becrystalamazed

[becrystalamazed]

Which game shows have had the most episodes? Part 21: the finale

All the episodes are counted.

The 21st and final part of my review of every UK game show, to determine what has had more episodes than any other show.

Countdown being number one shouldn't surprise anyone - but some of the other big hitters have raised a few eyebrows. More Bamber Boozle than Bamber Gascoigne? More Davina McCall than Stephen Mulhern?

In prime time, Big Brother is the runaway winner, with Strictly Come Dancing moving second thanks to its daily spin-off show.

Plus! The Countdown finals week, and a big preview of some thrills for the festive season.

[becrystalamazed]

Just seen the trailer for Gladiators series 2. As a trailer I thought it was a little strange. Why were they boiling Viper in molten metal? I am looking forward to the new series though. Apparently they’re bringing in some new games - and I hope one of them has something to do with the hamster ball cages from the trailer or that’s another point of weirdness - and two new gladiators. The latter is an interesting decision. Of the series 1 gladiators, not all of them managed to establish themselves and their personas: Athena, Electro, Steel, Bionic and Apollo mostly fade into the background. Phantom’s persona is more stated than shown, Dynamite’s feels practically thrown at her, Fire has managed to claw her way there through the work she put in on Strictly as Montell, and while Viper’s persona is concrete, he also hasn’t fully managed to sell it. Let alone the fact Comet might as well be new with how early the injury that took her out was. My point is, they’ve already got quite a lot pf potential to work with, and they’ve already shown they can’t equally balance the gladiators. Adding two more is just going to worsen that.

However… the human brain craves novelty, and contrary to popular belief I am human. So of course I’m excited to meet these new gladiators and learn their names and their personas. Also it also might be a good opportunity to introduce a villain/heel for the women. Both Sabre and Diamond gave it a try, but it was after they’d already established themselves so it didn’t really stick. And if any of the other series 1 women - other than Comet maybe - went with it at this point, I think they’d really struggle to sell it. A completely new person would be a great way to introduce it, as well as a great way to make the newbie integrate into the show.

This was quite a long winded and weirdly critical way to say I’m really excited for series 2 and the celebrity special.

[becrystalamazed]

So! Itopia series 3 has emotionally ruined me. There better be a series 4 or I will never recover.

I’ll put my thoughts under the cut to avoid spoilers, except for this one - Alys Hunter is canonically bisexual.

Firstly they don’t have English subtitles for episode 6 yet, but there are Welsh subtitles on Clic, so I went through and google-translated it line by line.

I love how Lwsi’s central desire in all the  series is to be normal. Series one: get a Z to be normal. Series two: help out around the shelter to be normal. Series 3: hide her identity to be normal.

Gutted they didn’t tell us which course Lwsi was doing. It looked like some kind of maths or science by Izzy's coursework

I am very sure that the set for Lwsi’s accommodation is the same set they used for the Hunter house but repainted.

I love how the second Alys doesn’t have to be responsible for anyone she immediately vanishes off to the middle of nowhere and stays there.

Also, Alys and Sara as a couple recontextualises a lot of their actions in series 2. Of course Alys immediately latched onto Sara, she had a crush. Of course Sara followed Alys all the way into Itopia and back to the school, she also had a crush. Sara didn’t decide to stay after watching Alys and Lwsi’s sisterly bond, she stayed after watching Alys. Although, dating the girl who reminds you of your dead best friend has got to be rough. Brian Hunter seems to approve though.

As much as I hate to admit it, Zac getting the illegal Amber treatment is also very him. He’s always been very insecure, especially with what he can bring to a relationship, and with the long-distance strain something was going to give. At least he had the sense to immediately download the patch. That being said if I was Lwsi I would have dumped him on the spot. Also, why does he spend so much time crouching in shady alleyways?

As for the teens, I thought they were cool. Nansi has hypersensitive hearing she needs an aid for, she’s just like me for real for real. And I don’t normally like characters like Freddie, but somehow he managed to be my favourite. It really seems like he just wants to be friends with the others but they're not getting it. Also every time Mr Rhys told Ash he was disappointed in him specifically I wanted to throttle him. Can’t you see that boy’s self esteem is hanging on by a thread and that thread is meeting others too-high expectations?

I thought the Nansi-Ash-Eli love triangle was a bit silly, although it makes a nice juxtaposition to the borderline eugenic-y and eventually eco-fascist conflicts in the wider narrative.

It’s also nothing that a bit of polyamory can’t fix. Freddie should join too.

I also wish that we could have had flashbacks to Ash and Nansi being infected, to reinforce the idea that Ambers never really get over their past as Zeds.

