@devise22 said:
I feel like every year around summer this type of question gets asked, and every year people make like it's some new thing. Don't get me wrong, if you'd like to see more Quick Looks of lesser known things during the summer month, I think that is absolutely a constructive suggestion (if delivered as such). But the impression that it's some new thing and this site is changing that comes with this every year, give me a break.
This site doing longer playthroughs of games for Premium Features, or "Gimmicks" as Premium Features like Demo Derby Ranking of Fighters etc is super long standing. Demo Derby and RoF are both in the same vein as Flight Club, Old PC Games, TNT. And it doesn't matter if it is Yakuza or Shenmu or Until Dawn or do I need to keep listing? For years this site has output premium features dedicated to more extensive longer looks at games. And for years the QL schedule has been heavier during the early parts of the year, dryer during the summer and then a bit heavier again during the fall as more games get released. But the longer playthrough stuff has always been constantly heavy throughout the year except for during E3.
This is a good post. To piggyback slightly, the July after the OP joined the site (July 2013) there were 7 Quick Looks between the 1st and the 18th. We've had 9 this year. So I do think it's a matter of perspective likely mixed with a little bit of nostalgia.
So, I too feel like there are less quick looks these days. I remember there being weeks, a couple years ago, that when both East and West were cranking they'd have 2 quick looks every weekday and 1 each on the weekend days. That's a good pace to me, because quick looks are primarily what I'm here for. I listen to some non-GB video game podcasts, but this is the only video game site I frequent, so I want to know what's good to play from these guys. Of course, they never kept up that pace for long, because something (PAX, E3, GOTY, Extra Life, etc) would come along every so often and disrupt the schedule, but it was nice when it happened.
I even remember Jeff addressing this on a (I think) Bombcast a couple months ago and saying they consciously decided to scale back the QLs because of the (lack of) traffic on some of the lesser known games. Of course, they do still QL lesser known games when they want to, but I think they've decided not to QL stuff just to fill the schedule or feel like they have to QL every semi-interesting game that comes out, because it may not be worth the effort versus the other stuff they can do. Which is completely understandable, but I, personally, would still like the old schedule. Of course, I don't remember what Bombcast that was that Jeff said that, so I have no cite for you.
But, just to prove to myself that I wasn't imagining this, some numbers from qlcrew. Number of quick looks for each July (including unfinisheds):
Jul 2009: 15
Jul 2010: 26
Jul 2011: 29
Jul 2012: 28
Jul 2013: 20
Jul 2014: 42
Jul 2015: 28
Jul 2016: 23
Jul 2017: 23
Jul 2018: 12 so far (counting the 2 on the schedule that haven't been shown yet).
The first quick look was in August, 2008, so, coincidentally, the month you compared this one to was the slowest July since the first year of the site. And the way this month is going, it looks like it will rival it. They could definitely ramp up more QLs if they wanted to; yes there's not a lot of big games coming out, but there wasn't in July 2014 either. There's been plenty of times I've been looking at the new games on the Switch E-Store or Steam where I see something smaller I wish they had looked at, so I could have gotten a better idea of what the game is like. And yes, I could search youtube or something for footage, but I come here so I don't have to.
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