Jeff Cannata

Apparently Jeff Cannata is going to be on Scoops and The Wolf this morning. I just wanted to suggest that people check it out even if you don't normally listen. Jeff is a verteran of The Totally Rad Show on Revision3 and is starting a new show called Newest Latest Best on YouTube (for now). He's also a regular on the Weekend Confirmed gaming podcast.

What's so great about Jeff Cannata?

He has a voice that the industry is sorely lacking and I really believe in his version of games discourse. He is incredibly articulate and manages to talk about games intelligently without coming off as though he is trying to hold games up to some lofty standard that is unreasonable for an entertainment industry. He, to quote his personal catchphrase, "loves loving things", which really captures that spirit of what made Nintendo Power fun in the old days. If a game sucks, he doesn't love to dump on it, he's legitimately sad that it wasn't better. Ultimately, he just doesn't have that "I was picked on in high school so now I'm out to cuss as much as possible and talk as dirty as possible to pretend I'm an internet tough guy" vibe that other journalists have. And I think, finally, the thing that gives him so much more insight into gaming than other journalists have is that he's a working actor and a producer of content. He actually has some idea of what the creative process is like, instead of a number of journalists who seem to have no idea how to actually create anything and instead just feel they are qualified to critique what other people have done.

So, listen to Scoops and The Wolf, get turned onto Cannata.

Check out Weekend Confirmed and Newest Latest Best

Don't really know much about Cannata, but the morning show's been a cool way to get to know a couple different people already.

Now they just need to get these guests to record sound clips of their vists, like a true morning show would. "This is Jeff Cannata on Bombin' the AM with Scoops and the Wolf at my favorite video game website, GiantBomb.com! Too Human, mother***er!"

That would actually be pretty cool.

Jeff 2 seemed like a really cool and nice person on the morning show. His voice was pretty soothing... It would be cool to have him talk to Patrick more, they got along great.

I guess they are getting to be friends. Patrick did a spot on Newest Latest Best a few weeks ago.

Jeff and Ryan were supposed to be on the show at Pax Australia before Ryan's passing kept them from going.

I like Jeff Cannata a lot from what I used to watch of The Totally Rad Show. Back then the 3 of them were reviewing The Last Airbender (the one with the 1000 achievement points in 3-6 min) game and them being fans of the show, 2 of them gave the game a pass while Jeff just straight up said this game was bad and don't play it. He's very honest and hard working, I even remember him working on the show while he was incredibly sick.

You should buy him some flowers too.

I have liked Cannata since Project Lore, the World of Warcraft video series where Jeff and a group of other guys--including Alex Albrecht--ran dungeons as a party in WoW.

One of the coolest things about Jeff is his genuine excitement about what he likes. When The Avengers came out, he nearly cried (no exaggeration) on camera about how much he liked that Joss Whedon directing the film did justice to the franchise.

Cannata is probably my favorite podcaster to listen to. In addition to all the reasons you mentioned, I love loving things and I find Cannata likable for also loving to love things.

Great to have seen him on, love to see the collaborations.

He's a cool guy, entertaining to listen to and has an almost Brad Muir level of positivity which the gaming industry could use more of. We've got more snark and sarcasm then is healthy.

Are you kidding me? One of the reasons I stopped listening to Weekend Confirmed was because of his need to go on multiple 20-minute tirades railing against XYZ on every podcast. He may "love loving things" more effectively on his other shows (I haven't watched any of them), but on Weekend Confirmed I got tired of grinding my teeth while listening to his hyper-aggressive negativity.

Never heard of the guy. Waiting for the podcast feed to be updated so I can listen to it.

I literally don't know what you're even talking about. I've listened to every single episode of Weekend Confirmed since the beginning. He's had dialogs about what he doesn't like for sure but if there is anyone who throws temper tantrums its Garnett Lee. Cannata is almost always composed I can't recall a single time where he's been overly negative about something.

He's, I dunno, up and coming?

There used to be a famous tech-culture podcast called Diggnation with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, who used to host The Screen Savers (which became Attack of The Show) on G4. Diggnation was on Revision3. Alex used that platform to make a new show called The Totally Rad show, that featured him, Dan Trachtenberg (who later went on to make that Portal short that got moderately famous), and Jeff Cannata. The Totally Rad Show became rather famous in it's own right and ran for 5 or 6 years. Jeff then became associated with the Shacknews Weekend Confirmed podcast with Garnett Lee, which is basically how he became associated with the gaming industry.

He also did a stint co-hosting Always On with Molly Wood for Cnet.

So, like a lot of the weird San Francisco area games journalists. He's just a weird part of that community that seems to float around.

Garnett Lee flipping out over Diablo 3 is one of the most amazing things I've ever heard on a podcast. Afterwards the whole studio seemed legitimately concerned if he was okay.

