The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: Dbacksfan12 on August 13, 2019, 02:18:42 PM
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I got to thinking about this the other day when watching a SotC rerun...
As a endgame in itself, the WBMG isn't terrible. However, as some of us have discussed previously, its a bit out of place on Sale. I was trying to brainstorm some ways to improve it. I came up with a couple:
Idea number one was taking the winner's main game score and giving them an extra second for every $10 earned.
Idea number two was lengthening the round to 45 seconds, awarding progressively nicer prizes for each puzzle they were able to solve. The car would be awarded for solving nine puzzles.
They could then quit the show as a retired champion, or try again for more with the chance to win the (reinstated) cash jackpot.
Any others? Or is the WBMG best left alone?
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I'd fix three of my big sticking points:
* Change the clock to the style used on Scrabble, possibly even expand it to count off to the thousandths place. Each word popped in at a rate that wasn't exactly 1-per-second, and from what I've seen it was impossible to buzz in on a fresh puzzle if you started it with 01 on the clock.
** On that note, maybe start the clock after the first word pops in?
* Award a small cash consolation for each solved puzzle if the WBMG isn't won, say $500. This would give a decent reason to continue playing if it's obvious the endgame won't be fully won.
* Oust the rule that champs are forced to retire if they lose the car-level WBMG. Subsequent attempts would still be for the car, with the $50,000 bonus still being the level after that.
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If I have to have it, I'd ditch the car win pre-req for the chance at $50k. Other than that, I can't come up with anything that improves it.
If I don't have to have it, bring back Shopping, Syndicated style.
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They’re not going to have tech to granularity of the millisecond when the eye cannot track it.
Puzzles need to have more text that helps pin the answer besides “sports team
“fictional character” and the like. I’d either go to the clue screen or shuffle form from Matchmates.
Money Game seeds a cash jackpot that can be cashed out on day seven after the car for five wins, all daily prizes for day six, game eight for double cash and all prizes.
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If I have to have it, I'd ditch the car win pre-req for the chance at $50k. Other than that, I can't come up with anything that improves it.
If I don't have to have it, bring back Shopping, Syndicated style.
I totally agree...$otC was all about the shopping, getting those glamourous prizes for the ridicuously low prices and earning your way to bigger and bigger prizes...$otC never needed any sort of bonus round...simply the decision to buy the current prize offered or risk it and play on...without the shopping, the magic of $otC was gone for me...
JakeT
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Bring back the Winner's Board. The WBMG has no redeeming qualities in this household.
The topic of the end of Sale's run came up in a conversation at Trivia Nationals last weekend. For as much as I despise the WBMG, I have a similar amount of love for both Instant Cash and the upping of the 2nd Instant Bargain's value. Early last week, a massage chair with built-in speakers, plus a cast-iron fireplace worth in excess of $3000 was bought as a 2nd IB. (On top of that, it was sold for $5 and there was a Sale Surprise.)
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As a word game it's not bad, but it belongs on a different show. The shopping was the only end game that fit the theme of the show, IMO.
I would've given $100 a puzzle if it wasn't won, however.
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I've thought that instead of the WBMG, maybe a hybrid of the Shopping and Winner's Board formats would work. 21 squares, with each square having a "purchase" price of $5-50 using the contestant's score from the main game. In addition to 9 matching prizes, the letters C, A and R are behind 3 squares, leading to a car if the contestant uncovers all 3. After matching a prize, the contestant has the choice to stop or continue spending their money to try and match more prizes. If they stop, the leftover money carries over to the next game if they win--so while the prizes are never at risk, there is still incentive to continue on and try for the lot.
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The WBMG puzzles are against a clock that never stops. Do not hit the buzzer to guess. Just shout out answers or pass.
Each answer is a clue to the meta puzzle. Hit the buzzer before it hits zero, solve the meta puzzle, and win.
Done.
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I was thinking about this a while back while watching Robin's run on the show. You know, maybe it's the fact that I didn't even know there *was* another bonus round until years later (when I was younger, the WBMG was the bonus round in play during the first-run Sale episodes) that is influencing this, but I don't hate the WBMG as much as some do.
To be honest, I don't particularly care for the shopping endgame, mainly because it isn't really an endgame. It's just waiting to see if the contestant will take a prize and retire, or continue to play. The Winner's Board was better, but taking 10 shows to clear it seemed a bit long.
I will agree that the WBMG does seem out of place with a game that's all about shopping and that it took any semblance of risk out of the endgame. But, I honestly liked it (and still do); it's a quick, high-stakes bonus round with some fun puzzles (at times!).
