Thoughts on the GB Infinite Series Feature

I am loving Giant Bomb Infinite and I can say I prefer to have a jumble of videos and never knowing what is next.

Gb infinite, at its core, should be random ass videos and a line up of series videos (some of which can be very long on this site) goes against the spirit of the feature (in my humble opinion). Hope to see it around again soon. I don't visit in very often these days, but I like knowing that I could go in there and find some video from 4 years ago that I forgot all about.

Thank you for all your hard work. GBi has been on a lot in our household and the random nature of it was a big part of the appeal.

To start with I thought it was broken or something this weekend because every time I tuned in it was Metal Gear Scanlon. While I liked that feature at the time, if I wanted to watch it as a marathon, there are ways to do that on the site that don’t involve GBi.

I’m one of the people who think it should be truly random. I love it when a video I’ve never seen and wouldn’t seek out on my own comes up. I’d never seen a TANG before GBi started and there are lots of Quick Looks I never saw at the time because I wasn’t interested in the game, but actually are worth a watch when they’ve been put in front of me on GBi.

I also want to echo the call for more idents. I really enjoy Ben turning the knob and Jeff waking up to put the next video on, but we’ve seen them 100’s of times now. I can see certain members of the team doing something really creative with only 20 seconds or so to work with.

Excuse me, some of us haven't seen them all.

But yeah, random videos, no poll IMO. Every time I've been in there to vote it seems like there's an inside joke going on where only certain features ever get voted on.

You're doing great work with GBi and am glad that you're continuously addressing issues. The series feature was a great idea that I think is just a few tweaks away from working.

The main issue it seems with the series feature is that it becomes drawn out with the same type of content playing continuously. Perhaps you could alleviate this by having every third or fourth poll leave out the next episode of the series, to have it return on the following poll. So for instance:

• Poll: Ep 1 of series wins and plays
• Poll: Ep 2 of series included as first option. Wins and plays.
• Poll: True random
• Poll: Ep 3 of series included as first option. Wins and plays.
• Poll: Ep 4 of series included as first option. wins and plays.
• Poll: True Random
• ...

The obvious question here would be what happens when Ep 1 of a new series wins the "true random," poll. Some options could be to make Ep 2 of the new series be included as the second option in the next poll, because Ep 3 of original series takes priority as first option, since it's returning. Or, you could have true random exclude the first episodes of series'.

Those are just some ideas I thought I'd throw out. I'm personally against just have scheduled events, taking away agency of polls (if that is what you were thinking) but would be down with scheduled event polls. As in, an event to poll for multiple Ep1 of different series, and always have the next episode take priority as long as it keeps winning, but as soon as it loses. Kind of like an opportunity event where one series is sure to win, but how long it goes on is still decided ep to ep.

Just some of my thoughts. Hope whatever you decide works out! Keep up the great work!

In the end, if some of the more complicated solutions are too convoluted or difficult to implement, I would be 100% on board with true random videos and no polls. I agree that there is a problem with the hivemind aspect of a certain type of video always getting picked. Sure the majority gets what they want, but it neglects the minority every single time. The majority really shouldn't get their few types of videos 100% of the time. The minority should be included. And if people want to hop out for a bit so that some other type of content could be enjoyed every now and then, well so be it. It's better than excluding a percentage of the desired content. True random will never be a bad option and is at it's core what I believe GBi stands for.

So wait, was it vote exploiters abusing the poll system, or a bad feature? I guess I don't mind if the audience watching WANTS to see the next video in a series, I just don't like that the ballot boxes were being stuffed, either by bots or by people who just showed up to vote and then didn't watch.

I am perfectly okay with "true random". the way it was from the start.

maybe limit the series to 2-4 episodes max? and then go back to all random. that way if the episode ends in a cliffhanger or people know the next one is a amazing one they can vote for it. I love GBI for popping in and seeing a random video. Perhaps once a month you can set up a marathon with even just no poll until it's over. so people can watch all of metal gear or the endurance run from ep1 until the end like some monster.

@cooljammer00: I have to assume that it is pretty hard to vote down a marathon, because even if you don't want to watch the marathoned series, you have to stick around to vote it down. The people who DO want the marathon to continue will be there for the vote, so the marathon will inevitably continue.

As others have said, marathon blocks might be fun, but I have learned that a truly random GBI is more interesting to me. The same types of videos consistently win. Maybe drop poll options down to 3 to really force weird choices to be made.

I enjoyed the Metal Gear marathon but the chat was getting unbearably bad during it, so something definitely needed changing up with the feature. Though this also doesn't really solve the issue that the truly random, forgotten videos will rarely get picked in polls when they always come up against more well known videos, so if anything I'd prefer the voting be restricted to a few days a week or something. Though I think I'm pretty biased with that opinion, seeing as pretty much every time I've dropped in, the video has been some ungodly 6 hour+ extra life/BLLSL/E3 thing.

