GameDamage - A new show featuring Yahtzee, Yug and Matt

awkward, uneasy, unfunny, self-agrandizing, embarrassing

not trolling or posting flamebait, but it was genuinely unpleasant

i've read similar sentiments around other gaming sites too

I felt it suffered from the lack of teachers asking Yahtzee about edutainment products.

Give the guys a break - we'd all love there to be video game shows on TV or the internet, so give them some support rather than just whinging that it wasn't exactly how you yourself wanted it!

Hopefully we can get the support and funding to create the show we really WANT to create - the pilot is exactly that - a pilot, to showcase what we feel is the potential for a good format.

AustralianGamer.com
GamersEvents.com
Vurp.com

Hi Yug, what has been the overall response so far?

Marty

I thought it was a pretty good start for their first go at a tv pilot. I mean, I can imagine the amount of work and effort that's required to do what they did - heck, it's a lot better than I could have done if I had to do anything similar (having absolutely no clue on where to start), so major kudos for getting an entire pilot completed, and a fairly decent one at that. If you want to compare it to other local game shows (well, the ones I've seen anyway) that have been aired like Cybershack and Control Freaks, and Good Game, it's got the potential to knock them out of the water.

I enjoyed Matt's piece on physics (he's got the presenting voice and mannerisms down pat) as well as a few other segments, but overall the pilot could do with some tightening up in terms of editing and even omitting some of the skits out. I guess this is where a team of honest friends/associates/drinking buddies should be reviewing what works and what doesn't. I've mentioned this about skits and sketches before about the Angry Gamer podcast - skits are sort of a hit and miss affair. When it works, it's awesome, but when it doesn't, it's like a kick in the face. Honest feedback would help a lot in letting go of the ones that don't work. Heck, personally, I wouldn't even bother with skits.

I hope the guys don't take some of the trollish feedback to heart. I thought that short episode that the Blue Tongue guys did on game development (that was in the same vein as The Office) had some potential, but perhaps because of the feedback they received, they haven't made another one since.

Anyway, I guess everyone has an opinion on what works and what doesn't in a game show (everyone's an armchair expert!), but it's good to see that people are actually providing feedback and wanting the show to work.

For me, the pinnacle of what a game show has to be the 1up show. I haven't seen an episode in a year though (been too busy to download them every week!), but the way they mixed things up, kept things entertaining, interesting, casual, and relaxed is something in the vein of what the Australiangamer podcast already is.

I felt it suffered from a lot of negativity floating around the presenters.

Yahtzee makes a living on it, but the others should offset that by being more of the grounding force.

I realise Yug did a positive review of Edge of Twilight, but the bantering got a little annoying.

I would say in general the show just needs a bit of tightening up, and like any show the hosts will relax a bit more into the role and hopefully make something of the show.

Don't worry Souri - it would take a hellofalot more criticism before we called it quits!

Thanks for the feedback though - it's interesting, anyone who know's who Matt and I are (from AG) is very supportive of the project, while it's taking most of the international audience awhile to get over the 'its not 30 minutes of zero punctuation' issue.

AustralianGamer.com
GamersEvents.com
Vurp.com

Am I the only one who actually enjoyed the skits and found the funny? Particularly the Duke Nukem Forever ones.

Not going to go too much into it, but:
1) Enjoyed it, took a second to realise it wasn't ZP, but then I re-calibrated my expectations and was pleasantly surprised.
2) Skits were good, but that all 3 were running skits probably wasn't. Perhaps 1 or 2 should be running, and new ones pop-up at every interval. Of course that is time and money, but they only need to be short and un-eventful. Many skit comedy shows (Comedy Inc for example) don't always re-use skits, but may if it gets a good response.
3) Each of your individual portions was great, but I feel the couch segments faltered a little. Perhaps some graphics could be thrown into the couch segment to make it a bit more attention-seeking. I would suggest one of those stereotypical news layouts (ticker, mugshots, etc) when Yahtzee reads the news, I'd also expand this a little (3 stories makes the games industry sound dead). Otherwise in other conversation, throw to either full screen shots of what you may be talking about (as you did with MMORPG segment) or again, like in the news, provide two screens so the user can watch you talk and interact with each other whilst stimulating their minds with screenshots.

In general: good pilot, needs fine tuning though, but I doubt you'll need another pilot to get some sort of backing to perhaps make a few episodes and refine your quality.

At the gamedamage forums, regarding interviewing developers, Matt says:

"Seriously, do people really give a shit about the developers? ... The fact is this is a bad idea. And will not be done. I can pretty much guarantee that."

This developer just lost all respect for you and your project. Extremely obnoxious and egotistic.

(http://www.gamedamage.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=1186)

Matt here.. I joined ages ago, but I can't find my details, so I'll just anonymise.

I just wanted to apologise for any offense that has been given by that comment. Naturally I care about developers. Australia's developers are a major export industry, and a number of game developers from various companies are among my best friends.

The comment was in relation to interviews with game developers as content.

It was said largely in frustration as a response to yet another person saying "you should have x". If we added all the x together we'd have a 17 hour marathon show per week, and most of them (such as this one) were simply impractical on a tight shooting schedule.

The comment that was quoted here had elipses where I had actual text, and I'll put it back into context a bit.

"Are the developers going to be funny, or entertaining? Or are we just going to be asking the same dull questions everyone else is?"

I stand by that. No matter how awesome a game is, or how good the company is there's no guarantee that the producer or whoever you interview is going to be... well... funny. And all in all that's what the show is about.

I may be shooting myself in the foot here... Just trying to clarify.

"I stand by that. No matter how awesome a game is, or how good the company is there's no guarantee that the producer or whoever you interview is going to be... well... funny. And all in all that's what the show is about."

Not everything about the show was funny though. In fact the only really funny parts were the skits and the sections when the three of you were on the lounge talking. Each of your specific "segments" were on the informative side, not actually on the humourous side, even if they did throw in a joke or two.

It might be hard to believe but us developers can be funny sometimes :)