5 Least Favorite Current Pricing Games

[wdm1219inpenna]

I'd love to hear your takes on which five of the current pricing games you dislike most and the reason or reasons why.

While not technically an active pricing game, Pay The Rent is on hiatus due to the move from CBS Television City to the new studio.  As the new studio is smaller, they're needing to resize the large Pay The Rent set.  That being said, I'm not a big fan of this game at all.  The $1,000 and $5,000 levels are extremely easy to win and reaching $10,000 tends to not be that much more difficult.  Getting all the items in just the right order though is a tough challenge and while that is commensurate to a $100,000 total prize, I simply do not miss seeing this game very much.  If they changed the game to where you needed to select 2 of the 6 items to exceed a certain total for $5,000, then 2 more of the items to exceed another total for $10,000 and then the last 2 remaining products not previously selected having to exceed another given total to win the $100,000 might prove more challenging. 


One Wrong Price - This game bores me to tears.  The show has a few three prize games that are quick games already with Most Expensive, Easy as 1 2 3 and Make Your Move.  For a show called Price is RIGHT, having a game with the exact opposite title seems like a bad idea to me.  The set is unique and I do love that it, along with Five Price Tags, are the only two pricing games whose names are not listed anywhere.  That said, it's a very "meh" game to me at best.


That's Too Much! - Price is Right's main premise is to bid as close as you can without going over, yet this game wants players TO go over, but just by a little bit.  The correct answer could be anywhere from the 2nd through the 9th possible price shown.  I consider it highly unlikely that the show ever has or ever will use the first or tenth prices as the one that's "too much".  It also has a very low win percentage and is a rather boring game to me.  Much as I'm not a fan of non-car games being played FOR cars, I'd much prefer to see Range Game played for an automobile than this horrid game.


Coming Or Going - The set is very dull and so simple.  If the prize is a trip, the answer seems to always be "going", and if it's not a trip, the answer seems to always be "coming".  Double Prices and Side By Side are enough one prize games involving a 50/50 chance to win. 


Time Is Money - Of all the current pricing games, this is the one I detest most of all.  There is virtually ZERO play along factor with this game.  Furthermore, while it is rare for anyone to win the $20,000 top prize, it is far too common that players end up winning ZERO dollars in this game.  As a TV viewer I get absolutely ZERO enjoyment or pleasure watching this pricing game and usually if I have it recorded, I just fast forward through it since almost nobody ever wins a darn thing in this miserable game.


I'd love to hear your lists.  I'm sure a great many are not fans of Stack The Deck, but at least that game involves two levels of pricing, one with grocery items and another for the car itself.  I don't mind that aspect of it, just how incredibly difficult it seems to be to win.  I wish they could amend the game where if a player gets all three grocery items priced right that they earn one extra card for the game.

[TLEberle]

I enjoy Stack the Deck (mind your initials!) and wish it was played for the luxury cars like Three Strikes. Get those grocery choices right, pick the proper spaces and it becomes "how many thousands of dollars is this car?"

I tend to blip through most of the quick-choice games unless they have a bit of movement to them, but given a silver bullet I would eliminate Freeze Frame. It's a clever-ish use of shuffling through digits but the shutter noise ruins it for me. Pay the Rent is at least an interesting puzzle with entirely too large stakes and a stupid name.

Half-Off is fine enough but the new obsession with blue as the dominant color makes it awful to look at. Bonus Game is totally irrelevant, doesn't have the cash bonus opportunity and provides no player agency other than "be right."

[TimK2003]

I'd have to take more than a few moments to whittle my 5 least favorite games.  But I would likely choose 5 pricing games that are practically identical with another pricing game.  For example:

Double Prices = One Right Price, the only difference is winning one or two prizes if correct.

Shell Game = Bonus Game, the only differences in Shell Game are, 1) the contestant can choose which shell may be the winning shell -- in any order they wish. And 2) they have a chance to make a bonus "side bet" if they are guaranteed the win.

