MOB RULE: MY NIGHT WITH THE XBOX 360 PREMIERE OF 1 VS. 100
Tonight, I snuck across the border. As the hour reached vodka-rocks-o’clock, I went under cover of a hotmail.ca and freshly created Canadian Xbox Live account (meet the mild-mannered, balding middle-aged ‘powerpi11‘) to spend a quiet night in seeing what Microsoft and Endemol had in store for their Xbox 360 massively multiplayer real-prize game show initiative, ‘Primetime’.
First announced at last year’s E3 and currently only ‘airing’ in Canada, tonight was the beta premiere of its version of NBC game show 1 vs. 100.
Here’s the premise, for those that haven’t seen the TV version (as I hadn’t!): a titular ‘one’ is chosen from the viewing audience (players have a higher chance of getting chosen, apparently, by doing well at the game playing along at home) to go up against a ‘mob’ of 100 other players — though I’m less clear on how this is doled out, as there seemed to have been at least 10,000 players connected, and I always seemed to be in the mob (sharded, presumably?).
Then begins the trivia questions: topics in the opening night ranged from who first reached a million followers on Twitter (A: you know this) to what members of an audience were doing to make Morrissey abruptly shut down a recent performance (A: eating meat).
If a player answers correctly, they move on to the next round, and any mob member that chooses incorrectly is taken out of the prize running, but still continues to play. And here’s the crux: the more mob members taken out, the higher the one’s prize winnings rise on a tiered structure — 160, 300, 600, 800, 1200, 2000, 3000+ Microsoft Points, which begins to quickly add up to an un-sniff-worthy amount of Xbox Live Arcade money for a free, online game (that above range roughly equates to between $3-50+).
After a certain number of rounds, the player’s asked each time — in true fomulaic gambler’s dilemma game-show tradition — if they want to take the Points they’ve earned so far, or continue on. If a player continues and loses, that amount of Points is distributed to the mob members remaining. On average, that amounted to somewhere between 80-160 points ($1.50-3 per player). At left above — the ‘one’ deciding whether to take their 3000/$50 of Points, or try to eliminate even more of the 23 remaining mob.
So what did I learn from my hour and 15 minutes of play, before being ingloriously booted from the proceedings for not actually having an Xbox Live Gold account (was that about to be my chance to be the one?):
* Just that slightest amount of interaction instantly turned an activity I’d rarely consider taking part in passively to one that legitimately and repeatedly made my heart fractionally tighten. Suddenly, the thrill of game/reality TV that inexplicably seems to captivate howevermany millions of viewers cut through me like a hot knife.
Even with absolutely nothing at stake (no prizes are being awarded during the beta), I played for 80 minutes, non-stop, dead simply in some semi-sad anticipation that I might be the next ‘one.’
With ‘commercial breaks’ lasting some 20-30 seconds — never nearly enough for kitchen or bathroom runs — that is a captive audience, and that is a Tivo-era marketer’s dream come true (ads shown in the beta: manga.com, UFC [above], and, natch, Microsoft/MSN).
* I am unstoppably quick on the answer-button draw (sorry, rza145), and even when you’ve been disqualified from the prize running, the sub-competition of playing against your small group of four other local or Xbox Live users for point (not cashable Point) prowess is stimulating enough to keep the controller in hand.
* Like any true corn-fed American, I know next to nothing about Canada. Not even, embarrassingly enough, when pressed, what ‘Nova Scotia’ means (I’m sorry), or that Vancouver’s nickname is ‘Hollywood North’ (why?), or what a Tim Hortons ‘timbit’ is (also: what is a Tim Horton). But, if nothing else, what this showed was the lengths Microsoft is willing to go to to custom tailor its questions.
* At least 5 people out of 100 in Canada think that either Marilyn Manson or Marilyn Monroe died recently (A: Marilyn Chambers).
* At least 1 person out of 100 in Canada thinks you can get a temporary tummy tuck or a nipple ring in a box of Cracker Jack (A: tattoo).
* I would very much like to live in a world where network TV shows broadcast billboard ads for indie games like Metanet’s N+ (the Toronto developer presumably chosen here representin’ the Great White North?).
Will I play again? Are you joking: come May 12th, I’ll be donning that ‘powerpi11’ skin an hour ahead of time, just to see if I can again make it through the digital RCMP’s mindful watch (whose uniforms, I now and forevermore will remember after tonight, also go by the nickname ‘Red Serge.’)
1 vs. 100 [xbox.com]
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