Also - if your fusebox blows that many times in a row, you’ve got a fire hazard somewhere. You don’t just keep switching it on again.

Also Mums! We had a mother and a child running away from some Zeds, we have Freddie who’s a caregiver for his mum and we even got what I think is a picture of Zac with his mum. Do we have any mums with names or speaking roles? Still no. But it’s progress(!)

I love Itopia’s commitment to naming the background characters. All the classmates get names, even though only one of them is actually named in dialogue. And they get full names too! Ems was Emyr Miller, Izzy is Isobelle Grant.

The prime minister being an Amber is a nice call back to the news indents of Prosiect Z saying there were rumours that the prime minister is a Zed.

The Zero movie was a fun touch. Of course Zac, zombie movie fan and Zero's actual boyfriend, keeps a poster above his bed even though Lwsi doesn't want to see it.

I loved the parallels between Freddie trying to talk Ash into getting the patch and Eli trying to talk Nansi out of it. They really are the angels and devils on the shoulders.

I liked the little touch of Jen’s blog - Lwsi Hunter was my best friend. Nice callback to her.

The Alys and Lwsi dynamics this series were spectacular. Alys almost drops everything to get to Lwsi when she hears about the Zeds, but Sara talks her out of it, point out that Lwsi has proven herself capable many times over. Meanwhile Lwsi nearly drops everything to warn Alys and spends most of the time wishing Alys was with her. And the pep talk Alys gave Lwsi was wonderful.

I don’t want to talk about it but I have to. Alys got infected. Her plot armour finally ran out. She wasn’t even sacrificing herself for someone. And then Sara had to walk away with that heartbroken - heartbreaking - look on her face (which honestly did the most to sell me on their relationship). And she was the one in the white van to save the kids in Alys’ place. How could they do this to me!?! The infection music into the Prosiect Z theme was just salt in the wound.

Also, the little detail of Sara carefully stopping the car before answering the phone. She’s not losing anyone else today. Not after Heledd. Not after Alys.

My knee jerk reaction to the evil, all powerful eco-fascist AI Aliza was dislike. But with the whispering in the Amber’s heads thing - oh she has great potential. I’m so excited to see how she’s used. She’s the product of the remnants of the Itopia network. And you know who was the second to last person to have access to the Itopia network? Nina. She’s still out there, somewhere, and I refuse to let my guard down.

But, fun fact! Aliza is called Aliza in the subtitles and Eliza in the credits! We once again have a character with two ways to spell their name! Zayn/Zane lives!

In conclusion, I loved this series, it broke my heart and I desperately want a series 4. Not just to resolve the Alys cliffhanger, but because they’ve started some legitimately interesting plot threads.

[becrystalamazed]

Itopia Characters Explained Badly

Lwsi Hunter (S1-3): Normal teenage girl desperately tries to be a normal teenage girl, accidentally ends up as the chosen one.

Alys Hunter (S1-3): People keep sacrificing themselves for this bisexual scientist and it’s not making her atlas personality any better.

Brian Hunter (S1-2): Grieving dad trying to be there for his daughters by being nice to their partners, mean to their exes and providing a getaway vehicle to escape from zombies.

Zac Evans (S1-3): Zombie movie enthusiast finds himself in a zombie apocalypse not as the hero but as the love interest. He does a lot of crime.

Macs Woodward (S1-2): Heartbreaking! Your conspiracy theorist tabloid journalist ex might actually be right about something!

Mari Thomas (S1-2): Rocks up late to the series, gets incredibly traumatised, sacrifices herself, gets her happy ending, leaves.

Dr Ed Thomas (S1-2): Tries to prevent the zombie apocalypse from the inside, fails, his daughter and his favourite employee need to pick up the pieces.

Dr Megan Crane (S1): Her reports are being changed so no one believes what she says, her co-workers who know the truth are being kidnapped and infected, she’s living in a one person horror movie and it’s technically her fault.

Nina (S1-2): Scientist wants the recognition she deserves! (note: does not actually deserve any recognition)

FN Stine (S1-2): Straight white male billionaire believes his point of view is the most unbiased, gets shocked when he discovers that consequences can happen to him.

Emyr ‘Ems’ Miller (S2): Shady bastard. Massive simp.

Ceri Stine (S2): Lwsi Hunter Bad Ending AU

Sara (S2-3): Local lone wolf won’t stay that way if Alys has anything to do about it!

Isobelle ‘Izzy’ Grant (S3): “God, I wish I’d had an evil supercomputer in my head that turned me into a zombie, life would be so much better” she says to flatmate, who had an evil supercomputer in her head which left her forever alienated from the rest of humanity.

