Game On starts with a bit of a sputter

First off, if you've never been to twit.tv, I'd recommend checking it out. They have lots of great tech-related shows (with its flagship show, This Week in Tech, as well as its award-winning Tech News Today). They have a couple of other non-tech related news as well, such as Frame Rate (focusing on movies, TV shows, etc), NSFW (a general humor show), and now they've debuted their new gaming show, Game On.

With the wonderful Veronica Belmont and the amazing Brian Brushwood as hosts, talking about video games (including an interview with David Jaffe), how could it go wrong?

Well, that's live internet streaming for you.

Justin Robert Young (co-host of the NSFW show on TWiT) has done some good writing before, and I generally enjoy his humor. The show started off well, but Veronica and Brian were interrupted by a "robot" (given how decent the costume looked, it was probably planned by someone on the crew), who proceeded to push the show a bit too close to the "appropriateness" line (if not crossing it for some people). The questions were legitimate questions (what will be good in 2012, how will Diablo 3 be), and the hosts answered those questions well, but the commentary afterward was a bit much. You could tell by the feedback in one of the chatrooms on TWiT that the robot was not received well at all, and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets "reconfigured" or even junked for future episodes.

Afterward, there were some minor technical issues while they set up their interview with David Jaffe (something that isn't unexpected from a first episode, and can be easily edited out for the final version). The interview was interesting, mostly focusing on Twisted Metal, though David Jaffe was often interrupted by his two young daughters. Many people considered the interruption to be something that made the show feel a bit more real, and not something overproduced. I don't disagree; I thought that it was actually somewhat funny that his daughters were getting involved and I wasn't worried about the interview. However, even after Jaffe had told them to leave so he could finish the interview multiple times, they continued to come back, and it started to pull the show a bit off-the-rails. You could tell he was getting somewhat impatient, but he kept his composure, though he did drop a few F-bombs at the tail end of the interview. Overall, it wasn't terrible, but it could have been better. I guess the lesson to learn is that when you're doing an interview, it might be best to make sure that your door is locked before you start.

Next up was App-diction, where Veronica covered a gaming app, which in this case, was GTA3, in the form of a short. It's an interesting idea, and I think it can turn into something great. The segment involved her seeing her college self playing GTA3, though it ended up being just some fluff and some average writing. You could tell that Veronica had fun making the segment, but I felt that it was a bit flat, and with a short that involves you talking with your past self, it's pretty hard to act with yourself.

Overall, the show is off to a rough start. I thought the test pilot worked out a lot better, but I didn't see the live version of that episode. Some of the segment intros could use some improving and shortening, but like any internet show, it just needs some time to mature. Congratulations to Veronica Belmont and Brian Brushwood for launching a new show, and I look forward to the success of the new member in the TWiT family.