The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: Sonic Whammy on May 05, 2017, 09:33:54 AM
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Hey, everyone! I hope everyone's doing OK.
Most of us here at the Forum know the great Tim "Loogaroo" Connolly. Aside from game show knowledge that he's proven both on and off screen, he dabbled for fun on his old website with a few original game show ideas. One of which was a last man standing trivia contest called Strikeout!
Several months ago, my Lost Silver Productions teammate, Scott Goldiner, volunteered himself to be the one to pilot test Tim's game out as part of his Game Show Megamix repertoire. And this past March, we had the opportunity to give it its first official run, with one or our newest members, Bridget Duffy, doing the hosting.
And now, it's officially on the Tube, so I give you guys the opportunity to have at it. Does the game work? Should anything be changed? Whatever positives, negatives and honest critiques you can offer, please do. And yes, I know that the material is about anime, video games and nerd culture, but don't let that factor into your opinion.
So without further ado, please enjoy the debut of... STRIKEOUT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6hr97zz5x4
Fixed the broken video link. -knagl
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Round one is too close to Inquizition for comfort, but I like the pass/play element of round two. Being able to punish your opponent in round three with a right answer doesn't do it for me.
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Looks like you reduced the number of questions in the bonus round to 10, which is probably for the best since 15 questions on a given subject is probably going overboard.
I liked it! If nothing else, this gave me a chance to see the game being played "in the wild" so to speak, so that I might go back and tweak some things that didn't work as well. (Taking the feedback about rounds 1 & 3 into consideration).
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I clicked on the link and it didn't lead to any video.
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I clicked on the link and it didn't lead to any video.
The part that matters is "R6hr97zz5x4". You can even google that and find a match to the video.
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Round two is clever but why wouldn't a savvy player just pass every time? A player who goes it alone should be rewarded, and if the three players are forced into playing there should be consequences for the players who blow it.
In round three getting a strike because your opponent answers right falls flat. Do it like Joker's Wild 90: toss up for control, then every right answer is a strike. On a wrong answer the opponent can peg back with a steal, then back for another toss up. It also should move at a decent clip.
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Actually, 9 questions in the bonus round. Figured 9 strikes, 9 questions.
If anyone's having trouble seeing it, google "Strikeout Lost Silver" and you'll find it right away.
Tim, we're probably gonna do this again sometime soon, possibly at the end of the month. Then we're on break from cons 'til August. So if you want to tweak the rules, you got a little time. Don't rush. I might think of a thing or two as well, even though I really enjoyed how it played out.
So keep the comments coming, gang! More, more!
(And come to the GSN podcast tonight, link's on the GSN wall.)
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Round two is clever but why wouldn't a savvy player just pass every time?
Because if everyone tries to do that, the next question is an automatic must-play for everyone, at which point you either get the question right or get a strike. The optimal strategy isn't to duck every question; if anything you want to play as many questions as you feel confident in playing because that accelerates the round (more situations where both your opponents get a strike as opposed to just one of them).
A player who goes it alone should be rewarded, and if the three players are forced into playing there should be consequences for the players who blow it.
See above. In any question where more than one person is in, if one person answers correctly anyone else who chose to play it gets a strike.
In round three getting a strike because your opponent answers right falls flat. Do it like Joker's Wild 90: toss up for control, then every right answer is a strike. On a wrong answer the opponent can peg back with a steal, then back for another toss up. It also should move at a decent clip.
I think in a more professional setting, the pacing would be a fair bit faster because players wouldn't get a lot of thinking time like they did in the video. At least doing it this way allows both players to control their destinies to some degree; having a toss-up and then keeping control with whoever got it right would open the game up to curb-stomps.
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I think in a more professional setting, the pacing would be a fair bit faster because players wouldn't get a lot of thinking time like they did in the video. At least doing it this way allows both players to control their destinies to some degree; having a toss-up and then keeping control with whoever got it right would open the game up to curb-stomps.