Ash (S3): Boy’s self esteem is directly tied to meeting people’s expectations of him, please stop telling him he’s a disappointment.

Nansi (S3): Hypersensitive girl is betrayed by the people she trusts most, and now there are voices.

Eli (S3): Girl loves the fact there are people with superpowers even though she isn’t one of them herself.

Freddie (S3): Young carer just wants to be curious and cause chaos, why is he now the most sensible person in the room?

Mr Rhys (S3): Really regretting chaperoning this residential.

Aliza (S3): oh no.

[becrystalamazed]

Alys Hunter is bisexual!!!!!???!!!

[becrystalamazed]

Itopia series 3 trailer! I'm so excited!

[becrystalamazed]

I think it’s a great plan.

Also, I found it a fun film to rewatch.

[becrystalamazed]

Somewhere in my head is a snarky comment linking Junior Taskmaster with Project Z after the zombie apocalypse task, but I just can’t find it so have this as a placeholder.

I did immediately try to devise an episode of Project Z taking place in the Junior Taskmaster house, only to come to the conclusion it’s too small of an area for it to be feasible. Which is devastating to me.

[becrystalamazed]

The children yearn.

[becrystalamazed]

Ah yes! The classic British children’s game of make a random choice and get attacked by a snake if you’re wrong!

Junior Taskmaster (2024-) • Raven: The Secret Temple (2007) • Trapped! (2007-2010)

[becrystalamazed]

I don’t normally normally Strictly post this much (outside of support for whichever gameshow-adjacent woman I end up rooting for/crushing on) but I’m so glad they brought back the dance-a-thon as an event. It used to be the event I would look forward too, and it’s so much fun, even if it has to be a logistical nightmare. Very happy to see it tonight.

[becrystalamazed]

How to Rig a Game Show (Covering the 'How' and 'Why,' and a little 'How Come'), With Relevant Social Commentary

I'm trying to type up this big effort-assed essay on the American quiz show scandals and the part they played in why we are now where we are.

Nutshell is that, apart from Charles Revson, there was never really one single, abjectly malevolent actor in the whole thing, it was a series of people making small rationalizations and little moral compromises that ended up snowballing into something big enough, heavy enough, fast enough, and out of control enough that the whole thing plowed right tf into the court of public opinion and clobbered a hell of a lot of people.

And in a weird way, it serves as part of an explanation on why some of the shit that happened recently has happened. Let's examine the mechanisms in place that let it happen, how it took place, and who benefitted from it.

The punchline from all of that is that as a consequence of the whole fracas is those who produce game shows are legally mandated to hold a higher ethical standard than any producer for any segment of any news outlet operating within these borders. Neither a complaint nor a complement, just a description of the state of play as on the field.

But here is the complaint: 'Yellow Journalism' never really stopped being a thing with the American press, they just managed to shunt that image off to the tabloids and celebrity gossips, while rewording some of their more-blatant examples to appear more respectable. Even though 'if it bleeds, it leads' was the operative slogan of my day (at any rate), such sentiments were begrudgingly pooh-poohed by those trying to maintain a veneer of integrity. The information age has gone to demonstrate to everybody that engagement has always ranked higher than any proclaimed allegiance to objective fact.

Hell, look at how the US press was quick to call the recent clashes in Amsterdam as anti-Semitic attacks before everybody else found out it was a case of a bunch of out-of-towners literally trying to start shit with locals and the locals reminding the out-of-towners they were both unarmed and without air support. I don't think anybody who originally reported it as motivated by anti-semitism have bothered updating everybody on the newer developments, and if they did, they probably included it as a side note on an unrelated story, below the fold.

Yet some poor, dumb sumbitch of a college undergrad intern is looking at a nickel, minimum, in a federal penn if they bullshit the MSRP on a can of soup.

But despite the exaggeration of the stakes and the consequences involved, there are about three ways I can think of for cheating a game to happen (as in a deliberate and willful effort towards influencing what is presented as a genuine competition towards a pre-determined outcome), depending on who is involved with the deception, and the direction in which it is applied:

"Top-Down Bias:" This was the type of rigging that happened with The $64,000 Question and it's spinoff, The $64,000 Challenge. The shows' producers would meet with Revlon CEO Charles Revson, who would make thinly-veiled comments about the state of the contestants on the show, with producers adjusting material to be friendlier or more antagonistic in their questions for them based on those meetings.

The fault in this approach is that while any plan can be foolproof, there is no plan out there that is capable of being goddamned foolproof. As much as Charles Revson fuckin hated Dr Joyce Brothers' guts as a contestant, there really wasn't a way for the writers to get around her memorizing the literal encyclopedia of boxing they gave her, even to the point of asking her about people who were referees of notable fights.

