Giant Bombcast Let's Talk About Memberships!

[0] Hey, folks.

[1] I'm Ryan Davis from Giant Bomb, and I am joined here today by Jeff Gerstman, also from Giant Bomb.

[2] Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstman from Giant Bomb.

[3] As well as your friend and mine, Whiskey Media's own Dave Snyder.

[4] Dave.

[5] I'm not a Giant Bomb, too.

[6] Well, you're a bigger man. Oh.

[7] It's your Whiskey Media status is why you're here with us today.

[8] That's right.

[9] We're not talking about PC quick looks?

[10] No, we're not.

[11] We're not talking about obscure Russian weird strategy games.

[12] We're here to talk about Whiskey Media.

[13] And so listeners at home, you may know about this Thursday we are doing our Big Live Live show live.

[14] And that is to kick off the new Whiskey Media membership program.

[15] And we just wanted to sit down here and the three of us kind of talk about...

[16] what that's going to entail, what that's going to get you, and kind of what that means for Giant Bomb and Tested and Screened and Comic -Fi and the rest of the Whiskey Media family of what you're going to get going forward.

[17] No more board leaks?

[18] I can't leak anything more on the boards?

[19] It'll all be out there.

[20] I've got like a day left.

[21] I can just sit there.

[22] This is an audio board leak.

[23] Did you guys see, by the way, where people saw the Wings and Halo stuff?

[24] I didn't actually see.

[25] I couldn't find that, but you told me it happened.

[26] All right.

[27] So one of the features was, of course, like people were, you know, hey, what bobble do I get?

[28] A pretty shiny internet thing.

[29] And you know what?

[30] Yeah.

[31] I think everybody probably wants a shiny bobble.

[32] Yeah.

[33] I like pretty things.

[34] They're just normal.

[35] You just jangle my keys in front of me, I get excited.

[36] Wait, if I subscribe, I get jangly keys?

[37] Yes.

[38] I will come and jangle your keys.

[39] Oh, great.

[40] My keys should use a good jangling.

[41] What are we even talking about?

[42] All right, let's get back on message here.

[43] Hey, folks, I'm Ryan Davis from Giant Bomb.

[44] This is on message.

[45] Yeah, this is.

[46] All right.

[47] I'm sorry.

[48] So continue with showing people the – So the original idea was like, hey, I'm going to give – like we'll put wings and a halo on somebody.

[49] Right.

[50] Because it's like, hey, you're an angel.

[51] Right.

[52] Thank you.

[53] This is just me being fucking sappy is basically.

[54] It's like, oh, yeah.

[55] They're like fucking – yeah, it's angels.

[56] They're helping us out.

[57] Then, of course, our Czech programmer, Honza.

[58] Yeah.

[59] Pushes out the code but forgot to deploy the CSS.

[60] Mm -hmm.

[61] So all of the code goes out for like probably like 10 minutes.

[62] Yeah.

[63] Where randomly these wings and halos are showing up all over the site.

[64] So no rhyme or reason.

[65] It's not like for anybody.

[66] It's just like, oh, sometimes it's showing up.

[67] Yeah, no, it just showed up on everybody's avatar.

[68] So, of course, broken, whatever.

[69] But then people are – everybody's like, oh, that's probably for the subscription stuff, which it was.

[70] Mm -hmm.

[71] But at the same time, it was very good that it went out because then I saw people say, oh, this is for the subscription stuff, but I don't want to look like I'm dead.

[72] Yes.

[73] Why would I want to look like I'm dead with wings and halos?

[74] Right.

[75] Thanks for subscribing.

[76] We're going to kill you.

[77] Your avatar is now dead.

[78] We have your credit card information so we can find you.

[79] I'd like to talk here just about...

[80] Well, what are they going to be?

[81] I mean, they're not that anymore, right?

[82] So now I've got medals.

[83] Medals.

[84] Like Olympic medals.

[85] I don't know.

[86] Gold medals.

[87] It's more like...

[88] I tried to look at Call of Duty prestige stuff because I was like, people go nuts over stuff like that.

[89] But anyways, I need to get it somehow over the Avatar just a little bit.

[90] So I ended up going with these.

[91] that have the little giant bomb guy on giant bomb.

[92] Or if you're on screen, it's got the eyeball or all that kind of crazy stuff.

[93] So if you have a head for your avatar, it looks like he's wearing a little metal.

[94] Yeah.

[95] In fact, most people have heads.

[96] Is that weird?

[97] No, it's not weird.

[98] That's why the wings worked.

[99] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[100] Outside of being dead.

[101] Well, the wings didn't look like angel wings.

[102] They looked like cool...

[103] They're like cool wings.

[104] It looked like Prophecy Christopher Walken wings.

[105] You might start a Team Fortress 2 clan with those wings.

[106] That's my favorite N64 game, Cool Wings.

[107] Cool Wings.

[108] So, I mean, let's talk a little bit about, like, why we're launching this membership program because I think that's...

[109] That helps make the rest of like what we're doing and what you're going to get from this membership program as a user.

[110] I think that helps it make a little bit more sense.

[111] So like Dave, to you philosophically, like what's the big picture reason of why are we doing this membership program?

[112] To me, like the reason that sites do this kind of stuff, why specifically we're doing it is that you basically – the internet, you've got a couple different ways to make money.

[113] You've got advertising.

[114] Yeah.

[115] You've got subscription.

[116] You've got partnerships where you farm out and sell your content, where content that we make shows up on other sites and things like that.

[117] And for us to stay truly, truly, truly independent, the best way for us is to at least get a portion of our revenue from our user base.

