Giant Bomb GOTY 2019 Discussion Thread

Hey, Idk if this is a good idea but I thought we could have a centralized place where ppl can give their thoughts on the GOTY podcast discussions and content this year. I'm about to check out some of the day 1 stuff so brb with some opinions.

So disappointing to have the same format as last year. I understand their reasons for doing it this way, but it's turned the podcasts into something I used to look forward to and even relisten to years later into something that I'll just skip. Days 4 and 5 should still be good, but I really feel like they've made the wrong choice to continue with this format.

@jonaghan: Did they say it'll be the first 3 days like last year? I don't mind a look back at the year but I do think 3 days was much. I'm hoping this year will be 2 days of recap and 3 days of categories.

@jonaghan: This is my feeling as well. I used to love listening to the GOTY debate (and other awards), but if they spend 4 days just talking in general about games, with one day of actual debate, then I'm probably gonna tune out until Friday.

I'm personally someone who likes the new format and I'm liking their special categories video to be entertaining (I really like edited videos, but I understand those are complicated to make in general, GOTY seems to be the good time for it).

We'll see how long the recap of the year is but I like it simply because it lets them talk about every game they found relevant without having the fight for/against it in a particular context. I see a lot of negativity against the format in the forums and on reddit, which I definitely understand, but for me it makes for a better listening experience.

They got to end of May on day 1 so it’s possible the recap is only 2 days this year. 3 days of categories would be great!

So...

Did everyone forget that Devil May Cry 5 came out this year?

It's not on like anyone's radar on today's top 10 lists. I'm only about 30min into the podcast though.

The game is amazing!

Yeah I didn't enjoy the new format last year. I sort of get why they shifted towards it to ensure that each game got its due, but the positive points raised in the initial discussions were simply ignored later on or brought up again anyway, which ended up being more repetitive. But I'll listen to whatever - it is more fun having categories straight from the get go though.

God this time of year is just the best. I've been waiting for today's content to drop with bated breath

@liquiddragon:

Definitely 3 days. They have outer wilds control death stranding luigis mansion 3 and outer worlds to talk about. Not to mention Star Wars and a bunch of other indies.

@velocityraptor: @liquiddragon:

Definitely 3 days. They have outer wilds control death stranding luigis mansion 3 and outer worlds to talk about. Not to mention Star Wars and a bunch of other indies.

No it will definitely be two days of categories. The last day is usually longest with GOTY.

They’ll be done with this in 3 days. 2 days for categories.

Just to clear up any debate in here. It's 3 days of deliberations and 2 days of awards.

I've posted time stamps on the actual podcast page for every game discussed. You can also view them on my Twitter page.

Wow, wasn't expecting multiple minutes of pure hate for Metro Exodus and the comments the game looks just "fine". The comments on the pump ball bearing gun and how terrible it is, when this is BY FAR the best the guns ever been (I hated it in the other 2 games loved it in this one). The gun is now a silent sniper rifle meant for doing stealth, not for straight up combat in the clip they showed.

The game got super shafted by the anti-Epic crowd with tons of people railing against the game because it was the first major Epic exclusive and a lot of people forgot it existed thanks to that and being earlier in the year. I think Exodus is the best of the 3 Metro games, with a much greater lore focus thanks to all the optional areas. I don't think any of them enjoyed Metro to begin with and these post-apocalyptic games with a deep story / lore are not the Crews cup of tea.

@marino: Thanks for the confirmation...

On the other hand, I liked the personal videos and the game show, tho the audio was jacked. Why didn't they just have 2 hand mics and pass it around, one for each team.

Obviously guest lists are still awesome!

@silversaint: I haven't played Exodus but I think in general, they give up on most games that push back in anyway, partly 'cuz they have to play so many games for coverage and they don't have time/don't want to put in the effort and partly 'cuz of their tastes.

@liquiddragon: I think in general the Crew just doesn't like story based games, especially if they involve any amount of actual length. They want games that offer bite sized chunks of mostly gameplay, off the wallness, or super blatant story.

Exodus just wasn’t that good. Felt a lot more boring than first two.