"Bottom-Up Bias:" Contestants try to exert influence on the outcome of a game by means of outside assistance. Possibly the rarest instance of rigging a game that I've seen or studied-- it's only happened twice in all of history (that I know of). Charles Ingram's incredibly unsubtle coughing code on the UK's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was the most-recent incident of this I can think of happening in real life.🎤

(please note: I do not consider Michael Larsen's exploitation of the big board on Press Your Luck to be an example of this; he wasn't the only one to notice the board had a set pattern, Bill Carruthers made mention of other people after Larsen thinking they had figured out the same system he had done. Larsen was just the quickest to spot and exploit it. Exploiting a bug in a game as it is designed is not cheating, that's on the production for not smoothing out that particular wrinkle at the start. Old Man Goodson liked to shit hisself over an episode of the pre-scandal chat-quizzer Two for the Money when a question came up that read something like "name a word that ends in the letters -TH;" The team figured out a lot of ordinal numbers could end that way, and ended up taking about five grand in early-1950s dollars in a game whose average payout was usually ≤ $750)

"Broadband Bias:" This was the most-common type of rigging that took place during the scandals. Frank Cooper's Dotto was the first show to be canceled on account of rigging but also involved just about every program in Jack Barry & Dan Enright's primetime catalog (Twenty One, Tic Tac Dough, High-Low, The Big Surprise, hell, let's throw Juvenile Jury in on that even though it wasn't a game show) and ultimately came to a head with Charles Van Doren's Senate testimony. Broadband Bias refers to the idea that you don't have to worry about an outcome that would lie beyond your control if you plan it all in advance and give contestants their instructions for each game.

To hear word from Barry and Enright themselves, they acted independently of Geritol's influence, What happened was that Twenty One had it's very first game end the show on a zero-zero tie. Reps with Geritol told B&E point-blank that they never wanted to see another episode like that ever again. The message Enright took from that was to prep the contestants.💰 Jack stated he had no idea what Dan was doing behind the scenes, but I think that was Jack and Dan's strategy to help soften the impact for each other's roles in it all. Not hatin', just statin'.

The plan was that losers would get a little extra in consolation prize money and/or spots on other quiz/panel shows B&E operated for their taking the dive, winners kick back some money to the production to help cover the losers' extra pay. Nobody the wiser would think anything truly wrong was taking place, they were entertainers, they were there to entertain, this was the check drawn from their performances.

The problem with this lies in the sheer number of participants you have to involve in order to keep the deception going: promises made to participants were not promises kept. Enright painted himself into a corner he couldn't get himself out of, and was exiled to Canadian TV for a decade as a result of it.

Does that mean that game shows are inherently more moral content than anything else out there?🍀 Absolutely not-- considering how much quid-pro-quo that Enright was running just for Twenty One (and this was a scheme Dan had apparently done across multiple shows), a cynical person could argue that the bulk of the reforms in the wake of the 1960 amendment to the Communications Act of '34 to address This Sort of Thing was not just to ensure honest competitions kept and maintained a paper trail (to show how they kept everything honest), but it also lead to one of the first instances of security theater in this country.

It's one thing to have a bank manager on stage talking about leaving questions sealed in a safe deposit box for a week (like on $64k), it's another to guide contestants through a bureaucratic process that could be presented in such a manner that contestants get the feeling that they would have no standing to launch proceedings if they had a grievance anyway.

Not that any of that excuses the predatory gaming that producers participated in during that rash of call-in-and-lose 'live game show' scams that were a thing for a handful of years during the first decade of the 22nd century. The three examples of game rigging I spoke of here were with the consideration of 'the contestant' vs 'the house' as parties ultimately neutral to one another; the house actually taking money from contestants📺 is something altogether different. I do hold the Call-In-and-Lose games as responsible for what would be every negative trope associated with mobile game ads (purposely terrible game demo, simplistic ruleset presented, little to no thought at all put into them, ad astra, ad infinitum).

And despite all of that, the public really wouldn't have cared if those accused had told everybody it was rigged to begin with. Case in point: Chuck Barris' The $1.98 Beauty Show had Johnny Jacobs announce it was fake at the beginning of every episode. Every episode straight up carried a disclaimer roughly saying "this is a satire. please do not think in any way that the participants are actually involved in any kind of competition because this is a satire. Please do not inquire about being a contestant on The $1.98 Beauty Show, even if you live in or plan to visit the Los Angeles area, because this is a satire. There are much better uses of your dignity that are worth considerably more than $1.98 because this is a satire." And that was on the screen for longer than the rest of the show's credits.

