Should the East Coast bring back 'Bring Your B-Game'?

I really want the East Coast to bring this series back but to change the format a bit.

This could be the New York version of Unprofessional Fridays where Dan, Vinny, Abby and Alex showcase their b-game for 15 minutes each. There's so many b-games I want them to play that so many people have never seen of heard of before. Or games that are criminally underrated. Games like Deadly Creatures, MadWorld, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Xenon Racer. I don't know about you but I hope they bring it back in this layout.

As long as they figure out what a B-game is, I think it’f be cool to see some deeper cuts or games that got overlooked.

Hint: It’s not a big budget Star Wars game that got time on a conference stage at E3.

No, that series had some of the most repetitive banter in the site's history. "Is [X] a B Game?" "Ehhh" "Is [Y] a B Game?" "Well..." for the duration of each episode.

There's a good reason they scrapped it so soon. Besides, if there is some old game of that quality that they feel strongly enough about, they can always just play it during a Playdate.

There's something to the idea of the East Coasters bringing in a semi-obscure or forgotten title to play with the others, especially one they were enthusiastic about back in the day (and ones that aren't just chosen an hour before a stream off the Steam top charts), but the bulk of the series was hampered by a confusion over what B-tier games meant. Something more loosely defined would be awesome.

What ever happen to Encyclopedia Bombastica.

Nah not really. Now if you were talking about a Choose our own adventure however.... That felt like a neat back & forth between the audience & the crew. You had people writeup their glowing endorsements on obscure games like Sentient & actually win!

Still waiting for Blight Club. Aaaany day now, mark my words.

Nope, a B game is just that...fine, unremarkable, not broken but not exceptional, wouldn't be very entertaining. Bring a worse game to the table and maybe we'll talk, i miss the days before steam became the wasteland of trash that it is today that there would be fun quirky picks to laugh at, now its all too intentional.

@liquiddragon: That one was great, too...I liked looking back at AKI wrestling games with Alex.

I always thought it was funny and kinda sad how the abandoned the series after two episodes..because for the second episode they played what was obviously something that didn't fit the criteria. But yes, I would like to see it come back.

Yes! Bring Your B Game was one of my favorite features from the East office. I've always pictured it as the east's UPF but with only B-Games.

Make it multiple games per episode instead of just one and stop spending all the time talking about if X game is a B-Game and what is a B-Game and just focus on the actual game being played. "Bring Your B-Game" has a lot of potential in it's concept, it just needs to be a little bit more like UPF mixed with a bit of that Demo Derby "remember this" vibe. And, most importantly, everyone (from the people on camera to the people on chat/comments) needs to stop worrying so much about the definition of a "B-Game".

Also, speaking of things East should bring back, I'm still waiting for the Shenmue 2 ER with Dan, Vinny, and Alex.

I'm with you, those games are typically just "Ok". Steam has a lot of crap, agreed, but not the worst pit. Take a look at itch.io's store!

Since GB East doesn't have unlimited time to spend (natually) I would prefer if they didn't bring back "Bring your B-Game" and instead did a show like this:
"Who can beat Dan?", or "Taking on the Dan Man" or "Dan-King off", or whater ever.
- Semi-Old to old golden oldies.
- Play it against Dan.
- Do some research on the game before the show, so there can be some commentary.

Examples:
Like with Red Alert 2. But also let the other in the crew try and beat him.
Age of Empires 2 (HD-version is easy to get going) - Battle Dan 1on1, or if Dan is much better, do it 2on1 or what ever. Make it a mini-tournament.
Swat 4 - Let Dan be the criminal hiding in the building. Co-op him to custody. Can be done 3on1 if Dan is too sneaky.

Why this focus on Dan? Well, he is the best antagonist, and entertaining while competing.

The feature didn't bring anything to the site that a normal playdate of some random weird game does other than an endless series of comments debating whether or not something was actually a B game. I'm good without.

The biggest problem with that show wasn’t the definition of what a B game is but rather the games themselves being just O-K which made for some pretty lifeless footage. The guys were typically not that enthused to be playing said game which would lead to off topic conversation while they ducked around in the boring beginning levels of an already boring game.

I'd rather see just about any discontinued GB video feature come back before this one.

