Great job on a massively long podcast! Some great insight into how games impacted the staff this year, even though I don't agree with most of their picks (Horizon and Hollow Knight should definitely have been on the list.) At the end of the day, I don't really care (that much) about the actual lists, but the discussions are what I'm here for. Which makes it very sad that Jason was not there for their final deliberations :-(
As for this years new deliberators:
Ben really impressed me though with what he brought to the discussions, he seemed to have come prepared with anecdotes and arguments for/against certain games.
Abby from Brooklyn obviously had a lot of passion and meant well, but for me at times she made these discussions very hard to listen to. Mainly because she kept repeating the same (often very generic) arguments in the same wording over and over again. As an example, if it wasn't for Vinny articulating what Dream Daddy did for him, I would not have known why it made the list, apart from that "it's so good", "very fun", "has a transgender dad".
Jan got the impossible task of filling the big hole left by Jason.
I have practically nothing in common with the GB guys when it comes to taste in games, and it's getting worse every year. :)
I'm there with you. Horizon is my game of the year with Hollow Knight as a close second. Both games are almost completely ignored in their discussions.
Still, it's fun to hear them argue about stuff. I could relate the most with Brad when they trimmed the best character list, none of these entries do anything for me.
Bas_L's comments