No scripted videos for Game of the Year? Or in general?

Apologies if this has been voiced elsewhere, did a quick search and didn't find anything.

I love GB but it kinda bums me out that this year's GOTY awards have no silly scripted videos to go along with them. I've been chewing through the podcasts like I do every year before I start reading the articles or watching the awards videos, so I'm only getting around now to watching the first couple videos. It was honestly pretty disappointing to find out the videos this year are just the podcast deliberations. No funny themed videos to announce the winners, no sitdown to play the winning game for 20 or 30 minutes afterward, just "hey here's that discussion from the podcast."

I know there's other videos on the site this year, like Hitsmas and Rock Band and whatnot, and I'm excited to get to those when I have time, but again, it's a little disappointing to me that GB's output in the last three or four years has been entirely just "let's sit on the couch and do an unedited stream for a couple hours." What happened to Vinny and Drew's travelogues? Vinny's short-lived idea for briefly mentioning the games they've been playing but don't have time to quick look? Dan and Jeff's hilarious and stupid rollercoaster ride? I know all that stuff takes a lot of time and effort, but isn't that the point of having a much larger staff now and two offices?

I'm not trying to shit on GB here or anything like that. I just miss some of those older, more tightly produced videos. They were always super fun.

I feel like this is just kind of a general internet video game trend these days. I am with you though, there was a time when I would eat that kind of stuff up but these days i'd much rather watch a 30 minute edited video rather than a 3 hour long stream.

They probably didnt bring in the amount of views relative to the amount of extra work put into them. Live or unscripted content is probably more popular and IMO more entertaining.

This very much succinctly sums up my thoughts on it too. I guess it's gotta be tough to find the time to do edited videos like that, but from a viewer's perspective, the edited videos on the site have always been some of the best content, and I miss it.

I wouldn't have an issue with the occasionally tightly edited thing but it is definitely not what I wanna come to this website for.

@efesell said:

Yeah, it's like, I don't need every video to be some tightly edited masterpiece. I just miss when they used to put in more effort to craft something special because they were always so good at it. Plus, I don't know, I just find the cycle of "here's a video of us on the couch playing a game for 1-3 hours" for every video and feature now to be kind of boring. For years, I used to watched every single Giant Bomb video. Now I rarely bother to even open the website, sticking instead with the podcasts since they're easier to digest.

Totally fair. It's definitely the trend overall. But yeah, it kinda bums me out. I still love GB but honestly I barely open it anymore because everything they produce is too long and too freeform. There's certainly an audience for that and I don't want to take that away from them, but I really miss when GB was a pioneering site. Like, they literally invented the Quick Look format that every other site ripped off. They popularized serial streaming (just made that term up) with the Endurance Run. They made big waves with that roller coaster idea.

I really hope someday they get back to balancing out their output with more short or edited videos.

I was never super into the GOTY skits but it was cool seeing a different type of content and them being creative. I do miss the edited stuff during E3 though as those used to be great. Even the short T-shirt thing from this E3 year was fun.

Petition for the crew to recreate scene for scene select popular Big Bang Theory episodes next year.

I really do miss those for GOTY, specifically. There are so man good bits you can go back to and still laugh. Getting hunked, being someone's nightmare, Alex ASMR... they may be more work, but they live on forever.

Honestly, if they spent 10 hours less on podcasts to do some videos, I'd be a happy dude. With more staff, and with Abby wanting to do more edited content, maybe pull her out of a 3 hour Hitman video to do some stuff.

I like edited videos a lot in general, but I get why they don't put in the time for the views they receive. If they don't do them during the year it'd be nice to at least have something to remember at GOTY time. It's a hard argument to make, though, as you can do a couple full streams in the time it'd take to do 5 minutes of fancy stuff.

I definitely miss the old GOTY videos. We get live unscripted stuff literally every week, it was cool to have something different. I have a feeling they didn't have time even if they wanted to, to plan, write, film, and edit that stuff. It is much easier to just play some games in the studio

I always thought those heavily scripted videos fell flat and were never funny to the point where I just avoided that content entirely. Do not miss it.

There were a few that were amusing. Like Vinny out hunting squirrels in Central Park with his wood working tools, so his family could survive after the death of Videogames.

Idk about skits, but I sure would like to relieve them of the stress I saw in/about the discussions. I guess a few skits would work, along with let's plays and such. Along with their personal lists, maybe coming together for some of the categories like Style.

Worst game(s) would have to be heard from though, I need some negativity!

To be honest these days I watch very little of Gb's stuff mainly because there's so much of it. I just don't have the time. I'm happy it's there when I do though.

And I do miss the skits and the amazing stuff we got out of them like this...

It becomes more and more clear that this isn't the site I originally loved.

I still love the opinions and personalities, but, to me, nothing crystallizes their style of humor as a scripted presentation.