[118] Yeah.

[119] I mean, it's a period.

[120] It's that sort of blunt.

[121] To me, in a way, it's like working with you guys out there in membership land to buy our collective freedom.

[122] It's buying the freedom from advertising, freedom from engineers spending more time developing fun new ways to market things as opposed to fun new features that actually make websites better.

[123] uh, instead of worse.

[124] Absolutely.

[125] Like I, I would rather be in business with our users like that.

[126] I couldn't think of a more awesome business partner to have than the people that use the site because we all have exactly the same interests in mind.

[127] And, uh, and that makes kind of that, that, uh, that momentum that much easier to, to keep and maintain for, uh, for someone as, as small and independent as, uh, as Janet Baum and whiskey media.

[128] So.

[129] And for engineers or designers, you're spending, you know, basically you're splitting up your day in three different ways.

[130] You're either spending it on some way to try and do some revenue -based thing, whether that's putting Amazon, you know, buttons on your pages or dealing with ad technology or building, you know, weird API hooks that other people can do.

[131] And you're building features.

[132] That's a part of it.

[133] You know.

[134] I'd rather work on features.

[135] There you go.

[136] Personally.

[137] I mean, we're still going to always have to do stuff, but it makes everything a lot easier when you know that you have a portion of your user base that's going to fund things because then you can build towards them.

[138] So let's talk about what these features are, what it is that folks are going to get on our different membership levels here, Dave.

[139] So the biggest stuff, probably to me the most significant thing is we rebuilt the entire site to be mobile compatible.

[140] Right.

[141] So HTML5, we re -encoded all the videos.

[142] All the problems that people had with the actual live site on their smartphones.

[143] They couldn't post on the boards.

[144] They couldn't get a lot of the JavaScript stuff to work.

[145] And, of course, you're zooming and zooming forever.

[146] Double tap, double tap, double tap.

[147] Turn it sideways.

[148] I'm not the best concise designer in the world.

[149] I don't know if you guys have noticed that.

[150] I like to put a gazillion links on a page.

[151] You told me week one, you said, I like long pages.

[152] I was like, this is going to be awesome because I like long pages.

[153] I also hate making people have to click, click, click.

[154] So for the mobile stuff, we've basically redone, I mean, everything.

[155] And not just Giant Bomb.

[156] We did it for Screen.

[157] We did it for Tested, for all the sites.

[158] And everything just works now.

[159] Mike even made it yesterday so that you can do all your quests.

[160] Through the mobile site.

[161] Oh, cool.

[162] That's awesome.

[163] You can just browse around.

[164] Like, it'll all work.

[165] We've got you fuckers.

[166] You can't get away from our quests now.

[167] Well, wait.

[168] Why don't we make mobile -only quests?

[169] No. That'll just piss people off.

[170] Yeah, I know.

[171] I know.

[172] So.

[173] Just to be clear, we have two different levels of membership here.

[174] We have a monthly and we have an annual, and there's going to be some significant differences between what you're going to get on those levels, correct?

[175] The main difference is the yearly membership.

[176] I'm sorry there.

[177] We are offering a T -shirt.

[178] Our little custom t -shirt made by one and only BuzzClick as normal.

[179] Yes.

[180] It's an awesome shirt design for sure.

[181] I like it.

[182] It's actually pretty sweet.

[183] Dude keeps it down.

[184] And you're barfing.

[185] You've shown up dead in a previous t -shirt.

[186] Now you're...

[187] Yeah, no, I throw up and die on shirts.

[188] That's pretty much my job.

[189] Or you get starry eyes.

[190] I like that too.

[191] That was the early one.

[192] Yeah.

[193] So for the yearly account, you'll get a t -shirt and you get no ads.

[194] And so the reason we made the yearly account get no ads versus the monthly account getting no ads is that it's really hard for a small business that doesn't have, you know, we don't have the impressions of, you know.

[195] ABC .com, NBC .com.

[196] I can do an impression of NBC .com.

[197] I'd like to hear this.

[198] You like that?

[199] That's pretty good stuff.

[200] I like that.

[201] Now I'm going to tweet that to NBC.

[202] Oh, no. And he's going to know about it.

[203] He's going to come and kick your ass.

[204] Impressions mean.

[205] Meaning like actual volume of traffic.

[206] Of traffic, like page views.

[207] We're still, believe it or not, we're still a medium -sized website.

[208] Yeah.

[209] Giant Bomb and Whiskey Media have come a long, long, long, long way in the past three years.

[210] It's been a rocket ride, but we are still all things considered.

[211] But here's the important thing.

[212] We all like that.

[213] You like that?

[214] I like that.

[215] I know you like that, too.

[216] There's certainly some part of me that gets real like, we need to smash it all and become the biggest.

[217] Give us 10 years, we'll get there.

[218] I like being where we're at right now.

[219] Because we can say dumb things.

[220] We have more room for under the radar.

[221] We haven't had to, and you mentioned content licensing earlier.

[222] So we haven't had to go down that road, which then leads to all these people you signed deals with saying like, well, we can't help but notice that you use the F word in like every third article you write.

[223] And that just doesn't work for mommybloggers .net slash video games.

[224] So can you guys clean up?

[225] it up for us this isn't speculation this is all we've all we've actually gone through like all this kind of stuff before and so we're the very big thing that we all kind of went into and this was you know before you guys came along but then solidified uh when giant bomb came on was didn't want to do that yeah absolutely did not want to become one of those websites ever.