I wish we were getting more than 2 days of categories but I can understand wanting to give more time to discuss without yelling/arguing over each other. hehe I'm really digging the personalized videos.

I just hope that doesn't mean there will be less videos of everyone doing things together. GOTY always has me excited to see the whole group gaming together as much as possible & of course HITSMAS.

Looking at the games they have discussed so far and i just see a lot of time spent on games that don't stand out to anyone at the table. Games like Trials Rising, Crackdown 3, Left Alive, Dead or Alive 6, Yoshi's Crafted World, Rage 2 and Team Sonic Racing all pass by and it's pretty clear that no one has much of note to say about these games.

Like you have Brad doing his almost annual 'huh, a sonic thing is good apparently?! when the first version of that game came out in 2010 and has been released around new platforms enough to get mentioned every other year. Then you get Jeff's usual 'i like dead or alive because it's fun to pick up and play against people that don't specialize in it' explanation that you also get with DOA 5. And naturally a mention of all the DLC costumes. Then you get the Trials lament where they like the bike stuff but don't like the stuff that's not biking and wonder how the structure of that game really plays out, when Trials Evolution already had you go back to gain more medals to unlock new tracks.

Wouldn't it be way more interesting to just.. go more indepth on the games that people do want to champion? Like we've had 10 min of Sekiro discussion here that will get repeated in a more elaborate way because that is clearly a top 10 game for Ben. (Is the style good? Should this game be knocked for forcing you to play very agressive or is that a strength? Is the stealth too slow?) What is the added value of having a truncated version of the same discussion that will still happen? Last year that was one of the things that actually brought down the quality of the discussions because people would say 'so yeah, we already talked about the good parts of that game, and how good the characters are' referencing to a 10 min discussion they did a few days ago.

Or spend time with the games that people don't expect to make the final 10 list at all but still want to share with their co-workers? Alex apparently liked Sunless Skies? Cool, let's spend an hour with that game and talk about the things it does well! They could do a run of Slay the spire. They could play some Crash Team Racing together. They could have a Mortal Kombat tournament. THey could fuck around with Heave Ho some more. All that stuff would be way more valuable than having to talk about Left Alive or the state of Sonic games. If you want to talk about games with the quality of Left Alive or Anthem, just revive the Worst games category and give bad games their own spot. I doubt more than 50% of the table has looked beyond the steam trailer and some screenshots before Left Alive popped up. I doubt 50% of the table could tell you the differences between The 2 sonic games before they showed up to the table. Talking about games for the sake of talking about them no matter how the crew feels about it just feels like a poor choice. Like you already have people asking for Ace Combat 7 because of that approach and there are naturally 100's of steam games you're not going to discuss. Why discuss Left Alive when no one cares about that one neither? That weird mismash of trying to be all encompassing when people might have put a 30 min quicklook session towards a game just leads to a lot of nothing. I'd rather see them all hivemind together for some Baba is You puzzles during that time.

To end on a positive, i do love how they put up the quicklook footage of the games . That's such a great thing to have!

it's only been 1 day so my impressions are basically conjecture- but i think the newish format does erode a bit of personality from the site. it very much feels like a choice based in operational efficiency (and perhaps staff well-being), to which i say 'fair enough' and 'good on em.'

that doesn't prevent the end product from being a bit...generic? (not a great word but i'm having difficulty finding a suitable term for undifferentiated).

i'll be listening to the whole kit and kaboodle regardless. still nice to hear the summaries of opinion, even if redundant.

Honestly, this year at least the first two days seem really.....unplanned? Like I want to say lazy but I don't think the GB crew aren't working hard. The content of the Feud video was fun, but wow, the actual quality of that video was terrible. Camera wasn't framed correctly, audio was awful, and then the answers being shown before they are spoken at the end...It just feels out of place on this site with even UPF's being of a higher production quality.

Watched a couple of the personal videos and those are OK i guess, but again it just all feels like they forgot to plan things together like the last few years so they just made a bunch of filler list and recorded themselves once they were back home.

Underwhelmed so far, but if we get Hitsmas 2019, all will be forgiven!