I think the weird b-tier games generally get showcased through other series now, like Playdates, UPF, etc...

I'd like to see Load Our Last Save come back, though.

I liked the idea of it. And I'd do anything for more GBEast series' that aren't just them playing an entire game in 50 parts.

But didn't they just do an episode of Bring your B game? I think they played Rage 2 on it?

That's what Playdates are for.

No. One thing that doesn't do much for me on GB is when they just dip into some game and play the first like hour of it. Usually no one is really paying attention and it's just something where they talk over it and hardly get invested, and you also just see the often boring early parts of many of these games. Hate it on UPF, some play dates, and definitely hated it on Bring Your B Game before. Give me full playthroughs.

Well according to Dan every PC game is a b game so there's a lot to choose from.

Sure, I'd be down for it. Or any regularly aired show that had them playing random games. I never understood the issue with the "B-Game" thing. Who cares. Bring whatever.

For me personally, at the moment I'm finding they are doing a lot of Mister type stuff which is just kinda.. old, simple games? I don't typically find that pre-SNES era stuff interesting. And UPF is usually people just picking weird, often junk games. Playdates seem to be them playing something relatively new and has got coverage elsewhere on the site. Steam game suggestion streams are more often than not just the chat asking for a bunch of weird, junky games for comedic value and/or has already been covered on the site. A looooot of time is being spent on these long form series and if it isn't something you're interested in or haven't already seen before.. Then why watch it.

I'd like to see coverage of more stuff. Soooo many games out there.

I felt like that feature was dead in the water the second they failed to figure out what the hell a B-Game was. There's definitely potential for a series where they look at obscure, unsung, or weird stuff, in a more in-depth manner than a typical UPF segment, but there's no need to put an umbrella over it.

I just want Random PC Game to come back, I guess.

@zombiepenguin9: LOLS would be a good excuse to dip back into old games in a fun way. Psi-ops is still one of my favorite videos on the site and Vinny’s frustration with Ninja Gaiden was great too.

No, but I'd really like to see Bring Your B-Game's A-Game, in which they actually play the game for a good amount of time beforehand and can talk about what made it interesting at the time while at the same time showing off parts of the game that the average person might not have seen. Seeing the first level of a game which is interesting but flawed usually showcases the "flawed" bit more than the "interesting" bit. Wading through tutorials, bad controls, cutscenes, and bugs while arguing about what a B-Game is was bad content, but the idea itself has merit.

It got renamed as "UPF"

As other's have said, the problem was that none of the crew was particularly passionate about what they were playing.

Having said that, I think the feature could be re-imagined somewhat as a "Guilty Pleasure" sort of feature. In other words, have them play games that they like, but are also able to acknowledge aren't very good or weren't very well received. It would be fun to explore why they hang on with an otherwise bad game.

For example, Two Worlds is a bad game, I won't disagree with that. But I also sort of love it for the ways in which it is bad. It's got that bad faux-Enya theme song, you can literally kill everything on the map (then kill their ghosts), get ridiculously overpowered using alchemy, and the protagonist has a ton of really bad action-hero lines that don't fit the world at all. It's terrible, but in all the right ways that make it a good laugh.

It's understandably tough to get four people to agree on a mediocre game they want to play, and watching disinterested people play a video game is not fun.

I don't know why everyone (GB staff included) got so caught up in the title of the feature and the adherence to it. I was totally fine with watching them play some middling but interesting games that don't get a ton of love. As some have mentioned, the concept of playing undeniably terrible games can be fun (see: Bequest, Garfield with Gerstmann, etc.), but that has a limit. I don't really want to see them playing too much of the obviously good heavy-hitters we're all playing, either, so it was nice to have a feature that could spotlight some largely forgotten but competent games. Conceptually, it was fine. The execution and reception was where the failure occurred.

Alex specifically said he eventually decided to cancel his plans for that feature because (going from memory here) upon further reflection, he didn't really like the idea of a feature dedicated to just dunking on bad games and being negative.

@cloudymusic: I know, I was kidding.

They nailed the definition of a B-Game in one video I watched.

The game should start with a fun and entertaining premise.. Camp and cheese wouldn't hurt, but after an hour or two becomes very stale usually because of game-play.

That's also what I noticed in the B-Game games they've done so far.