I mean, they didn't really say that in roughly that way, but I think you get the point.

I do believe that the that extra scrutiny that was incorporated into American game shows as a result of the scandals was a factor in why Mike Richards was cut loose from Jeopardy! as quickly as he was after Alex Trebek's passing. Going by accounts from those who had complaint against him while he was the executive producer at The Price is Right, one could not help but come away with the idea that Richards was trying to be the same type of business-as-usual Hollywood producer that empowered Harvey Weinstein to go hogg wild for as long as he did. Not a big deal in any other sector of the entertainment industry, apparently, but in a subsector of entertainment where you literally cannot do Business-as-Usual (including the regular charge of acting like a Goodson/Todman Producer towards Goodson/Todman Models that Bob Barker liked to pull), that is an absolute non-starter. If Sony Pictures Entertainment had their Standards & Practice rep go over the allegations, they likely saw an established pattern that did not carry good omens for Sony's fiscal futures if they allowed him to carry on. And remember, this was the company that released Mobius to theaters twice.

Unless you've sworn a life debt to them (and why the fuck would you ever go and do a fool thing like that in fuckin Hollywood of all places?), there are no bosses or coworkers that are really worth going to prison over, particularly when it comes to anything that would be highlighted by hand within the pages of "Legally Established and Enforceable Precedents About Which On Game Shows You Do Not Fuck Around (Even as a Joke Between Good Good Good Friends), Rev 5th Ed, Now With New Ingram's Rule"🏛️

It is possible to rig a game show, but if you wanna stay out of prison you gotta tell everybody it's rigged. There are three ways I have found to put a thumb on the scale if you wanted to but there really isn't a need to, because the money straight up ain't in it like it used to be. Pat Weaver at NBC (Sigourney's pa) had pushed for the 'magazine' style of sponsorship for programs for years before this happened in order to reduce sponsors' control of programming, and that was before the march of technology increased the number of competitors through the internet.

You can control the outcome of a closed system; nobody gives a shit that pro-wrestling is scripted because no promoter will suddenly decide to allow random members of the audience to participate in a royal rumble; but if your pitch is that anybody can play, then anybody should be able to win, and you should be able to show the receipts backing that up.

If you want to make a game show, make one that requires leaving the things that need to be left up to chance left up to chance. Trust your audience and your contestants, give them a game that builds tension organically.

Footnotes and bonus content:

🏛️ [it's an actual book, ask your Standards and Practices representative to show it to you the next time you're a contestant on a game show; some of them will even take the time to read it to you, and slowly because you're supposed to read that in your contestant agreement when you signed at the bottom saying that you understood it and their paychecks really depend on your having understood it.]

🎤[about the only other time I can think of something like that happening in the English-speaking world was, funnily enough, a plotline on The Phil Silvers Show— Fred Gwynne was a guest star as somebody previously attached to an Antarctic weather expedition and only had a guide to North American birds to read, and so he remembered all eight thousand-plus birds and went crazy because of it. Sgt. Bilko gets him on as a contestant on The $64,000 Question despite his protests and the bulk of the episode involves their trying to sneak Bilko and a walkie-talkie into the isolation booth to get Gwynne over that last hurdle (given a "now what?!" amnesia plot on Gwynne's part).

Beyond the anglosphere, there was an incident in the 1990s on Italy's 'Telemike' (named for the host, Mike Bongiorno. He hosted the Italian version of Jeopardy! back in the seventies for RAI; when a competing network managed to get him signed, they brought it back under a different name). A contestant tried to sneak in notes to help her out during the double-or-nothing final round and Mike caught her trying to look down her own blouse.

The point is that it hardly ever happens in fiction, and happens with the same apparent frequency as it does in real life.]

💰[Martin Scorsese's character in Quiz Show even mentioned as much to Rob Morrow's character, and more or less explained everything that would happen as a result of the scandals. When Jack Barry talked a little about it on the Dick Cavett Show, he still spoke about the stakeholders involved in the manner someone would assume somebody still intending to draw a paycheck in 'this town' would speak of them would say, which I don't fault one bit. And to his credit, Jack could have just as easily left Dan twisting in the wind when The Joker's Wild took off, but he didn't. I have to give the man props for that.

And while I'm on it, Goodwin's role in the scandals is given a little more impact in the portrayal because he's good friends with Robert Redford. Not hatin', just statin'; I'm sure you'd do the same if you directed a movie about a day in the life at your friend's job]

📺 [Not that I think setting up a game to be impossible to win is "rigging" like how I have attempted to discuss it; there have been several game shows that made a giant performance about the top prize being offered, and then you watch the show and realize there's no likely possibility that anybody would be lucky enough to collect on the amount as advertised. Just because you could win $50k at Plinko does not mean anyone has actually won it.