[226] That's why you don't have like the crazy, crazy ads on giant bomb.

[227] You know, that's why we don't do a lot.

[228] We, that's why we have long pages.

[229] You know, most pages you break them up.

[230] You know, we try to stay fairly honest and, um, yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there are some like business dudes out there that look at our website and go, Oh, these guys are doing it all wrong.

[231] Where are the top 10 lists?

[232] Yeah.

[233] Where are the super short pages that say click for next?

[234] No, we just do that on April Fool's.

[235] Right.

[236] Yeah, so yeah, being this size lets us keep kind of doing this stuff the way we want to.

[237] You start getting bigger and you start having to make, you know, it's harder not to make the compromises when you get larger like that.

[238] So being able to be this size and, you know, keep it within the family as it were.

[239] Yeah, I mean, it'd be great, you know, with the...

[240] memberships if we can help use that to kind of power our growth in a smarter way yeah like it'll it'll enable us to to look at what we're really doing and say things like oh well you know it'd be great if we add another video producer or something like that because then we could do x y and z as opposed to we need to hire another ad tech dude because we need to get more ads we need to hire an seo dude to make the pages go higher and help us make more money so that we can do more shenanigans Bottom line, we can do more shenanigans.

[241] You guys can do more shenanigans.

[242] I'll build a better internet.

[243] Your better internet is more shenanigans.

[244] Mine's just clean.

[245] Sophisticated technology powering our shenanigans.

[246] A clean, well -lighted place for dudes jumping on piles of cardboard boxes.

[247] That's what we are.

[248] Whiskey Media.

[249] Or Tony just sitting there making...

[250] Goofy voices.

[251] And doing videos in his garage.

[252] I bought a webcam.

[253] Yeah?

[254] I don't know why.

[255] Let's just say, is it 96 again?

[256] I bought a, like, it's a really nice webcam.

[257] Does it look like an eyeball?

[258] No. No, they had one of those, and I decided not to buy one, even though that one was motorized and would do, like, crazy head tracking and stuff.

[259] Instead, I bought one that had just better image quality, and I was really impressed with how far just webcams had come.

[260] Are you going to, like, chat with someone about Mortal Kombat?

[261] I don't know.

[262] I don't know.

[263] Well, thanks for bringing that to our attention, Jeff.

[264] I'm saying, I will do something dumb with it.

[265] I mean, eventually.

[266] It's our promise to you.

[267] We will always do something dumb with it, whatever that it is.

[268] Yes.

[269] So let's run down some more features here, Dave.

[270] Mobile site's big.

[271] I can guarantee you the mobile site that we've actually built.

[272] It destroys.

[273] It's the best thing we've ever built.

[274] And for annual members having no ads on the site, we're still going to be pursuing ad deals.

[275] But as you've seen on how we've had ads on Giant Bomb so far and also on the other Whiskey Media sites, we're trying to be smart about it and we're trying to have good ads that make sense for you.

[276] The other one, the only sort of caveat on the ad one is probably with the...

[277] The Quest stuff, we will more than likely keep those live on the site for the reason that people would absolutely bitch at me if for some reason they couldn't get the same score as a regular user.

[278] Oh, I had people at PAX that were taking me to task for like – they're the hardcore like – Quest completionists.

[279] They missed 7 .75.

[280] They missed 7 .75.

[281] I got an earful on that one.

[282] 7 .75, though, I feel bad about it, but at the same time, it was like the perfect spontaneity.

[283] Spontaneous.

[284] Yes.

[285] Yeah.

[286] It's just a good moment.

[287] Good funny moment.

[288] All right.

[289] More features, Dave.

[290] All right.

[291] So we've re -encoded everything to 720 HD.

[292] Actual high definition.

[293] Actual high definition.

[294] Proper 720.

[295] 720 progressive scans.

[296] So for everybody else out there, our previous stuff was, I think, 640 by 360.

[297] 360, yeah.

[298] So if you've ever blown up a Giant Bomb video, they look great.

[299] Gameplay specifically, you'll notice that you can't see like little text.

[300] Fast motion and little text goes bad.

[301] It kind of gets bad, which is it really hurts the game stuff.

[302] So we went ahead and we, you know, when you do video stuff like video coding stuff, you basically just look at everybody else's sites and go like, well, what if we do this?

[303] And then you just turn the knob a little higher.

[304] So that's what Viddy and I did.

[305] We went through and looked at what everybody else was offering.

[306] And we said, well, if we.

[307] offer it at this compression rate and this size will be the best on the internet for gaming video stuff.

[308] It'll take us a little bit of time to convert a lot of the back catalog stuff.

[309] So your endurance run type stuff may take us a month or so to actually get up to speed.

[310] Yeah, because this is a whole new video process for us.

[311] It's all kinds of crazy.

[312] So we've got to go back to the beta tapes now.

[313] The masters.

[314] The hard drives.

[315] This is where it pays off that we never shot stuff on tape.

[316] This is where that all...

[317] Instead it's just hard drives.

[318] Stacks of hard drives with post -its on them.

[319] Way easier.

[320] The Vinny method.

[321] So we've reconverted all that stuff.

[322] Everything new from today.

[323] Oh, so going forward, everything is already...

[324] It's all 720.

[325] Great.

[326] Working on the back catalog.

[327] And I guess we should say, is that going to change page designs to make the video player bigger?

[328] Or are we strictly talking when people hit full screen on a video?

[329] Or if they download a video?

[330] The player is still a Flash player if you're viewing it in the website.

[331] We will eventually move all that stuff to HTML5 as...