Here would be my suggestions for fixing it:
-Each WBMG is a flat $5,000 until the player goes for the car or the $50,000.
-There is no risk to play on until the player wins 4 WBMG's (don't have to be consecutive). At that point, the player may continue to play for the car, risking all WBMG winnings (the $20,000). Winning another WBMG wins the car and a shot at the $50,000. However, if the player loses the WBMG while playing for the car, he/she must play for the car again on the next show, and continues to do so until winning it. Losing a game along the way costs the WBMG winnings to that point.
-Upon winning the car in the WBMG, the same offer is extended as for the car, except the prize jumps to the $50,000 grand prize. Winning another WBMG wins the $50,000 along with the prior $20,000, the car, and any front-game winnings. The champ then retires undefeated. However, losing a WBMG means having to play another game and try the WBMG again for the $50,000. Losing a game along the way costs the $20,000 plus the car.
Pros of this method:
-Players can win the car in 5 shows instead of 7, thus avoiding some of the "Welp, that car's not going anywhere!" syndrome that plagued the show many weeks, including weeks where, before the car was even introduced, we knew no one would win it. At least, at the start of each week, the car would be vulnerable.
-Players who are good at the main game, but not the WBMG, can still continue to play and not be forced out because they lost WBMG #7.
-A very good player can win the "lot" in as few as 6 shows (as few as Alice took), but most contestants will take more.
-Risk is reintroduced, though not until players have had a chance to earn some money to make the risk interesting.
Cons of this method:
-Progress toward the "lot" is dependent on performance in the WBMG instead of the front game.
-Only the strongest front game players would likely risk their car and $20,000 to try for the $50,000, especially since it may take them more than one show to get it, unlike with the Winner's Board.
-Players who are risking WBMG winnings will likely become extremely Instant Bargain and Instant Cash-averse in the front game, thus potentially forcing more players to play the game like Alice.
I likely put way too much thought into an endgame for a show that's been off the air for 30 years now, but there you have it. Enjoy!
/this saved me from working on a manuscript...
Anthony
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I've had thoughts that align with what was posted above, but honestly it just makes the game more complicated and harder to integrate.
Specifically --
Contestant gets 8 attempts at WBMG. Contestant stays at prize level until it's won. At the end of the 7th attempt, contestant makes a decision to risk their WBMG winnings for the chance at all 8 WBMG prizes ($5k - $10k, car, $50k). The bonus for a contestant that is 7/7 on WBMG is a risk-free shot at the $50k.
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One thing I liked about Temptation ‘07 was the Wipeout-style bonus game that built your bank (Knockout?). Maybe play a series of puzzles for one minute, no buzzer to stop the clock. You simply add $25 or $50 to your bank for each correct answer, then decide to buy something or return the next day.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I believe this and the Winners Board were the results of NBC wanting a bona fide bonus round on its shows. I dunno if this remedies that issue, but if a contestant needs $95 to buy the lot, and wins $70 in the front game, it might make the bonus round I proposed a little more interesting.
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Hearing "let's go shopping" was the highlight of the show. I propose still selling the major prizes like the car for $530, but also playing the bonus round for Bonus Bucks, say, $10 a puzzle and/or $5 for each clue word you didn't need.
If you fared well enough, you get a choice: add these extra Bonus Bucks to your savings...or buy an instant Bonus Bargain AND come back the next day. Maybe it's $40 for a living room set, maybe bigger prizes (or cash bonuses) on successive trips back.
To be frugal or give in to temptation isn't a huge decision but it could go either way, so it's something interesting at the end of the show until you're risking boats and cars to keep playing.
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If I have to have it, I'd ditch the car win pre-req for the chance at $50k. Other than that, I can't come up with anything that improves it.
If I don't have to have it, bring back Shopping, Syndicated style.
I totally agree...$otC was all about the shopping, getting those glamourous prizes for the ridicuously low prices and earning your way to bigger and bigger prizes...$otC never needed any sort of bonus round...simply the decision to buy the current prize offered or risk it and play on...without the shopping, the magic of $otC was gone for me...
JakeT
Jake, the problem I had with the first format was that it seemed anti-climactic to ask a player that won their first game if they wanted to bail out and take the first prize offered. Most people of course risked it to get something better. I don't know how often a champ would take the first prize and retire, I've only seen it happen once. I think they should've stuck to the second bonus format. One flaw with the second format was that there was no way to lose. Whatever was matched first was won. Perhaps what they could've done was have a "LOSE" square or something like that. I always thought they had changed to the WBMG format because the second format was a little like "Concentration" that you had to match prizes, and Classic Concentration was just starting at that time... I'm probably wrong but I remember thinking that at the time.