People talk about loving the randomness, but the voting is always very predictable. Maybe that will change with fewer poll options, but random, unknown Quick Looks never won against Vinnyvania or Dark Souls.

Understand why some people would like the marathon feature but i'm really glad it's gone. Really ruined the idea of GB Infinite for me.

Set scheduled events for marathon streams would probably be the best way to do it. Maybe over a weekend once a month?

I think I would also side on removing the vote option altogether and just have a truly random selection

I see a lot of people seem to like the idea of 100% random with no poll. I think that would be neat but like the series feature should probably have some limitations. I'm currently leaning towards thinking one day a week for each mode would be interesting, that way anyone who doesn't like that mode knows it is only for one day and they can come back the next day when it returns to the normal poll-based video selection.

While looking through the comments here I had another idea for more randomness while still leaving polls: what if you just hide the name of one of the videos in the polls? I'm not sure if the video length should still be included or not, maybe only show it sometimes and see which option people like more? Just make sure the actual title goes on the twitter feed and the stream when the video plays. Example poll options:

1. Endurance Run: Persona 4 - Part 35 (27:32 - 2009)
2. Quick Look: Jurassic Park (40:45 - 2011)
3. Thursday Night Throwdown: 04/14/11 (2:01:16 - 2011)
4. Thursday Night Throwdown: 07/28/11 (1:51:36 - 2011)
5. Mystery Video (40:27)

I think something like this could be neat since it'd potentially expose a lot more random videos and still let people pick the classics when they show up. It'd probably also be pretty fun to be in chat after voting for a random video but having to wait in anticipation along with everyone else for the video to start and find out what it is.

Anyway, thanks again for all your hard work, I'm looking forward to seeing GBI continue to grow and evolve. I think its just a matter of time and patience while we all struggle to find the right balance of features so that there's something for everyone.

Thanks for GBi, Will!

I'll add my vote for a two channel+chat system. GBI and GBI-Series. Then you avoid the conflict of such vastly different formats being voted for in the same poll. The "next series" polls could be be left up for the last many episodes allowing viewers with differing time zones and general availability to still get a vote in during such long stretches.

I don't know how practical it would be, but I personally would love a scheduled show format. I think it could be done one of two ways.

Option 1:

Every day at a given time (we will use 8 PM), a scheduled video will play. If there is a video currently playing that bleeds into the 8 PM timeslot, the scheduled video is automatically queued to be the next video once the current one ends. At that time, the scheduled video is played and the next week, the next video in that series will play. So let's say Mondays are P4, Tuesdays are Shenmue, Wednesdays are MPP (wiggler wednesday), etc. This would allow people to tune in at those times to catch the next video in their series. Once the series ends, it either loops or a new series replaces it.

Option 2:

On a given day of the week (we will use Saturday), the poll goes away and the entire day is scheduled content. Starting at 9 AM (or whatever) we get one episode of each P4, then Deadly Premonition, then Shenmue, then MGScanlon, then VinnyVania, etc. for the entire length of Saturday. The order of the series would remain consistent from week to week. If people want to catch their series, they know roughly when to tune in on Saturday to catch their show. Again once the series ends, it either loops or is replaced by another series.

I think this would be the perfect happy medium because it allows random MOST of the time, but allows scheduled content as well. I personally think a full on marathon format is BORING, but of course that is just my opinion on the matter. Maybe an annual marathon on New Years or on the site anniversary or something for a specific show.

Love GB Infinite Will. It has ruined my life.

I actually really like the idea that some people have suggested, to remove the voting altogether. It seems like polls just leave me frustrated more often than not, especially when there's something more obscure in the results that never seems to win because it's up against something recognizable like Metal Gear or whatever. Having it be a truly random, hands-off feed of GB videos sounds like a great way to remove that factor and ensure that everything gets a chance at being shown. (Alternatively, weighting the poll algorithm so that things that have been picked less often are more likely to show up in the poll options, but that sounds like way more trouble than it's worth.)

In general, though, I love the feature. I hope these disagreements help demonstrate that people feel strongly about it just because it's such a cool and fun thing, and not that it's a bad thing. Thanks for implementing it!

Thanks for your continued work on GBI, personally i can only say that I'm happy the series feature is gone for now.

Sad to see it go, but completely understandable considering the chat wasn't fun during the MGS thing. I just hope it will return with the necessary changes. I know some people don't like a marathon like this, but I liked being able to see episodes of a series in their context. I think a big part of people not liking it is just that it's changing from what it was at first, but I don't think that what it was first is what it should be necessarily. Infinite to me is a curated stream of videos with a few constrictions to make it not the same string of "Giant Bomb classics" every time, it's not true random but it's also not pre-defined.

