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Improving the Winner's Big Money Game

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JakeT:

--- Quote from: Clay Zambo on August 16, 2019, 09:58:04 AM ---Both Winner's Board and WBMG feel, to me, awkwardly tacked onto SALE; "Let's go shopping" is how the game should end.

--- End quote ---

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

Loogaroo:
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.

Fedya:
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.

TheInquisitiveOne:
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

SuperMatch93:
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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