PAX West 2016: Giant Bomb Panel with CAH & 404ing It

John Drake's reactions during the 404 panel... priceless! Easily worth a 2nd watching.

What is this No Man's Sky: The Panel?

Either I'm going crazy or I heard Dave Lang say "Yeah, I got business socks on".

50 minute mark.

lol

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

@lonelyspacepanda: the GB crew should do a panel out of Jeff's garage and spew beer everywhere while Drew does a 360 degree pan to truly complete the Diggnation transformation.

This is the best site.

hey guys, thanks for the show. it didn't really hit on all notes for me but I appreciate what you guys were doing.

Did GB forget how to do these ie. talk about stuff and video games and not some improv acting... thing?

Don't force it, just let it happen naturally.

Yeah, this seemed really forced and not good, didn't really enjoy watching this.

@shottyb: Yea, a lot of comments are saying the hot mic was the band talking, but I am sure it was Drake and Lang. I heard the Socks comment that was clearly Lang, and then at the 52 min mark, Drake says "Does yours come out as white powder?" haha.

Not my favourite GB panel. Ah well. Pat Baer was cool as always though.

I love Giant Bomb but....

Hopefully next time it'll be better?

I really just don't think this 'hey lets sit around and chit chat about what we saw' format with the window dressing of 'guests' works so well.

Teaming up to get on the main stage probably allows more people to get in if you're at PAX, but watching from home, it made everything feel rushed and forced. If they do it as a team up again next time, hopefully they take the good points and improve on those, I guess.

Never seen the 404 panel before though. That seemed like fun.

Really bummed this is a crammed panel. Also immediately just cringed at the politics email in the Cards section and just skipped right to the GB part.

I haven't seen comments this negative in the history of the site.

This was to professional, it sucked.

I watch Tim from Grand Illusions to fall asleep after my 3rd shift job.

I loved the video looking at strangers browser history, but hated the rest.

@heatdrive88: Have to agree with you buddy thats basically what i thought as well. Give them some lee way as they have to keep doing these panels it seems difficult to keep coming up with things to say every time.

Good show but it felt a little disjointed in parts. Not to mention the AV team leaving the lights on the band. It would have made it far less distracting if they were in darkness behind the GB guys.

Clearly a lot of planning went into the set-up. Huge stage, live band, three panels in one go with a lot of people involved. In that regard, I give them credit for trying something different. You can't do the same old routine if you want the site to grow.

They just need to show a bit more love to the actual content of the segments.

One of my biggest problems with these things is them talking about games people outside of PAX (or even some people there at the show) might never have seen or heard of, and just aimlessly trying to build up some desperate jokes around it to keep people interested. It's not fun to watch, it's just tedious. Same goes for Jeff making the 'videogames today...' speech every time they do a show like this. Yes, I get it, the industry is changing and getting weird. I don't watch these things to hear you slowly ramble about the state of gaming, I come for some wackiness and laughs.

Not trying to be a dick but I feel like they need to remember what made these things eventful in the first place and double down on it. Jeff has openly remarked about how he doesn't plan much; well, maybe he should.

This was fine, and I don't even like CAH. Don't see why this panel is so contentious.

Definitely could've used more time though.

max tempkin seems like an improv nerd that couldn't actually perform then through dumb luck uses his mildly successful business to live out his hilarious "bits".

This was... hard to watch.

I feel kinda sorry for the band, who just had to sit there. The panels themselves were fun, IMHO.

The Co-Optional Podcast (TotalBiscuit, Jesse, Dodger) did a great panel podcast. Apparently there was a ton of great indie games around, which GB barely even mentioned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7360DkHJAQ

I feel like they should have done a podcast type thing as there are few opportunities to do one with both east coast and west coast together

And you finished of the whole bottle?

I had to, it's vodka. It goes bad once it's opened.

EDIT: Yepp was a bit lackluster this year, might be time for something totally different or nothing at all in regards to PAX

Hmm.. I already was iffy about this venture - everything about CAH rubs me the wrong way, and now reading the comments I'll just give this one a pass.

As far as I'm concerned dropping q & a was great. But yeah this panel unfortunately didn't have much of anything going on. Weekly podcasts were coming out normally from both coasts, so just repeating stuff from there doesn't seem like the right way either.

I wouldn't mind if you guys would lighten up your calendar with these yearly events. A bit selfish coming from a Finn who doesn't have any interest to travel to US for PAX I know. Again just me, but I don't usually really like the live panel content (outside of E3 Live. Granted, its concept is a bit different) and creates a draught on your studio content.

I just don't think GB suits this kind of environment. None of them are that comfortable in front of a big crowd except for Jeff and Vinny; and that's fine.

It'll just always be a bit awkward. The Mario Party Live thing made sense because it was them doing what they do but...live. Not just a 30 min segment of the Bombcast.

This just didn't work, some bad decisions went into this, or lack of maybe. Must have been a pretty big disappointment to actually show up for this. I feel like Jeff really wants to put on a show, but doesn't have time or energy to make it happen. In retrospect, the most successful thing they have done in front of an audience was them playing Mario Party.

I'm sure the GB crew didn't walk away from this feeling like they did something great. The next panel will probably be better than ever :)

Good stuff. The VR opener to the GB segment was hilarious.

I just watched that Live Co-Op podcast with Dodger etc; this was what GB used to be at these things. Works better.

Jeff needs someone else who is willing to organise a show.

Except for the two awesome segments with Jeff playing VR to the sound of Final Countdown in Ska and Dave "Business Socks" Lang coming out of the cake, this really wasn't that good of a panel, but I just want to thank Drew and Jason for their great work in making this much, much, more watchable than the original PAX stream.

Also, getting rid of Q&A and replace it with Max wearing a journalist disguise was the best idea.

I liked the browser history video at the beginning.

Business Socks.

I'm of the opinion that a general lack of preparedness has hurt most of the GB panels in the past but watching this I'm not entirely sure if this falls under the same category...

Either way I still think some prep time or even some general guidelines/framework of some of topics you want to cover will improve the overall panel a bunch. I think the last few of these have proven that just showing up and expecting magic to happen is not feasible. ...Unless you invite Randy Pitchford.

PAX production levels are probably completely out of your hands of course. Those are just a bummer.

Not sure why there is so much butthurt about this. I guess there is some expectation for some big special skit as in previous, but in the past I've always found that stuff tedious and stupid once you get past the setup and it just goes on and on. It's the guys from GB sitting around BSing, I'm good widdat.

To be fair, it is hugely successful. And not from dumb luck, but from stealing other people's ideas.

I don't see anyone being butthurt. Just people with some fair criticism.

This is like seeing a band that is amazing in a small venue where there is lots of intimacy with the crowd suddenly playing a stadium. It doesn't make the band better or worse, just some are better in one venue vs another.

I was present in the audience and I've been a member since Day One.

The previous comment was to contextualize the following comment: I feel like the GB crew phoned it in on this one. Apart from the Shenmue and Dan Ryckert announcements, it looks like they didn' talk about panel content at all. I've seen them do this style with Q&A before and it worked, but this time around, I was honestly kind of bored.

EDIT - I was walking out of the panel and someone was very loudly saying: "...what does Giant Bomb even do? The whole thing was inside baseball - do they talk about video games?" I'm not sure they actually even said: "we are Giant Bomb Dot Com, a site about video games". You have to assume that some of the crowd was simply there to support CAH and had no idea what GB was.

Thoughts?