Post by Judge Sam on Sept 3, 2009 22:11:42 GMT -5
So as I've said previously, before the game started the event I was most looking forward to was this live consensus voting, so much that to get the right # of people with it I was willing to wait for whenever haha. I first got the idea by ending up on this Wikipedia page and just loving it from the start. It's got flavor, an interesting decision making process, drama, everything.
Why drama? Well you've probably seen a reality tv show where they group up everyone together and tell them they have to unanimously agree on one person to get some prize like Immunity, and if they don't, no one gets it. Usually someone else getting the prize hurts you. This was the whole premise of the short-lived fox reality show Unan1mous. It's also a common mole challenge.
Anyway doing this is sure to provide drama as one person is going to be a contrarian and that triggers someone else to refuse to agree too. Good fun! I thought it was kind of funny that a voting twist with the flavor of a harmonious, ideal call for consensus was really just a ploy to make things dramatic and interesting lol. I kept pushing the theme of harmony in the instructions.
Which actually might have worked too well because you guys actually worked really well together during the first hour of the chat! Blew my mind haha, was never expecting that. You guys argued at like every live chat and all the time in private IMs and on the board but we hit this event and everyone is polite and understanding.
I knew the event was going to take a long time but I guess I underestimated it a little. It takes longer to type up something than to say it especially if people are typing up one at a time. I had thought people would be chatting continuously, both in other chat rooms and on the message board to organize thoughts. Instead there was like an hour and a half of *one* person questioning someone else on everything under the sun... probably not the best use of limited time lol.
In fact, I had kinda billed the event as something explosive to watch, and (while not your fault at all) that first hour must have put everyone to sleep lol. I couldn't believe it, it was the most dull thing on earth. Of course I knew it would heat up near the end once the hours dragged on and it sure did!
I had thought about having it go maybe through multiple nights but the idea was always one session and plus that's just dragging it on a little too long, we all have things to do haha. So I did definitely want there to be a decision that would be made that night, that would also entice people to stick around. The idea was to make it a vote by exhaustion where a consensus is reached because people are so sick of the process they are willing to vote anything just to end it. This is a surprisingly effective tool. As I'm sure you experienced, after you've spent 20 minutes discussing about which movie to go see you're fed up with wasting time and are willing to go see larger and larger numbers of movies just so you can get out the door.
The same thing happened here. We also had people lose their votes which also made it easier to come to a solution since the #s of people required lowered as well.
As for designing the thing to work smoothly, and insane amount of adjustment and thought went into it, from the procedure, to the timing, to all the roles and the # of votes needed to BLOCK. I did want it as simple as possible so it wasn't a mess and I was very glad everyone understood the rules. I'm surprised because usually that doesn't happen! I don't know if it's just you guys are smart and patient, have great reading comprehension, or maybe it was the painstakingly written with pictures super-long posts I wrote up and had donald proofread. It really took a long time to get that set up but it seemed to work well. =)
So I'm glad I seemed to make all the right decisions with all that since it played out nicely. One thing especially was that during Spies 6 I noticed a possible problem:
14,13,12,11,10: 3 required to block
9,8,7,6: 2 required to block
5,4,3,2,1: 1 required to block
If six or less players are left, then the auto-vote of someone not present no longer counts.
It says six or less players are left, but the final round is five or less players means 1 required to block. This actually came up during the game. Figuring out this, if I should adjust the numbers, or include this for the 3 and 2 portions was a headache haha and I can't quite remember. In short, I think the specific case of 6 people meant that you would have the person who got all the votes automatically voting against it. And then if you had one other person, it would be blocked. So it was really "1 other person" to block at 6, which was way too early to start being one person to block.
I'm glad it ended when it did because having 2 or 3 people vote out someone random would be pretty dumb.
You guys also said that you thought it might have been leaning towards getting rid of a cit, since everyone will always agree on a citizen, but have trouble agreeing on a spy. That may be true. But you also said that since there were 3 spies and 3 votes to block the 3 spies could just be like "BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK lol just gonna block all nite suck it citzzzzzz".
I don't think that would have worked in Spies 6 cause there were plenty of normal Exiles after that haha and that would expose the spies pretty obviously. Maybe if that happened every single round though, that would be quite a boring game.
The event was also a live event where I had no clue what was going to happen, and anyone could be chosen, which are events I didn't realize I really enjoyed until I talked to David/Ellis about it once.
I liked the numbers of people at the event. Too little would have been boring when people started leaving but too many would have been a rabid henhouse.
If I were to do it again, I might drop or be less strict about the unanimous requirement, and maybe flavor it as chat mafia rather than a consensus decision making.
The worst part was the emotional rollercoaster of it all lol at the end. I mean man, talk about a downer. You guys put your heart into spirited discussions for 5 and a half hours, debating back and forth, pushing your opinions, all that good stuff. So much blood sweat and tears into that night, and then for me to come in and say "citizen" and just kick you while you're down. That sucked. I almost wanted to let you guys off the hook and say I'd tell you tomorrow but you would have just hated me more for that lol. So much heart for a tough result!!