Tonight, 8pm UK,
Youtube and here
#sdb
#imbackingbrig
#teamdan
OK, we’ve been building it up all week and tonight’s the night.
Tonight Daniel Peake will futilely attempt to beat me over fifteen mystery games devised by TV’s David Bodycombe, whilst Lewis Murphy adjudicates and commentates.
It will begin at 8pm UK time, and the live feed will be up on Youtube and on here. You are invited to tweet along with #sdb or you’ll be able to leave comments on the Youtube channel. It will be expected to finish between midnight and 1am, so feel free to join us late if you want. Me and Dan will not be reading the Twitter or Youtube feeds – we’ll only get what our hosts will be reading out until after the event. Yes I know you think I’m a bit fat and ugly and I’m a man who has been horrible about your rubbish TV show but I’m also acceptably rugged looking (i.e. unshaven) and you still would.
The format is the same as popular German event show Schlag den Raab (Beat Raab!) – each game worth more points than the last (Game 1 = 1 point, game two = 2 points… game 15 = 15 points) so it’s a race to grab 61 points out of the 120 on offer, however unlike on television we will play out all fifteen games even if a winner has been decided. Because it’s a shame to waste the effort.
Please bear with us if there are technical problems. This is actually quite high concept and me and Dan genuinely know little of what to expect and David and Lewis will have to react to whatever happens. If you’re enjoying it do please say hello, we’re likely to be here a while. Fingers crossed it should remain on Youtube after the event, but there is a chance the copyright detectors take it off, I’m informed, so if you can tune in live then do. We will keep you informed through here and Twitter if there’s something you need to know (@danielpeake, @davidjbodycombe and @ogbajoj all worth following as well).
So let the games… BEGIN!
I’m looking forward to the bands, I wonder, which ones you have booked 😉
My money is on Hurts.
Vocals provided by Max Mutzke!
WE KNOW, MAX MUTZKE!
Who’s youtube channel will be broadcasting this?
It’s David’s and here’s the link to the stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAIu6PKVyN0
It seems to be this one, but I’m a bit confused right now…: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mZlrKLCUSc
Looking forward to it. Dan to win 😀
We’re ironing out some technical issues, we’ll be with you soon.
Brilliant work all round. Well done, and thank you, to everybody involved. I hope it was sufficiently fun for there to be further episodes down the line, but if it’s a one-off then it will go down in glory…
Utterly brilliant
Really fun to watch
For future I’d suggest the more active games are more fun to watch e.g order and chaos, mastermind etc rather than the tasting game and drawing
I disagree about the drawing – that was comedy gold; I stand by the four games I listed on twitter as the ones that worked best – Order and Chaos, Blindfolded Jigsaws, Solo Chess and Drawn Memory.
If it’s at all possible, and there is a next time, some more physical/dexterity stuff… But that obviously depends on what’s financially feasible both for acquiring and mailing the equipment required, and what could be made to work in physically disparate locations – Acumulatower might work, Crokinole wouldn’t, for obvious examples.
I did have a more ambitious balancing game in my early drafts, but the webcam can only concentrate on a relatively narrow angle so anything more than 1 foot cubed would be too large to fit in the view.
Fantastic fun to watch. Would definitely watch if you did it again.
It might be a bit less fiddly if you were able to group the games that needed the second camera position in a clump, so as to reduce the amount of camera position changes (but somehow without grouping all of one game type together), but that’s a very minor thing really and the added fiddliness is better than biasing the result towards one game type.
I thought that the slight delays moving camera position or setting up the tech for a game just added to the SDR-like feel – it’s as close as the games got to a five minute walk to an outdoor location and then changing into protective clothing before cutting to a ten minute ad break!
Many thanks to everyone involved in this, it was a really enjoyable evening’s entertainment.
Because Dan and Nick were not in the same room, there were necessarily a largish number of quiz-type rounds. As such, I had to space those out with at least one or two other things inbetween, and also I wanted to use the better props towards the front end of the show.
As such, there were too many factors that decided the running order before we even got as far as considering camera positions.
Maybe I haven’t thought about this too hard, but I don’t think there was a bad game in the bunch. Even the games with no play-along were at least funny (Tasting, Blind Puzzle) or tense… and if the racing game was possibly the weakest, then it was at least quick. The word puzzle might not get a lot of love, simply by virtue of being the first puzzle, but it too was a heck of a way to start the show. The atmosphere was great throughout, and Dan’s videos were a lovely, authentic and fond way to start proceedings off.