I think it would make sense to limit the amount of options to 2 if a series is going. Then people wouldn't be able to split their votes, and if the majority really doesn't want the series to continue, then it wouldn't continue.

Maybe just have a poll going for the duration of the video with "continue this series?", and have a normal poll at the end if people didn't want it to continue. Or just have that poll at the end, followed by a normal poll. Or just have 1 poll with 2 options, with the next in the series being one and a random option being the second.

You'd still have two camps though, so I this might still result in an unpleasant chat, but I think it will be better the method we had. I think limiting the options like this should be enough to break marathons easily enough.

I think "random videos" in general is not a great format, whether voted on or not. Maybe there can be a time frame in the schedule for random videos but I think you want to program this like you would a television channel so that people have an idea of what is being shown at given times of the day.

But you definitely want to keep the idea of playing a series in its entirety because that is clearly popular so you could say, OK, we are going to do a community vote on which series to run in its entirety and every day at 12pm PT we will run that series for X hours then repeat the same videos again at 8pm PT for those who can't watch the first run. Then when that series is completed you do another community vote for the next series and repeat until all series are played through then reset.

And then there can be blocks specifically for random Quick Looks, or for the weeks leading up to E3 you can show the press conferences from years past at specific days and times. You can have blocks dedicated to specific staff members or friends of the site. You can program it so that before live shows, say 13 Deadly Sims, it plays the previous week's episode so that people who missed it can catch up.

Just a few ideas but there is so much you can do with the depth of content available that is more interesting than "random videos."

@cmblasko: If people want to go watch an entire series, they can do it on the site though.

I am pro-marathons and am very much against this decision.

@spencero: The appeal is watching it while chatting with other people. It's also that there is no thought put into it - someone already decided on the time, place and content and all you have to decide is whether you want to engage or not.

I feel sorry for the people that enjoyed the feature but hopefully we can all pick enjoyable episodes to enjoy together. GB4life.

Thanks Will for posting this update.

Really enjoying GBI and the marathons. Like some of the others who have commented I wouldn't mind if this was a scheduled thing instead of something we would have to fight over.

@cmblasko:

You can pop out the chat and watch something else. It’s not an ideal solution, but it could work as a compromise.

Heyo, thanks for the shitload of work ya'll have been putting into this.

I'm definitely in favor of the ~once a month-ish marathon method, it's been a ton of fun but the truly random variety is even more fun IMO.

Also, I think we could really use a topic or status thing stickied at the top letting people know what's going on with the stream ATM. Staff and mods would be able to edit it obvs, and it could be used to let people know stuff like "yeah this feature is being removed, don't worry" so people don't have to ask about it and let the talk about it start up again.

I would even go as far as to remove any video that is over 90 minutes from the rotation. Quick Looks that run longer and other videos are fun but when you see it's some stream they did for 5 hours that kind sucks the whole fun out of random clips all the time.

@fledeye: My idea already is a compromise! The people who want to watch the series can do so at designated times and the people who want to watch random videos can come back afterwards. I'd wager that "random video" people probably wouldn't even mind sitting through the series videos in this case.

I'd love to see the voting be removed all together. The polls and the chat's voting tendencies have already kept me from wanting to tune in because every time I'm in there, the top-voted videos are always super predictable and there are a lot of great lesser-known videos that go completely ignored. These people have shown they can't be trusted, so better just to strip them of their power and make it a truly random feed.

I definitely do appreciate the work that's been put into this. I know it's a feature I've been wanting for a long time.

Personally I have a love hate relationship with series viewing. I feel like the series/marathon viewing thing is great in small doses. I mentioned this in the chat but I think my ideal situation would be series voting enabled in blocks. eg; Series voting is enabled in for this four hours and disabled for the next four hours.

I know that this would probably be a huge pain from a logistical/technical perspective and from a viewing perspective leads to a lot of half-played video series but I think it would be a nice middle ground.

This seems like the right call. I’d love to see occasional scheduled marathons - like something special once a month or so - sort of like tv stations will do. I can imagine it being cool If it were an anticipated event that the staff was involved in somehow, especially if it came during a dry season for games.

Custom "TV"-themed styles? It's kinda nifty to be given something different like a fake TV-box around the border of the video, and maybe slightly different colors, etc... rather than just looking identical to ./chat.

@cmblasko:

You said in your post that the series idea is clearly popular. I would say, reading this thread it’s 50/50 so there has to be compromise. We can’t both have want we want.

You also mentioned scheduled programming like a TV station. I’m not sure how you’d implement that given that this is an international website. 20:00 Pacific time every Tuesday for MGS might be great for someone living in California, but it would be no good to someone in Paris.

I think truly random videos is the only way to keep everyone happy. If you want to watch a series there are other ways on the site to do that and there’s no argument about what’s been shown at what time because no one has any control over it.

