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Permalink Reply by Crassus on January 16, 2013 at 2:05am

http://bigdoor.tv/scot.html

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Permalink Reply by nutman on January 16, 2013 at 3:50am

He elaborated in chat a bit, and I think on a Christmas show post-AGI death.

basically, he didn't want to do the show anymore. That's it. Jessica couldn't come on anymore, Lawrence was on less and less because of his real job (due to scot no longer being able to pay him) and that contributed slightly to the less-fun atmosphere of the show for him. But also, he just doesn't play video games much and therefore doesn't feel it makes sense to do a show and talk about games. I think he has said on twitter that he's excited for GTA V, but that's about it. I remember looking at his XBL profile and it was all apps like netflix, hulu etc.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin J Baird on January 16, 2013 at 11:59am

Bobby Blackwolf was the lead behind most of the organization of the network itself.  Once he departed, I stopped hearing anything.  There was a new team that started to try and gain a Kickstarter campaign but that fell through.  Not enough support.  I also think they were unrealistic with their intentions to have that much money.  It was like someone wanted a full time job to work on the site and people just aren't going to give that much.

I think Scot used AGI as a base to stay relevant and connect to find new outlets for his personality.  It's a tough field to try and be in though.  

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Permalink Reply by nutman on January 16, 2013 at 5:28pm

Ultimately he wanted it to make money, and it was going nowhere. He could have certainly made better decisions in hindsight, but it is what it is. They lost a lot of exposure and uniqueness when the video game cafe place they recorded at shut down. Then, outside of being Live and daily, it was just another game podcast. As I'm sure you know kevin, there are a fuck load of those.  Tons of competition and it's easy to just get lost in the itunes search.

The site seems to be getting better though. Although the kickstarter failed they have redone the site and Scot is not involved in the day-to-day. He's making an ice cream company I think. serious.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin J Baird on January 16, 2013 at 6:10pm

There just isn't a lot of money in gaming media in general.  I can't think of any success stories really.  I think the gaming companies don't really care to advertise in traditional ways.  Gaming sort of has its own built in marketing.  You don't learn about Bioshock Infinite from TV commercials.  You know about it through word of mouth and hundreds of websites providing viral information for free.  The one thing the gaming industry has is free advertising.

And that hurts the ability for the media entities to really survive.  The few companies that do traditional advertising aren't enough to subsidize a staff of people.  And the accessory and third party market aren't large enough to make much of a dent either.

The other half of it, that is often missing, is just good sales people who want to work in this sector.  Landing campaigns on websites isn't as profitable as selling cars or some other sales job that a talented sales professional could go out there and work towards.  So you have a whole lot of people with good ideas but having no clue how they'll really make money.  Most hope someone will discover their intentions and invest in them, but it's just not realistic.

It wouldn't take much to be the dominant player in the gaming news media.  Most outfits are barebones, even the larger ones.  Their ability to produce content and update is limited.  Someone with even a small budget could crush the competition and own all the eyes, but realistically, would that even be enough?  

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