New Scaratings

I originally posted this as an answer to someone on another thread, but since this crosses several threads here, I'm moving it to a thread of its own.

On different threads there are discussions of boycotts, declining player numbers, and cheating as a result of Buzztime's East/West Split and repeated premium games. Here are my thoughts on these three related subjects:

A boycott to protest the Split makes sense in the East. It won't be necessary in the West, as I don't think most players will want to play repeat Premium games at all.

Buzztime is in heavy denial that these games are repeats. In several threads on their Facebook page (including at least two they have since deleted from their Wall), Buzztime insists that Premium games will not be "repeat games" in the West because the "content is new to the site." It's like they've totally ignored the technological developments of the last decade, which include wifi hotspots, 3G and 4G phones, and iPads.

They're keeping their fingers crossed, and hoping cheating won't be a problem. Closing their eyes and thinking that if they pretend it isn't there, it will go away. However, cheating will be a problem, it won't go away, and it can't be detected.

Cheaters who put up perfect games every time will be easy to spot. But, for instance, a player who just gets hold of the five Pyramid answers and the final answer in Showdown, and otherwise misses a few questions here and there, changes the course of the tournament and the game. That player is impossible to detect.

There's something about trivia games that occasionally attracts the clever cheater. I've seen it before in many types of other trivia competitions. The idea of beating the rival, and better yet, being the hero doing it, is a powerful one. The clever cheater realizes the crime is undectable, and is tempted by the rationalization that it's not so much of a crime - only a few important critical questions as insurance, your team might have gotten them anyway, and it's long past time somebody stuck it to those bastards at, say, the Steel Pit.

With these repeat content games, cheating is easy to rationalize. Clever cheating is impossible to detect. Cheating is going to happen.

The fatal stupidity (there is no other word for it) of Buzztime's decision to repeat Premium games. at different times, across split feeds, is the total destruction of the integrity of those games in the West. Making cheating so ridiculously possible creates cheaters. Clever cheaters are undectable.

In any Premium game, ANY score from the West feed is suspect beginning February 28th, 2012. I won't be competing in those games, because those games have no integrity. I despise cheating, and when a game makes cheating so easy as to encourage it in those easily tempted to do so, I lose interest in the game.

That is, I despise cheating for gain. As a form of civil disobediance it does, I must admit, have an attraction.

TFM

I know that the cloud of suspicion will be hanging over the west coast regardless if cheating occurs. I can also appreciate cheating as a form of protest in the hope of getting BT to reverse its decision. But even if the effort to undo the change is successful, there's no telling how long that will take. In the meantime, what we lose is the purity of the game, which to me is testing my knowledge and truly competing (preferably on a national basis). If I participate in a cheating protest for a couple of weeks, or a month, I won't know whether others are continuing on with it. So after this week, I will see no reason to play any premium games until order in the BT universe has been restored.

T-tests are not difficult guys.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Not at all, but do we have data from the past several months on how many people played particular games? Don Denton's site keeps track of the top 100, but not the total number of players.

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

I think the concern is more with cheating than the affect on player count though, which means to detect cheating, we can compare pre and post split scores to see how likely they are to have come from the same populations.

Sure some "new" genius could pop up and gain an undeserved reputation with a different handle, but that a)is unlikely in the short term at least to appeal to dishonest current players looking for ego boosts and informed enough to know about the split b) would be suspicious enough to be a strong implication of cheating per se and c) can be verified if anyone wishes to claim such plaudits by inviting them to play weekend Countdown.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Just curious, are you East Coast or West Coast ? Excuse my ignorance of you have posted it elsewhere.

Total players per game is easily found on player stats page on the BT site.

I will be keeping an eye on Wed Six, Spotlight & Playback.

We don't plan on a boycott, that would hurt our bar and they could drop BT. We do still look forward to playing those couple of national CDs before the premiums start. Probably 6 to 730 eastern (till 8 on Sat.)