I am not a fan of this format in the least. Same thing I posted in the Day 2 comments:

Not a huge fan of this 3 day like 12 hr podcast going over all the games they played, many didn't complete, but played. While I feel this is useful for the crew (forgot games, didn't play, never heard of the game etc) and would be a great supplementary podcast, it feels a far cry from a GB GOTY podcast. Without them arguing over a specific set of categories it feels so disjointed and irrelevant. Let alone as someone who listens to the majority of the two GB podcasts and heard about them talk about many of these games before I could just care less to hear about some of these games, especially those I highly expect to come up again in real award discussion later on.

Do I really need 10+ minutes gushing about Bloodstained when they did an entire playthrough video series, which insures it will probably be a GB Top 10 GOTY and heavily discussed in the real awards debates? No. I skipped the entire Outer Wilds section since its clearly in contention for GB #1 GOTY and god its 30 mins of discussion.

The DOTA Underlords discussion sort of highlights why I feel this format is bad. They discussed Underlords for 10 mins and accidentally briefly mention how TFT is way bigger, but none of them played TFT enough to discuss TFT. With 10 mins in this format I would of expected a comparison of TFT and Underlords(even at a rudimentary level), especially when TFT is arguably the superior game, same genre, and both came out this year within a week of each other.

The feud video was so great! I really hope we get more both coast videos , these are my favorite every year; almost more than podcasts. Hitsmas would be amazing as well! Anyways hope more videos with the whole crew together, podcast format I enjoyed last year so it's still awesome here.

I love you Giant Bomb but there isnt any love or fun to almost any of this GOTY business now. It's really dry and boring for the most part.

I didn't like the insane arguments but this isn't it either. Seems like there won't be much video stuff with the crew all together.

I know Ron Funches was mostly kidding but if anything I'd call the site list selection process for the past several years to be kitschy af. I for one have been secretly pulling for Outer Wilds to take the top spot since it would be a nice change of pace to award something for being an actual artful and special experience unique to a video game. So for people who think it's a predictable GB pick, it really isn't the kind of game that typically gets this kind of support in this staff. You could make a case that Tetris Effect might have been that but also that game got a lot of momentum from the nostalgia of Tetris' place in video game history.

As far as the format goes I'm kind of riding the middle on it like I did last year. It's an interesting change that allows for a ton of games to be discussed but it also doesn't feel like an evolution to the previous format to have rehashed and reduced accounts of games this year, particularly when so many of them weren't even finished by any of the staff.

GOTY was always pointless, but now it's boring too. It just seems like a waste of time for the crew now that could be spent on regular content which is better. Might as well not do it at all.

Adding to the comments here. I used to love the GOTY debates and while I can understand that maybe Jeff & co. found them frustrating at times, they were also compelling listening and really provided something fun over the Christmas period.

This format just makes 3/5 of them absolutely tedious to listen to. Slowly recapping every game of the year with no sense of urgency, barely any interaction between the hosts and mostly just repeating what was said in Bombcasts, Beastcasts and Quick Looks has turned my favourite GB content of the year into some of the most skippable.

I've posted my issues directly on each podcast but I think realistically my gripes with the content stem from an overall tiredness from 80% of what content comes from this site, it makes me sad and in a lot of ways bitter but I guess it might be time to move on.

This stuff just seems so phoned in, grind out all these opinions on games in an unequal amount of effort and get it over with. Force a smile, force a joke, everyone still trips over each other, make sure you take a shot when anyone says "it's fine". Hehehe, video games are some serious stuff.

I'm halfway through Day 2 and have yet to see any of the crew's individual videos, but I prefer the new format. In fact, I'm slightly dreading the final two days. Right now, most of the discussions are cursory, but they feel like a fitting coda to a year in video games – at least more so than arguments about why Tetris is seemingly a better game than Red Dead Redemption, or why Dan's disappointment with Death Stranding is more profound than Jeff's in Anthem. Plus, aside from one or two standout and impassioned arguments each year, I hardly find the discussions that lead to awarding or dismissing a game for a given category to be particularly insightful.

I wonder if they will do a Hitmas this year. They hasn't been many group videos so far.