@jazgalaxy:

@jazgalaxy: Please give me a link that sounds hilarious

I wish I could find it again. I can't remember what episode it was on, but it was when they announced the player run real money auction house. He goes on this massive rant about how that ruins what Diablo was about and by the end he's just shouting. And everyone is trying to calm him down and he won't have any of it. Everyone is trying to talk in these gentle tones and whatnot. You would think he had a gun. Then he gets embarrassed and keeps apologizing, which makes it worse.

I mean, I love that guys passion, and I'm just as guilty about caring way too much about videogames sometimes. I remember one time having a conversation with a normal person one day and getting agitated about a corporation. At one point I said that I hated them, and the girl was just looking at me with the most baffled look on her face, as though she couldn't quite understand how someone could HATE a company that makes products that you don't have to buy.

Pretty massive reality check.

I was somewhat expecting Jeff Cannata to be Jeff's half-Canadian half-Japanese East Coast alter-ego.

I was somewhat disappointed.

Did this guy used to play wow on wowhead on some kind of video series dungeon thing? Think I might know him from that.

He was on Project Lore, if that's what you're talking about

Yes, that was it. The videos are gone from wowhead apparently.

Jeff is great. Great OP. :)

I think that other guy was born with the Guy Fieri/Giorgi Tsoukalos gene.

@demoskinos: Don't get me wrong, everyone on that podcast is guilty of hot-button topic of the week mindless internet bitching. Jeff is the least negative of the bunch, but he's also the only one to turn bitching about things into a shtick, complete with ranty voice.

He's more positive than most games writers/entertains on the average, but comparing him to Brad Muir is laughably preposterous.

He's the only person I liked listening to on Weekend Confirmed when I listened to it. Seems like a cool dude.

You tried too hard in the OP, especially with your "high school bullying" comment.

Jeff Cannata is awesome. Big fan of his.

Also, Garnett was right about Diablo 3.

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I can't imagine what you mean by that. This is my actual opinion. I've been following the guys career for like 5 years. One doesn't do that when they don't legitimately like someone's work.

And moreso than that, the "high school bully" thing is legitimately why I can't listen to most gaming podcast. I can't tell you how many podcasts I've listened to where scrungy, overweight, half balding men in their mid thirties spend every other sentence threatening eachother, game developers, and somehow videogames themselves with physical violence. Picture Ryan's Sonic The Hedgehog rant, except done by someone who isn't funny and has 1/10 the charisma Ryan has.

Oh yeah, totally. I think even Blizzard would agree with him now.

Gotta agree with @jazgalaxy here.

@jazgalaxy: Damn, I must be missing out on some interesting podcasts.

Then again, I only listen to the Bombcast and Idle Thumbs, so for all I know most gaming podcasts really are like that.

Jeff Cannata is the most charming man in the game industry. Excuse me while I swoon.

He went off pretty well on Jeff Mattas when they talked about GTA5 for the first time, and that wasn't all that long ago.

Cannata's enthusiasm is fine, but I just don't seem to like anything he does, and I like most of the things he doesn't.

I like Jeff Cannata he seems like a fun guy and can entertain in a podcast. He can be opinionated and i don't often share his opinions on things but still a cool guy.

This X infinity. I stopped listening to Weekend Confirmed for a long while because they feel it necessary (as they do in the latest episode) to explain why they don't like things for extended periods of time. You don't like Call of Duty. I get it. Nobody does anymore. Let's move on.

I've actually had to stop listening to several gaming-related podcasts for similar reasons. I stopped listening to 8-4 Play a long time ago because they're so negative. I want to stop listening to Player One Podcast because I get tired of hearing babies scream in the background and the hosts saying "uhhh.... yeah" to each other for an hour and a half, but for some reason I keep listening to it.

Edit: Also not a huge fan of Cannata. The other guy, Garnett Lee, bothers me too. Andrew Yoon seems to be a pretty okay guy.

I agree to some extent.

I think a lot of the annoying conversation has to do with there not being a lot of games to talk about at the tail end of the generation. But, I also think it has to do with gaming journalists desire to overly analyze things that aren't worthy of that amount of analysis. This is one of the things that bothers me about Patrick. Instead of accepting on face value, the fact that people play different games for different reasons, they try to analyze why games "don't work", when in reality they just mean "I don't like it". I always feel like Jeff is pretty up front with the fact that his experience is his experience, though. He tends not to make blanket statements about games in general and localized it to his experience.

This was so so sad.

Jeff Cannata seems like a nice guy, but the little I've heard of his opinions are pretty uninteresting.

Oh weird. I thought I recognized him from somewhere, and I now remember watching a couple episodes of The Totally Rad Show just by chance a while ago. Small world.

Weekend Confirmed is the only other podcast (gaming or otherwise) besides the Bombcast that I've never missed an episode of. Jeff is a big part of that. TRS was a big part of my life for a while. And I agree Jeff is right there with the Giant Bomb guys as one of the best guys out there. Honest, optimistic, cheerful. Just love the guy.

