GIGA Signing Off

I found out GIGA was ending—March 31st, the parent company was pulling the plug—the way I find out about most things: late, almost by accident. There was something deflating about it, even though I’d already watched the thing slowly stop being what made it worth watching in the first place.

I hadn’t been there for all seven years, just caught it somewhere in the middle. But what I saw worked. The Berlin and Cologne crews had a balance to them, different enough to actually complement each other instead of just competing. You could feel it in how the show moved.

It was good afternoon television. The kind you put on without thinking about it, the kind that makes time pass less painfully without feeling like you’ve wasted it. Those aren’t common. When they’re gone, you notice.

But it had been fading already. The esports stuff kept expanding. The people who actually cared started leaving. The two teams seemed more interested in winning some internal argument than in making anything worth watching. It was that slow decline, the kind nobody wants to admit is happening until suddenly it’s over.

So when they ended it, I felt caught between relief and something like regret. At least the thing was finally over instead of just circling down. But it had stopped being what I liked about it a long time before NBC made the call. They were just making it official.