Usually it's the quickie games that are very similar in scope.  But if they ever retired Bonus Game instead of alternating it with Shell Game, I probably wouldn't miss it.  Plus it's one less prop set they have to keep in storage.

[wdm1219inpenna]

Very clever about the "Stack the Deck" initials!  Good thing we're not talking about "Bumper Stumpers".

The only reason I'd not want to see Bonus Game retired, for one, it was played on the very first show, along with Any Number and Double Prices, so it's rather nice that it's still in the rotation to this day...

I would be hard pressed in thinking the show would retire Bonus Game A. because in recent years they updated the graphics with the electronic windows, also perfect playing only wins the bonus prize whereas Shell Game could really be a budget buster with all 4 chips being won since the cash award for a perfect playing of Shell Game and then identifying where the ball is is equal now to the prize package being played for, as opposed to the base $500 which was the norm for a very long time with Shelly.

[Kevin Prather]

Watching the Barker Era channel, my first thought is "Holy cow, did Danger Price get overplayed or what?"

Of the long-running pricing games, I think I'd pick "Ten Chances" as my least favorite. Even all these years later, you get people who don't understand how to play it. And I don't even mean the zero rule. I mean people trying to reuse numbers and such. And when you get one of those players, ten chances starts to feel like twenty.

[TLEberle]

Watching the Barker Era channel, my first thought is "Holy cow, did Danger Price get overplayed or what?"

It would have been ten years old in the mid-1980s, and that, Poker Game, Take Two and Race Game all had the same rubric of four one-biddish prizes, so I wonder if they had a backlog of those.

[wdm1219inpenna]

Hard to fathom that Danger Price ranks 25th as far as oldest pricing games on the show, considering as of this posting the show has featured some 112 different pricing games (not counting any LMAD games played on Price during Mash-up weeks).

During the mid 1980s there were far fewer games in the rotation too which might explain why Danger Price appears to show up so often.  It's still a solid game and I don't mind seeing it.

According to http://tpirstats.com/Other/AllSeasons.html, Danger Price was played 35 times during season 13, the 1984 - 85 season which would be the last full season with Johnny Olson as announcer.  Not sure how many episodes there were back in season 13 but even if you figure 220 episodes, 35 is a pretty large number of times for Danger Price to appear.  Again the pricing game rotation was far smaller even back then than it is in 2024 with over six dozen pricing games in the rotation.

[jjman920]

Hard to fathom that Danger Price ranks 25th as far as oldest pricing games on the show, considering as of this posting the show has featured some 112 different pricing games (not counting any LMAD games played on Price during Mash-up weeks).

It makes sense. Danger Price was the first game to debut after the show permanently switched to an hour and once that happened, there was a steady stream of games introduced each season to beef up the rotation.

Time Is Money - Of all the current pricing games, this is the one I detest most of all.  There is virtually ZERO play along factor with this game.  Furthermore, while it is rare for anyone to win the $20,000 top prize, it is far too common that players end up winning ZERO dollars in this game.  As a TV viewer I get absolutely ZERO enjoyment or pleasure watching this pricing game and usually if I have it recorded, I just fast forward through it since almost nobody ever wins a darn thing in this miserable game.

I find the first part of this critique interesting because I thought there was play along factor in guessing which products belong in which ranges. I assign each range a number (1 for the low ranger, 2 for the middle, 3 for the high-end) and then guess where I think which one goes. And during the countdown gameplay, I then think to myself, "maybe that product could go there" or when watching the contestant "you fool, cashews are like $9, keep it high!" I won't say that it's enjoyable for everyone, especially when a contestant is completely clueless and it becomes "Waiting 30 Seconds for the Money to Hit Zero," but hey, I like yelling at my TV.

I don't have very many least favorites that aren't just overplayed one or two prize games (which is understandable) or games that suffer from poor setups despite the actual game not being bad (Switcheroo or Pathfinder), but I will put down one game that is absolutely on any list of my least favorites...

