I've Been Away for Some Time...

I have started my freshman year at Marquette University this year, and as I was in Wisconsin, busy being a freshman, it seems many things have shifted during my virtual homework-induced coma of reluctance to all things video games press.

So with the beginning of Christmas break, I have found a great deal of more time on my hands, and that has allowed me to hammer away at Forza 4's single player. As the in-game soundtrack began to repeat itself within at least 15 minutes, and that Forza isn't quite renown for its err, "narrative", I switched on over to marathon through the missed episodes of my favorite podcasts like Bitmob's own Mobcast, the Giant Bombcast, the 1up podcasts, the IGN podcasts, the Totally Rad Show, Bonus Round, and Weekend Confirmed.

When listening, many questions came about as the many personalities surrounding game journalism have went elsewhere or moved on with their lives to something else:

When/why did Patrick Klepek begin working for Giantbomb.com? And didn't he used to work for G4?
What's going on with Retronauts? What's with Bob Mackey? Why are there IGN guys on the podcast? Is 1up now owned by IGN or something?
Where does Ray Barnholt now work? Last time I listened to a podcast
Why was Game Pro discontinued?
What happened to the Mobcast? Was it not popular enough?
What happened to the seemingly not-so-popular/more peripheral 1up podcasts like @1up?

Please submit your answers in the form of a comment below! Thanks for solving my curiosity in advance!

Tags: IGN, Entertainment, Bonus Round, video game, Gametrailers, Retronauts, Shacknews, Weekend Confirmed, Video Gamer, Podcast, 1up, IGN Entertainment

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Dan "Shoe" Hsu

December 19, 2011

Hey Michael! I can't answer all those questions, but here's a crack at a few of them:

1. Patrick's been at Giant Bomb for a while now. He was at 1UP, then G4 and EGM before moving to Giant Bomb, where he's a news editor now.

2. GamePro probably suffered from the same thing most magazines suffer from: diminishing sales. They tried going quarterly, but that only lasted one issue before they went under.

3. Mobcast: It was doing just fine, but honestly, it was just a lot of work for us to organize and schedule with the guests all the time. We tried going to a monthly format to make it easier, but the issue is, we only have so much manpower around Bitmob (no one's getting paid, so we rely on volunteers while we try to get the business going)...and we just decided we need to focus more on bringing people to the site than taking time away from that to do the podcast. The podcast wasn't bringing in any money by itself, so we decided to put that on hold until some future time where we could bring it back (when it made sense to).

Hope that helps! Welcome back. :)

-shoe