I second Tim on both fronts here. The idea that every question in Round 3 puts a strike on someone makes it a fast round. And depending on the length of the first two rounds (each has a 10-question maximum), you want something that's going to peg a winner down faster if the first two went the full way.
Travis' idea MIGHT do that, too, but it does seem a little much to sit there and eat all the strikes just because you missed the first question. Look at how Now You See It dropped that "keep playing until you miss a word" rule in the finals after only the first episode. Was a total raw deal.
Overall, the play or pass in the final round gives it a Russian Roulette vibe. And yeah, don't sweat the time limit thing. We do play it a little looser at cons because, again, these guys aren't trained in the arts of the game show contestant like most of us are. This is far from a real game show (the performance in general, not Strikeout, it's something to entertain the con masses in a different way for a hour or so and just have all us play things for fun.
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Whether it's better or worse than getting a strike by raw luck is a question for the philosophers. Once the game is known and moving I would advocate round three using some of the red box games that Tic Tac Dough became known for, interspersed with long-form questions to break it up. If depends on how many strikes the survivors are left with.
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Observations:
Round 1: It seemed like the contestants could see the answers as they were being submitted? I presume that would be addressed, as it gives an advantage to a player who is unsure of the answer, but sees that the other three people all locked in "B", or whatever.
Round 2: Same comment as Travis, it seems like a player could skate through by always passing unless they were really strong on the category.
Round 3 and bonus round: There needs to be a time limit to answer the questions, although it sounds like that would be addressed in a non-convention setting based on the post above.
Overall, entertaining. I'd watch it again, although preferably with slightly less geeky question material. :)
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Observations:
Round 1: It seemed like the contestants could see the answers as they were being submitted? I presume that would be addressed, as it gives an advantage to a player who is unsure of the answer, but sees that the other three people all locked in "B", or whatever.
Round 2: Same comment as Travis, it seems like a player could skate through by always passing unless they were really strong on the category.
Round 3 and bonus round: There needs to be a time limit to answer the questions, although it sounds like that would be addressed in a non-convention setting based on the post above.
Overall, entertaining. I'd watch it again, although preferably with slightly less geeky question material. :)
First, before I say anything, thanks for fixing the link, knagl. I don't usually post links here, or if I have it's been way too long.
Anyway, let's see here. The selection reveals in Round 1, we'll check into that. There's a typo that has to be fixed in the software elsewhere anyway, so perhaps we'll hit upon that along the way, too.
Round 2, it's being discussed among a few people whether there should be a restriction on passing. In actuality, the 2-pass limit in Round 1 wasn't originally there, either. I put that in. Perhaps something similar might be best for this round, but we'll find out exactly what.
And the later rounds, yeah, we play it a little looser, but especially this particular weekend we did because the convention overall was very weird (and again, the convention is the reason for our question material, so that's why I said take that out of the equation). We wanted to host a tryout session and things and the unexpectedly sparse attendance killed any shot at that. So the fact that we got volunteers who felt they were good enough to play, we compensated on time to help them out a little more. In a more optimal setting, we can better institute a time limit, as could a regular show.
All in all, we got another run of the game coming likely in 3 weeks. Then it won't be for another 3 months at least before it's done again. I'd probably say expect Episode 2 to use the existing rules just for the purpose of gathering more data, and then if a change is made anywhere, it'll start with Episode 3. But keep the suggestions coming in the meantime.
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Since I can't really play along, I can only judge based on the format. Also try as I might, I can't totally shut off the "game designer" part of my brain. For most people if you have three people sitting down with a buzzer to answer quiz questions they're going to think Jeopardy--Strikeout has fewer questions and largely meaningless decisions. If you want people to buy in, there needs to be a game there.
Round one is a warm up round, so that's fine. Round two has the potential to be interesting if something is made of the play/pass angle. Round three should be the big climactic final, but it's just more decisions that look strategic but aren't really.
My last idea here is to take a page from Tic Tac Dough and to have it as Opponent's Choice. One player chooses between two categories--one would have a single difficult question and the other two somewhat easier questions. This gets both players involved every round, plus you have actual strategy and decisions because the contestants can (or should have been) tracking who did well with which categories.
