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[billygoto]

Random Death

45 of the 1100 questions were Family Guy, Simpsons, or Futurama related.

1 in 24. That's actually a lot for this game. See below.

There were 5 Candy Bar questions out of the 1100. Get over it.

The game is structured such that individual questions are extremely important.
I understand wanting to put off-the-wall questions in there, but there is no accumulator
of earned points that a player can fall back on if he gets a weird question wrong. Most
of the time, I was answering 1 question per round, so that question was the only factor
that went into the other contestants' voting. If it was a bullshit question, then it sucks to be
me. I did pretty well, but eventually I was knocked out by a Sideshow Bob question. In
Jeopardy, I probably would have just won based on my accumulated points from the
previous rounds, but in this game, the Sideshow Bob questions can happen to anyone at
any time and that's just random death if you're unlucky. It's something to consider when you
edit the questions.

For the same reason, I don't like the voting. It's mean-spirited and unsporting.

Random death isn't typically a feature of games which are fun to play.
It's kind of like having the Nintendo crash when you've got the Boss down to a 1/2 heart.

[hackajar]

I got as far as I did using stratigy, not answering questions right (I did better first day then the final round answering questions).

I worked with guy next to me (can't remember name, started with "A" and he wore a lab coat) to vote everyone but us off, so we would dual in 5 question elimanation.

I worked out the same seniero with Vicki in the finals. Hence why it was down to her and I. Also why me not answering Simpsons and Family Guy questions incorrectly didn't really have any effect on the outcome (short of the 'candy tree' question that killed me in final round).

Just to be clear, since some suspected that the organizers were "fixing" contest; Non of that happened, it was just contenstants being evil (and playing game way it should be played). If it was fixed some people would have gotten farther then they did. ;)

[ravyn]

I got as far as I did using stratigy, not answering questions right (I did better first day then the final round answering questions).

I worked with guy next to me (can't remember name, started with "A" and he wore a lab coat) to vote everyone but us off, so we would dual in 5 question elimanation.

i knew i should've gotten rid of lab coat guy when i had the chance. =/


anyway, i'm going to have to agree with billygoto - the vote after each round is a sort of unsporting random death. (and yes, i readily admit that i say this because it led to my own untimely demise, but at the same time, i'd like to see the winner of the game (whatever game) be the person that genuinely does know the most stuff - at least if the game is to be based on trivia.)

also, given that this is meant to a drinking game, what about some manner of awarding points for alcohol consumed, a la HJ? a full bottle of vodka's got to be worth something...

[Voltage Spike]

also, given that this is meant to a drinking game, what about some manner of awarding points for alcohol consumed, a la HJ? a full bottle of vodka's got to be worth something...

The points-for-alcohol thing is fairly recent. It started off as a sort of joke because someone (Humperdink?) drank an impressive number of beers a couple years ago. I was actually rather surprised when it made a return last year since some teams used this as their only strategy.

I also believe that someone unsuccessfully tried to argue for more points based on alcohol content (not volume) last year.

Oh, and while Ravyn's performance was impressive, I do not agree with the points. Heavy drinking does have a certain audience-appreciation factor, but it isn't as entertaining as forced drinking or a strong demonstration of knowledge.

[alklloyd]

Although I wasn't actually involved in the event, what did everyone think of it?

Bring back HJ please.

Al

[billygoto]

I got as far as I did using stratigy, not answering questions right (I did better first day then the final round answering questions).

I worked with guy next to me (can't remember name, started with "A" and he wore a lab coat) to vote everyone but us off, so we would dual in 5 question elimanation.

I worked out the same seniero with Vicki in the finals. Hence why it was down to her and I. Also why me not answering Simpsons and Family Guy questions incorrectly didn't really have any effect on the outcome (short of the 'candy tree' question that killed me in final round).

Your sig says: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups".
I guess that applies rather directly to the Leetest Link.

[lil_freak]

Bring back HJ please.

Al

I understand that most people missed having HJ around this year, but as it is with any new concept/idea you have to give the new game a chance. I'm sure when HJ first started it had its bugs, too.

For this being the first year for the LL I think things went really well, other than a minor technological/coding problem that took place.

I think Grifter and the rest of guys from 801 that work so hard on trying to get this game of the ground did a great job in the short time they had to work with. I'm also convinced that next years installment of the LL will be awsome and run a lot smoother.