Hot Seat: This is a Let's Make A Deal game, but because there's no pricing games allowed on Brady LMAD because it's become Price's sister show, it's got ported over to Price. It has the gloss and sheen of Let's Make a Deal and uses SFX that sound like they were crafted by Cat Gray. It's very boring to me. Congrats, you're playing Higher/Lower in chair. Glad you're comfy. I appreciate the suspense of going for it, but it's not enough for me to justify its gigantic Shower Game-rivaling set and time to play. I also hate that it has no introduction anymore. Prior to the pandemic, they used a graphic on the backwall to introduce the game, but they dropped it because there was no audience during the first pandemic season and they didn't want to use a shot of the backwall. Instead of using another piece of the set such as George's podium (which they've done in the past), they decided to just walk up to the game, zoom out from the game's sign and have Drew just go into explaining the game. Even following the return of the audience, they have decided not to bring back that intro and currently, Hot Seat stands as the only cash game in the show's rotation that doesn't have its top prize introduced or announced by George. It's just...there and it's a nitpick of mine that makes me sad the director doesn't seem to mind for someone who's as details oriented as Adam Sandler.

[aaron sica]

My least fave:

What may be the most unpopular opinion in the room - Plinko. I've just never liked it.

My other least favorites:

One Right Price
One Wrong Price
Double Prices
Side by Side

There's an obvious pattern there....I'm not a fan of the "quickie" games, but I know that they need to be in the rotation.

[TLEberle]

My least fave:

What may be the most unpopular opinion in the room - Plinko. I've just never liked it.

It's unfair to the contestant who just wants to be on TV and win some cash but I've started to hate-watch in a fashion, laughing when someone wins just two extra chips and they total up $600. Same as Time is Money when the contestant spends 17 seconds looking into the crowd and furtively moves stuff back and forth.

[nowhammies10]

1. You can't
2. rank pricing games
3. in this manner, every
4. game is someone's favourite
5. Stack the Deck

[TLEberle]

1. You can't
2. rank pricing games
3. in this manner, every
4. game is someone's favourite
5. Stack the Deck

I remember having this exact conversation with Steve G. and wondering for whom that answer is "Double Prices," and then finding out that STYDFan/CarShark did in fact proclaim that it was his favorite game because it generated wins.

[Kevin Prather]

I remember having this exact conversation with Steve G. and wondering for whom that answer is "Double Prices," and then finding out that STYDFan/CarShark did in fact proclaim that it was his favorite game because it generated wins.

I'll just leave this here without comment.

[beatlefreak84]

It has taken me a few days to mull over this, but I tried to come up with ones that really aren't just "quick plays" since those are there purposefully:

(In no particular order)

1.  Pay the Rent (clearly designed to not be won often, but most contestants will stop at $10,000 anyway, so it feels like a letdown almost every time)
2.  Gas Money (way too high of a cash consolation prize, and the mechanic of "avoid the right price" seems counterintuitive to The Price is Right)
3.  Bonus Game (not a bad game per se, but Shell Game does the same mechanics so much better it's a wonder this game hasn't been retired)
4.  Double Cross (so much chrome/explanation for a game that's really a 1/3 guess...you know they will never put the correct answer as the default setting!)
5.  Pass the Buck (get a 1/6 chance of winning the car without needing to know anything about prices...at least Let 'em Roll makes it a 1/32 chance if you don't know anything about prices)

I absolutely agree Plinko is way overplayed, but I don't hate the game.  Likewise, I don't hate the idea of Stack the Deck or Time is Money; it's just painful to see so many contestants play it suboptimally.

Honorable mentions:  That's Too Much (way too challenging to win, and again, seems counterintuitive to the show's title, but at least it plays quickly) and Gridlock (pretty much a quick-play version of Money Game; chrome is nice, though)

Anthony

[TLEberle]

5.  Pass the Buck (get a 1/6 chance of winning the car without needing to know anything about prices...at least Let 'em Roll makes it a 1/32 chance if you don't know anything about prices)

One way that I would improve PTB at least in my mind is that if the contestant doesn't win either extra number choice that Drew reveals the location of the car and then the contestant chooses from what is left.