The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => Game Show Channels & Networks => Topic started by: TenPoundHammer on January 11, 2008, 10:51:18 PM
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Since this is the section on GSN's original shows, I'd like to start a general discussion, regarding ideas for improvement on any GSN original, past or present.
Here are some of my pipe dreams ideas. Keep in mind that, except for a really short span in 1997, I didn't get GSN until 2002ish, so I apparently missed a lot of the originals. Here are just a few ideas to get the ball rolling; I'll try to keep it short and focused.
Current shows[/u]
Chain Reaction:
*Two words: Smarter contestants.
*Oh yeah, and maybe have Lane and Goen trade places.
Lingo:
*Make the board about 3x bigger. It looks absolutely dinky, even worse than the 1985 Concentration pilot in that regard.
*Wait until Bonus Lingo is over to reveal missed words, or at least pause the clock to reveal them. That way, none of the two minutes is wasted on a reveal.
*I'd rather it just be Chuck and four contestants, but if they insist on having a female co-host, I wouldn't mind one of those smart types who still looks cute in glasses.
Past shows: How they could've been better[/u]
Cram:
*My biggest complaint on Cram (besides Graham saying "Oh man, you guys!" 487 times per episode) was the bonus round. Hearing Graham spit out "What-- *buzz* What-- *buzz* Wh--*buzz* W--*buzz* W--*buzz* What did--*buzz*" got annoying very fast. Perhaps an easier physical task would have cut down on this?
Friend or Foe?:
*Get rid of everything except for Kennedy. (Sorry! I couldn't resist.)
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[quote name=\'TenPoundHammer\' post=\'174609\' date=\'Jan 11 2008, 10:51 PM\']
Chain Reaction:
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[/quote]
A brighter set. Contestants play for four figures (split between three people), yet it still looks like a rave. The only thing missing was Dylan with a glo-stick.
Lingo:
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Scoreboards on the desks. The Bonus Lingo desk had one (go figure), but your maingame desks don't? Chintzy.
Whammy!
*Just call it "The New" PYL. Save the "title:longer subtitle" for the movies...and it's overblown there too.
*Drop the Double Whammies.
*I don't know how, but the excitement from the 80s version got lost in the translation here. Drop the manufactured enthusiasm this version suffered from.
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Chain Reaction:
(Apologies if someone has mentioned this idea before) For the last round, take a page from Edwards CR. For this round the team plays as a whole on a turn not seperately, but the team decides whether they want to take the letter or give a letter to the opposing team and no bidding.
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Chain Reaction:
-What about going with 2 players per team instead of three?
-Change the host
-I agree with making the set brighter
-This might sound like nit-picking but what about going back to a staircase effect for the puzzle? Somehow it looks more pleasing to watch imo (and getting rid of that stupid sound effect for something simpler when they're
trying to guess the word (it sounds like a bunch of critters for the lack of better words)).
How much is enough:
-The game could move so much faster instead of having players trying to fill in time regarding about if it's higher or lower. If you can't add more than this (high-to-low button-mashing) for a challenge in a game show then scrap it. Something is missing from this show and if they add a challenge element, it will be exciting to watch.
Friend of Foe:
-Remove Kennedy from this show (and have her do something else). The show lasted longer than it should.
I'm sure lots more games need fixing but I haven't watched GSN as much since they rebranded themselves a few years back.
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God, I missed you.
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Chain Reaction could be improved by:
* Cutting team size to one or two. This means that the coordinators aren't required to pick telegenic teams who can't play worth a darn, and might be able to find teams who can figure out the puzzles.
* Rounds are worth 100, 150, 200, 300. Most cash wins the game. This way you don't have that silly war of attrition at the end of the game where the trailing team watches their chances dwindling by the minute as their dunderhead partner bets $500 with a single letter showing.
* Since the teams are no longer three a side, we can chuck Instant Reaction, which is at best moderately painful to watch. Move the speed chains from the end-of-chain bonus to the bonus game, where it would actually be interesting.