As a personal bit of advice to any quiz producers out there: don't do that shit. The game is the thing, make a good game and the prizes will take care of themselves]

🍀[lmao a Turkish crossword quizzer some time back got cancelled immediately after they had a whole round of questions making fun of President Erdoan on a live broadcast. News channels here wouldn't dare try to jeopardize their access like that]

[becrystalamazed]

Mostly Disjointed Ramblings About Game Shows, and Why Making Good Game Shows is Easier Now Than They Have Ever Been (mostly as a letter to myself)

When it comes to producing game shows (at least as far as they go in the USA), the "here's how you play the game" is often one of the furthest down the depth chart on "reasons why this be A Thing in commercial television" Budget, targets, media planning, strategies, and contingency plans are often what will get a commissioning executive's attention. A lot of time here lately they are interested in a known quantity of some sort being attached to it (being successful in another market, a well-known brand or celebrity attached to it, etc). Neither a complaint nor a complement, simply the state of play as currently on the field.

That doesn't mean your game shouldn't have some thought into it, just that media buyers are looking for a lot of other things besides how unique or compelling your game idea is. Ideas are everywhere, ability and the demonstrations thereof are a little harder to come by. Just know that your audience are going to be the ones interested in the game, one that is just as fun to watch others play as it is to play along at home. Cut out the middleman and play to the people who will be interested in what you have to offer, not somebody's conception of what will interest the right number of people.

The fantastic thing about the progress of knowledge and technology (as witnessed just over the course of my lifetime) is that the internet has lowered so many barriers to entry that if you have at least a microphone and some kind of computer device to connect it to, the only reason to not make something is lacking the knowledge of how to put it all together (a hurdle I'm still trying to cross myself, but flight day is coming).

Don't worry about stats or metrics or demographics-- If you make a good game, the rest will follow. Everybody complains about nothing being on or that the wrong shows keep going while the good ones get cancelled. Not everybody is a Fred Rogers, because he felt that the best way to fight bad content was to produce the content he felt the world needed. I would like to follow his lead in that regard.

I wholly cop to the idea that this smacks as more than a little self-important coming from an amateur quiz producer in thinking the world needs game shows, but I'm focusing on Mr. Rogers' actions on this: he made what he wanted, how he wanted to make it, and he made it for a number of reasons that weren't solely to do with money. He was successful with the resources he had available; whether that was because of or in spite of his limitations is a debate for another day. An unexamined faith is worthless, as are unexamined motivations. A good project is easier to complete with the right motivations behind it.

Sturgeon's Law holds that 90% of everything is shit. Who cares? Make your shit anyway.

Even if you don't roll a crit on this attempt, take notes. Even if you crit-fail, nothing is a failure so long as learning took place. Find points in the logistics where things have slowed down/broken/were absolutely non-functional. Find ways to untangle the knots you can, cut and reroute around the knots you cannot. Be honest with assessing your own work, but give yourself the same credit you would give a friend showing off their art to you. This is something you want to be proud of, work to give them something they can be proud that you would share it with them. Art is never a gamble, creating anything is never a gamble. You will have better standing to get that 10% on your next attempt, even if all you get from it is the joy and satisfaction from the act of creation and seeing something you've always wanted to see in this world.

Put a game together, write and research some questions for it, learn OBS, invite your friends to a discord call and have them play it. Put it online.

Congratulations, you have now joined a pantheon of notable people including (but not limited to) Goodson/Todman, Barry/Enright, Hatos/Hall, Heatter/Quigley, Stone/Stanley, and Dewey/Chatham/Howe.

Game shows don't have to run on the payout offered or the people hosting it. the British Broadcasting Corporation has certainly got a lot of mileage out of the idea that people will line up and wait months to win a punchbowl* if it gives them the chance to show off their knowledge of something very few people may have even heard of. Lord knows in the episodes I have seen of Mastermind, there have been artists or writers or historical events I've looked up afterwards because of the questions a contender answered on them.

