Beta Notes: 1 vs. 100
6/24/2009 7:19 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3
The main point of a beta test is to let a small section of dedicated players figure out what works and what doesn't before wider release to the general public. To that end, Beta Notes makes constructive criticism about what can and should be improved before the game goes gold.
This week:
1 vs. 100
Your basic trivia quiz with a massively-multiplayer twist,
1 vs. 100 lets players compete against each other on Xbox Live for multiple-choice supremacy. The regularly-scheduled
Extended Play sessions offer a nonstop stream of canned questions, but the
Live shows play out more like the show on which the game is based. In these two-hour sessions, one lucky player ("The One") faces off against 100 randomly selected opponents ("The Mob") to see who can last the longest without missing a question. As Mob members drop out, the prize pool of (thus-far imaginary) Microsoft Points gets bigger, until the One misses a question (letting the Mob split his winnings) or decides to stop (taking the prize for himself). Those not selected as the One or the Mob can play along as members of "The Crowd" for bragging rights.
What we like:
- The pacing: Questions and answers come at a good clip, with 37 questions in the average half-hour Extended Play episode. Plus, the quick answer timer makes it nearly impossible to Google for answers. Good move!
- The competition: Playing live against thousands of other players lets you revel in their ignorance when they miss an easy question en masse. Which is the whole point of trivia, after all.
- The interface: Bravo for compressing a lot of information on scoring, Mob and Crowd performance, and statistics into an easy and pleasant-to-read format.
What can be improved:
You can't tell from this screenshot, but one of these hosts is human and personable and the other is... not.
Sure, host Chris Cashman's spoken shtick during stat breaks and before commercials is a little corny, but he's a game-show host -- corniness is in his contract. That notwithstanding, these live chat interludes are 100 times more interesting than the prerecorded female avatar that narrates the question-and-answer portion of the game like a lobotomized robot. While Cashman can pepper in comments on the One's current streak and his choice of fashion or handle, all the robo-hostess can add are brain-dead comments like "The correct answer is ... X!" or "Let's see how many Mob members just didn't have a clue," repeated ad infinitum. After roughly five minutes of this claptrap, you'll be ready to mute the speakers until that little "On Air" sign pops up on-screen.
Let Cashman out of the commercial-break ghetto! He can keep quiet during the actual questions -- let those stay quiet -- but once the answers are locked in, let him pop in with some easy banter about the question ("Looks like the One thinks Ringo Starr was a member of the Monkees. Let's see if he's right!") and the Mob's response ("Looks like 35 of you didn't know that Brazil was in South America. What's wrong with you people?")
There may be technical or logistical hurdles to streaming that much audio, but it's worth it to work through them. Having a truly live host is one of the biggest things setting
1 vs. 100 Live apart from every other videogame trivia show ever -- don't be afraid to use it to its fullest.
Racking up points is all well and good, but I want to be able to lord them over everyone else!
While the lucky few that get chosen as "The One" or members of "The Mob" will get to compete for real life prizes, 99-plus percent of
1 vs. 100 Live players only get to compete with each other as part of "The Crowd." Thankfully, the game keeps track of Crowd members' progress with a detailed point system that takes into account correct answer streaks, reaction time and question difficulty. There's only one problem with the system: It's nearly impossible to figure out how your score compares to the rest of the Crowd. What good is having 15,000 "points" if I don't know how many points everyone else has?
Yes, I can compare my score to the other three people in my immediate play group, but who knows if they're representative of the Crowd as a whole? Yes, I can look at the top-10 scorers list and see how my score compares, but unless I'm actually in the top 10, I don't know exactly where I stand. Yes, the stat breaks occasionally break down the Crowd's stats in bar-graph form, but knowing that I'm one of 18,000 people that have a correct-answer streak of five or more questions isn't really that helpful.