How Much is Enough could be improved by shoehorning in however much of PokerFace you can do in a half hour. Really, no need for a standing ovation.
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ok.
Chain Reaction: Start off with a better set. Sliding doors maybe? Better theme. As with many shows, why not a techno style ? (It'll fit the show since the Disco worked with Cullen's) Ok I'm nitpicking here maybe $25 a letter play to $1000, Bring back the "plus" doublers. And give the Host the Answers! finally play the "Speed Chain" to after the second round (Ala Super Password).
Lingo: Fix that Board!! Is it me or does it look like the board is drooping too much? are we due for a Lingo plus? I mean I'd like to see a Four letter puzzle and/or a seven letter puzzle.
That's all I can think of.
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*Wait until Bonus Lingo is over to reveal missed words, or at least pause the clock to reveal them. That way, none of the two minutes is wasted on a reveal.
I guess pausing the clock could work. It usually only took about an extra second or two to reveal them, but I guess that can add up during the round. I wouldn't want to wait until the end though. If they don't get it, tell them what it is, be done with the word and move on.
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[quote name=\'TenPoundHammer\' post=\'174609\' date=\'Jan 11 2008, 07:51 PM\']*Wait until Bonus Lingo is over to reveal missed words, or at least pause the clock to reveal them. That way, none of the two minutes is wasted on a reveal.[/quote] Serves the team right if they can't identify a five-letter word in five guesses with two letters showing. They can suffer.
*I'd rather it just be Chuck and four contestants, but if they insist on having a female co-host, I wouldn't mind one of those smart types who still looks cute in glasses.
Lingo had a "teacher and student" week, and I can assure you Shandi looked as cute as ever in glasses and the rest of the librarian's outfit.
/What?
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[quote name=\'William_S.\' post=\'174702\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 04:01 AM\']Lingo: Fix that Board!! Is it me or does it look like the board is drooping too much? [/quote]What the hell does this mean? Its an electronic board, is it not? How does that droop?
I mean I'd like to see a Four letter puzzle and/or a seven letter puzzle.
Four letter words would be a nightmare.
Anyhow, I would make some changes to a few of them:
Lingo
Toss-up starts the game; perhaps with a seven letter word. Control is not lost unless you give an illegal answer or miss a word.
Play the game to a fixed amount (2 or 3) of Lingos as opposed to points. Give $100 per Lingo; with a net sum of $500 for winning the game.
Play the bonus game to rewarding contestants more for their word knowledge than luck. Each correct word lets them draw one ball from the hopper, which corresponds to cash or prizes (more than $100 per). Getting a Lingo (at any time) nets them a jackpot. With this setup, however, they get a smaller number of spaces marked off to begin with.
Russian Roulette
No changes needed; except for dropping the lowest scoring player if time runs out in a round.
Whammy!
Ditch the stupid kiddie effect of dumping things on the contestants' heads.
Lose Todd as the emcee; find someone who isn't overly-energetic, but can still make the game fun for the players/viewers.
Award a small prize or cash amount to any player who earns the max. number of spins; contestant keeps it regardless of the game outcome.
And of course, Chris contributes nothing to the thread, except a one-line message snarking someone.
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[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'174734\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 01:47 PM\']
And of course, Chris contributes nothing to the thread, except a one-line message snarking someone.
[/quote]
Oh, man, I needed a laugh like that today. Thanks, Mark. :)
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[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'174734\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 01:47 PM\']Lingo
Toss-up starts the game; perhaps with a seven letter word. Control is not lost unless you give an illegal answer or miss a word.[/quote] The problem here is that the other team has no way to get back in the game except if a team fumbles. What's wrong with teams alternating control, and drawing N balls, where N is six minus the number of tries it takes to guess the word? And while we're going into fantasy land, start with an empty bingo card.
Play the game to a fixed amount (2 or 3) of Lingos as opposed to points. Give $100 per Lingo; with a net sum of $500 for winning the game.
The problem here is that the show is firmly designed to play to a time limit. There's no way to get around it.