[332] as we see more browser adoption.

[333] The mobile stuff's all HTML5, but for right now, we still have more than half people that are still using Flash.

[334] So it's still a Flash player, and it'll shrink for the player that's in there.

[335] It'll still look a lot better, but then when you hit that full screen, it opens fully up.

[336] It's a lot better.

[337] I've seen it.

[338] The first thing I did was have Vinny run a WoW video so that I could make sure that I could read them.

[339] The text box.

[340] That's a good test.

[341] That's a good test.

[342] So all that stuff should be pretty good.

[343] Another thing with it is we've now changed all of our encoding to be from FLVs to MP4s, which is H2...

[344] H .264.

[345] Yeah.

[346] So that means that everybody who's got a paid membership will be able to download them.

[347] So you can download the mobile version.

[348] You can download the medium version.

[349] You can download the HD version.

[350] Do what you will with them.

[351] But it's a fully portable version of that video now.

[352] So if you've got sharing set up on your network for PS3 or something like that, you should theoretically be able to put these all in folder.

[353] on your pc and watch them on your tv or like the biggest request that i've always received from like from day one really is like i want to watch this on my iphone or you know my ipod touch or whatever like i want to watch more of this stuff on the go and that now uh that does work with the entire back catalog so day one tomorrow you know today as you're listening to this you can now uh go to the download area there's just a you know download link near the video player and you can download the entire endurance run If you need.

[354] That goes across the board with all the sites.

[355] Well, Dave, that sounds like an awful lot of amazing features.

[356] It sure does, Ryan.

[357] Surely that can't be all.

[358] My pockets don't go forever.

[359] This sounds like it would cost a lot of money.

[360] Well, Jeff.

[361] It actually doesn't cost all that much.

[362] What?

[363] I would expect to pay $3 ,000, $4 ,000, $5 ,000 a month for such services.

[364] Yes.

[365] What if I told you.

[366] Yes.

[367] That it was.

[368] Okay.

[369] What if I actually told you it was $4 .95 a month?

[370] What if you did?

[371] What if I did?

[372] What if I told you that?

[373] I don't know that I could handle it.

[374] I could give you these knives.

[375] Are there knives?

[376] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[377] Hold on, hold on.

[378] Do not promise knives on here because I like my knife collection.

[379] I don't want to have to send it out to people.

[380] $4 .95 a month, you say?

[381] $4 .95 a month or $49 .95 a year.

[382] And with that, you're going to get?

[383] You're going to get the T -shirt.

[384] You're going to get the T -shirt.

[385] You're going to get the no ads.

[386] You're going to get no ads.

[387] You're going to get HD video.

[388] HD downloadable video.

[389] You're going to get an emblem.

[390] Sweet community perks.

[391] Limited edition.

[392] No. Everything's limited edition.

[393] That's right.

[394] The Intimidator.

[395] Collectible plate.

[396] William Perry.

[397] Not the French.

[398] I think there's one more thing of significance.

[399] Legally, I should probably say you did not get a collectible plate.

[400] Okay.

[401] Lawyerism.

[402] Lawyers will be knocking on the store.

[403] No knives, no collectible plates.

[404] You get a T -shirt if you're on the annual.

[405] You get no ads if you're on the annual.

[406] But otherwise, your feature set for monthly and annual is the same.

[407] But wait, there's more.

[408] There is more.

[409] Let's talk about podcast stuff.

[410] I think this is the one thing we haven't touched on yet, and I think this is important.

[411] Okay, well, we've got podcasts and we've got our Fridays.

[412] Oh, yes.

[413] Well, let's talk podcast stuff since we're here in the podcast room.

[414] What is happening to the podcast?

[415] You're asking me?

[416] Yes.

[417] Okay.

[418] As the informational experts.

[419] So the podcast.

[420] So go back in history with the podcast.

[421] The bomb cast was always kind of funny because we'd set it up and it was like, hey, it's two hours.

[422] Well, it just kind of kept growing.

[423] Yes.

[424] It was like we were having so much fun doing it.

[425] It kept getting longer.

[426] You guys were in your little basement by yourself.

[427] Yeah.

[428] And sit down there and say funny things to each other.

[429] And it used to be a Tuesday.

[430] It used to be a Tuesday thing where you guys would do it on Tuesday and then it would go up Tuesday.

[431] Yeah.

[432] And we noticed that that was absolutely horrible because it meant nothing happened on Tuesday.

[433] Yeah, destroyed Tuesdays because it was the entire Giant Bomb team.

[434] Yeah.

[435] So, you know.

[436] You think like, oh, it's like a two -hour thing.

[437] But that's two hours of my time, of Jeff's time, of Brad's time, and of Vinny's time.

[438] So it's actually eight hours.

[439] Eight man hours.

[440] That's what they call it.

[441] Eight man hours.

[442] Or men.

[443] And then it takes me a certain amount of time to do some editing.

[444] It takes me a certain amount of time to kind of prep for it.

[445] So it is not just, hey, two hours and that is it.

[446] If you think of the amount of time it actually takes all of us to sit down and record a podcast.

[447] It's probably more like 14 to 15 man hours.

[448] Yeah, it's a significant amount of time.

[449] Not that we don't like doing it.

[450] I love doing the podcast.

[451] Always have.

[452] I like spending a good man hour.

[453] It is one of my favorite things.

[454] But it just sets you up.

[455] It takes some time.

[456] And so we moved it from Tuesdays to doing it on Mondays.

[457] Yes.

[458] So then we were trying to kill as many man hours as possible.