I’d agree with all of this, really.
I’m not sure if it says more about the quality of the broadcast, or the quality of 2013’s game shows, but… I kind of wish it was done some time in 2013 so I could have voted for it, even if Brig decided it didn’t count when counting votes. At least it had ambition.
I agree too! Dan’s little ‘Kandidaten’ VTs felt so much like ones from the actual show. It’s amazing how much detail went into it all!
It was absolutely fantastic, the games were well varied and there were some very clever ones like the Order and Chaos game (I didn’t see the rules brief as I was getting food at the time), and the game with the 16 cubes to make the pictures was also very clever. The addition of Schmecken was also very well-executed, just replacing cubes of actual foods with jelly beans. I didn’t think there were any games that didn’t work, it was all handled incredibly well.
If there’s ever a Schlag den Brig II: This Time It’s Personal, then you can be sure I’ll watch it!
Brilliant night’s viewing. Nice to put a face to Nick’s voice after all this time.
Yes, just to echo everyone else’s comments really – a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and on the whole the logistics of the production were well managed.
Particular favourite games of mine were a lot of the strategic ones: Order & Chaos, Solo Chess and the cube-patterns game. But equally, the Drawing and Blind Jigsaw games provided great hilarity!
Like many, I was hooked and would watch something like this again. And yes, it was nice to see Nick after all these years! 🙂
I had a ball watching Schlag den Brig, thank you for putting this on.
I think the only infrastructure improvement I can think of is that, in this day and age, we have been conditioned to expect some background music as and when it’s appropriate – and The Genius has shown what benefit dramatic music over the top can provide, when performed tastefully. However, given the evident limitations on playing licensed music, I can only suggest that the show employs the services of someone to sing gentle think music and/or dramatic stings live. Be glad that I’m not volunteering for this role – as someone put it, you really would want to lop your ears off. (But you should hear my Stylophone interpretation of Idiotape’s Sunset Strip for while David’s explaining the rules…)
Aside: in Kart Duell, was there a plan in place for the circumstance where the game gets to 6-6 and both players have left the same card to the end, to force a 7-7 tie? My guess is that replaying the game would be more satisfactory than awarding both players the points, which would have got Dan past 60 without being guaranteed to be in an uncatchable lead…
The plan was to replay again with 7 cards each.
Regarding the music, I could make something fitting if you guys would want me to. Whether it falls in the boundaries of tasteful is up for debate though.
The Voice 7.8m
Who Dares Wins 5.2m
Take Me Out 3.9m
Splash 3.6m
Reflex. 2.7m
CBB 1.9m
All including HD and +1 where applicable.
Be interesting to see the splits for The Voice. I could see it not finishing terribly well because it wasted a shedload of time on a joke act, and in many ways the success of the blind auditions has been derived from it being the antithesis of the Cowell auditions.
Reflex didn’t do quite as badly as I anticipated with no Voice pretune.
I only have 15 minute breakdown, but it grew throughout, with a big spike in the final 15 minutes:
6.3
7.3
7.9
8.2
9.1
Crikey, people didn’t turn off halfway through for the joke act. Far from it.
Mildly disappointed now. Still, big numbers even if it’s down on opening night.
You left out the #sdbratings 😉
Good share, apparently.
I’d like to say thank you for an awesome evening of entertainment. It clearly took a lot of time and effort to put together and, unlike a lot of last years shows, had some genuinely tense moments.
Highlights for me were Order and Chaos, the tasting game, the mastermind game, solo chess and Card Duel. Also the moments where Dan and Brig were left to their own devices and did a bit of smack talk and engaging with the audience. Definitely more of this in the future.
My only real issue was with camera position two on Dan’s set up. Because of all the hangout thumbnails I couldn’t really see what he was doing in the table-top games. I do also agree with Alex about the music; there are royalty free music services that have decent background music but I don’t know if youtube live would still flag them up? I use Purple Planet for my blog vids.
Also would have been cool to have a ‘grab these items to play along’ message in the beginning, as the video game and drawing games would have gone down well. The word game would have too but then you’re relying on the viewers not to post the answers to Twitter.
Thanks again and fingers crossed we’ll get to see another SDB soon.
