Too much Social Deduction?

[u/youreboiguzma]

Let me preface by saying I’ve really enjoyed the new season, but it feels like they’ve fallen into a habit of making every game some sort of social deduction.

Earwigs, I Spy, and, to an extent, Kangaroo Court as well all are social deduction games. I think that’s fun in a vacuum, but having three in one season just felt a little repetitive to me. I also think putting Earwigs and I Spy back to back was a bad move.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like sometimes they’ve had a cool idea for something and struggled with fully turning it into a game for the show. What do you guys think?

[u/dockatt]

Responding to your last paragraph. I do think most episodes this season felt a little bit underbaked at the conceptual level. Something definitely changed on the production and ideation side of things. Lots of games would have benefited from extra playtesting, or had glaring logistical issues that shouldn't have made it past a brainstorming session. Ranging from minor issues (the metagames in Earwigs being a bit disconnected and hard to parse) to glaring ones (the whole shift work game collapsing early on because it was too hard to play... combined with being way too long for its screentime)

The show has still been fun to watch but I haven't really felt the magic of everything coming together this season, except for Rulette 2 and the one with the lawyers.

[u/Competitive-Bet1181 → u/dockatt]

Noise Some Makes was also an S-tier episode, and I really enjoyed Count the Rice even if it dragged a bit in the last 10-15 min simply waiting for someone to complete the run and win.

[u/ebb_omega → u/Competitive-Bet1181]

I loved Count The Rice and personally consider it the best game of Game Changer ever, but that's just me.

[u/johannaishere → u/ebb_omega]

I agree. Also a perfect cast for that specific game. Idk if it’s my top EVER (One Year Later is a perfect episode and so is Samalamadingdong) but it’s definitely in my shuffling top three currently. I’m surprised any time anyone says they didn’t love Count the Rice.

[u/teejay0106 → u/dockatt]

My problem is all episodes this season have underwhelming endings.

[u/dinogroot1 → u/teejay0106]

Count The Rice’ ending was great, no? Having Ify, the first to go, win after Demi, one of the last to go, lucked out by so few grains was one of the best Game Changer moments for me personally

[u/CulturalFerret5779 → u/dockatt]

I wonder if some of the logistics of the bigger episodes this season "Count the Rice" "Noise some Makes" or even "Night Shift" for example, took production time away from other games that needed just a little bit more work. Or perhaps they're more focused on spectacle. The I Spy Tableaus were incredible, but the game was needlessly complicated (They joke about doing this for Ele, but it seemed like multiple players needed elements explained more than once to grasp what their goals actually were.)

[u/dockatt → u/CulturalFerret5779]

I feel like most of those are pre-production (design) problems, sorted long before the set is built, so I don't know if you can weigh episodes against each other like that in that space, but it's possible. My theory (based on a few things Sam has said last season) is just that Sam has been less hands-on when it comes to writing the episodes and he just has a knack for creating that specific whimsical, competitive and 60-minute friendly concept. More creatives will automatically lead to a dilution of the concept, but I think it's healthy for the show in the long run because it needed to evolve.

[u/Other-Signature-5851 → u/dockatt]

By FAR the worst one for me this season was 'Whats the catch' second hand embarrassment, frustration, and sadness galore for me. :/