I sat through all two hours of Saturday and the final hour of Sunday. I originally wrote a much longer piece but finally decided to keep it fairly brief.
When you are a contestant, it's definitely a lot of fun to compete for a real prize. (With the exception of an occasional pricing game, they're games of luck and random chance using a deck of playing cards.) As a player, it's exciting even though you don't really have a lot of control over what happens. Prizes are decent: gift cards mostly in $10 and $25 denominations, though someone won a $100 one in Sunday's game. As I said elsewhere, better that what PlayCafe typically pays out.
On the other hand, as a viewer the games offer very little to engage you. Contestants are just typing their actions in a chat window, and keeping a random-chance game interesting without contestant interaction is frankly beyond the skill level of the on-air talent. I don't want to get into a detailed review of the performers, so instead I'll just direct you to a typical game as presented in
this YouTube clip and allow you to judge for yourself.
The mechanics of what's going on could use a lot of work. There's an awkwardness at the beginning of each game as selected contestants (who may or may not still even be around) are asked to identify themselves. We're also asked to take a lot of stuff at face value including (as goongas noted) that contestant selection is as random as the hosts claim. And I have to say that it struck me as pretty odd to see 'dazztardly' Dan himself end up as a contestant, when he's working for the operation.
In general, I think asking these guys for more trivia questions misses the point of what they want to do. It's clear they aren't all that interested in trivia anyway. They're obviously making a
game that's fun for just about anybody to play. Where they need the most work is in creating a
show that's fun for people to watch.