Add Cannata to the people-named-Jeff-are-awesome list!

I do like Jeff and I listen to Weekend Confirmed every week. However like others have said, sometimes I think he lets his acting side get the better of him as he can go on fairly dramatic rants. The most recent example of this would have to be his comments on GTAV. It is totally fine to not like that game. This is 'MERICA after all. But to ridicule a game tirelessly simply because it wasn't the game you wanted is just childish and made me reconsider the value of his opinion for myself.

I go back and forth on Cannata, he seems "nice" and on paper it looks like we might like the same things, but there is something about him that puts me off. out of the weekend confirmed "regulars" I think I probably enjoy Nicole the most, followed by Spicer....too bad they are rarely on.

I don't think that was really what he was going for. I agree that he wasn't articulating his thoughts very well in that podcast, but I think had a lot to do with the people who were in the room with him at the time. The guy who was arguing against him was Jeff Mattas who, honestly in my opinion, was making an arguement that was kind of ridiculous. His basic position was that all the flaws in GTAV were because Rockstar are artists and they were expressing themselves in some intellectual master-stroke, when, in reality... the game just has problems.

I think Cannata was trying to argue that for selling as many copies at GTA did, and for the attention it was getting at the time for being an avant garde masterpiece, it was actually bereft of any real substance. I tend t agree with him in that regard. The setup for the game was fantastic. An old retired criminal who is out of the game meets an up and coming criminal who becomes the son he never had. All the while they are joined by a ticking timb-bomb of a best friend who is stumbling toward a secret that could put them all against eachother? IT's a perfect set up. But the game doesn't do anything with it. After it sets up the plot, it meanders and stalls right up until the final missions, even when ti makes NO sense that the characters aren't engaging the central conflicts and questions of the plot. People were making inane psuedo-intellectual observations like "Trevor is genius because you finally get to actually play a character who behaves the way GTA players behave!," but in reality that is pure coincidnece as illustrated by the fact that there are two other player characters commit the same atrocities, yet do not have matching personalities. It's simply reading into what's not there in order to make superficial content seem deep.

So, in that way, I agreed with the frustrations Jeff was having.

I would have to disagree with you on that, the artistry of making an open world game with that much detail is great and top tier alone. Now for the characters and story i can agree with half of your points. I don't think it is a total flop like you make it out to be. But what i believe is the story toke a back seat to designing the world and the online features. For me everything just did not hit the peaks it could have but i do think with what is there its still well done in most video game story standards. The voice work and interactions were still well done which i felt jeff downplayed to great degree. Franklin and lamer dialog is some of the best natural feeling convos i have heard in a urban setting in awhile.

Micheal and Trevor voice work both nail their roles pretty well too. I would also disagree with Trevor because i do feel Trevor is the character people can play gta how they want if killing random people is your thing. Sure it won't stop you from doing the same with the other characters but the story always points this out about Micheal and Franklin being crazy or murders while Trevor does not have that same story hook because its expected of him. I feel because jeff did not like it he finds it harder to respect the great things gta does and gets right.

I should probably start listening to the Morning Show anyway. Thanks for the tip.

I guess I'd prefer that to a "this game sucks I don't like it" and nothing else. I can handle someone not liking something I like if they at least explain it, if they just blow it off or are dismissive, that annoys me. To be honest that happens with some of the Giant Bomb guys sometimes and it can be irritating. Jeff's never come across as dismissive or sarcastic or snarky and that's the stuff the drives me crazy. I haven't always agreed with his opinion but it's usually well thought out and explained at least. If anybody made me grind my teeth on WC it was Garnett. I like him but sometimes he would say the craziest stuff to the point I wanted to reach into my iphone and strangle some sense into him.

Uggggh I remember that. Garnett can be such an incredible doofus.

Garnett Lee is one of the worst video game "journalists" ever. There's a bunch of guys out there that I respect, and I listened to nearly every 1UP Yours, but he was never the best part of that show. His entitlement was astounding and the way he would talk to people and constantly get drunk on the show and abuse his co-hosts was pathetic.

I remember when he absolutely berated the developer of Shadowrun on Xbox 360/PC before the game came out about the art-style. He was welcome to an opinion but he's drunken attitude was embarrassing ... on the next show a week after that John Davison asked him if that guy "had fucked your wife?" or something to that affect. Or when he got pissed off CliffyB for the framerate of Gears of War he saw at a preview event and Cliff basically saying it was an Alpha build, the framerate will be locked at 30 and Garnett knows nothing about how a game is put together based on those comments. Garnett then went off like a child, ranting about how generic the game is. It was the first Gears of War on Xbox 360. Shows what Garnett knows.

There's so many examples of this guy just being a total douche bag. He's a fucking joke.