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To continue the thread drift from "Improve the WBMG" to "Improve the SOTC post-game..."
Change the shopping format so that you can pick up prizes without retiring, and make sure that there are enough low-end prizes available that champs always have something in reach at the end of the show and have to decide whether to spend some of their bank or sock the whole thing away. Once you buy a prize, it's yours to keep (to borrow a saying from an NBC stablemate) but the cost of the lot doesn't change just because you already bought some of it.
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As a point of reference, there was that bizarre week during the syndicated run where 3 contestants took the first level prize and left - it was a really nice motorcycle. Contestants buying a prize ahead of the car, cash jackpot, or lot was fairly rare. Which was probably one of several components in the Winners' Board appearing.
I honestly don't have heartache with a losing contestant being able to cash out for a prize, but think that buying a prize was a key component to the show.
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Perhaps what they could've done was have a "LOSE" square or something like that.
It's a Winners Board (or Bored), not Win Nothing Board.
If I'm a contestant on the show I would want to be on during the Money Game period. Chance at big bucks in the end game, middling bucks during the main game and nothing is ever at risk. The only downside is that the producers can tweak the end game to reduce wins in ways they cannot during shopping or prize matching.
It stands to reason that if people are stopping to win the suitcase of currency that they are not winning other prizes and cash costs what it does, while I presume that many of the Board prizes can be bought for the prize of mentioning it on the air, then that might be why shopping was comparatively short lived.
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If I'm a contestant on the show I would want to be on during the Money Game period.
Sure, but who cares about them.
Lots of game shows, maybe most, can adjust the difficulty to suit the prize budget, but the WBMG, at least to me, felt very obvious about it. One clue word would be the clear tipping point between impossible and probable, so elapsed time depended far more on where the writers stuck that word than on the player's skill.
I recently watched Jim Perry's Canadian show Headline Hunters. The front game of that would make a more legit and interesting WBMG, shopping aside. One whole clue popped up at a time, each less obscure than the last, comparable to Trebek Double Dare or for that matter, the Fame Game.
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Both Winner's Board and WBMG feel, to me, awkwardly tacked onto SALE; "Let's go shopping" is how the game should end.
But if you want an endgame, and you need to use some elements of the NBC show, why not base it on the Fame Game. Let's put five clue cards behind the numbers, three money cards (say, $500, 1000, and 2500--tying into the main game version), and one Stop sign. (Hey, the spaces were already octagonal, why not use it?)
Pick a number. Find a clue card, Jim reads the clue, you try to solve. Don't know the answer, try again. Pick a money card, that's what you win. Pick a stop sign, game over. Solve the puzzle, win today's prize, whatever that is.
All that said, I think TEMPTATION (the Aussie version) did the endgame as well as it could be done, and still feel like part of SALE: a series of questions that add to the champion's prize fund.
Of course, to make either of these ideas work for the NBC run we'd need some pretty sophisticated time-travel equipment.
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As a point of reference, there was that bizarre week during the syndicated run where 3 contestants took the first level prize and left - it was a really nice motorcycle. Contestants buying a prize ahead of the car, cash jackpot, or lot was fairly rare. Which was probably one of several components in the Winners' Board appearing.
I honestly don't have heartache with a losing contestant being able to cash out for a prize, but think that buying a prize was a key component to the show.
On the syndicated version, About a dozen contestants bought something and left the show rather than continuing. The three motorcycles mentioned above and maybe another person left with a first level prize, 1 or 2 left with the second level prize, same for third level prize, and 2 or 3 left with the car.
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Both Winner's Board and WBMG feel, to me, awkwardly tacked onto SALE; "Let's go shopping" is how the game should end.
Exactly...the show was always supposed to be about the incredible bargains...when the only buying opportunities remaining are the 2-3 "instant bargains", the whole concept of the show is nearly tossed out the window...you are supposed to be, after all, building up your winnings so you can participate in a "sale of the CENTURY"!
A refrigerator for $10 is awesome but it's far from CENTURY! awesome...
JakeT
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SotC tried to (or was forced to, depending on your interpretation) solve a problem that wasn't a problem: if people weren't willing to buy the mid-level prizes and instead kept shooting for the moon, then that means you either didn't have tempting enough prizes along the way or you made the lot too tempting to pass up. Personally, I think offering a progressive jackpot on top of the lot was what threw the decision metric off balance. Having a $50K+ pot of the gold at the end of the rainbow apparently made that decision trivial for most champs.
