Well it is fair to say this has been rather heavily reformatted:
- Kay hosts, big screen at the middle back of the stage, contestant podium on the stage left, big fishbowl in the centre, stage right is a desk where all the money balls (on rasing and lowering platforms) and danger balls pop out.
- Alright. A situation is set-up somewhere – who will sit between two scary looking men? Who will pick a bit of litter off the floor? That sort of thing. When someone apparently at random performs the action, Vernon Kay pops up on a nearby advertising screen to talk to them. They are made an offer: take £100 now (someone apparently is shown doing this) or come to the studio later to play for a possible £100,000. If they come to the studio they’re allowed to pick a partner to come with them. I don’t know how set-up the pilot was, but one couple wouldn’t have fallen inside the key demo.
- To begin, Kay puts a money ball worth £100 into the big fishbowl in the middle – the comparison with Goldenballs is unescapable, although these balls unscrew rather than snap open. However Kay also adds a Kill… I mean red Danger Ball into the fishbowl as well. Balls will be added to this bowl throughout the course of the game.
- In each round the contestants get a choice of two categories. The questions are mainly celebrity and pop culture with some general knowledge thrown in.
- In round one there is one question and one money ball at stake. This is always a picture quiz where they must pick one correct answer from three given options, such as guessing which of the three actors shown is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son or knowing what colour eyes the Queen has.
- A correct answer adds a money ball to the fishbowl (which we’ll just call the pot from hereonin). There are 13 other money balls (from memory £200, £300, £400, £500, £1k, £1.5k, £2k, £3k, £5k, £10k, £15k, £20k, and £50k) on numbered stands, they pick a ball, Vernon reveals what it is and it’s plonked in the pot.
- A wrong answer adds a Danger Ball to the pot. These roll out of the centre of the desk. You obviously want to avoid these.
- Round two is three questions for three balls, and works on the Play Your Cards Right higher or lower than the previous thing principle. Tonight this included the value of the world’s richest men, the cost of various projects, and the lenghts of celebrity marriages. The balls are all picked at the end of the round.
- Round three is the final round and it’s worth five balls for five questions. Straight fifty-fifty choices (which of these animals is native to Africa, out of each pair of celebs which is older, that sort of thing). Add the balls.
- And now it’s time for the final. There will be 11 balls in the pot both bad and good – the two that seeded it and nine more earned through the quiz. They’re given a mix, and then players start drawing them out. They are allowed to draw up to five money balls, and they can walk away at any time. However, if they pick a Danger Ball, they have to answer a (fairly tough actually) four-way multiple choice question. If they get it correct then they can opt to play on or leave, if they get it wrong they leave with nothing. Picking Danger Balls does not count toward the five money balls the contestants are allowed to pick.
- The problem is I think they’ve not got the maths quite right, or at least not to make an interesting endgame which currently does rather play itself. Contestants are pretty much going to continue going for the big ball everytime because nine times out of ten it’s in their best interests to do so – it’s such a top heavy distribution, and the low balls are really low. People will gamble £3-4 grand for a shot at £50k without too much thought, especially without the time investment Deal or No Deal (say) requires. (Although see David Howell’s take on the maths below)
- Vernon was actually on good form this evening, working well with contestants who could throw stuff back. He suggested he quite liked the fact that these were people chosen basically at random and hadn’t had to fill in loads of forms to apply, they felt more normal.
- It sounds like a half an hour show with two couples although they filmed a third couple to cut together a better show with. I didn’t really feel any need to watch a third game play out (although as it turned out the contestants were a lot of fun).
I can’t say I’m convinced at all – it does feel pretty derivative of Golden Balls, though it’s certainly a different emphasis, and I don’t think the picking gimmick’s all that interesting – but either way it sounds much, much better than the pitch film.
I don’t really see the Golden Balls comparison. Yes, there are balls that serve as the random selection method, but to say it’s copying Golden Balls is like saying a game has boxes, therefore it’s copying Deal or No Deal, or a game has envelopes, therefore Secret Fortune.
Actually the platforms the money balls are on raise and lower like on Secret Fortune.