[459] But we've basically gotten to the point where with all the other sites and you guys are part of a, you know, family of sites at this point, you guys are the only ones.

[460] Yes.

[461] That go kind of crazy.

[462] It's true.

[463] We go a lot longer than the tested or screened or online podcast.

[464] And so having to basically discuss this within like whiskey and stuff, we're like, well, what can we, how do we handle this stuff?

[465] So we basically came to the decision that we are going to split up the bomb cast into two separate hours.

[466] Would that be fair?

[467] So it's not getting shorter?

[468] Two separate chunks.

[469] There are two chunks.

[470] It's the same.

[471] Basically, it'll be the same two -hour.

[472] Well, probably formatted differently, I'd assume.

[473] Yes.

[474] We will have the same.

[475] Maybe we can take this opportunity to get some new music.

[476] Some more music.

[477] You just heard it for the first time.

[478] Yeah, it's already old.

[479] So, yeah.

[480] So, I mean, the idea here is that it takes us, it costs us a fair amount to produce a podcast.

[481] And a podcast, believe me, we've tried.

[482] And deliver a two -hour podcast.

[483] Yeah.

[484] Let's not forget the actual cost.

[485] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[486] There is actual money going out the door for downloads and stuff.

[487] I mean, what do we get in return for that?

[488] I mean, we get a lot of love.

[489] We get a lot of love from the community.

[490] We get a great mind share in the industry.

[491] But it's a hard thing to quantify.

[492] It's a hard thing to monetize.

[493] We've never been able to sell it.

[494] Yeah, and we've tried damn hard.

[495] Podcast advertising.

[496] The reason it doesn't work for most people and the reason why I don't think I've ever been on a podcast that was getting actual money for any advertising they were running.

[497] is because you can't really quantify the number of actual listens.

[498] The best we can do is downloads, right?

[499] And then even that's kind of sketchy because I know I download it twice.

[500] Yeah, we basically have to do it based on the amount of bits served.

[501] You're sucking all of our bandwidth, Jeff.

[502] Damn you.

[503] I do it.

[504] Yeah, I do.

[505] I got it on my laptop and on my regular computer.

[506] And, you know, it's an MP3.

[507] It's a very portable file.

[508] Someone could listen to it for five minutes or listen to the entire thing three times and we would have no way of knowing.

[509] Yeah, so advertisers want reporting.

[510] They want to know that their ads got heard.

[511] So podcasts are kind of a bad format for that when you can't really quantify exactly how many people listen to it.

[512] It just doesn't work.

[513] You see some people that have figured out some kind of podcast advertising.

[514] Usually those people, that's all they do.

[515] That's why all of it is for that audible audio book service.

[516] I think they're the only people that actually advertise on podcasts.

[517] That's not going to cut it.

[518] Here's what we're doing.

[519] Still going to have weekly podcasts, weekly bombcast as you know it.

[520] And the great news is everyone will be able to listen to all of that eventually.

[521] Yes.

[522] So when we first launch it, the full two hours will only be available to subscribers.

[523] However.

[524] like when the podcast comes out every Tuesday, that first hour will still be free to everyone.

[525] Yes.

[526] So you will still get, even if you don't choose to subscribe, even if you don't visit the site at all and you just listen to the podcast, you're still going to get a full hour of Bombcast.

[527] And we'll probably shuffle things up a little bit so anything that's time -sensitive is going to be in that first hour because otherwise it would be crazy.

[528] So all the impressions, basically, that I have to listen to now every week.

[529] Yeah, the WiiWare releases would have to be in the first hour.

[530] First thing I'm not talking about.

[531] All the importance.

[532] Yeah, we will be shuffling around some of the format just to make best use of this new method.

[533] And to freshen it up.

[534] Yeah.

[535] After a few years of doing stuff this way, it'll be good to revisit everything that we're doing with the podcast and see if there's anything new to do and see if there's anything worth dropping.

[536] So in that first week, that two -hour full bomb cast will only be available to members.

[537] However...

[538] The following week, we will make that free to everyone.

[539] Yes, the second hour will go up and we'll be putting it up a couple of different ways.

[540] There will be multiple.

[541] So I've got it in every crazy option thinking about how people want to consume it.

[542] So this will be for the people that listen to the first hour for free.

[543] They will be able to get the second hour on its own the following week.

[544] Correct.

[545] Or.

[546] If they just want to listen to a one -week delay, they can listen to the full two hours one week late.

[547] Or if you're subscribing, you'll listen to the full two hours and the time will fluctuate.

[548] Sometimes it's two and a half.

[549] We're not necessarily saying the podcast is going to be cut at two exactly.

[550] Oh, yeah, no, because we will go at least two.

[551] Frankly, we always go at least two.

[552] We'll cut it at a segment.

[553] I also have a fourth feed because we had forgotten one because we don't need enough.

[554] Three wasn't enough feeds.

[555] Even number four, I like it.

[556] So the fourth feed is actually for people that are getting one, two, one, two on the same feed because a lot of people are probably just going to want to listen to the...

[557] the first hour and then next week they want the first hour and then the second hour from the previous week.

[558] That one will give you the halves separately.

[559] Everybody's covered.

[560] As of the second week we're doing this, you'll still be getting two hours of content a week.

[561] It's a matter of timeliness.

[562] What you are paying for is timely access to that stuff, ultimately.

[563] And supporting our...

[564] It makes it so much easier to justify the time that we spend on this thing.

[565] Yeah, I mean, it basically gets down to that and it justifies...

[566] As far as it is, it's a sinkhole for us from a financial reason.