This might have swung things too far in the other direction, but what's stopping the show (aside from budgetary concerns) from making the prizes cumulative as you forge on through, instead of refusing one prize to try for the next? So you either leave with the diamond earrings, or risk them to try to add the dune buggy to your stash tomorrow. Then once you reach level 2, you have two prizes in your account that you can either leave with or risk for a third prize. Having them risk an array of prizes to push their luck a little further might be a tougher choice. This might also be one of those instances where personalized prizes might come in handy at least on one of the levels. Put something in the showroom that you know your player really wants and now you're putting them to a decision.
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Don't forget about having to pay the taxes on those prizes.
The possible fix I thought of is to offer people a buyout, turning the money they've won into cash at a rate of something like a mid-four-figure per day sum. Something not bad but not as much as the cash jackpot.
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While shopping was the essence of $ale, I was of the thought that the risk factor was also a large part of the show’s success. I always wished the US version took some form of the Australian Winner’s Board formula:
Six prizes, similar to Shopping, with the car in play as either the last prize to be won or added to the board if the winner’s final score exceeds $100. No cash prizes on the board (more in a bit).
After every visit, the champion decides to take the prize(s) and leave, or put them on the line in the hopes of coming back to the board on the next show.
The cash jackpot starts at $50,000 and goes up $1,000 a day until hit, just like Shopping. I like the idea of a buyout, but only if the champion clears the board. The offer would be 10% of whatever the cash jackpot is at that point.
The Inquisitive One
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It hadn't occurred to me until now, but one could probably do a successful combination of both shopping and the WBMG.
Years ago, I hosted a game of $ale on BigJon's old netgames forum. I did a bonus round that was essentially the syndicated shopping round, but with a twist: the winner would also have a chance to earn a special bonus prize that was associated with each level. For example, if the $85 prize was kitchen appliances, they could play to win a bonus of groceries for a year. This bonus would be theirs to keep regardless of if they played on and lost.
I think the way I did it was have them answer a five-part trivia question, with all five parts necessary to win the bonus, but you could also just play the WBMG with the bonus as the prize for solving all the puzzles.
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I wonder if perhaps it was the competition's (Press Your Luck) performance during fall 1984 that necessitated the changes to $OTC in October; with the limited info I've seen, I do know the ratings between them were pretty close for most of the time they up against each other. Paging Jason....
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Hi! :)
A bit of context: for $ale's first 13 weeks, it averaged a 19 share to Child's Play's 20. By fall 1983, it flips considerably, with $ale averaging a 23 to CP's 17. Enter Press Your Luck.
It takes a few months, but the shows end up neck-and-neck, averaging 20 shares at the end of '83. Throughout '84, Press is a consistent winner, sometimes by as much as 3%.
In April '85, $ale takes the lead back, 20 to 19. $ale's best period I can see is June 1985, where it averages a 21 share to PYL's 18. However, coverage and total share are slipping for both shows - $ale continues to win, but with 19 or 17.
Press Your Luck moves to 4:00 PM in January '86 cleared in less than half the country and pulling a 6 share. It ticks up a skosh after the first 13 weeks to 50% clearance and a 7 share, but that's the best it'll do there in both respects.
Meanwhile, $ale is outperforming Card Sharks all through their time against each other, usually by 1%. But again, it's like a cartoon flipbook - as you go forward in time, the share numbers are sliding down. By the time $ale leaves in 1989, it's losing in its new slot - 10 AM- against Family Feud, 14 to 13.
-Jason
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Well, I'm curious about something now...
When did Sale make the change to WBMG? Did Goodson complain about the similarity to Concentration?
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When did Sale make the change to WBMG? Did Goodson complain about the similarity to Concentration?
Late-1987. November or December, I believe.
Now I wonder whether the change came from $ale and Classic airing back-to-back, but that's just speculation on my part.
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In April '85, $ale takes the lead back, 20 to 19. $ale's best period I can see is June 1985, where it averages a 21 share to PYL's 18. However, coverage and total share are slipping for both shows - $ale continues to win, but with 19 or 17.
I wonder what the cause of the mutual slide-off was. Was it just cable existing?
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I wonder what the cause of the mutual slide-off was. Was it just cable existing?
Well, if both shows' clearance percentages were slipping, that would've caused their share points to fall as well (My CBS station growing up in Louisville never cleared PYL for starters, but the NBC one ran $ale in its correct time slot). By this time, the networks were struggling to maintain 80% affiliate clearances for any show not named Wheel of Fortune, TPIR, or a soap.