News
1 Vs 53,000
If game show hosts have anything in their hands, it's typically a microphone. Maybe the long-and-thin archetype made famous by Bob Barker.
Chris Cashman's hosting object of choice is decidedly less elegant: An Xbox 360 controller. Standing in a cramped Microsoft studio in Redmond, the Seattle-area native uses joysticks and buttons to flip through a dozen pages of real-time statistics for the online Xbox Live trivia game he hosts, 1 Vs. 100. Heck, sometimes he uses the controller to play along, too. "I'm not necessarily good at it," Cashman says, and his low score stands as confirmation.
[caption id="attachment_19964" align="alignleft" width="550" caption="1 Vs. 100 host Chris Cashman uses an Xbox controller to play along"]
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But Cashman is good at making the game feel different than most—alive, live, living. He comes to the studio two nights a week—Tuesdays and Fridays—to serve as host to tens of thousands of Xbox Live trivia players, piping in with minutes-long, joke-filled monologues about the game. He mocks players' usernames and visible avatars. He reads e-mails aloud. If an e-mail includes a phone number, heck, he can call players and broadcast their interviews between question breaks for everyone to hear.
1 Vs. 100 works much like the now-defunct TV game show. A logged-in player is randomly chosen by computer to answer questions as "The One" and potentially win Xbox Live prizes like free games. The resulting prize improves as a mass of 100 players chosen as "The Mob" miss the same questions; conversely, the Mob collectively wins prizes for outdoing The One. The thousands of spillover contestants on Xbox Live answer questions, as well, to raise their chances of getting into the prize fray.
Last week marked the second season's premiere on Xbox Live, and it counts TV producers, encyclopedia writers, and a former Hollywood Squares writer among its staff (no sign of Jim J. Bullock, though). At an open press event for the new season, the game's makers weren't shy about tapping into an atypical audience, as producer Oren Stambouli repeatedly called out "wives and girlfriends" as a priority (almost enough to be bothersome, since I know plenty of wives and girlfriends who game already, thankyouverymuch).
But 1 Vs. 100 doesn't have a promotional push on radio, television, or places outside of the games blog scene. The game's makers held a champagne toast that night over the 53,000 simultaneous players who logged in that night, but in comparison, a network TV show that played on 53,000 screens would be dubbed a disappointment. Is Microsoft happy to have a "new demographic" trivia game whose numbers have topped out just shy of 120,000 screens in a single session?
"We start with our core and expand beyond," Stambouli said, claiming that most players of the live games have multiple players huddling around the screen to answer trivia questions as a group. He and his staff are okay building viral interest--"help me play" as a way to draw others in--and no other online service has a comparable game that encourages similar, everybody-in-the-living-room play. That's good enough for advertisers like Sprint and Progressive Insurance, whose video ads have returned for a second season.
Chris Cashman tends to talk off the cuff, so when he was up for a group interview, he said something that made Microsoft's PR folks cringe: "I was trying to explain my new job to my grandparents, and they were trying to understand what Xbox is." Xbox Live's staff has an uphill battle penetrating an old-guard market of folks who might love how 1 Vs. 100 works, but who aren't yet on board with MS's mission of having the Xbox become the centerpiece of American living rooms. Other new Xbox Live features have been touted as attempts at reaching a new audience, but Facebook and Twitter integration don't impact the old guard, and for younger fans, these apps are decidedly clumsier than logging into those services on a computer or even a cell phone (unless you like typing 140 characters with an Xbox joystick).
Hence, it was disappointing to hear that there are no plans for more "Xbox Primetime" content in the near future (live events, game shows, and so on). Cashman, calling himself out as a non-gamer, was proof enough that this content is the better route for engaging new players. Controller in hand, he watched a contestant miss a question and lose it all. "She blew it," Cashman muttered, and then his volume skyrocketed. "SHE BLEW IT!" he repeated. "CHOKE JOB!"
His mic wasn't on.
1 Vs. 100 live games air every Tuesday and Friday night at 6 p.m. PST on the Xbox 360's Xbox Live service for the next couple of months, along with nightly "Extended Play" sessions. Play is free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers.