_________________
BUD - Stained Glass Pub Silver Spring MD
OC BUD - Grotto Pizza DE near Ocean City MD

LET'S GO ....Orioles and the 9 and 5!!

Comparing pre- and post- split scores across Countdown will be problematic in that post-split Countdown may be significantly different from pre-split Countdown. Supposedly, the overall difficulty will be raised, while the amount of pop culture content will be reduced. While it remains to be seen, the difference could be substantial enough to reduce the validity of the comparison.

T-tests are also, imo, too blunt an instrument to prove individual culpability with sufficient precision. A very low margin of error is required before accusing any one person. A lot of data is needed, and even then there are confounding variables such as fluctuating team rosters. And individual hot and cold streaks happen, and are difficult to distinguish from an incident of cheating. A cheater who suddenly starts cheating all the time may be easy to detect, but an individual who starts cheating on only part of the game, and/or only part of the time, is much more difficult to identify statistically with a high degree of confidence.

Focusing on the T-test runs the risk of missing the greater point: because cheating will now be so easy, all West scores are a priori suspect. East scores do not have any stigma. That's because the question content is secure for the East. The the same content being rebroadcast for the West hours later voids question security, and destroys the integrity of the game in the West. A game without integrity is always suspect, later tests to determine honesty with a 95% level of confidence notwithstanding.

TFM

West. Los Angeles, California, to be more specific.

TFM

Yesterday, Saturday, March 3rd, a post referencing the category of the last two Playback rounds appeared on this board in the category about that game. A pretty routine matter, except that the post appeared on the board half an hour before the game started in the West.

I don't think the info was posted maliciously, and I strongly doubt it even occurred to the poster that the info could give teams in the West who saw it a slight and unfair advantage - if you've prepped, just knowing which of the three possibilities to focus on going in is a help. I am not posting this to throw any stones at anyone, and I apologize to the original poster if any aspersions result from singling this out.

This is yet another example of how repeating games destroys the credibility and integrity of the game for people who have to play the repeat game. Special knowledge - insider information - gives a person or team possessing it an unfair advantage.

As a practical matter, I think that even the accidental revealing of insider information can't be stopped. You can ban it on one board, but social media makes effective enforcement impossible. A mention of a category - or worse, an answer to a question worth 50% of the score - on any Facebook wall spoils information to large groups of people, however unintentional and innocent that spoiling may be.

In repeating Premium games for the West, NTN/Buzztime has created the following situation: cheating can't be prevented, as has been demonstrated. People receiving unfair insider information not only can't be prevented, it will also frequently happen by spontaneous accident. There is no such thing as question security, because the act of repeating games does not allow question security to exist. The Premium games in half the country lack integrity and credibility. The Premium games in the West lack face validity.

I am not competing, and have no interest in competing, in such games. And I'm observing that the players still trying to compete in them are growing increasingly frustrated - at least if text messages and tweets are any indication.

TFM

For what it's worth, based on what I saw in my limited experience with the new Countdown, I expect my average to increase by well over 1500 points from where it was.

I have yet to score fewer than 10,200 points on a full Countdown game under the new format after 21 games. Under the old format, I would say my average solo score was about 10,500 and scores in the 8000s occurred more than occasionally. With the new format, my average score should increase by at least 1000. I consider fewer obscure pop-culture questions as a major reason for the increased scores.

_________________
"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

I certainly didn't have any malicious intent on my posy yesterday, just frustruation at the question.

People would get fixated on "pop culture," but ignore that a lot of the crap questions were just "crap" from a different era. It looks like both have been removed, and, really, that makes me happy, since the older folks seemed to think it was unforgivable to ask about Britney Spears, but completely forgivable to 4 Cary Grant questions in the same game, or to ask about a movie no one has seen since 1975, forgetting that it was, in fact, just "pop culture" from their era they were remembering (yes, most of those "classics" are actually really bad movies with no redeeming value).

I enjoyed the games I played, except the first Countdown from Saturday, which I almost left when it was a higher % of entertainment than before. I went, "This is even worse!" and almost left. Glad I stuck it out.