I very much enjoyed Order and Chaos, I genuinely hadn’t noticed the diagonal danger in game two, I certainly think there are lots of interesting strategies for both sides (as chaos I think the key is to disrupt as many useful bits in the next-to-outside grid squares because most rows will have to cut through them, you certainly don’t need to be placing symbols next to symbols already on board) as order it’s fun to use your opponent’s moves against them, forcing them into no-win situations. Would play again.
Incidentally, Dan had the smart idea of him wearing a red shirt and me a blue shirt like Raab and Kandidate on TV. I don’t know if anyone picked up on it!
I did pick up on that! I also noticed during Bilderwürfel that each of your cubes were properly color coordinated. Great attention to detail.
Ha! I’ve only noticed that now you pointed it out!
Thought last night was excellent and would gladly watch another.
Not really a weak game in the selection and most were of a very good standard considering the constraints of being separated and online.
Technologically it was very well put together and I particularly enjoyed the parody videos at the start – I didn’t expect those!
My favourite game was arguably the jelly beans because when wondering which SDR games you might replicate I thought “they’ll never be able to do that eating one” and then you effectively did!
A lot of hard work by all parties was evident in a great show (and well done Dan!)
Curious to know how many of these games have been played on SdR before, at least in near variant form, and how many were DJB originals. I suspect the degree of adaptation is a sliding scale, but I’d be curious to get a Director’s Cut of the thinking behind the game selection.
By my reckoning, Schmecken, Sortieren, Safeknacker* and Karten-Duell (and Pool if we’d gotten to it) are directly from SdR. Blinden Puzzle and A Capella are variations on Raab games. Wortsperre, Google Quiz, Krimskrams, Ordnung und Chaos, Pipe Racers, Bilderwürfel, Solo-Schach, and Nachahmer have never been done on SdR before (though obviously Pipe Racers was an existing flash game, and many of the others are existing concepts).
Incidentally, the tiebreak game was Gyul Hap from The Genius, and an extra game should we have needed it would be stacking the 16 minicubes from Bilderwürfel, which has kind of been done on a bigger scale with milk crates on SdR. Cory who wrote the Sortieren engine also wrote a random Gyul Hap generator that also figures out when a Gyul is appropriate, and it’s pretty awesome actually.
* Yes they have played Mastermind on SdR before, it was game 4 on show 10 and was called Superhirn. David didn’t know this going in, however.
Part 1:
#1 – Word Lock. Unusual to have a 2-phase game at the start when the 1-pointer is a pretty quick affair on SdR. However, I wanted to get a prop in early to show what we were about and this was a pretty cool prop to play with. I could’ve just done it as a straight race with Phase 2, but I thought it was more fun to get a bit more mileage out of it by using it as a word game.
#2 – Google Quiz. This was partly in reaction to “How can we be sure they don’t cheat?” and then I thought it might be fun if we *let* them cheat. Also, I knew we could see what they were up to via screensharing so there was something fairly visual to see the progress.
#3 – Schmecken. Not really intended to be a rip off of an SdR game, but I was interested to see whether we could do a tasting game. The main problem was finding a foodstuff that wouldn’t spoil during the week. I did consider ordering a pizza with loads of toppings on it and then getting them to somehow identify them while blindfolded. Then some time later it struck me that gourmet jelly beans were a perfect solution. When trying the game myself, even knowing the answers, I found certain flavours completely overran others so I tried to put a savoury, fruity and aromatic one in each tube as a general rule.
#4 – Bits and Pieces. I have a Visual Dictionary that lists all the different parts of complex things and that was the basis of the idea. I thought it had a good OC-style ‘do I buzz or wait’ tension to it. In style it reminded me a little of that car models game a few shows back on SdR.
#5 – Order and Chaos. Because a lot of the games are being played remotely, I wanted to ensure there were at least a few where the players rather than scoring ‘separately’. I found a mention of this on Wikipedia and I reminded me of a similar version I’d played and enjoyed at a Mind Sports Olympiad. It was also fairly easy to mock up in PowerPoint, which was also a bonus.
Part 6:
#6 – Blindfold Puzzles. Based on a pack of jigsaws that my elder daughter has. The furry texture made me think that these were solvable even if you were blindfold. I had hoped that it would be wrapped up in 2 puzzles as I knew the 3rd one would be very hard but we got a result in the end.
#7 – Pipe Riders. Just put in to replicate a time trial-type race game. This seemed to be a simple game that both players’ computers would be able to run without worrying about too many plug-ins. If you want to play it yourself, it’s on Miniclip.