I see your point – I think it’s a little bit more developed than that, with the picking multiple balls and hoping not to hit a danger one which wipes out/significantly diminishes your money, but it definitely feels different. It’s definitely a difference in emphasis – the balls are there to facilitate the rest of the game in Golden Balls and they are the game here. That’s different enough for me.
I’m not sure though that the shopping centre thing is a strong enough gimmick, and any show with that high a chance of a total wipeout may not go down well, especially in what feels like a feel-good Saturday night show where contestants get picked from nowhere. But then again, Channel 4 does seem to like that sort of thing, and it’s a heck of a lot more sophisticated than The Bank Job…
So it’s a cross between Golden Balls and Secret Fortune, with the Cash Cab contestant selection method.
I’d rather just see Cash Cab back.
Distribution too top-heavy to create many interesting risk-reward decisions as you said – I’d go with something like £250, £500, £1k, £2k, £3k, £4k, £5k, £7.5k, £10k, £15k, £20k, £25k, £30k. That still creates a £100k ceiling too.
Given that you were suspicious that this might happen, did you walk around the Westfield performing slightly random actions (picking up litter, sitting between people, buying flowers, etc.) in the hope that it would be you? Random actions suddenly become +EV when there’s the prospect of being Verned for performing them.
No I went straight to TVC as the queue was building. They had filmed all the hidden camera stuff earlier for VT anyway.
You knew one of us was going to do this, and that one of us is me.
I’ve created a spreadsheet that quite literally simulates the entire game – questions, ball selections, and – in a really, really rough-and-ready way atm, stop/go selections. (The current utterly arbitrary system I have for those is “stop once you get above 1/x of the prize fund, where x = the number of danger balls in play”. There’s got to be a drastically better method than this.)
Questions are handled based on (adjustable) probabilities of correct answers in each round. I’ve assumed P (right answer | front game) = 0.8 and P (right answer | endgame) = 0.5 for now. The former is high as it reduces the risk of loads of danger balls in the endgame – I’m pretty sure they’d want to make certain there were five cash balls in there at the end, and that’d need going at least 4/9 in the front game which isn’t a given with tricky questions). The latter is lower because Brig mentioned about the questions at this point being trickier.
I’m actually growing a lot fonder of the distribution here now I’ve made this spreadsheet, surprisingly – even with that P=0.8 in the front game, seven times out of eight you’re going to have at least two danger balls in the game, more often than not you’ll have three or more, and about one-quarter of the time you’ll have four or more. That, in turn, makes it really quite easy to lose the lot.
Take this scenario I just simulated. In the pot for the endgame are three danger balls, four three-figure sums, £5k, £15k, £20k, and £50k. The player draws £20k first up. I don’t know if the average British contestant would turn down £20k there when there’s a pretty meaningful chance of drawing a danger before you add anything decent to the pot.
(My arbitary formula says go on. Next ball’s a danger, the question is answered wrong, instant wipeout.)
I /suspect/ most would continue under that situation. Equal chance of getting a four figure sum and a danger ball, danger ball isn’t certain elimination though is undesirable, and a couple of slightly positive results (£100 and another three figure number)
The next one, if they didn’t just survive a danger ball or pick a five digit number, is far more difficult to tell. £25k, two chances in seven of significantly increasing that, three chances in seven of potentially losing the lot…
(For the most tempting to continue ‘next ball is at least four figures’ option of the scenario you presented)
Actually what the general populace would do isn’t what we should be considering, thinking about it – It’s what the portion of the populace willing to risk a certain £100 for up to £100k without knowing the details of the game they’re going to play would do, that’s at least marginally biasing towards risk takers (Very marginally, mind)
This sorta seems like another one of the many, “It just exists,” shows we were discussing when Volte Face/Trust came up.
Doesn’t sound like it’s bringing anything new to our screens, and after Red or Black ITV won’t be taking too many chances on “normal” people getting on the show without a serious vetting process.
The press only got on their high horse about that because Red or Black was entirely luck based, surely?
This is Gogglebox for Channel 4.
They could always withhold the prize money until vetting is complete and then not air the episode if the vetting disqualifies the contestant.
Red or Black season 1 couldn’t do that because it was live. I suspect Red or Black season 2 wasn’t live for precisely that reason.