. Like, everybody's scrambling trying to find a way to monetize blogs. And I don't know if there really is a good way to do it other than like sub stack, you know, do it individually. A site has been one of the vanishingly few board game journalist outlets whose reporting goes beyond new game announcements and reviews. Something that board game wire believes is hugely important for an industry which has quickly grown from a relatively small niche hobby into a multi-billion dollar sector. And that's why everything's getting so damn weird. I just added that. Articles published on the site that otherwise may not have seen the light of day include an exposive alleged toxic workplace culture, investigation into the impact of Twitter's decline on tabletop creators. The reporting of a wave of redundancies at Dark Souls and Elin Ring board game maker, Steamforged. Yeah, so they have a new website, Carter, I guess, was the one who, oh yeah. And Lynne Codega, who I'm familiar with from Polygon, I think, was one from Polygon who got into it with Hasbro over Wizards of the Coast. So yeah, I mean, it's just like, I don't know, man. It feels like, I mean, it feels like in some level that tabletop is bigger than it's ever been, but also feels like we're kind of on the other side of it. Like it's starting to contract again. Like we hit peak critical role. And then Wizards of the Coast blew itself up. They got greedy during the pandemic. And now they're just making some very, very questionable decisions like this one to finally give people a mini to celebrate the 50th of the warrior from the cover of the basics set, which is the first D&D set I grew up playing. But I do not believe the warrior was a thick, brown skinned woman at all. I mean, it's very clear. This is a dude. It's very clear. This is a dude. This is a white dude with heavy metal hair. It was the early 80s, you know? But yeah, they've got that going on in all the AI controversy and this nonsense too. Like, what is going on? I had to look into this and again, the hat tip to Michael Hovermail talking about the new classes and was it? Is it 60, the 2024 edition? Are we calling it like 5.5e? But apparently you can have dance offs if you're a bard. D&D gives new bard subclass. Our last second nerf. The College of Dance gives D&D bard players an entirely new, soundless art form to try out. As you might guess, this D&D bard subclass is all about movement, unless you dance around making unarmed attacks while being very hard to hit yourself as both your dexterity and charisma modifiers get added to your AC. Wasn't this in Jumanji? Didn't Amy Pond dance fight the bad guys? Oh god, D&D's so silly right now, it's so silly. But yeah, I think that people are losing interest in D&D because it's so silly. It's not the game that they're playing in Stranger Things. I think it had a boost in popularity from Stranger Things and from Critical Role and Critical Role went out and they're doing their own thing right now and that's got some mixed reactions, I guess. And I don't know, I think we're, I think really at the end of it and I'm gonna kinda go off here a little bit on a tangent which I tend to do. But I've been thinking a lot about it and I think we basically were at the other side of like peak mainstream nerd culture, right? I think we had about 10 or 12 years where it was cool to be a geek. It was cool to be in the comic books. It was cool to be in the Star Wars. It was cool to be in the tabletop. And all of these things kinda got ruined by Hollywood and corporations because they were all chasing, chasing that money. They're like, "Well, D&D's hot right now, Star Wars. "We gotta buy Star Wars. "Oh, we gotta, you know, "glam up the nerd prom shit." And we're on the other side of that now. I think that we're gonna see a massive contraction in everything, in video games and tabletop in, you know, nerd movies. I guess what you would call nerd movies, nerd TV, all this stuff. I think we're gonna see a massive contraction because the general public I think is over it and a lot of old school nerds are also over it. They're done. They're walking away from these franchises because corporations came in and they nerfed a lot of the franchises. They took away what made these franchises special. Chasing money, you know, mythical money. They thought, "Well, if a bunch of smelly old white dudes "you know, like this thing, well, if we change it, "we'll get the smelly old white dudes "and we'll get this whole new audience." And it didn't work out that way. They basically have all these legacy franchises that are in a lot of ways, pass their expiration date. They've been handled badly and I don't know if you can go back. In the case of Star Wars again, like, I don't think you can go back. I think it's done, you know, it's cooked, it's over. But I think we're gonna see this with a lot of other stuff too. I think Dungeons and Dragons definitely a lot of players have moved on. The hardcore players have moved on. A lot of them just never bothered buying five E books to begin with where they're just playing homebrew. I think we're gonna see it in the video games. We're gonna see, you know, people going back to older games and playing indie titles and we're just gonna see a massive contraction. It's not gonna be as cool to be a geek again. And that's okay. I think it's all right. I think that's how things actually get fixed. I think it's basically gonna be four geeks by geeks again and we're not gonna have all these corporations and Hollywood studios and, you know, fake geeks. Not gonna say fake geek girls 'cause I'd met plenty of fake geek guys too. I don't think we're gonna have as many fake geeks in this space as we did, but there's not gonna be as much money in it either. You know, so you're not gonna need a bunch of websites to cover industries that are in decline or that are, you know, people aren't searching for a whole bunch of information on Star Wars or tabletop games or whatever because they've checked out, you know, they moved on. And that's what I think is actually going on. So we're gonna see a lot of these sites implode, I think, comics especially, like nobody cares about comic books, the industry anymore. I'm not saying nobody cares about comics or nobody's reading comics, but like nobody cares about the comic book industry anymore. They just don't. It's like we peaked, it's over for the most part. The general public, isn't it? You're not making new comic book readers. Kids aren't reading comics. Kids aren't watching Star Wars. Kids, I don't know if kids are even getting into Dungeons and Dragons anymore. I mean, they might've for a while because of Stranger Things, but then they got into it and they were like, "Damn, this is weird or damn, this is expensive." It's a very expensive hobby. So, you know, I don't know guys, we'll see. We'll see what happens, but there we go. We're gonna see a lot of this. We're gonna see a lot of salt. We're gonna see a lot of blame. They're gonna blame people like us. And I'm sorry, I am. I am sorry, but, you know, we're gonna stay the course as long as we can. I'm gonna wrap it up. Please subscribe. We'll talk later. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Thanks again for listening. More news and videos are available on our website at www.clownfishtv.com and on our YouTube channel, ClownfishTV. You can buy official merchandise, clownfish, comic books and more at shopclownfish.com. If you like this show, please consider subscribing and leaving us a positive review on iTunes and other podcast platforms. If you're looking to help support this show financially, go to clownfishsupport.com. If you'd like to sponsor an episode of this show, send us an email at business@webrief.io. This podcast is a production of clownfish studios, LLC and webrief media proudly made in Pittsburgh, USA. - Big o' tires, biggest Black Friday sale is here. For a limited time, get unbeatable savings on the tire brands you know and trust. Plus savings on brakes, oil changes, air filters and more. All with multiple financing options tailored to you. These savings won't last. Make an appointment online at bigotires.com or stop by one of your locally owned and operated Greater Colorado Springs Big O Tires today. Big O Black Friday savings going on now. Big O Tires, the team you trust. - How much do you guys know about the things flying around in the sky under the ocean? I didn't know anything about it. I found a thing on National Geographic called UFOs, exploring the unknown of five part series and I was hooked. I started paying attention to the hearings, the fact that the Senate majority leader is asking for a UFO disclosure and none of the mainstream media is covering it. Well, Monday through Friday on my show, I try to cover all the stuff going on in the world of the UFO UAP phenomenon. Check it out, be educated. I ain't asking you to believe in all of this other stuff about what people are theorizing. I'm just telling you to ask questions. So come on over, ask some questions, be part of Down to Earth with Christian Harlow. [BLANK_AUDIO]