Game Journalists Go Head to Head in 'The Metagame'

The Metagame event, held this past GDC in San Francisco, garnered a good deal of buzz ... even if not that many people had a chance to see it. The folks behind GameLab set up another session of the inventive game-knowledge gameshow, and pitted two pairs of journalists against each other to see who could better argue their (randomly determined) cases. The results are not only hilarious, but viewable on the MTV website.

Comments

YAWN

[QuantumG]

Yeah, that's way more entertaining than, say, reruns of the X-Files.

Waste of Time

[Jaqenn]

You know that scene at the beginning of Space Oddessy: 2001, where the monkeys dispute over the water-pool? By screaming nonsense at each other? MTV recreated that here.

I didn't think either side made a compelling argument for the entire competition. I want my 20 minutes back.

Still a Waste of Time

[Jaqenn]

Sorry to repost, but I just finished the last clip, and I am so filled with rage that I have to post again saying how much of a waste of time this is.

Question: "Which game better integrates theme and gameplay: Adventure, or Street Fighter 2?"

Team one: "Adventure gives you...adventure. You have this, like, adventure. You get to have an adventure."

Team two: "Street fighter gives you fighting, in the street! You're fighting, in a street! And there is two of you!"

Both teams repeat themselves over and over until time runs out.

Why didn't I just give up and stop watching? Because I am an idiot.

Re:Still a Waste of Time

[_Sprocket_]

Why didn't I just give up and stop watching? Because I am an idiot. Shhh! Not so loud. You'll give away the secrets to MTV's success.

Needed a better scoring mechanism

[Dutch Gun]

I watched the first few clips, and couldn't really take much more than that. The arbitrary nature of picking a winner based on "applause" completely invalidated any sort of game mechanic they came up with. More often than not, it seemed like the winner was chosen randomly because the applause levels were essentially split. A simple electronic voting system would have solved this problem elegantly, and made it feel like a real competition.

I think the concept has some potential, as people generally love getting into these sorts of arguments anyhow. It feels a bit too much like a 'beta' release at the moment, though.