#8 – Picture Blocks. Based on a board game called Q-Bits. I liked the ‘chicken’ idea but worried that both players might refuse too many times, so I didn’t make the shapes that hard early on. There were more difficult pictures later in the pack. Originally the building time was 30 seconds but I was amazed how long it took to do, so I upped it. In particular, the half-and-half squares (the triangle shapes) are very tricky.
#9 – A Capella. Just a way to fit in a music round without using particularly popular tracks.
#10 – Solo Chess. A neat little brainteaser that had a good playalong factor. Quite pleased with the way the scores varied a lot during the round.
Me and my housemate *really* took to Solo Chess. As a quickfire quiz round it was pretty effective, felt a little like a Krypton Factor Mental Agility round.
Part 11:
#11 – Copycat. Inspired by a board game called Identik but I didn’t like the main rule they use (which makes it more of a description game) so I made it more straightforwardly memory-based. One of the most popular games of the night.
#12 – Sortieren. Had to be done really, just for extra fan points. Only sorry that it ran out 5-0. Be cleverer next time, Dan.
#13 – Safecracker. Done because I knew it would work on Powerpoint well (there were about 1047 animations in that one slide!) and that it lasted the right kind of timespan. It’s also possible to get yourself in a real logical mess if you change too many things at once, as I think it’s fair to say Nick did.
#14 – Card Duel. A cheap and cheerful way to get another prop into the proceedings. As I knew any of games 12 to 15 were likely to be ‘the clincher’, I wanted them all to be worthly ‘match-winning’ games.
I wouldn’t particularly have changed anything, if I had to run it again. Getting games that were over quickly was harder than those where it was ‘Play to x’ style. We didn’t have musical acts or commercial breaks so we had a lot more game running time than SdR would do. It would’ve been nice to have more games where Dan and Nick could interact directly, such as the online Pool game we had lined up for #15.
Because Dan and Nick were apart, there were necessarily a number of quiz or puzzle rounds so it was important to spread these out. The props helped provide a good change of scene between these to make it look like there weren’t too many quizzes. It did strike me how many games in SdR are basically races of one sort or another, so in a way this worked quite well for our adaptation.
Whether we’d do it again, I dunno. I wouldn’t mind doing it once a year, maybe, but it took about 3-4 weeks of planning and a good working week worth of question writing, presentation building, programming, prop-collection and organisation so… it’s effort.
I would like to say that we were extremely pleased with the turnout – consistently 50-55 people throughout the evening, which is pretty darn good considering. I had thought it would be something more akin to the 20ish we get for SdR commentaries. It was also fun to watch the hashtag during the night and particularly your own trials at the Copycat game.
If we get enough support – maybe if other people help out with games ideas, questions or props – then I’ll see what we can do for another time.
I had an idea that quite a lot of effort went into it so just wanted to make sure it was entertaining enough to have done it justice. I love games and gaming but I’m also hilariously lousy at most of them so I was quite pleased it wasn’t a complete thrashing (and indeed if a few things went the other way the score would have gone the other way. Needless to say I thought the knight/rook adjudication was well harsh and would have totally have been accepted on SdR under their five second rule. LEWIS.).
I think Lewis did a great job all night actually considering he was basically doing all the admin and filling in whilst we were having breaks.
Someone should hit up Tom Scott to book up the Youtube Studio.
Just gone through the whole thing on catchup – I’d love to see this become a seasonal thing, if it doesn’t strain things too hard.
For sheer ingenuity, I don’t think that can be matched, and it makes me wish I could have been available for the Labyrinth Labs now.
I caught the last hour or so, thanks to your post on this site. I found it interesting.
Understand that, as an American, I am not familiar with “Schlag des Raab”. I know naught of naughty streaming, and only understand enough German to read a record label. So, I come at this from a different angle, with a different attitude.
During the hour in which I was watching. I had the feeling of being a fly on the wall, observing games being played by two good and close friends.
Presentation of the games was actually quite good, considering that there were not the resources of a major broadcast or cable network. I thought well of the presentation of “Sortieren”, “Safeknacker” and “Kart Duell”.
I’ve liked the idea of “SdR”, but it would be hard to translate it for an American audience. One would have to cast the American “Raab” as being an absolute, total, A-number one, smug, arrogant jerk! (There are stronger terms I could use, but would rather not use them.)