[567] For one of those things.

[568] It's just one of those harsh realities of the world for me, this whole thing.

[569] It's just what it is.

[570] But we're doing our damnedest to make sure that you can still get as much bomb cast goodness as is possible.

[571] As the law will allow.

[572] And to be very clear, and I'll go on record on this.

[573] I don't mind going on record on all this stuff.

[574] We have no plans to do this around any of our quick looks or regular sort of...

[575] Like coverage content.

[576] Yeah, any of our coverage stuff.

[577] We, at the same time...

[578] We know that everybody who's basically going to be signing up for these paid accounts are doing so mostly probably because they just want to support us and not necessarily because they are really, really jonesing, though I'm sure there are people that are jonesing for 720 video.

[579] I'm sure that there's probably a larger portion of our audience that are just doing it because they like what we do and want to make sure that...

[580] We stay doing the type of stuff that we do.

[581] It's been a hard balancing act on our end trying to figure out what are the things you come up with for a membership service that doesn't include throwing up a gigantic paywall or covering your website in a bunch of red buttons and yellow buttons and green buttons.

[582] We want it to be value added.

[583] We want it to be that it's better than it was, not worse.

[584] Yeah, that it's better than it was and that you're not...

[585] in the position to feel like, Oh God, I can't talk about the podcast because there are so many other people that aren't, that don't get to listen to any of it and all that stuff.

[586] Like we don't want to create some classist system where, yeah, there's no paid member boards or anything.

[587] I, we, I just hate that stuff.

[588] Like why would you throw half your audience in one corner and the other?

[589] I mean, it's people are doing it.

[590] It's not to be better than somebody else.

[591] It's just, they just want better access, but that's not how we find.

[592] That's not how we roll.

[593] We are inclusive, not exclusive.

[594] It's not like we're going to take those of you who choose to keep your account, your free account, and kick you or beat you with a boom microphone.

[595] Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you guys about that.

[596] We may end up kicking and beating people who don't sign up.

[597] I forgot about it.

[598] Again, we have all that information.

[599] All that data collection.

[600] Remember those polls, those questionnaires we had people fill out?

[601] That audience survey.

[602] About whether they wanted to subscribe to a biking magazine.

[603] We're going to beat some dudes up.

[604] What were some of the sites that came out of that?

[605] I don't even know.

[606] I don't even know.

[607] The number one's always music.

[608] But then it's always something weird.

[609] That thing came to me weird.

[610] And then they said, feel free to make it weirder.

[611] So I did.

[612] I don't know that any useful data came out of the audience survey.

[613] Yeah.

[614] So that's the long and short of the stuff on the podcast.

[615] Dave, you also mentioned something briefly about Fridays.

[616] Yes.

[617] Well, there's two things.

[618] One is we are basically toying around the idea of doing a Friday live show.

[619] And so we know that we already do TNT and we do all of our other shows.

[620] Nothing's changing with them.

[621] But we wanted to do a show where it was a little bit more sort of interactive than what we normally do.

[622] No more Q &A.

[623] Yeah.

[624] And we're still toying around with what it's going to be.

[625] Everybody's sort of going through the big live live show.

[626] We bought a whole bunch of equipment basically to try and to really commit to doing live stuff because we like doing it.

[627] It's fun.

[628] So we definitely want to do something on Fridays that's a full whiskey thing, not just a giant bomb thing.

[629] we can sort of wrap up basically, hey, here's what's been going on through the week, and do you guys want to send in questions and all that kind of stuff.

[630] But it's something that's still kind of being formed.

[631] I think it's an important thing to talk about because it's indicative of the fact that this is not a static thing.

[632] We have not said, here are the features that you get, and that's it.

[633] We're working on other stuff.

[634] We've got a feature list that we feel pretty good about going out there with and saying, like, yeah, if you want to become a member, you're definitely going to get this stuff, and we feel pretty good about this stuff.

[635] But, you know, from here, it just kind of gets to the point where we're able to start developing more stuff and go further down both roads.

[636] The more people that sign up, the easier it is for us to start justifying doing crazy things like that and creating more content for members.

[637] So that's the idea there.

[638] We spent all that time on that chat app.

[639] Yeah.

[640] Yeah.

[641] Built that chat.

[642] I like the chat.

[643] I like the chat too.

[644] I have a good idea of something we can do in the chat.

[645] Tell me your idea.

[646] Okay.

[647] So you know how when you type in stuff and there's the button marked comment.

[648] Yes.

[649] For when you send things to the chat window.

[650] Yes.

[651] There should be another button.

[652] Okay.

[653] Marked ask a question.

[654] And it highlights it.

[655] And that goes separately to a separate queue that we see.

[656] So that we have an easy way to pull questions for our shows.

[657] So I had an even, I had another kind of, I had very similar type stuff where I wanted it to be that interactive where people could basically, there'd be like a little action pane and people could basically put up.

[658] broadcast stuff the same way like in the in the question the worry with a question pane would be people would flood it the same way that they flood the chat people can only have one question in the queue at a time so they can only pick their one question and then save there and then once that question gets answered the intern that is moderating it in this case young steven young steven clicks the button marked get it out of here or if it's a bad question He clicks the button marked, this is a bad question from a bad person.

[659] Do not take any more of their questions.

[660] That's a good idea.

[661] We're going to do a lot of stuff.

[662] This is happening constantly.

[663] This is always these sort of conversations are constantly happening at Whiskey Media, and they will not stop.

[664] And some of them are fights.

[665] Some of them are tooth and nail fights.