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One thing I was working through in my head is that the carryover of unused strikes opens it up for one dominant contestant to have enough of a cushion in the later rounds. A good contestant should have some reward for their gameplay, but not at the expense of the game. The first thing I might do is reset the strikes for Round 3 to make it a true head-to-head.
I might also consider a 3-strike bonus round and apply the unused strikes from Round 3 as rewards. This can reduce the number of right answers for the bonus, used as passes, or perhaps play against a clock with a time bonus for the unused strikes.
It might just be me, but 3 seems to be the right number of "strikes" and something that is just an ingrained expectation. Adding 2 at the second round deviates from that slightly, but it's not excessive. Once we get into 7 and 9, it seems to break down, particularly from a visual standpoint. I understand that the contestants will likely enter these rounds with a bunch of these already filled in, but it becomes more difficult to visually "chunk" that information.
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As Tim and I read the suggestions here, I can't help but observe one thing about the game overall.
One thing I enjoyed about this game of Strikeout is its simplicity. Too many times, we see games on TV, and even make up games ourselves, that throw in extra rules and twists that are designed to stimulate the game for us, the experts, but often just make the whole thing too complicated to follow for the casual person. And as I read some of the ideas here to change this round or that, I worry that danger might take place. Travis, your 2 easy versus 1 hard Opponent's Choice thing just seems to fall in that zone, at least to me, anyway.
That's not to say that change can't work, but I think we gotta be more subtle. For instance, in that final round, what if on top of the standard Play or Pass, if the person who answers the question fails, the other person can have the option to try the question themselves and dump a second strike on the first guy with a right answer (they risk a strike themselves, of course). Something like that is subtle and still accomplishes the original objective. It can even cause someone who's got a big lead in strikes to suddenly get zapped twice as fast and even up the game in a hurry.
I will say this. I have my own game in development, and I've been inspired to make a subtle addition of my own to one round. But more on that later.
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That's certainly your prerogative but right now you have a bread on bread sandwich. I don't think a meaningful choice like what I proffered is too complicated at all.
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Again, not saying it can't work. But help me out, how would you enforce it? Give me a sample of how it can play out.
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How do you enforce what? "Tom, you get to choose whether Harry answers one question on Baseball or two on US Presidents. What do you choose?"
What's to enforce?
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How would the strikes work? Is answering/failing on the 2 easy questions different from the 1 hard question?
My imagination is that if there's no difference, just like the unlimited passing right now in Round 2, everyone would just give the other guy the 1 hard question.
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Since every wrong answer gets a strike, that rule would still apply in round three, rewarding a player who paid attention in the first two rounds.
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See, I wouldn't even treat the easy questions separately. Here, you wanted to think in Tic Tac Dough red category mode. Think Double-Or-Nothing.
If you challenge the opponent to answer the 2 easy ones, they must get both right or they get two strikes. Likewise, if they succeed, you got the two strikes. No splits. SOMEONE must get two strikes if the easy questions are chosen.
That would put the element of risk on you as the challenger. If you think from how they've done in other categories (there's very little repeating of the same category during the game if any, so you can't really "pay attention" in that regard) that they can't answer 2 easy questions on this next subject, then take the chance. But if you think it's gonna backfire, just give them the hard one so that you only incur one strike at most.
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My favorite Loogaroo game is actually Time Bomb.
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Going to jump in here with my worthless two cents. Probably quoting people...
Round 1 can be a bit dry right now, but it's fine if it moves faster. Pacing and format are two different animals and that'll get improved with more run-throughs.
Round 2, simplify the rule: "You may never pass on two consecutive questions". It still creates the possibility for an all-play while also not forcing the obvious tactic of passing when an opponent has four strikes and you don't. (And obvious tactic was obvious to your contestants.) It's a simpler rule than what you have right now (and you admittedly want simpler rules). It also speeds up the game since players who pass have their decisions made for them on the following question. If you want to add meat to the decision making without adding more rules on top of that, have a "NEXT" box to show what the category will be for the following question that they'll be forced to play if they pass this one.
