OP NOTE: This is not about the Polygon website, or its articles on gaming. This is about some good good video content.
About a couple years ago, Polygon pivoted from making pie charts about Mario Kart to putting their top personalities up front and center on YouTube: Griffin and Justin McElroy (of My Brother My Brother and Me), Simone de Rochefort, Patrick Gill, Russ Frushstick, Jeff Ramos, and recent hire Brian David Gilbert. While the Polygon website is about gaming journalism, Polygon Video is about a bunch of fun-loving goofballs being bad at video games and having a great time.
ENRICHING BRAND CONTENT (TM):
Monster Factory
Hosts: Griffin and Justin McElroy
Updates: Monthly
By far Polygon's most popular series, the McElroy brothers take character customization engines in video games and create beautiful, terrible creatures, and then build a lore around them. Whether it's Adult Cool and his powerful kicks in Phantasy Star Online, recreating Bart Simpson perfectly in Black Desert Online, or THE FINAL PAM in Fallout 4, Monster Factory is a laugh riot. The energy of the McElroys is infectious and their sheer glee in toying with sliders and discovering how broken games can get is pure joy.
Awful Squad
Hosts: Griffin McElroy, Russ Frushtick
Also Featuring: Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Simone de Rochefort, Clayton Ashley, Patrick Gill, Chris Plante, and Special Guests
Updates: Live Streams every Tuesday @ 2 PM ET
Awful Squad is about Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, and it's also not about Playerunknowns Battlegrounds. Each week starts with Griffin, Russ and crew taking on public matches (and usually not doing very well but SOMETIMES ~magic happens~), and then bringing together their community into private matches with custom game ideas like Car Jousting, Tower of Error, Zombie Wiggle Party, and occasional quirks like G-rated mode (use dirty words and you have to drop your weapon). This is not a series about watching high-level PUBG play. This is about Justin playing songs on his accoustic guitar; this is about Simone jumping out of the plane early by mistake and laughing her head right off her neck; this is about Russ getting into a car and almost instantly driving right into a teammate by accident.
Video Game Theater
Host: Simone de Rochefort
Also Featuring: Patrick Gill, Guests
Updates: On Hiatus until February
Simone, Pat, and occasional guests (like Abby Russell from Giant Bomb) act out famous scenes from video games. Whether it's the death of Goofy, Tidus learning to laugh, or a man shouting "SHAUN" over and over, you can expect the Video Game Players to give these scenes the respect they deserve (none).
Yellface
Hosts: Jeff Ramos, Simone de Rochefort
Updates: Monthly
The story of Yellface is that people at the Polygon offices found out Simone has amazing faces and reactions when a video game scares her, so she and Jeff got together to play Outlast II, a game with no shortage of jump scares. And this is a series with no shortage of amazing reactions. It also helps that Jeff is hilarious, and the two have a great back and forth throughout. TO BE CLEAR, this is not a "PewDiePie screaming into the mic over and over" Let's Play, this is Simone hiding behind Jeff because the camera turned to reveal a fence.
Week in Revue:
Host: Brian David Gilbert
Updates: Fridays
A new weekly series recapping the news in song from Polygon's latest hire. Not my personal favorite but it's alright.
Game Ogre
Hosts: Patrick Gill, Simone de Rochefort
Updates: Every other Monday
A new series where Patrick and Simone play video games by each sharing a half of a controller. Usually when you hear "2 Players 1 Controller" you think of incredible speedruns at Games Done Quick. This is the exact opposite, and it's quite an experience.
Overboard
Featuring: Ashley Oh, Jeff Ramos, Clayton Ashley, Simone de Rochefort, Patrick Gill
A brand new series that debuted this week, the Polygon staff plays board games! The first episode is about Mountains of Madness, and boy howdy does it drive everyone insane.
OTHER POLYGON SERIES:
The Baseball Game - Pat Gill and Allegra Frank watch every intro in a particular franchise and rank them.
The Besties - Audio podcast where Justin, Griffin, Chris and Russ discuss the best games of each month and end up hating each other.
Issue At Hand - I've honestly never seen this series but it's about comics, so. Yay?
Please Retweet - Pat Gill tries to get Nintendo to retweet a very good Toad.
SEO Play - Simone answers questions about games based on search engine optimization. (Ended)
The Polygon Show - All-woman podcast with Simone de Rochefort, Chelsea Stark, Ashley Oh, and Allegra Frank. I love this podcast. They discuss everything from queer indie games to which video game characters they would wrestle (aggressively or sexually).
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM:
Former Polygon producer Nick Robinson was once a staple of Polygon Video in 2015, until news of his creepy and predatory behavior caused his departure from the company. I won't shame anyone for enjoying old Polygon content with Nick, as Polygon was responsible and acted swiftly to the situation, suspending and then firing him after internal investigation within a week. But please do not start an endless discussion about it. It happened, it's done, it's over. He's not there anymore. Move on.
