To be fair (and it makes me sick to do so) but they do need to have padding because the runs don't always run on time. Some of them end early, some of them go late, etc and there's the changing of the setup between runs - you need something to cut to when they're moving equipment into or out of the room.
GDQ has a vested interest in paying $0 for talent so you're going to get shit like this as these nobodies try and leverage this into their "big break" for streaming.
I actually agree with this quite a bit, with a speedrunning event especially, the schedule can end up being all over the place, plus when you have X amount of runners each event, there's bound to be at least one person who gets sick and it requires scrambling last minute to shuffle everything around. And it being 24/7 doesn't help, since people might be on a specific sleep schedule because they thought they were running at a more obscure hour, so you can't just shift them around.
Good events (aka ESA) have this, I think the difference is how they handle it. ESA is a lot more relaxed, they don't really try and do skits or anything and instead vamp for time in a way that feels pretty natural. I think GDQ's biggest problem is their unnatural toxic positivity. I get that GDQ is, for lack of a better term, more corporate than ESA. But it feels like GDQ doesn't understand how to handle that at all and thinks it means they have to be completely sterilized of anything that's even remotely negative. And, hey, I'll give them credit, if they were making a public access show aimed at 2-4 years old, they'd absolutely hit the ball out of the park. It feels like they can't even say "this game is bad" because that might hurt some dev's feelings, so instead of awful block, they have to have silly block. Meanwhile, ESA will run a game the runner will gladly admit is bad/flawed/whatever, but is still fun.
I think GDQ also prioritizes their crew more than the runners. Which, again, to an extent I sort of get...but they go too over the top with it. Especially with the hosts. I'm sure it happens every now and then at ESA too, but a big difference to me when I watch the events is how often the GDQ hosts interrupt to try and read donations versus at ESA. I think it goes back to the relaxed thing. ESA runs will let the runner and the couch shoot the shit and go on tangents when there's nothing technical to talk about. This is becoming rarer and rarer in GDQ runs because the hosts will look for any opportunity to jump in and read donations.
The donations they pick are also just really cringe most of the time. Not even just the "trans rights" spam, but the number of "personal" stories. I know ESA has these too, but it feels far more common at GDQ. It's just an odd vibe, going from someone talking about how to perform the buttsmash glitch to get out of bounds, to hearing about how someone was depressed for a year after painstakingly losing a parent to cancer, to T-pose humping a wall to launch through the level to hit a trigger while the crowd screams ORB or whatever.
What makes it even stupider is that they have a completely separated event that is all about "female" speedrunners. So why do they feel like they must force the tranny shit on SGDQ too is just beoynd my understanding
It always amuses me that ESA almost always has more female runners/commentors compared to GDQ. I've always heard rumors that women are less comfortable going to GDQ events, whichis why they're getting phased out more and more by troons versus ESA or other events. To the point that I think a standard event still has more women than GDQ's "female" events.