Round 3 is, in fact, the previously mentioned bread sandwich. Here's your fix: There's a category board, one question in each category. Have a general knowledge toss-up. The toss-up isn't worth a strike. Instead, the toss-up winner can choose to play a category or can force the opponent to play a category of the toss-up winner's choice. This also addresses Travis' concern about being able to give a strike to an opponent who can do nothing about it. This also increases the value of knowledge gained about your opponents' strengths and weaknesses earlier in the game, which can only be a good thing.
While the bonus is straightforward, the win condition is creative and interesting. I understand why you chose it. It does create the side effect, though, that someone who did well in the first three rounds wins less than someone who just survived to the bonus. This is easily fixed by changing the total win to a flat amount though.
Some folks might have a problem with the advantages carried by one player over another from round to round. I don't. I view it as the strength of your game, and it's the kind of thing that's missing from too many formats.
Round two is clever but why wouldn't a savvy player just pass every time?
Because if everyone tries to do that, the next question is an automatic must-play for everyone, at which point you either get the question right or get a strike. The optimal strategy isn't to duck every question; if anything you want to play as many questions as you feel confident in playing because that accelerates the round (more situations where both your opponents get a strike as opposed to just one of them).
No, it's not. Because if you're the only one who plays a question, then the only one who can get a strike is you. If you were the only one who played a question, and getting it right meant your opponents get strikes, then it might be different. As it is, you can be penalized for playing and your opponents rewarded for doing nothing.
I get that there's a bit of a Challengers vibe there, but on that show, everyone had to play on every category in some way. The math works way different here.
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So far, it appears the growing consensus for Round 2 is, "pass one, must play the next". We'll see if the next run of the game in 2 1/2 justifies that. It probably will, but just to be sure. And I like the idea of seeing the categories of the questions, I was actually thinking about that myself before you said it. Tim, what do you think of that one?
Round 3, still under debate, although I'm liking the last idea that I told Travis. Just waiting on his reply.
And Go The Distance, yeah, that's interesting, I didn't notice that about the payoffs until you mentioned it, Parliboy. OK, note made, after this 2nd episode, we'll drop that probably. To this, I ask Tim a question. Should we:
A) Only give the $250's in GTD if they DON'T win the $10K?
B) Drop the $250's altogether and just give the overall winner an extra $1000 for making it to the end?
C) Not give any other bonus at all, just award what they picked up in the first two rounds and the $10K if they win it?
I may have one other idea, but let's figure all this out first.
(And PS: Huzzah to anyone here who's subscribed recently. We really need it. Hope you're enjoying yourself.)
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What I don't like about the suggestions for round 3 is that it's turning what should be a simple, dramatic knockout round into some complicated game-within-a-game where answering one question grants to the ability to answer another question or pass a question to the other player and some such. I feel like eyes will glaze over if we get too deep in the weeds with rules explanations. I've discussed the "hot streak" format with Travis, and the idea that someone could buzz in, get a question right, rattle off two more right answers, and their opponent is dunzo all because they weren't fast enough on the first question really doesn't sit well with me.
I would be more inclined to try something different with the questions, i.e. Seesaw lists or something of that sort, before mutating the final round rules too much.
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Round 3, still under debate, although I'm liking the last idea that I told Travis. Just waiting on his reply.
There's no reason to wait for me. Also, I'm recovering from neurosurgery and can't just dash to a computer terminal--sometimes I read the board from an iPad.
What I see is several people lining up to say that round three needs work. I'm glad to see that Tim is receptive to that since it's his creation after all. The one thing that I can't stand in game shows is arbitrary penalties (cf: Lingo, Make the Grade, Nick Arcade), and round three as it stands is largely arbitrary. That said, I love what Gene has put forward.
So here's one last note: the nature of the game isn't so much that one person wins as somebody loses by striking out. You're kinda driving in the opposite lane by having losers rather than a winner.
