More new GS games coming soon

[Jeremy Nelson]

On another note, Toys R Us has a board game called Zero, which looking at the rules, resembles Pointless quite a bit. The game is made by University Games and goes for $25.

Also at Target, which is where I got mine. It is Pointless if it were run through the University Games-o-tron. Which is to say they get the idea right, get a few things wrong and add a few geegaws that really have no place and the game plays fine without them. Recommended.

After looking around on EBay UK, it seems that University Games actually is licensing the Pointless board game across the pond.

[pacdude]

I had my girlfriend play with me—the epitome of the 'casual customer.' She even noticed things like, "Why does [Contestant's Row] always start at the far left?" and "Where's the noise [in Pathfinder when a wrong number is stepped on]?"

Fine, but (especially in the latter case), you know as well as I that by virtue of her knowing what that sound is, she's not nearly as casual as you're suggesting. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data" and all that.

Fair enough. She may be more attentive than I give her credit for, but Jeremy brings up an excellent point. It's not difficult to do something right, especially when there's seemingly no reason not to.

[TLEberle]

and wonder how anyone can have an excuse for putting out a half baked product.

If you can get your core demo to buy the product and your choices are 1) spend more time and money or 2) don't do that, and doing Thing 1 doesn't cause you to make much more profit, then companies will do Thing 2 until that corollary ceases to be the case.

[clemon79]

If you can get your core demo to buy the product

Precisely so. The key takeaway here is that at this point of the game, if you are a hardcore game show geek like us, and you think you're part of that core demo, you're fooling yourself. Ludia's pandering was nothing more than an attempt to market outside of their demo.

[Speedy G]

This is obscure and only borderline game show related...

I stumbled onto gameplay videos of a game I played as a kid, The Omega Virus.  I can't find any information online about who was involved with it, but I swear it sounds like Gene Wood is the voice for the Virus.  Am I hearing things?  Listen:

[MikeK]

The big issue with TPiR Decades for the iPad is that if you win your showcase, the app crashes, and you have to replay that pricing game then lose at the Showcase Showdown or in the showcases to advance.

[clemon79]

The big issue with TPiR Decades for the iPad is that if you win your showcase, the app crashes

I would love to hear if this is reproducable or limited to Mike's install. Not that I'm doubting you, Mike, but if that's a repro that's shoddy even by Ludia non-standards.

[Adam Nedeff]

It's not difficult to do something right, especially when there's seemingly no reason not to.

Exactly! My friends and I were fishing for a way to explain the problems we had with the game that bewildered us. There's no music for "Hurdles" even though the William Tell Overture is public domain. They use the SportsType font for elements that don't use SportsType on the real show, but then you come to a pricing game like Dice Game, which DOES use SportsType, and it uses a different font. It's not so much that the game is full of mistakes, it's that the mistakes are so...WEIRD.

[Jeremy Nelson]

The big issue with TPiR Decades for the iPad is that if you win your showcase, the app crashes

I would love to hear if this is reproducable or limited to Mike's install. Not that I'm doubting you, Mike, but if that's a repro that's shoddy even by Ludia non-standards.

Same thing has happened to me. I got to the third episode, and it has crashed on me three times so far.

I thought giving the game a chance for $2 rather than paying for the $40 version was a solid idea, but....

[Dbacksfan12]

It's not so much that the game is full of mistakes, it's that the mistakes are so...WEIRD.

Something that's always annoyed me is, for lack of a better term, "mathematically incorrect", is bids in contestants row show up $0695, for example.  Unless it got corrected in the most recent version...

[Jeremy Nelson]

It's not so much that the game is full of mistakes, it's that the mistakes are so...WEIRD.

Something that's always annoyed me is, for lack of a better term, "mathematically incorrect", is bids in contestants row show up $0695, for example.  Unless it got corrected in the most recent version...

Nope. All of the unnecessary zeroes are still out there.

Adam, I agree with you- those mistakes aren't weird though. They're careless. If a font is already in the game, and you use a totally different one (Sportstype for a bunch of games, but NOT Dice Game where it belongs), that's reeks of We Don't Give A Crap. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'm designing video games, my team and I are spending hundreds, if not thousands of hours developing and rendering and coding and all that good stuff. Granted, this isn't Arkham Asylum or Halo, but if I'm going to spend a good portion of time putting a game together, I'd want to make sure it was the best quality I could make it. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable releasing a game with so many careless mistakes, and that's me talking beyond just the stuff Ludia puts out there.

Of course, there's the very real possibility that the people behind these games... (A) get paid very little, (B) work under short turnaround cycles, (C) just don't care, and know the company doesn't either, (D) are very unskilled workers, or (E) some combination of A, B, C, and D.

I thought Fremantle would tighten the reins when they bought the company, seeing as how these shows are their property, but I guess not.

[MikeK]

The big issue with TPiR Decades for the iPad is that if you win your showcase, the app crashes

I would love to hear if this is reproducable or limited to Mike's install. Not that I'm doubting you, Mike, but if that's a repro that's shoddy even by Ludia non-standards.

Besides Jeremy below, at least one other member of this board included crashing after winning a showcase in his review on the App Store.

[Fedya]

There's no music for "Hurdles" even though the William Tell Overture is public domain.

The notes on the page may be in the public domain, but the performances aren't, unless they predate Steamboat Willie, or somebody deliberately created a public domain version.  (At which point people would probably complain it doesn't sound like the arrangement used on TPIR.)

[DoorNumberFour]

The big issue with TPiR Decades for the iPad is that if you win your showcase, the app crashes

I would love to hear if this is reproducable or limited to Mike's install. Not that I'm doubting you, Mike, but if that's a repro that's shoddy even by Ludia non-standards.

Besides Jeremy below, at least one other member of this board included crashing after winning a showcase in his review on the App Store.

Mine crashes too.

[clemon79]

Well, then Ludia continues to find new lows with which to surprise even me.