Information Please ran for years on radio on the driest game possible –a simple question bee with multipart questions sent in by listeners with a reasonable request for accuracy attached (usually asking them to get 3 parts out of 4 right)– but It was the American QI before QI was even a thing. it worked on the strength of the panel's interplay with one another as they would bust each other's chops (or moderator Clifton Faddiman's chops for some of the questions he sprung on them), sometimes it would be in a guest panelist showing off knowledge of a field nobody would have thought was in their wheelhouse. (Groucho Marx and his always being there for questions about Gilbert & Sullivan may not have been one of those times, it was something of an understanding that the man was crazy for their operas over the multiple times he guested on there, even though he never got to perform in one until the Bell Telephone Hour had him play Koko in The Mikado. Considering that the part of Katisha usually being played by Margaret DuMont-types, it's not like Groucho wasn't dropping hints his whole career)

Got a group of friends for a podcast but can't decide on a how or why for it? Make it a panel game. There are many ways to gamify a conversation, and what makes them work often times lies in the panelists' frustration in working within the constraints the game presents.

If you're lost as to figuring out what to play, look up what has been played around the world-- One of my favorite types of games are the ones that have inspired extracurricular clubs outside of their productions: Indian college students have made the BBC's Just a Minute into something of a high-level academic tournament akin to American debate clubs.** The dearly-departed moderator for Just a Minute, Nicholas Parsons, took a trip to India for the BBC to document not just one of those tournaments but the program's fanbase there. Just a Minute's Indian Adventure was the documentary produced back in 2018 (coinciding with their recording episodes of JaM in Mumbai).

In the Cyrillic-speaking world, that format is known as Что? Где? Когда?† It is one of the few shows that has the "Underground Countdown" subculture from The I.T. Crowd being a thing in real life. Not just in other countries doing their own version on television, but in regular tournaments where all the teams write questions to try and stump all the other teams, while trying to solve the riddles the other teams brought with them.

Old Man Goodson could have set a real nasty precedent back in the 1940s if he and Bill Todman thought to patent the lockout system he used for 'Winner Take All,' (nobody ever tried to do a quiz set up like a jump ball in basketball until that point) but his lack of capitalization on what he had has been the genre's overall gain. See a game you like that ain't on anymore? Write your own, original questions for it, don't use their graphics, their sounds, or their trademarks, and get to producing something. Only seven stories in the world but an infinite number of ways to tell them? There's an equivalent amount of games in the world, and an equally equivalent number of ways to play them.

The idea in jazz is that you have to learn to imitate before you can innovate, to make your own contributions to the genre. I see no reason that same logic cannot apply to game shows or those looking to making any kind of art. Better content begins with you.

—in terms of a work update, I still ain't cracked shaders in Godot 4, but I am still trying. If I can get past this, I can start putting them on the main scene, and start getting the logic for it built. More info as it develops.

Sniff you jerks later.

Footnotes:

* [a very fine, artisanal, handcrafted crystal punchbowl that the BBC commissions especially for Mastermind, but a punchbowl nonetheless. For American conventions in the genre, prize descriptions containing fewer than ten words in it are usually reserved for 'zonks' or gag prizes; a cultural difference that is neither good nor bad but simply exists because​ the more airtime spent on it, the more the manufacturer/supplier/sponsor paid the production in order to have George Gray or Rod Roddy or Gene Wood or Johnny Gilbert say that about it.

That's also without mentioning the fact that British game show productions work a different compensation scheme for their contestants than their American cousins; a lot of times it will include spotting a contestant the train fare and a hotel room to be at the studio on tape day, as opposed to the absolutely non-existent mass transit system we have in the USA. Whatever; that's a soapbox for another day for a mentally-ill neurodivergent trying to keep their head down as it is in a country that absolutely loathes the disabled.]

** [The OG radio show works like this: one player is given a topic (e.g. "my favorite joke") and, on the moderators' cue, will speak on that topic for as long as they can without violating one of three standing rules: "Don't stop speaking" (meaning you can break this rule if you don't immediately begin speaking on the moderator's cue), "Don't repeat anything you have said" (down to the word, but some allowances are given for words as part of the topic itself), "Don't get off-topic" (Stay on target. Your anecdotes have to have some bearing on the topic. Factual inaccuracies have counted as breaking this rule, but monologues that are presented as flights of fancy are more or less allowed as long as they conform to the three standing rules). The other participants are listening in to raise objections whenever the speaker breaks one of those rules, and the prevailing party to an objection is given a point -- if overruled, the object-ee continues on the moderator's cue, if sustained, the object-or assumes the role as the current speaker on the topic to be continued on the moderator's cue. The topics are timed, and the current speaker when a minute ("Just a Minute") of total speaking has elapsed is given a point.

The Rule of Funny, although never stated outright, takes precedent over all of those rules; the moderator is empowered to award points for objections that normally would be overruled but drew a decent amount of laughs from the audience (the current speaker is still awarded a point for prevailing on an objection). The moderator is also empowered to have the audience decide stalemates based on a cheer/boo system on the moderator's cue.