[Adrenaline]

.............
The game is structured such that individual questions are extremely important.
I understand wanting to put off-the-wall questions in there, but there is no accumulator
of earned points that a player can fall back on if he gets a weird question wrong. Most
of the time, I was answering 1 question per round, so that question was the only factor
that went into the other contestants' voting. If it was a bullshit question, then it sucks to be
me. I did pretty well, but eventually I was knocked out by a Sideshow Bob question. In
Jeopardy, I probably would have just won based on my accumulated points from the
previous rounds, but in this game, the Sideshow Bob questions can happen to anyone at
any time and that's just random death if you're unlucky. It's something to consider when you
...............

Have you ever seen the weakest link? Even if you havent, the questions arent setup so everyone will know them, you get questions that you wouldnt expect everyone to know and there happens to be that lucky 3 or 4 that do. Same thing with other trivia based games like jeopardy and who wants to be a bazillionaire.
It's a game. a GAME. breathe a little. :) and then come on back next year and pwn in whatever game is being played, if you choose to. :)

[TheCotMan]

It's a game. a GAME. breathe a little. :) and then come on back next year and pwn in whatever game is being played, if you choose to. :)

Later I was thinking about the candy bar questions, and found a link as to why they might have been included... many nerds/geeks attack vending machines for food or even a meal and candy bars are in vending machines.

[tequilastrapple]

Pink shirt guy, thank you for taking off your shirt. That was lovely.

To the organizers: for a first time run, yes of course it was chaotic. But that's to be expected. You guys rock. For a first-time run, it could have been much, much worse. And yes, the changes from Friday to Saturday night were marked. But perhaps it would have also been helpful for some of you to take your shirts off, too?

The game format: Okay, so if we have to move on from HJ, then we have to move on. I only saw the last two years, and I loved it, but I understand that change can be a good thing. However, The Weakest Link is just a crappy game show. I think the only reason for its initial success was its first host. And I agree with what has been said about voting people off - that's just unsportsmanlike, eh. It makes sense to base HJ's replacement on a pop culture game show, so that most people are already familiar with the format, but I hope that a switch will be made to one of the other game show formats that people have mentioned in earlier posts.

Non-tech/pop-culture questions: these make it funnier. I hope you wonderful, underappreciated organizers decide to keep them. HJ usually had one non-tech question in each round. I particularly appreciated the category (was it at DC 10 or 11?) where you had to recognize a celebrity based on a close-up shot of some part of their body. I hadn't realized until then just how unique Geena Davis's lips are. But I digress... I'm sure the pop-culture questions wouldn't have bugged us so much if they weren't so limited in scope. And doubtless, with a whole year to come up with new questions, the scope will become much wider. Other random pop-culture trivia categories that I would like to suggest for consideration are: Star Trek (please don't hate me), stupid presidential quotes (as in, "Which president said _____?"), and beer/liquor (as in, "In what state/country is (insert semi-obscure brand name here) brewed?" or "What is the signature ingredient in Cynar?" Answer: "artichokes").

Points for beer: The ability to hold your alcohol and still play well is pretty impressive. Shouldn't it count for something? Great idea about the puke buckets on stage.

Audience participation: I would like to assume that while brainstorming for next year, this is one aspect of the game that will be brought back. In HJ, allowing an audience-member to answer when the contestants were stumped made for grand entertainment. This also perhaps cut down on the number of assholes in the audience who would say the answer before the contestant had a chance to. To you assholes in the audience who did that this year, Screw You. I hope something happens to prevent you from attending next year.

Nudity/boobies/strippers: I did enjoy the presence of a Vanna Vinyl. As demonstrated by me in the audience shouting "Where's the stripper?" at one point. I find the human body in all forms to be aesthically, joyfully, pleasing, and what's not to like about a scantily-clad beautiful woman? But principally, I enjoyed her presence because she was there as an incentive to answer correctly (for those of you who don't know, for a correct answer to a double-jeopardy question, the answerer was permitted to remove one article of Vanna's clothing). When the situation was handled well, this could be highly entertaining. But sometimes certain audience members were really disprespectful, particularly at DC 10 when some guys in the audience around me started calling her "bitch" because she was still mostly clothed (ahem... Martin), when in fact the reason she was still mostly clothed was because the contestants could hardly get any damn double-jeopardy questions right. I admit, as a woman, it started to make me feel uncomfortable. (And if you're about to type a reply that goes off on me for saying that last sentence, don't bother - I've heard it all before). She was just doing her job, and doing it well, I might add. I know I'm ranting, but it really pissed me off. Sorry. Anyhow, stripping and good-natured heckling can be great fun, but it was turning ugly. I digress again. The point is, I missed the stripper, as I'm sure many of you did, but it's time to move on. Zhym's right, there's a stripper joint really nearby. I would like to encourage the attendees who called DC 10's Vanna a bitch to go to that stripper joint and try doing the same thing there. Let me know, because I'd like to attend so I can watch the bouncers beat the shit out of you.