The long-form format would not be what American audiences–or networks–are used to, either. We are not used to game shows lasting more than an hour–much less an open-ended format whose closing time would not be easily determined, except by what happens in the games.
Still, it’s an interesting idea. If it stays up and posted, I may catch what I have missed–even if I have to do so in chapters, on the installment plan.
I watched the whole thing on catch-up as well, and while nearly everything I want to say has already been said, I’d still like to echo everyone else’s sentiments that it was brilliant.
Also, if you do decide to do it another time, I could probably help out with some programming work.
Really enjoyed it. Downloaded the whole thing from Youtube and watched it at my leisure. Thanks for all the hard work guys.
I know it takes a LOT of work, but it’s really appreciated. Please do do it sometime again, if you can.
Maybe it would help to have fewer rounds? If it could be around 3 hours rather than 4, it might be less of a commitment to watch live, and also mean less prep work for David. Just an idea! 🙂
For the full German effect we should have gone on until 2am really 🙂
We could do with more mano-a-mano games where the result is decided after 3 or 4 minutes rather than multi-round games that take 15 minutes, but since the reaction has been so positive we’ll think about doing it again. But it won’t be for several months.
Fantastic news!
Just don’t exhaust yourself David. Some of the games that wouldn’t have required TOO much prep were as much fun as the apparently prep-heavy ones.
And maybe you could ask us viewers to contribute a question or two in a certain game, to help ease your workload (on the research at least). Anything to make it less laborious for yourself, as it ought not be a chore for you.
Thanks again.
Amazing. Is there anywhere I can find details of the actual SdR games?
Well you can watch all the episodes here:
http://www.myspass.de/myspass/shows/tvshows/schlag-den-raab/
Lewis has a sort of database, although I can’t remember if it’s online or not.
I’ve just updated the “database” (meaning, massive text file) and you can find it at http://www.fifty50show.com/schlag-den-raab.txt
It isn’t as detailed for episode 44 yet just because I haven’t gotten to watching it through again and recording all the details, but it does have the names and basic translations of those games, and the winner of each. Everything else has detailed descriptions.
Cheers to both of you. Downloaded SDR44 last night, will start working my way through them once I finish updating the Mole challenge guide. (Speaking of, Steven Gatjen has really aged quite terribly since he hosted German Mole all those years ago. And yet, I’d totally still go there.)
He looked about twelve when he hosted Fort Boyard around 2000.
Kudos to you, Lewis!
I don’t know if there is a German website, which could go on the virtual shelf alongside fort-boyard.fr and crystalmaze.marcgerrish.com. But this sounds like it has the makings of such.
Is “Shame or Cash” something particularly British or European? This Yank has never heard of it.
It’s particularly Raabian really. It’s a form of quiz he plays on his talk show, TV Total, and they play it every episode (with a few exceptions where I assume they didn’t get to it) on Schlag den Raab. It’s a fairly standard trivia quiz on the buzzer, with long and sometimes curveball questions. It’s a point if you get the correct answer, a point for the opponent if you buzz incorrectly, plus the opponent gets their own chance to answer (sometimes, less usual recently).
I’d like to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone for watching and for DB for putting on such a fantastic spectacle. The time and effort he put in was spectacular.
I’m extremely glad people have enjoyed it as much as they have, and over the moon with the number of people who watched it. To have been involved in this has been brilliant, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
I look forward to receiving my 500,000 euros in used notes by courier, by the way.
I’d have said this a few days ago, but moving house got in the way (sorry), so I’m saying it now: THANK YOU!
I like others have just finished watching on catchup. That was a phenomenal piece of gaming right there. Many massive thanks to David B and Lewis getting it set up – having organized quiz events myself I know that it takes quite a lot of time.
To Dan and Nick – thanks for the massive entertainment value. Being that one of you were very helpful in the lead up to me being on a certain C4 programme and one of you being my guest in the studio I could not choose who I wanted to win but rather just enjoyed the fact that it ended having played 14 games.
Again thanks a ton gentlemen!
Rewatched this last night. Really, the only missed opportunity was ending with an a cappella version of One Moment in Time.
Even having One Moment in Time at all was a last-second idea. I literally spent most of Karten-duell listening to the song* to get it to the right place, while keeping half an eye on the game progress to update the scoreboard on the second screen.
* with the setup I was using, not an easy thing – if I was hearing my outputs the whole time, I would also be hearing myself on just enough delay to utterly confuse my brain and make me talk weird