These particular rules do not appear to apply to the collegiate play I have seen, which I totally understand the reasons for why they need to would do that. Collegiate play also includes an extra rule or two to discourage competitors from metagaming, which I also totally understand.

From what I can tell, JaM is the first British game show format to ever be imported to American television screens. It ran on the DuMont network as One Minute Please in 1954 but could not find a sponsor after a year. Unfortunate, but that seemed to be the operative word for the DuMont Network's fortunes.]

† ['Chto? Gde? Kogda?' or literally 'What? Where? When?'-- totally different kettle of fish from the American Who, What, or Where Game

A game show that has flourished across two modes of production, the game's usual play loop involves a team of six experts playing against the viewing audience. Viewers send in riddles (a lot of downright clever ones from ones I've amateurishly-translated) for the experts to argue over for sixty seconds then have the nominated captain for that round answer. If the experts get it right, they take the round. If not, the viewers take it. Regulation matches are a best-of-13 affair, with a tournament structure I've not quite understood having the expert teams vie for position in order to square off against the viewers in an annual championship game.

Tom Scott's absolutely phenomenal Laterial is the closest analogue I know of currently in the English-speaking world (and if anybody in this world decided to become The Riddler in real life, we would be doomed seven ways to Sunday if his producer, David Bodycombe, decided he was going to be That Guy. He's been an absolute sweetheart in my interactions with him but I'm still gonna try to stay on his good side just in case). In 2011, Merv Griffith Productions took the black-tie-formal aesthetic from the original Russian production and converted it into a high-stakes, James-Bond-at-a-Bacharat-Table-tensioned type affair (complete with Authentic Mancunian Vernon Kay in a white tux to emcee) as Million Dollar Mind Game for ABC, a network who (apparently not knowing what to do with it) burned it off putting it on Sunday afternoons against late-season NFL games that not even season ticket holders were bothering to show up to.

But the original show and the story of its creation are why I put Ch?G?K? on my shortlist game shows as a legitimate work of art, along with Korea's Genius Game and USA's $25,000 Pyramid and a bunch of other shows that have really come to stretch even the least plausible definition of 'shortlist.' ]

[becrystalamazed]

16th of December let's go!!!!

It looks like we've got Lwsi, Zac, Alys (<3) and Sara carried forward. I don't know why Zac is on the Amber side given that he was never infected... maybe something happened in between series?

I assume Ash, Freddie, Nansi and Eli are the four teens along the bottom. Ash, Freddie and Eli are all fairly androgynous names so I can't really make guesses for who is who. We'll probably get more info in the month to come.

We also have two new adults, no idea how they're going to be involved in the plot. Really hoping the woman is someone's mother though, to restore balance.

[becrystalamazed]

need andy to make this a full feature documentary i would watch the whole thing

[becrystalamazed]

We have a synopsis for Itopia Series 3!!!!!

“It is three years on from the events that saw Lwsi provide a cure for the millions of Zeds across the World by turning them into a new breed of hybrid humans, known as Ambers. However, a fractured two tiered society is beginning to form where it is now easier and more desirable to be an Amber than a Human…

Lwsi is keen to put the past behind her and lead a ‘normal' life. Despite everyone in the world knowing her as ‘Zero' the cult hero who cured the Zeds she has been able to remain anonymous.

Meanwhile, a group of teens (16 years old) - Ash, Freddie, Nansi and Eli stumble across a mysterious compound in the woods, where something suspicious is going on”

So… Not where I thought the series was going to go. Talk about a dramatic timeskip! It seems they’re moving well away from the source material, which as a big Prosiect Z fan makes me a little bit upset. But since I’m also a big fan of sketchy labs in the woods, I’ll live. Also, I’m calling it now before I forget about her and she jumpscares me (again) - it’s absolutely Nina’s lab.

Trying to just be normal in extraordinary circumstance is incredibly in character for Lwsi Hunter, so I’m happy with that. And the dramatic irony of the Z being designed to forcibly unite humanity and yet has accidentally caused a major schism has not escaped me.

I guess the casting call that was put out was for the four new protagonists. I don’t mind this. Just make sure one of them has a living, on-screen Mum and I’ll be fine. I just hope they’re as realistically written as Lwsi and Zac.

The only thing I really would hate is there being no Alys Hunter. She’s one of my all-time favourite characters.

There’s going to be a screening on the 15th so I think we can expect to see it on TV soon! And you can expect me to be very excited about it when we do!

[becrystalamazed]

I’m keeping my crown today!

Josh Widdicombe on The Wheel with the specialist subject of gameshows…

I’m glad someone else is living my dream.

(If I get any of the questions wrong I am never going to live it down)