I agree with basically what everyone is saying here. It's just a fact of life that the Giant Bomb staff will chill out as they get older. In fact, I would be worried if they didn't mature out of the style from 2009. It was a lot of fun to listen to the big arguments back then, but in retrospect they did a lot of talking past each other and not getting anywhere.
I also have a feeling that games are just less contentious than they were back then, because within any given genre things are getting more and more standardized and less risky. Things that were once "bad design" in one genre just get funneled into new subgenres that people feel OK about reading about instead of actually playing. That means discussions go like this:
Jeff: I really love X
Brad: I did not enjoy X, but I respect your love of X. X was not for me, but I understand why you love it.
Jeff: I understand why you didn't enjoy X. I am glad we can come to peaceful terms over this divide.
I believe they have said that in years past they would beat certain games that they didn't like, just to argue them with the people who were going to push for them. This was done out of some sense of justice, and to create more juicy conflict for our entertainment.
And this is where your theory comes in mercutio123, because two people in a group of four really pushing a game means it's going to be near the top, which means a sole dissenter NEEDS to finish a game they don't even like in order to successfully argue; whereas with 7+ people, two people are not going to push a game to the top when the rest of the group is "meh" on it.
So why go out of your way to finish a game you don't like, to argue it a more forcefully than maybe you would have otherwise if it weren't being recorded for entertainment purposes, which maybe makes the rest of the week more awkward for your team trying to produce tons of content under deadline, while you got a wife and or child at home, a holiday you have to plan a trip for, and oh god you're pushing 40, and seriously who gives a shit.
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