Chris Cashman's hosting object of choice is decidedly less elegant: An Xbox 360 controller. Standing in a cramped Microsoft studio in Redmond, the Seattle-area native uses joysticks and buttons to flip through a dozen pages of real-time statistics for the online Xbox Live trivia game he hosts, 1 Vs. 100. Heck, sometimes he uses the controller to play along, too. "I'm not necessarily good at it," Cashman says, and his low score stands as confirmation.
[caption id="attachment_19964" align="alignleft" width="550" caption="1 Vs. 100 host Chris Cashman uses an Xbox controller to play along"]
[/caption]
But Cashman is good at making the game feel different than most—alive, live, living. He comes to the studio two nights a week—Tuesdays and Fridays—to serve as host to tens of thousands of Xbox Live trivia players, piping in with minutes-long, joke-filled monologues about the game. He mocks players' usernames and visible avatars. He reads e-mails aloud. If an e-mail includes a phone number, heck, he can call players and broadcast their interviews between question breaks for everyone to hear.
1 Vs. 100 works much like the now-defunct TV game show. A logged-in player is randomly chosen by computer to answer questions as "The One" and potentially win Xbox Live prizes like free games. The resulting prize improves as a mass of 100 players chosen as "The Mob" miss the same questions; conversely, the Mob collectively wins prizes for outdoing The One. The thousands of spillover contestants on Xbox Live answer questions, as well, to raise their chances of getting into the prize fray.
Last week marked the second season's premiere on Xbox Live, and it counts TV producers, encyclopedia writers, and a former Hollywood Squares writer among its staff (no sign of Jim J. Bullock, though). At an open press event for the new season, the game's makers weren't shy about tapping into an atypical audience, as producer Oren Stambouli repeatedly called out "wives and girlfriends" as a priority (almost enough to be bothersome, since I know plenty of wives and girlfriends who game already, thankyouverymuch).
But 1 Vs. 100 doesn't have a promotional push on radio, television, or places outside of the games blog scene. The game's makers held a champagne toast that night over the 53,000 simultaneous players who logged in that night, but in comparison, a network TV show that played on 53,000 screens would be dubbed a disappointment. Is Microsoft happy to have a "new demographic" trivia game whose numbers have topped out just shy of 120,000 screens in a single session?
"We start with our core and expand beyond," Stambouli said, claiming that most players of the live games have multiple players huddling around the screen to answer trivia questions as a group. He and his staff are okay building viral interest--"help me play" as a way to draw others in--and no other online service has a comparable game that encourages similar, everybody-in-the-living-room play. That's good enough for advertisers like Sprint and Progressive Insurance, whose video ads have returned for a second season.
Chris Cashman tends to talk off the cuff, so when he was up for a group interview, he said something that made Microsoft's PR folks cringe: "I was trying to explain my new job to my grandparents, and they were trying to understand what Xbox is." Xbox Live's staff has an uphill battle penetrating an old-guard market of folks who might love how 1 Vs. 100 works, but who aren't yet on board with MS's mission of having the Xbox become the centerpiece of American living rooms. Other new Xbox Live features have been touted as attempts at reaching a new audience, but Facebook and Twitter integration don't impact the old guard, and for younger fans, these apps are decidedly clumsier than logging into those services on a computer or even a cell phone (unless you like typing 140 characters with an Xbox joystick).
Hence, it was disappointing to hear that there are no plans for more "Xbox Primetime" content in the near future (live events, game shows, and so on). Cashman, calling himself out as a non-gamer, was proof enough that this content is the better route for engaging new players. Controller in hand, he watched a contestant miss a question and lose it all. "She blew it," Cashman muttered, and then his volume skyrocketed. "SHE BLEW IT!" he repeated. "CHOKE JOB!"
His mic wasn't on.
1 Vs. 100 live games air every Tuesday and Friday night at 6 p.m. PST on the Xbox 360's Xbox Live service for the next couple of months, along with nightly "Extended Play" sessions. Play is free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers.