So, as I said before, the Vannas were great because they added an extra fun incentive aspect to the game. So can someone think of something else entirely new that could be added to the new game to give it yet another layer of incentive fun? Besides loot? An activitiy of some kind, something that would be a reward for the answerer, but also entertaining for the audience?

The MC: Saturday's lovely host was a great improvement. She is beautiful, but even better, she wielded power over her audience. And I get the impression that she was thrown into this completely unprepared. Now imagine how awesome she could be with a whole year to prepare? I'm sorry, I don't remember your name, but please come back next year! Now, what if there were two hosts? They could alternate rounds. One asks questions at the podium while the other does more audience interaction. It's a tough job to ask the contestants questions coherently, while also interacting with the audience, getting the assholes who shout answers before the contestants do to shut up, etcetera, and drinking way more than you probably thought you were going to. Tag-team style co-hosting could be sweet, and also reduce some of the chaos. Also, one other suggestion for the organizers: if you are able to squeeze it in, a rehearsal round without an audience could be really helpful. But maybe you already do that and I should just shut up.

Thanks for reading. Once again, Grifter and the rest of the game-organizing gang, you are badasses. I look forward to seeing what you will come up with for next year.

[[Syntax]]

You also say its been done for years, its old..

As many people have brought up, the con is being replaced by a new audience of people who have not attended 10 years.. or even 5 years.. This was my 4th con, and Ive attended HackerJeopardy twice. So I cant really say it was old..

[TheCotMan]

I know there was no time to add this, because I asked about it before LL, but for next time, have questions which take advantage of video and/or images.

Show a picture, "What is this?"

Maybe have a round of "only picture" questions.

[telemonster]

Humperdink had everyone rolling in the hotel room we were in. Holy shit, that was funny.

Me? TV questions break up the geek stuff, but not everyone knows all of the Simpsons trivia.

I was kind of bummed when people who knew answers got kicked off.



HOLY SHIT

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

I GOT IT.

You could set up IVR system with two T1s or a shit ton of analog ports jacked off of the hotel PBX so that people in hotel rooms can answer along, or dictate the flow of questions. Everyone would dial some extension in the hotel that is tied to a pool that flows into this thing, and they could participate. I'd say people in the tent could participate via wireless data, but that would be a bit more open to attacks versus analog phone pairs.

Excitement has to be high though!

Also, you could open up a web page and allow people to input questions before hand, to build a database of trivia questions. I started working on one for the 5th hope, but never finished, and realize how hard it is to come up with broad trivia questions for such an event. There is alot of ground to cover, and you have to be sure to validate all answers to make sure there isn't an error.

Teams would be good.

My 3 cents.

[billygoto]

Pink shirt guy, thank you for taking off your shirt. That was lovely.

Um.. you're welcome?

Nudity/boobies/strippers: I did enjoy the presence of a Vanna Vinyl. As demonstrated by me in the audience shouting "Where's the stripper?" at one point. I find the human body in all forms to be aesthically, joyfully, pleasing, and what's not to like about a scantily-clad beautiful woman?

Oh, come on. Level with me. Clearly some forms are better than others.
Clearly, the doffing of the JCrew-clearance-sale pink gingham, revealing a bare
out-of-shape love-handled mantit birdcage is no substitute for the hothothot yellow
leather (Thurmanesque?) catsuit being peeled off of the finely-tuned form of the
lovely Alicia...

[zapphire]

...I did enjoy the presence of a Vanna Vinyl. As demonstrated by me in the audience shouting "Where's the stripper?" at one point. I find the human body in all forms to be aesthically, joyfully, pleasing, and what's not to like about a scantily-clad beautiful woman?

...no substitute for the hothothot yellow eather (Thurmanesque?) catsuit being peeled off of the finely-tuned form of the lovely Alicia...

If there has to be that element, then the catsuit should have a male consort up there: If Vanna Vinyl; then Sammy Suede. It would be nice to see some sexquanimity. :]