[666] I come out with bruises.

[667] Just bruise.

[668] My soul is bruised.

[669] And other times, everybody's like, yeah, yeah, let's do it.

[670] Yeah.

[671] So let's recap here.

[672] Monthly.

[673] Membership, $4 .95 a month.

[674] You're going to get HD video.

[675] You're going to get mobile site.

[676] Correct.

[677] You're going to get cool, shiny baubles on your community avatar.

[678] You're going to get full two -hour podcast access.

[679] You're going to get your Friday show.

[680] You're going to get your Friday show and whatever other features that we are working on for the future for our membership program.

[681] A pony.

[682] You will not get a pony.

[683] You can't say that they're going to get a pony.

[684] Intimidator jacket.

[685] Jeff will give you his Intimidator jacket.

[686] I don't have an Intimidator jacket.

[687] Well, you shouldn't be making these promises about giving people Intimidator jackets.

[688] I want an 8 -ball jacket.

[689] Jeff will want an 8 -ball jacket if you sign up for either the monthly or the annual membership, regardless of what happens.

[690] He will want that.

[691] Even if he gets one, he'll still want it.

[692] So you get all that.

[693] I want to, yes, I'm turning my home office and I'm going to cut out all the eight balls and just put them all over the walls in this room.

[694] And it's key to say you get this for all the sites.

[695] Yes, this is not just John Bond.

[696] This is all the whiskey media sites.

[697] Even sites that don't exist yet?

[698] Yes.

[699] What?

[700] What?

[701] Because you know we're always building something.

[702] We have like 18 site ideas in the hopper.

[703] There are tons.

[704] No ads on CocaineMountain .com.

[705] Well, Whiskey Media would first have to acquire CocaineMountain .com.

[706] You didn't let me finish.

[707] I can make that happen.

[708] What do you want for that?

[709] I got like 20 bucks.

[710] That's going to cost you more than that.

[711] Cocaine Mountain is definitely worth more than that.

[712] Plus residuals.

[713] Plus it's also part of the Batman, Batman, Batman network.

[714] So you have to.

[715] You have to work with those guys.

[716] Yeah, those guys are jerks.

[717] All of them have mustaches.

[718] So that's all the stuff you get with the $4 .95 monthly, and then there's the annual $49 .95 membership, which will get you all of that plus cool T -shirt and no ads.

[719] Correct.

[720] And we did have – uh we did have lots of you know we polled all our international users too on the boards and they were basically like dude we don't care if you charge us extra for shipping just please let us get stuff yeah yeah because everybody hates that Dude, legally?

[721] You want to talk about shit that I hate on the fucking internet?

[722] Yeah.

[723] It's that you have to go through all these fucking crazy bullshit laws to just ship something to somebody.

[724] I'm going to give this dude a hat.

[725] I want to say that this guy won a thing and then send him a thing.

[726] It's like, oh, well, no. First send him this math problem.

[727] Where is he from?

[728] Sweden?

[729] Sorry.

[730] Oh, yeah, the math problem thing.

[731] He's not joking.

[732] That's real.

[733] The Canadian math problems, which is the name of my new...

[734] Canadian emo core math punk band.

[735] Most of our songs are in 11 -4.

[736] It's a really awkward time signature.

[737] It's advanced.

[738] It's advanced, let's say.

[739] It's challenging.

[740] What were we talking about?

[741] Oh, yeah.

[742] I think it's in Montreal or just in Quebec in general.

[743] They don't allow contests, so they have to all be prizes of skill.

[744] So you have to send them bone dumb math problems like what's one plus two no you guys the fucking shit we had to do for the uh assassin's creed stuff like doing that people were actually buying a game oh well people can't buy it's like they wanted it where everybody had the same thing they just had to click the button and everybody had the same right amount it's like no i want people to like if they get more achievements they get like a better chance to win yeah not allowed to do that Right.

[745] I think we did it anyway.

[746] But that is what you were supporting.

[747] That sort of rogue behavior that you'll be supporting when you join with a Whiskey Media membership.

[748] But to get back to the international guys, basically there's a $10 extra charge.

[749] It's $10 American.

[750] It is $10 American.

[751] I can't go through all the crazy math to figure out how much it would ship to each and every country in the world.

[752] So we just did – we sat there on UPS and I had Melissa run through.

[753] I was like, well, how much does it cost to ship to Canada?

[754] And I was like, well, how much does it cost to ship to Uruguay?

[755] And then we just did like a bunch of basic ones.

[756] They essentially averaged to $10.

[757] So there you go.

[758] So we may lose money on that.

[759] We may gain money on it.

[760] I really have no idea.

[761] But internationals, we've got you.

[762] There's it.

[763] We love you guys.

[764] We love you, and I'd love to send you a T -shirt.

[765] Yes.

[766] I want people in other countries wearing our stuff.

[767] Yeah.

[768] Should we talk about unified logins?

[769] Yes.

[770] Not necessarily tied to this stuff, but it will be a crucial part of the experience going forward.

[771] So the number one feature everybody always asked for that I always got was they just wanted a unified login.

[772] Across Whiskey Media.

[773] Across Whiskey Media, and they also wanted their wiki points to carry over from site to site.

[774] Yeah.

[775] Which is perfectly reasonable.

[776] That's like something that should have been built immediately.

[777] Like in the beginning.

[778] But it's actually really hard to do that kind of stuff.

[779] A lot of the sites came from different origins.

[780] Comic -Fion was originally a PHP site.

[781] Comic -Fion was just a regular comic book that got hit with radiation.