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[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'174731\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 04:30 PM\']Lingo had a "teacher and student" week, and I can assure you Shandi looked as cute as ever in glasses and the rest of the librarian's outfit.[/quote]
You have my attention. Anyone got a screenshot?
Anyway, getting back on topic, I agree with making Bonus Lingo a bit different somehow, so that the # of words gets a reward. This idea's kind of crude, but it may work: $200 per word, even if a Lingo is made. (in other words, if a team gets 5 words/balls and makes Lingo on the second ball, they'd get the $5000 for making a Lingo, and $1000 more for the five words they got right.)
I guess there's a reason that none of us board members are game show producers...
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[quote name=\'TenPoundHammer\' post=\'174746\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 07:01 PM\']
I guess there's a reason that none of us board members are game show producers...
[/quote]
Nope. Just you.
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[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'174740\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 05:27 PM\']What's wrong with teams alternating control, and drawing N balls, where N is six minus the number of tries it takes to guess the word? (And if we're going of into fantasy land, start with an empty bingo card.[/quote]My beef with the show was that, on occasion, a team would clean up round one, and the bell would sound for time. The other team then swept round two (with doubled points) and win with the same amount of effort put forth. That was my way of correcting that.
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[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'174760\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 07:01 PM\']
My beef with the show was that, on occasion, a team would clean up round one, and the bell would sound for time. The other team then swept round two (with doubled points) and win with the same amount of effort put forth. That was my way of correcting that.
[/quote]
So is Jeopardy! broken, too?
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'174761\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 10:03 PM\']
[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'174760\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 07:01 PM\']
My beef with the show was that, on occasion, a team would clean up round one, and the bell would sound for time. The other team then swept round two (with doubled points) and win with the same amount of effort put forth. That was my way of correcting that.
[/quote]
So is Jeopardy! broken, too?[/quote]Completely different cuts of meat. Jeopardy gives each contestant the chance to answer every question. Lingo does not.
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[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'174760\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 10:01 PM\']
My beef with the show was that, on occasion, a team would clean up round one, and the bell would sound for time. The other team then swept round two (with doubled points) and win with the same amount of effort put forth. That was my way of correcting that.
[/quote]
I'm not following. It's been a while since I watched the show, but I thought that once you get a Lingo, control passed to the other team? You keep guessing words correctly, you're going to eventually score a Lingo before the bell. It's almost inevitable that the other team will still get to play. Whether they make a comeback is on them.
They might not get as much time, but it's not like "The Joker's Wild", where you could sit and lose because your opponent answered all the questions on one spin.
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[quote name=\'fostergray82\' post=\'174766\' date=\'Jan 13 2008, 07:18 PM\']I'm not following. It's been a while since I watched the show, but I thought that once you get a Lingo, control passed to the other team? You keep guessing words correctly, you're going to eventually score a Lingo before the bell. It's almost inevitable that the other team will still get to play. Whether they make a comeback is on them. [/quote]Or it's on the red balls in the bin, which I'd remove from play entirely.
Lingo not only isn't balanced, it's heavily dependent on the luck of the draw. If you happen to like that, good on ya, but I like to see the better contestants having the better chance to win.
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While I probably would not do well at all as a game show producer, I got a few ideas for some of the modern shows:
Lingo
I'd actually move the question mark balls to round one and add some prize balls and other crap. Then take those out in round two and play straight Lingo then. Yeah, this might make round one go slower, but having less gimmicks in round two might make that round go by faster. Besides that, I can't think of a way to improve the main game without it having some sort of disadvantage to a team, or that it's self-contained.
For Bonus Lingo, I thought of a concept of mixing old (No Lingo from the 80s run) with new (Current Bonus Lingo). The object is to avoid getting a Lingo, and the team starts out with 10 balls to draw. They try to lower the drawing by doing the 2:00 to guess as many five-letter words as they can. If they avoid a Lingo, it's $5,000. However, if they are able to get ten in 2:00, they get that Lingo jackpot at X value. Also, there would be a Golden Ball that automatically stops the drawing and gives the team the five grand. Not the best of bonus rounds, but it certainly avoid the anti-climatic nature of the current bonus round.