When I first discovered Jeff, Ryan, Vinny, and Brad during the Gamespot days, it was through the Hotspot podcast. The Hotspot was a weird peek into their candid personalities, because GS was (back then) a very stringent website known for their strict editorial code and relatively fair reviews. To see a human side, and faces, to those opinions was something special. Their wacky, off-the-cuff videos were great bonuses into their personalities (i.e. Time Trotters, that E3 Schwag Giveaway), before it became so common.

I don't blame GB for becoming just another "streaming people playing games" collection of shows, because of the current conditions for consuming videogame related content. However, it's a far, far, FAR cry from what I originally loved. I question what is left for me here, more often than not.

This years videos were all great. That said, I definitely find myself missing the good ol' themed holiday specials. This all just feels like live-streams that they didn't bother set up a chat for.

Now personally, I can live with that, but the fact that we aren't getting The Big Live Live Show Live reaaally bums me out. I thought the move to CBS netted 'em more funds to do fun stuff like that, not less.

@ripelivejam: it's just five different young Sheldon parodies

i figure Drew was a big part of the production values of their videos in the past so without him around you'd only assume they wouldn't do anything fancy.

They didn`t do them in 2016 either when he was still here, so I don`t know if that`s the reason.

Plainly, scripted content is hard and getting eyeballs on it is even harder. Just take a quick peak around YouTube. Original, scripted content that takes 5 times longer to make (and arguably much more skill) many times won't produce the same amount of views as a YouTube personality doing a 10 minute recap video about memes. It's the essence of why we don't see the same amount of editorials and written reviews that we used to on GB. At the end of the day, they are going to serve the numbers and if the numbers say more people will watch an easier to produce off-the-cuff video over that of a scripted one then they're going to follow those trends.

Way before Giant Bomb was doing scripted content in the gaming space G4TV's X-Play as doing it and some of it was down right amazing. Drunk Link, Office Jesus, Halloween Specials, X-Play: The Musical which cost $1 Million and no one watched. They were doing crazy, brave, expensive shit and it got them no where. Gaming content on YouTube ran them over and they could never get back up. G4 had to run COPS reruns nearly 24 hours a day to pay for the gaming content. It was sad.

Admittedly, I'm disappointed that they don't leave the office more and produce more features. I believed, once they got up and running in New York and had Dan on the staff, that they would utilize a city that had no end of things to do and see that would go hand in hand with the sites content. If enough people truly want to see that sort of thing, then they should be more vocal about it (without being jerks of course). It's your subscription dollars. Ask for what you want. Maybe you'll get it?

I'm pretty sure Jeff mentioned that the podcasts ran so long that they ate into any time they had set aside for filming stuff, so they came up with spur of the moment playdate ideas.

I'm busy at my job too, and there are many things that I never get to because higher priority things take precedence. I imagine the higher priority things for this website are creating content that attracts views and managing stakeholder expectations (CBS/subscribers). That means all of the crew's time goes into those two things, because meeting those priorities is job security. That leaves little time to edit videos, go on travel (especially when BOTH video producers have kids), or come up with something to one-up the year before. There's a lot more I want to say here, but I'm just not going to. I do miss the old Giant Bomb, but those days and those people are gone. This is what Giant Bomb is now, and it will continue to change as it needs to so that it can attract views and manage stakeholder expectations. Its the nature of the beast. I'll probably stop coming to this website in about 6 months, but hopefully the new direction will attract new viewers and the crew can still have some fun with it all.

I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I didn't then and don't now find this to be even remotely funny. a couple minutes of either years; Hitsmas makes me laugh so much more than any of the GOTY vignettes ever did and Ive been watching from the beginning.

Yeah, they were cool. Maybe the plans had to be a little more lo-fi cause Jan was so new (even though he's fit like a glove), and also Abby being part of the deliberations too. I wouldn't want them to be forced into any type of content either way, and the Winter Games and Hitsmas videos this year were spectacular. That psuedo-Friends skit from years back was fucking classic though, among others. I'm always supportive of them following their passions though, that usually ends up well. [I'd love to see KH2 played though...]

@cornfed40: To each their own I suppose. "You're my nightmare" is still one of the funniest things I've ever heard Jeff say.

@themanwithnoplan: Their parody television shows were fantastic. The Office parody and Collectshun are amazing. I often rewatch that stuff just for chuckles.

It all comes down to taste, I suppose. The scripted skits were decent amusement and occasionally had some amazing moments, like Patrick's hunk'd bit or Alex's meta-weird-trip thing or Brad revisiting the ending of the previous year, but by and large they were less funny, less spontaneous, and less entertaining than their off-the-cuff streams. I'd take Brad's insane Hitman run or them fooling around in VR over their goofy spoof skits any time.

I take it as this. We get the off the cuff, random video game time all year long. So, when it hits the end of the year and, as in years past, we got something a little more structured it was a refreshing change of things. It was special. It harkened back to the days where we got the top notch edited content a lot of people loved and still miss. This is no way to take away of the current (un)professional content, but it was a look into how talented and funny the crew can be in a semi structured style. Humor is always subjective of course, so I understand others may disagree. But I think there's something to be said that when they work on a polished piece of content Giant Bomb makes really great stuff, regardless of its comedic or straightforward tone.