Two former Polygon writers are starting a new site
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
Welcome one and all to BigFriendly.Guide (or BigFriendlyGuide.c om, if you’re nasty). This is the new home for Jeffrey Parkin and myself, Ryan Gilliam. For the last 10 years or so, you’ve been able to find Jeff and my bylines all over a website called Polygon. We don’t work at that website anymore, due to circumstances beyond our control — namely Vox Media selling it and laying almost all of us off in the process. While we worked for Vox, Jeff and I worked on a lot of guide projects together and discovered we had a mutual love in the world of games: helping others enjoy them. So when we found ourselves unemployed, it didn’t take us long to come together and decide it was time for us to make something of our own. And thus, BigFriendly.Guide was born.
The thesis: We’re a completely employee-owned website — me and Jeff, we’re the employees and we own the joint — dedicated not to serving Google the kinds of guides it’s looking for, but serving you, our readers, community members, and, hopefully, subscribers.
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Welcome one and all to BigFriendly.Guide (or BigFriendlyGuide.c om, if you’re nasty). This is the new home for Jeffrey Parkin and myself, Ryan Gilliam. For the last 10 years or so, you’ve been able to find Jeff and my bylines all over a website called Polygon. We don’t work at that website anymore, due to circumstances beyond our control — namely Vox Media selling it and laying almost all of us off in the process. While we worked for Vox, Jeff and I worked on a lot of guide projects together and discovered we had a mutual love in the world of games: helping others enjoy them. So when we found ourselves unemployed, it didn’t take us long to come together and decide it was time for us to make something of our own. And thus, BigFriendly.Guide was born.
The thesis: We’re a completely employee-owned website — me and Jeff, we’re the employees and we own the joint — dedicated not to serving Google the kinds of guides it’s looking for, but serving you, our readers, community members, and, hopefully, subscribers.
I kind of hate that website layout with a passion but cool. And already gave them a higher priority in my kagi results.
I always preferred Polygon more for their editorial content and thought pieces but I do recall the guides generally being pretty good when I looked at one.
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Welcome one and all to BigFriendly.Guide (or BigFriendlyGuide.c om, if you’re nasty). This is the new home for Jeffrey Parkin and myself, Ryan Gilliam. For the last 10 years or so, you’ve been able to find Jeff and my bylines all over a website called Polygon. We don’t work at that website anymore, due to circumstances beyond our control — namely Vox Media selling it and laying almost all of us off in the process. While we worked for Vox, Jeff and I worked on a lot of guide projects together and discovered we had a mutual love in the world of games: helping others enjoy them. So when we found ourselves unemployed, it didn’t take us long to come together and decide it was time for us to make something of our own. And thus, BigFriendly.Guide was born.
The thesis: We’re a completely employee-owned website — me and Jeff, we’re the employees and we own the joint — dedicated not to serving Google the kinds of guides it’s looking for, but serving you, our readers, community members, and, hopefully, subscribers.
I feel like a guide site is very likely to get scraped up by AI. People just typing in "How to repair buildings in Worshippers of Cthulhu" and getting their answer without ever knowing who wrote it out originally. I hope the best for them. I think it's a cool endeavor.
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Welcome one and all to BigFriendly.Guide (or BigFriendlyGuide.c om, if you’re nasty). This is the new home for Jeffrey Parkin and myself, Ryan Gilliam. For the last 10 years or so, you’ve been able to find Jeff and my bylines all over a website called Polygon. We don’t work at that website anymore, due to circumstances beyond our control — namely Vox Media selling it and laying almost all of us off in the process. While we worked for Vox, Jeff and I worked on a lot of guide projects together and discovered we had a mutual love in the world of games: helping others enjoy them. So when we found ourselves unemployed, it didn’t take us long to come together and decide it was time for us to make something of our own. And thus, BigFriendly.Guide was born.
The thesis: We’re a completely employee-owned website — me and Jeff, we’re the employees and we own the joint — dedicated not to serving Google the kinds of guides it’s looking for, but serving you, our readers, community members, and, hopefully, subscribers.
Heh, almost missed that the initials are BFG
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I feel like a guide site is very likely to get scraped up by AI. People just typing in "How to repair buildings in Worshippers of Cthulhu" and getting their answer without ever knowing who wrote it out originally. I hope the best for them. I think it's a cool endeavor.
Not even just AI. Fandom's entire wiki empire is largely built around manually stealing the work of guides writers and reproducing it verbatim. It is why you'll find so many fake roads and the like.
I am incredibly skeptical of this being viable monetarily. But the idea of people actively choosing to support a site that has known good guides and emphasizing the "tip jar" mindset? I have seen worse business models. And if they really focus on what the community/they want to make guides for rather than just chasing the latest big releases, that actually reduces the odds of other companies scraping them.
For example, the right crowd would straight up kill for a breakdown of what is actually needed to unlock whatever in Kynseed in the post release version (rather than EA). Fandom actually have a kynseed wiki but it is abandoned and the other guide sites don't give a shit about a moderately successful Stardew that "came out" in early 2024 (?). So even though stealing that would be trivial... odds are nobody would care enough to do so.
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Welcome one and all to BigFriendly.Guide (or BigFriendlyGuide.c om, if you’re nasty). This is the new home for Jeffrey Parkin and myself, Ryan Gilliam. For the last 10 years or so, you’ve been able to find Jeff and my bylines all over a website called Polygon. We don’t work at that website anymore, due to circumstances beyond our control — namely Vox Media selling it and laying almost all of us off in the process. While we worked for Vox, Jeff and I worked on a lot of guide projects together and discovered we had a mutual love in the world of games: helping others enjoy them. So when we found ourselves unemployed, it didn’t take us long to come together and decide it was time for us to make something of our own. And thus, BigFriendly.Guide was born.
The thesis: We’re a completely employee-owned website — me and Jeff, we’re the employees and we own the joint — dedicated not to serving Google the kinds of guides it’s looking for, but serving you, our readers, community members, and, hopefully, subscribers.