About a couple years ago, Polygon pivoted from making pie charts about Mario Kart to putting their top personalities up front and center on YouTube: Griffin and Justin McElroy (of My Brother My Brother and Me), Simone de Rochefort, Patrick Gill, Russ Frushstick, Jeff Ramos, and recent hire Brian David Gilbert. While the Polygon website is about gaming journalism, Polygon Video is about a bunch of fun-loving goofballs being bad at video games and having a great time.
ENRICHING BRAND CONTENT (TM):
Monster Factory
Hosts: Griffin and Justin McElroy
Updates: Monthly
By far Polygon's most popular series, the McElroy brothers take character customization engines in video games and create beautiful, terrible creatures, and then build a lore around them. Whether it's Adult Cool and his powerful kicks in Phantasy Star Online, recreating Bart Simpson perfectly in Black Desert Online, or THE FINAL PAM in Fallout 4, Monster Factory is a laugh riot. The energy of the McElroys is infectious and their sheer glee in toying with sliders and discovering how broken games can get is pure joy.
Awful Squad
Hosts: Griffin McElroy, Russ Frushtick
Also Featuring: Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Simone de Rochefort, Clayton Ashley, Patrick Gill, Chris Plante, and Special Guests
Updates: Live Streams every Tuesday @ 2 PM ET
Awful Squad is about Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, and it's also not about Playerunknowns Battlegrounds. Each week starts with Griffin, Russ and crew taking on public matches (and usually not doing very well but SOMETIMES ~magic happens~), and then bringing together their community into private matches with custom game ideas like Car Jousting, Tower of Error, Zombie Wiggle Party, and occasional quirks like G-rated mode (use dirty words and you have to drop your weapon). This is not a series about watching high-level PUBG play. This is about Justin playing songs on his accoustic guitar; this is about Simone jumping out of the plane early by mistake and laughing her head right off her neck; this is about Russ getting into a car and almost instantly driving right into a teammate by accident.
Video Game Theater
Host: Simone de Rochefort
Also Featuring: Patrick Gill, Guests
Updates: On Hiatus until February
Simone, Pat, and occasional guests (like Abby Russell from Giant Bomb) act out famous scenes from video games. Whether it's the death of Goofy, Tidus learning to laugh, or a man shouting "SHAUN" over and over, you can expect the Video Game Players to give these scenes the respect they deserve (none).
Yellface
Hosts: Jeff Ramos, Simone de Rochefort
Updates: Monthly
The story of Yellface is that people at the Polygon offices found out Simone has amazing faces and reactions when a video game scares her, so she and Jeff got together to play Outlast II, a game with no shortage of jump scares. And this is a series with no shortage of amazing reactions. It also helps that Jeff is hilarious, and the two have a great back and forth throughout. TO BE CLEAR, this is not a "PewDiePie screaming into the mic over and over" Let's Play, this is Simone hiding behind Jeff because the camera turned to reveal a fence.
Week in Revue:
Host: Brian David Gilbert
Updates: Fridays
A new weekly series recapping the news in song from Polygon's latest hire. Not my personal favorite but it's alright.
Game Ogre
Hosts: Patrick Gill, Simone de Rochefort
Updates: Every other Monday
A new series where Patrick and Simone play video games by each sharing a half of a controller. Usually when you hear "2 Players 1 Controller" you think of incredible speedruns at Games Done Quick. This is the exact opposite, and it's quite an experience.
Overboard
Featuring: Ashley Oh, Jeff Ramos, Clayton Ashley, Simone de Rochefort, Patrick Gill
A brand new series that debuted this week, the Polygon staff plays board games! The first episode is about Mountains of Madness, and boy howdy does it drive everyone insane.
OTHER POLYGON SERIES:
The Baseball Game - Pat Gill and Allegra Frank watch every intro in a particular franchise and rank them.
The Besties - Audio podcast where Justin, Griffin, Chris and Russ discuss the best games of each month and end up hating each other.
Issue At Hand - I've honestly never seen this series but it's about comics, so. Yay?
Please Retweet - Pat Gill tries to get Nintendo to retweet a very good Toad.
SEO Play - Simone answers questions about games based on search engine optimization. (Ended)
The Polygon Show - All-woman podcast with Simone de Rochefort, Chelsea Stark, Ashley Oh, and Allegra Frank. I love this podcast. They discuss everything from queer indie games to which video game characters they would wrestle (aggressively or sexually).
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM:
Former Polygon producer Nick Robinson was once a staple of Polygon Video in 2015, until news of his creepy and predatory behavior caused his departure from the company. I won't shame anyone for enjoying old Polygon content with Nick, as Polygon was responsible and acted swiftly to the situation, suspending and then firing him after internal investigation within a week. But please do not start an endless discussion about it. It happened, it's done, it's over. He's not there anymore. Move on.