Maybe this makes me a sociopath, but the more I think about it, I'd like GBi much more without the voting element. The randomness is what I want from it - I want to be able to drift in at a random time and see what's going on and chat with folks. I don't like that certain videos or categories of videos are such overwhelming favourites when they come up in polls, and I hated the series feature. I might have had a different tone if the series that got chosen were more to my interest, which is selfish, I know, but knowing that GBi was going to be non-stop Metal Gear Scanlon for 2 days was miserable. And then the P4 ER started, and my reaction was much the same. I was happier with Demo Derby, because that's a series that I actually enjoy and think works for GBi due to being more varied rather than just being one game/series and the same people for 24+ hrs, which is what I really dislike.

It's obvious that we need to find the solution that's going to make the most people happy most of the time, and I am willing to admit that my position is a fairly extreme one. The people who want marathons should get their marathons. I've been on both sides of the "why would anyone vote for this?" debates - I ask myself that every time a "Talking Over E3 press conference" or "random episode from the middle of an Endurance Run" is chosen, but then I'll vote for a Game Room video and whenever that happens I see people in chat completely baffled as to why it won. The truth is, there is content that I want to watch and there is content that I don't, and that's the case for most people, I'm sure. I want GBi to be a chill, fun place to hang out and watch GB content, and I think that's what everyone wants.

@fledeye:

You said in your post that the series idea is clearly popular. I would say, reading this thread it’s 50/50 so there has to be compromise. We can’t both have want we want.

My solution is a compromise, X amount of the time there are series videos playing and Y amount of the time there are random videos or other scheduled videos playing, where X would be a much smaller number than Y. Let's say we are just splitting the channel into "series videos" and "random videos," a day's schedule could look like:

00:00PT - 12:00PT = random videos (voted on or not, I would say no voting and just pick from a playlist until it is exhausted then reset)

12:00PT - 14:00PT = series videos

14:00PT - 20:00PT = random videos

20:00PT - 22:00PT = series videos (same run as earlier)

22:00PT - 0:00PT = random videos

So 4 hours out of 24 dedicated to series videos. This can be adjusted, of course, but generally way more time for random videos than series videos.

You also mentioned scheduled programming like a TV station. I’m not sure how you’d implement that given that this is an international website. 20:00 Pacific time every Tuesday for MGS might be great for someone living in California, but it would be no good to someone in Paris.

Sure, so the non-random content would repeat at least once. If we take the above example we have (as long as I didn't make any mistakes here):

12:00PT - 14:00PT = 12PM-2PM San Francisco, 3PM-5PM New York, 8PM-10PM London

20:00PT - 22:00PT = 8PM-10PM San Francisco, 11PM-1AM New York, 12PM-2PM Tokyo, 1PM-3PM Sydney

You hit most of the markets that I assume are Giant Bomb's primary audience with this schedule with pretty reasonable times to tune in. Again, this can be adjusted and played with; you can add more repeats, extend block time. You can do this every day or every other day or once a week. This would require research and experimentation to get right, I am only spitballing here.

No tact to at least wait til Episode 50 had played?

Come on.

I'm decidedly anti-marathon, but I also don't like the idea of removing polls altogether for complete randomness. Hey, I love Giant Bomb videos -- I've probably seen most of them -- but there are some real boring ones.

Instead, I would enhance the video cooldown system to produce more variety: Maybe increase the cooldown from 100 to 200 or more, or base it on real world time (2 weeks?) What if after every 90+ minute video plays, the following poll only includes videos that are less than an hour? This would increase variety in terms of type and total number of videos played.

Thanks for all your hard work Will, GBI has been a very cool thing, and I like that GB basically has a dedicated chat room now.

I haven't had GBI on in a few days, but just fired it up while reading this thread and Spring Cleaning 2015 is playing. Never seen this before, but it's mesmerizing.

The best thing about GBI is the inherent randomness and the series voting kinda took that away completely. I don,t think I'd mind its return if it could be limited to, say, five vids at a stretch and then be out of the running for maybe at least a day (then maybe if it does show up again it could be the next video in line just to throw a bone... yeah I know, easier said than done). The continued series voting did kinda kill the spirit of GBI for me, so I'm happy to see it gone at least in its current form. As another suggestion (i.e. if I had my way) I would forego voting every 5 or 10 videos and play something truly random. Thanks for the hard work and taking in the feedback, Will!

e: I'd also like occasional polls to vary by year of video, so we don't always have stuff from 2011 and before winning,

Primetime scheduling for the continuation of some series like Endurance Runs would be great. I see some users like the idea and would like to second it as a future feature.

Thanks for all your hard work.

My crazy idea that is never gonna happen is March Madness style rounds of voting every so often throughout the video pitting choices against each other so 1) people who just are popping in have a chance to vote on something if they can't wait around til the end of a long video and 2) so there is more of a showdown/closer vote between two vetted choices at the end.