In October 2020, Derrick Bitner of GameXplain left the channel to pursue a new venture. Ash Paulsen and Steve Bowling would leave that November for the same reason. A short time later, Jon Cartwright (who had left GameXplain earlier that year to join Nintendo Life) announced that he would be handing over his personal YouTube channel over to "some amazing people putting something really special together".
That special thing would be revealed and launched, on November 9, 2020 in the form of Good Vibes Gaming, a channel dedicated to spreading positivity and good vibes to the gaming community. Because, let’s be honest — “there’s too much negativity in gaming discourse these days”.
The cornerstone program of the channel was initially Today’s News Tonight, a week-nightly show where members of the crew and a Special Guest discussed prior days' gaming news. However, they also produce reviews, analysis videos, and video essays on various gaming topics, with these eventually drifting more into focus. Oftentimes, their shorter length feature videos give attention to older games or projects made by fans, usually shedding a positive light on overlooked or underappreciated subjects. Longer videos can include focused discussions, a weekly GVG Cast (filling a similar niche to Today's News Tonight), and also features on lengthier subjects such as series-wide retrospectives.
The channel can be found here
, while their Patreon can be found here. Daniel Alba and Brandon Miracle would join the channel in 2021 as art director and editor respectively, and on February 4, 2022, it was announced that Jon Cartwright would be (re)joining the channel, finally reuniting the crew who left GameXplain.
Tropes News Tonight include:
- Famous Ancestor: Ash has one in his father, Rob Paulsen.
- Podcast: "Today's News Tonight" served as one. However, the team felt that it’s news show/podcast mixture prevented the show from “exceeding as either” so it was put on hiatus and they launched a new weekly podcast, "GVG Cast"; though GVG Cast was not intended as a replacement, with TNT being intended to return retooled into more of a dedicated news show.
- Running Gag:
- Ash has a tendency to mention Mega Man a lot, which the other hosts gently rib him for. It's practically a tradition that there will be at least one mention of the blue bomber in discussions featuring Ash.
- Danimals yogurts and smoothies, and mascot Bongo the Monkey in particular have become an icon of the channel after he became a surprise Guest Character in Sonic Dash, anchored by the group's shared distaste of the products and escalated by the frequent appearances and Danimals-related comments of an enigmatic figure known as Bongo Lover.
- A legacy of Jon's distaste for the character, Kiddy Kong still holds presence as an ominous figure of sorts who looms over the channel and seeps into content in various ways, though arguably less so than fellow primate Bongo.
- Steve's utter hatred for Illumination's Minions.
- Special Guest: The number of "Today's News Tonight" episodes without one can be counted on one hand. The list of guests who've appeared include Tim Rogers, Imrhan Khan (from Kinda Funny Games), Shesez (of Boundary Break fame), SomecallmeJohnny, Scott The Woz, and Chuggaaconroy, to name just a few.
- Spiritual Antithesis: To GameXplain. The channel's creators cite that they were burned out by GameXplain's approach of releasing over a dozen short news and analysis videos every day, and wanted to try a "less is more" approach to content creation. The channel still reports on gaming news and features analysis and review videos, but it's handled in a far more chill fashion than many other journalistic channels, and is accompanied by a lot of more eclectic videos covering a range of gaming topics.
- Wham Shot: In the video titled gvgmeeting.mp4, it shows what seems to be a normal meeting between the group, and then Jon appears, to everyone’s surprise.