Lastly, get rid of Shandi. Chuck was conversing much better with contestants in earlier seasons when GSN didn't get a case of Icey syndrome and stick Stacey Hayes in there. If anything, a new co-host who has the knowledge of Stacey but Shandi's conversing "skills" (if you want to call it that) might be a good alternate plan if they want to keep the useless blonde co-host.
That's the Question
Seriously, this game is just made to be a toss-up game. Let Goen give the question, let players buzz in, and go from there. Give players an additional point for every covered letter plus the 5 points for solving. Let letters pop in for the answer in round one, but leave it completely empty for round two.
This next one might require that the producers actually use their brains and handpick a question, but gauge the question on how much time the winning contestant has. Less than a minute? Give them a short question. Over two minutes? Give them a longer question. $500 as a consolation seems a bit cheap, I can't think of any other consolation that wouldn't hurt GSN's miniscule budget.
Chain Reaction
I kinda preferred the "You get x points/dollars for how many letters are in a word", so I'd go to that format and double the value of the final word. Get rid of speed chains. The gambling round would be nixed and replaced with a 3-chain speed round where teams try to fill in the middle word in a chain for a certain value.
Bonus round should go back to season one, but nix the blindfold and have the guesser in front of the clue-givers (like in season two). No buzzins, classic bell. $100/right answer, get 7 and you win $5,000. Probably would result in lesser wins, but this is GSN we're talking about.
And if GSN ever decides to revive it (and how much they air it on the schedule looks like somebody likes it):
Whammy!
Get rid of Double Whammies and get more cash, less prizes. Oh, and make Todd Newton switch to decaf this time.
I bet somebody's not gonna like any of my ideas. Hey, there's just so much wrong with the majority of them...
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As has been pointed out by Matt the Invincible, the problem with "Lingo" is that they're making a game that's naturally designed to straddle play to time. Best two-out-of-three Lingos to end game is obviously the most natural, but when you're not straddling or having returning champions, it's not going to happen.
And at this point, Chuck and Shandi definitely have the chemistry thing going--I wouldn't dare break them up.
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[quote name=\'TonicBH\' post=\'174837\' date=\'Jan 14 2008, 11:47 AM\']I'd actually move the question mark balls to round one and add some prize balls and other crap. [/quote] How do 'prize balls' improve the game? And how do you suppose GSN is going to afford that stuff? F
Icey syndrome
For what it's worth, I've never liked the "X syndrome" as a descriptor of "They ought not to do this." As pleasant as she is to look at, Shandi's job could be done as capably as an offscreen intern with a Casio and a web browser pointed to dictionary.com.
That's the Question
This next one might require that the producers actually use their brains and handpick a question, but gauge the question on how much time the winning contestant has. Less than a minute? Give them a short question. Over two minutes? Give them a longer question.
This would set far too dangerous a precedent.
Whammy!
get more cash, less prizes.
The problem is that this was nearly impossible to do anyway; I don't know why it would be all that different in 2008. Unless you don't mind $2,000 and a spin being the BIG BUCKS square in round two.
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[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'174904\' date=\'Jan 14 2008, 08:17 PM\']
Icey syndrome
For what it's worth, I've never liked the "X syndrome" as a descriptor of "They ought not to do this." As pleasant as she is to look at, Shandi's job could be done as capably as an offscreen intern with a Casio and a web browser pointed to dictionary.com.[/quote]
Yes, but why, as a member of the all-important 18-49 male demographic, would I want to watch an intern surf the Web when I could have Shandi?
Lingo not only isn't balanced, it's heavily dependent on the luck of the draw. If you happen to like that, good on ya, but I like to see the better contestants having the better chance to win.
Um...even on Crosswords, the better player has a better chance to answer the final question than the dweeb in the back row. How is the worse contestant more likely to get hot in round two than the better contestant is?