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What I don't like about the suggestions for round 3 is that it's turning what should be a simple, dramatic knockout round into some complicated game-within-a-game where answering one question grants to the ability to answer another question or pass a question to the other player and some such. I feel like eyes will glaze over if we get too deep in the weeds with rules explanations. I've discussed the "hot streak" format with Travis, and the idea that someone could buzz in, get a question right, rattle off two more right answers, and their opponent is dunzo all because they weren't fast enough on the first question really doesn't sit well with me.
I would be more inclined to try something different with the questions, i.e. Seesaw lists or something of that sort, before mutating the final round rules too much.
Tim, a seesaw list mutates your rules a lot more than what I threw out. It also slows the game down too much.
You mentioned what you don't like about round 3 suggestions. What I don't like is that the progression for how complicated your rules are isn't going one way or another. Right now, your rounds rules complications are ranked something like: 2-1-3, and the game would flow better with something... linear. Either 1-2-3 or 3-2-1.
See, here's the thing about round 3 right now: you believe it's dramatic... but it's not dramatic. You want it to be, but it's not. The drama has to partially rely on your contestants' investment in the game, as well as overwrought production values. You don't really have those, and there isn't enough game to make this work in a convention setting. So instead of dramatic, it's bread sandwich.
(Please understand, I am talking about the format, not you. Any aggressiveness is predicated on the idea that I've spent a LOT of hours working with other peoples' prototype board games and always want to see them get better. This conversation is no different for me.)
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I'm in agreement that there's a rule out there that can add drama and still keep everything simple. We've all got this, I know it.
Anyway, was talking with Tim earlier today. He's working on an overhaul twist that makes everyone in Rounds 2 and 3 decide on a choice of two categories to play rather than a play or pass thing with a single category. This keeps everyone active on all questions. And the 3rd round isn't going to have forced strikes. The only thing he didn't get to tell me was what the max length of the rounds will be.
(BTW, feel better, Travis, haven't been here or seen you on FB in a while, didn't know anything was going on.)
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The ruleset I have at this point looks like this:
R1: Pass on as many questions as you want, but if you pass and nobody answers incorrectly, it's a strike. ("Caught looking", as it were.) And yes, that means if everyone passes, they all get a strike because they're all cowards.
R2: Each question is a choice between two categories. It's a toss-up question when multiple players choose the same one.
R3: Same as R2. If different categories are picked, whoever started the round with more strikes (or less money if that was tied) has the obligation of going first.
That should simplify things. Given that this is being done in a convention setting where people aren't likely going in with a super game-showy mindset, I feel like simplicity and clarity needs to be prioritized over clever pass/play or question mechanics.
(I also wonder if the forum here is really the place to have this discussion. I feel really self-conscious that there's this much philosophizing over a concept I literally conceived as a teenager.)
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And yes, that means if everyone passes, they all get a strike because they're all cowards.
*Like*
(I also wonder if the forum here is really the place to have this discussion. I feel really self-conscious that there's this much philosophizing over a concept I literally conceived as a teenager.)
We autopsy formats all the time. We're spending more time with yours because it's in the pilot stage. We don't get to do that too often.
There are only so many places *to* have this discussion. That said, you have the right to say "forget you guys, this is my baby", and nobody should begrudge you that.
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We autopsy formats all the time. We're spending more time with yours because it's in the pilot stage. We don't get to do that too often.
There are only so many places *to* have this discussion. That said, you have the right to say "forget you guys, this is my baby", and nobody should begrudge you that.
Tim, I will second this notion because, and I hope the majority or entire collective of those who have offered comments here can back me on this, we're also offering such critique because we truly like it. I know that sometimes this place gets a little sarcastic or huffy with each other (don't act like it's not true, guys), we've all had fun with this game and just want to have more.
I'll admit that I was nervous over this when Scott in his own typical fashion volunteered himself to do this for you. But my folks even just watched the pilot tonight and enjoyed it, too. So if there's anything we can do to make this really cook for you, then so let it be done. We got your back.