[782] It was bit by a radioactive comic book.

[783] And turned into a website.

[784] Turned into Tony.

[785] Turned into G -Man.

[786] Yeah, well, even just stuff with the original username conceit on Comic Vine being so different from other sites.

[787] You ever took that, Jeff?

[788] I'm now Jeff everywhere.

[789] You felt really guilty about it, too.

[790] I did not.

[791] Yes, you did.

[792] All right, I did a little bit.

[793] I think I'm still Spaderman over there, but that will soon not be an issue.

[794] Correct.

[795] So now you can actually, we've set it up, and this launches with all this stuff.

[796] They are not...

[797] Booked in together, though you will need a what we're calling a multi -pass.

[798] Hey, Lou Dallas, multi -pass.

[799] She knows it's a multi -pass.

[800] Yes.

[801] You will need a multi -pass to get paid membership.

[802] But you don't need to get a multi -pass.

[803] You don't need to get a paid membership.

[804] You can just use your regular login.

[805] Or you can get a multi -pass without getting a paid membership.

[806] Exactly.

[807] It's completely free to get the multi -pass stuff.

[808] Basically, you go through just one more sign -up form.

[809] You validate that this is actually you on Giant Palm or Tested or whoever you are.

[810] You put in your email address.

[811] You verify it.

[812] And then from that point, you can link each one of your profiles on the various sites or create new ones just right out of the bat.

[813] And these are all tied up to your top -level multi -pass, which is keyed off your email address.

[814] Correct.

[815] So, for example, I'm Captain Cascader on Comic Vine because I like to dress up in bedsheets.

[816] Ill -fitting clothes.

[817] Yeah.

[818] And so I still get to retain that name.

[819] And I...

[820] still will be snide on giant bomb and I'll be able to use, you know, my email address or, uh, my main account name, which for me, it'll probably be snide.

[821] It depends which way you go through.

[822] So if you want for you, for example, you should probably go through your, you were looking at me, Ryan Davis.

[823] That's right.

[824] Plays well on radio.

[825] What is this stuff?

[826] It's your microphones.

[827] Oh, all right.

[828] It's all -timey radio.

[829] There's a secret camera hidden within them.

[830] Don't let the government tell you different.

[831] So if you're one of those guys that has multiple names like you do.

[832] I do have that issue.

[833] The name that you primarily want to be, you should start from that site.

[834] Okay.

[835] And then that will reserve it for every website that we create.

[836] Going forward.

[837] Going forward.

[838] Excellent.

[839] And you shouldn't worry about land grab type stuff because we automatically check to make sure that that name is not used on any one of just the regular sites.

[840] before that name gets reserved.

[841] So nobody can go in and grab Jeff even if he waits two weeks to do it.

[842] Nobody can grab Jeff except for Jeff.

[843] The same way that nobody can grab Spader Baby.

[844] But if anyone wants to grab me, we might be able to set up a third tier membership.

[845] I would expect to pay up to three, four, maybe even $5 ,000 a month for such a service.

[846] What if I told you it was free?

[847] It's about how much it would be.

[848] It's free to grab Jeff.

[849] And I'll tell you, it was the absolute worst thing to build ever, ever, ever in my life.

[850] You had mentioned that it was a hell of a thing, a hard, hard task.

[851] You had printouts that were taped together like a flow chart.

[852] How fucking organized am I?

[853] I'm never fucking organized.

[854] And I remember when we were building Giant Bomb, you said, yeah, I don't do that shit.

[855] I hate doing that.

[856] Mockups are stupid.

[857] Yeah.

[858] Let's just build a site.

[859] And I was like, yeah, awesome.

[860] Yeah, and I can't.

[861] And you had all this stuff printed out.

[862] I was like, man, this must be messed up.

[863] Because it's impossible.

[864] Because if everybody's got a million names and you're trying to get people to go through, it's basically there's 30 different scenarios that you should never see.

[865] You should only have to do three clicks.

[866] But depending upon which way you went about it, you're.

[867] It could be 30 clicks.

[868] It probably won't be.

[869] Maybe you'll end up with a halo and wings anyway.

[870] Are you saying that people might die while signing up for their multi -pass?

[871] I'm not saying people, but maybe me. Well, there you go, gentlemen.

[872] I think that pretty well sums up what we're doing, where we're going with all this.

[873] Yeah, and you'll be able to hear more about it again at the Big Live Live show, live.

[874] Thursday, starting at 10 a .m. Pacific Daylight Time, going until question mark?

[875] Yeah, we've got some guests coming in for that.

[876] Yeah, starting at 5 p .m., again, Pacific Daylight, here at the Whiskey Media offices.

[877] We're going to be having a fat block party out on the street.

[878] It's going to be awesome.

[879] DJ's beer.

[880] It's going to be 21 plus, so bring your ID with you.

[881] You can find out all the details about it at whiskeymedia .com slash block party.

[882] Dave Snyder?

[883] Brian Davis.

[884] Thank you for your time.

[885] Thanks for sitting down with us and just figuring out all the stuff.

[886] Okay.

[887] I'll be back for Russian quick looks.

[888] Excellent.

[889] Excellent.

[890] I look forward to it.

[891] Jeff Gershman, thank you also for your time.

[892] Yeah.

[893] And also thank you at home for listening.

[894] And yeah, be sure to check out the Whiskey Media membership services and please sign up.

[895] The more of you that are with us and help and support the kind of crazy content that we do, the more crazy content and cool features that we can build.

[896] So thank you.

[897] Thank you.

[898] Thank you.