I like it best when either there's nobody on the couch and the runner does good commentary, or there is one designated person on the couch who does most of the talking.
For the bigger games with more runners, the couch hive mind weirds me out sometimes. I'm mainly thinking of the super Mario sunshine run. It's cool how people can bond so much through running the same game, but sometimes it's just a little unsettling.
I think when there are too many people on the couch they end up just talking for each other instead of for the audience.
Well said, and I agree. I also think there's some effect where since people have spent so much time running the game, they naturally want to talk about it. That's true of any hobby. But many of the couch people lack the awareness to recognize that they aren't the one being showcased. And they just can't keep themselves from talking about the parts of the game they like.
Yeah they'll say something like "oh we've got the jetpack skip coming up. I think Robert found that skip right?"
"yeah shout out to robert for finding this skip! great member of our community"