I love the format of going through all the games individually. Hell, I'd say cut out all the awards altogether and just do that for all five days. My issue is more with having to rush to get all this done on a time frame, in order to have something go up over Christmas break. I don't really know how you solve for that, aside from having the ability to control time, and I'm sure everyone on staff would love a solution to that problem as well. I feel like there is more compelling content that could be produced, both for GOTY and just for the site in general for the month of December if you didn't lose 2 weeks of the month, one to filming the content and one for the break itself.

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe push back GOTY stuff to January, take a loss on content for the Christmas break week, and take however long it takes to get everything done. That way, the east coast doesn't have to be away for a week or two, right before the holidays. Or maybe the east coast doesn't have to fly out for the discussions at all. Maybe just do the discussion over the internet, and spread recording that throughout the month that way. Or maybe just cut back on the length of the podcasts. *whispers*Getting rid of the award part would help with that. I mean, if these awards have just been an end around way to recap and recognize the year in gaming and you're spending three days recapping everything everyone has played throughout the year now, maybe the final two days of awards has out lived its usefulness. Perhaps 12 hours of podcasts across a week is enough. Spend the rest of that time elsewhere.

This year has been a bit of a disappointment, for sure. Only one group video so far and they tend to be some of the best GOTY content, since its only on special occasions that East and West meet like this - its a shame if they cut them out due to time constraints or etc. These single-person videos could be done anytime and anywhere, so they feel a bit lackluster, though I have enjoyed Abby's videos so far.

As for the podcast format. Hmm. I forget how I felt about it last year, but yeah - I don't feel the urge to listen to them as much as I used to. I much prefer the more confrontational way of making lists, because in essence, we still got the same results as now (we hear about the pros and cons of the games), but it feels more energetic as people are trying to keep their favorites on the list while push other games down. I can understand why the crew might not enjoy them as much, but they are much more entertaining to listen to.

I'm not sure why, but it definitely feels like GB has been slowly reducing the effort put into GOTY over the years. I yearn for the heydays of old Giantbomb GOTY videos that had a theme and were scripted. That was some quality content right there.

I am happy that the crew are doing something, according to Jeff, that they like more. That said, I think this year, sadly, sucks pretty hard. The solo videos are super flat and unengaging, as of right this minute we have only ONE group video, and the podcasts for the first (at least) 3 days are just them rehashing opinions from the last year of podcasts. That' cool people like them going over every game they like again but to me this feels like a poorly edited supercut of all their game opinions of the year. I would assume that this is officially the standard GotY format for years to come as Jeff answered someone's question that they did this because the crew liked it the most and "didn't want to make GotY about who yelled about a game the loudest."

At this point, if this is the format, I think I will wistfully wait for Hitsmas or something as the majority of the video/audio content is just bland. I'm not sure the point of getting so many personalities in the room, who play off each other very well, and then filming boring solo videos. GotY podcasts went from being, "Oh shit, time to start on this ASAP!" to, "Oh...guess I'll get to that when I'm playing Warframe or something, I guess."

I appreciate all the hard work and effort that everyone @ Giant Bomb puts into the site, its content, and GotY but the GotY content seems to no longer be special or something I can point to non-members as an example of why they should join.

Well can't say I'm not disappointed how this is turning out. According to the "upcoming" there are no more videos later today, so it seems that will now be only 1 group thing in 3 days. This is a real bummer to me, as the Holiday Spectacular stuff they did the past 2 years were some of my favourite things they have done, and I was definitely looking forward to more of the same/similar this year.

But it seems like a majority of it is just replaced with these solo videos. Which just give this years stuff a very phoned in vibe. (Though I am sure Vinny, Jan, Abby and Jason put alot of work in production wise, so not at all a knock on that side of things.)

I just keep up hope that maybe the latter half of the week has some of the stuff I am missing.

How are there not even hardly any group videos... yeah this is a big bummer this year.

Yup. I remember waking up and throwing them on rest of my day be damned but I have been background listening to the first two while I played Divison 2 and even then I turned it off some for something more interesting.

I really don't understand the change. Was it to make debates less frustrating for themselves? I think them being frustrated with each other is what made it fun to listen to.

