) I guess the next on will be Poland then...
Post by RyanZ on Mar 25, 2012 17:21:57 GMT -5
Gather 'round, boys and girls; today's rant is about Jump the Question.
Don't get me wrong, it's a very interesting lifeline. It allows a contestant to not know an answer without the penalty of their game ending. Actually, that's one of my issues with it - in every other version of Millionaire (save for Hot Seat), somebody had to know the answer for you to keep going: either you, your friend, or the audience. (Then later comes the wise men and the expert.) I like the lifelines themselves because most create this sense of community among the player and everyone helping them win. These lifelines create a common goal among people to help the player achieve their goal of winning a million dollars. And those other two, 50:50 and Double Dip, they're just there to make the game easier when the player thinks they know.
And there's one thing these lifelines all have in common: they require somebody, somewhere, to actually know what they're talking about.
Jump the Question shakes things up a little bit. For the first time in American Millionaire history, you can just keep going without knowing a question or just being plain lucky. The removal of the "community" lifelines, except for Ask the Audience, creates a sense of isolation with the player: they alone must topple these inconceivable odds of answering 12 of the 14 questions presented them. The audience is increasingly useless, and especially so if the player uses them in round two. The player is more and more alone in their once-in-a-lifetime quest.
But that's not even a big problem for me with Jump the Question. For me, the biggest problem is that the lifeline becomes entirely useless for the million dollar question. Remember, this is the hardest question; thus, the player should, in theory, need the most help here. Instead, they get only an audience that would be better used on a question about Lady Gaga's last album.
Now, I'm not saying the audience is stupid - they are not by any means - but didn't it help better when you could call you brother-in-law who does the kind of stuff for a living that you're being asked about? (Of course, technology ruined that for all of us when the right answer was a few keyboard taps away.) Even better, they could have kept a lifeline like Ask the Expert or Three Wise Men.
That's my main problem with Jump the Question - you are punished for being really smart if you make it all the way to the top by answering all the questions, which in itself used to be exactly what you wanted to do. You could say that this adds a new strategy of lifeline management, what with the player not getting money they jump, but I for one think that there should be some reward for not using up all your lifelines before the million dollar question. It's bad enough that the questions are becoming increasingly more difficult; now you have to do that last one essentially on your own.
Such are the hardships one must endure for a million dollars.
Don't get me wrong, it's a very interesting lifeline. It allows a contestant to not know an answer without the penalty of their game ending. Actually, that's one of my issues with it - in every other version of Millionaire (save for Hot Seat), somebody had to know the answer for you to keep going: either you, your friend, or the audience. (Then later comes the wise men and the expert.) I like the lifelines themselves because most create this sense of community among the player and everyone helping them win. These lifelines create a common goal among people to help the player achieve their goal of winning a million dollars. And those other two, 50:50 and Double Dip, they're just there to make the game easier when the player thinks they know.
And there's one thing these lifelines all have in common: they require somebody, somewhere, to actually know what they're talking about.
Jump the Question shakes things up a little bit. For the first time in American Millionaire history, you can just keep going without knowing a question or just being plain lucky. The removal of the "community" lifelines, except for Ask the Audience, creates a sense of isolation with the player: they alone must topple these inconceivable odds of answering 12 of the 14 questions presented them. The audience is increasingly useless, and especially so if the player uses them in round two. The player is more and more alone in their once-in-a-lifetime quest.
But that's not even a big problem for me with Jump the Question. For me, the biggest problem is that the lifeline becomes entirely useless for the million dollar question. Remember, this is the hardest question; thus, the player should, in theory, need the most help here. Instead, they get only an audience that would be better used on a question about Lady Gaga's last album.
Now, I'm not saying the audience is stupid - they are not by any means - but didn't it help better when you could call you brother-in-law who does the kind of stuff for a living that you're being asked about? (Of course, technology ruined that for all of us when the right answer was a few keyboard taps away.) Even better, they could have kept a lifeline like Ask the Expert or Three Wise Men.
That's my main problem with Jump the Question - you are punished for being really smart if you make it all the way to the top by answering all the questions, which in itself used to be exactly what you wanted to do. You could say that this adds a new strategy of lifeline management, what with the player not getting money they jump, but I for one think that there should be some reward for not using up all your lifelines before the million dollar question. It's bad enough that the questions are becoming increasingly more difficult; now you have to do that last one essentially on your own.
Such are the hardships one must endure for a million dollars.