To be honest the idea that "everyone will stop playing" is overblown. I've had home bars in 5 states and played in literally hundreds of BT bars. Other than the "big names" I've visited for the specific reason of playing with them, the number of people I've met who know the schedule, let alone know about split feeds and phone cheats etc, could be counted on one hand - possibly twice. Even most very regular humdrum players have no clue.

A couple I've talked to this week are illustrative. They had no clue the schedule was changing and looked at me blankly when I mentioned and even explained the E/W feed. They have about 6M P+ each and routinely exceed 35K Six scores. The bars are the customers but even most consumers neither know nor care.

Now I doubt the new prime time schedule will bring more people in either no matter how long they try it. But it is not, alone, going to kill trivia even in the western zone.

_________________
Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

A repeat game can never be honest. Eventually, I think even the most clueless player will have this insight, and drift away from the repeat Premium games in the West.

TFM

This statement is misguided. The game is neither honest or dishonest, its the players that exhibit those qualities. As a member of well-established West Coast Feed Team (Coaches!), we have talked about this change. Our team's decision was, we're going to keep playing, we'll play honestly, and we know full-well our better scores may be suspect. Frankly, that's not our problem, we play honorably and with a strict code of ethics (and I've seen this in action, including team leaders collecting paper-aids prior to tournament games). We have the ability to compare our results to the scores from the East Coast, as we will know how we did. We decided that was good enough for us. We mainly play for the fun, and certainly enjoy the competition, and from were we sit, we have the data we need to assess how we've played.

Oh, and only partially related. I got my Jeopardy audition invite on Friday. You may recall Ken's writeup in mid-Jan about several of us testing for Jeopardy. I selected Dallas as an audition site; my teammates choose Los Angeles, so they'll hear later if they made the cut.

I concur.

Nobody here thinks your team (for example) has any intentions of cheating. But it's not near as easy as simply having honest teammates. What if a teammate checks this site an hour before game time and stumbles into a discussion about a particular question? What if a teammate checks BT's Facebook face and finds the same? What if a teammate checks BT's blog and finds the same? What if I have your phone number and text you the answer to an impossible final question?

None of the above can be undone, and it doesn't matter that there was no intent to cheat. Unless every single teammate on every single west feed team refrains from using any communication device starting two hours before game time, answers are going to be stumbled upon.

BO

If buzztime is going to insist on having split networks, the only thing buzztime can do to diminish this problem is write new questions for the West coast games. I doubt buzztime will ever do that since it involves more work on their end.

But they could at least greatly diminish the value of cheating if they just only wrote new questions for the big point value questions of all the premium games.

In Playback, the bulk of the points are earned in the Headliner & Encore rounds. Buzztime gives the three possible Headliners each week. Of those three possibilities, buzztime should just select one Headliner for the East coast and a different headliner for the West coast.

In Showdown, buzztime should just write different questions for the Pyramid and Final Strategy rounds.

In Spotlight, buzztime should just write different questions for the Get-A-Clue and Final Cut rounds.

In Sports IQ, buzztime should just write different questions for the Match Point round.

In Six, buzztime should just write different questions for the Final Six round.

Yeah, if the West coast nails all of the new questions, then someone who is cheating will still get a perfect score anyway. But at least they'll have earned their way to the higher scores by getting the big point questions legitimately. If they miss just one or two of the new questions, it eliminates the perfect game. And depending on which question they miss, it may significantly reduce their score.

I agree, and I'm not sure it would be a good idea, anyway. It's not like it was a completely level playing ground before the split--we knew to always mentally just dismiss scores from McGillacuddy's, for example, just as we all recognized the BWW-Burbank score for what it was. I would hate to lose the competition from legit teams like Coaches (for whom high scores are actually expected), even if I have to check on the HOF the next day to see how we fared against them. I am already missing Danny K's.

Also, if the questions get changed, then things like the McCarthy and Sandbag Tournaments can never be nationally contested again--it would literally be a different game.

_________________
Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."