Ya, i dont particularly like the podcast format either. Its just a recap of their opinions for 3 days which is already recorded on podcasts and quick looks. So 3 days of retread for something interesting for 2 days. Also my fav part was also the team videos with christmas decorations up. This year it just seems so bare bones. I know they wanted to cut it down for 1 week but then they should of done some christmas specials building up to their holidays.

its gone from this

to this

Honestly at this point I feel this goty week, that used to be a highlight for me for giant bomb content, is weaker than the average normal content week. It's not just the podcast format either, the lack of cross coast content is very disappointing.

I am sure there are things that happened behind the scene that created this lack of content and hopefully Jeff will talk about it at some point.

Yeah it's day 3 and still no group videos & it looks like there won't be any group videos for day 4. I won't get into why but the holidays are usually rough for me so every year I look forward to the GOTY content. It always puts a big smile on my face. I don't want to be "that guy" that gets joked about in a future podcast for being the internet guy with negativity, cause I've never been negative about conent on this site for the years I've been a member but this years GOTY content feels very lackluster. Not a fan of it at all. I love Jeff but 2 1/2 hours of ranking WWE2k faces? I never skip GOTY content but.. I'm not gonna sit through that. :/

I assume all of these individual videos were recorded separately once they finished the actual GOTY casts since the East coast vids were shot in NY. I hope they will speak about why they decided to go this route in a future podcast & if they plan to keep it this way for the next years.

If there's no Hitsmas I'm gonna be really bummed.

I feel like the format isn't playing to Giantbomb's strengths at all. Their strength is the crew interacting with each other, and these discussions only have brief glimpses of that. A lot of it is one person talking about a game they liked that nobody else really played, and then long discussions about games that will be discussed at length anyway since they'll be on the main GOTY list and everyone played them. I don't miss the cutthroat arguing at all, but if they had limited time this year I'd sooner see them cut the GOTY podcast entirely than lose all that video content they can make with everyone in town.

It just doesn't feel like it's taking advantage of having the whole staff in one place. I'd sooner have 3 days of videos where each staff member shows off a game they really liked but nobody else dived into than 3 days of trying to say something about every single game that came out. I think they did something like that one year and it worked great, but I can't remember which year.

I've only been watching the specials for the last few years. The discussions were just exhausting and not that interesting. At this point maybe just skype the deliberations and record video on both coasts. Use the time in san Fran to do fun stuff together instead, its certainly what i'd rather be watching and I hope also more fun to make.

Fun features with everyone together is definitely the highlight. That's why you fly everyone to San Fran!

As for the awards themselves, I've long been a proponent of just making up awards every year to highlight the games you want to highlight instead of rigid premade categories that you then have to fit games into. Just have the Game of the year and then a bunch of unique categories.

As others have said, this year has been pretty lackluster. I would pretty much have the GOTY bombcasts playing all week,but I haven't even listened to a single one this year.

I almost think it would be fun to have a GB west GOTY and a GB East GOTY. No travel for the staff and then it would be easier to listen to the podcast without having 10 people trying to all voice their opinion. Maybe then each coast could argue their own set of awards.

Obviously I have no idea the amount of work that goes into everything so maybe the newer format is better for them instead of the audience.

@nem said:

...Also my fav part was also the team videos with christmas decorations up. This year it just seems so bare bones. I know they wanted to cut it down for 1 week but then they should of done some christmas specials building up to their holidays.

its gone from this to this:

This is the part I have the hardest time understanding. They specifically made filler podcasts so they would have more time devoted to the GOTY week for recording videos/podcasts and there's such a drop in quality this year. Put aside the content for a second, but there are at least 4 people on staff who are wizards of audio/video and this year's main group video is poorly lit and has terrible audio. Not to mention no holiday theming on any of them (group or solo). If they're going to trim the amount of content, at least make it look and sound its best!

Remember when they would make custom landing pages? or write articles? or do skits? or wear Christmas sweaters? or decorate the office? We do!

Game of the Year 2012

Game of the Year 2015

Game of the Year 2017

They should be embarrassed by the quality of the GOTY content. It’s poorly made and uninteresting (is anyone really going to watch 2.5 hours of Jeff rating faves?). An explanation from the guys would be much appreciated. This weighs heavily on whether I’ll resub this year.