POSTMORTEM
First off, I have to apologize for the showcase rounds taking longer than they ought to have. I've been caught up in some real-life travel and that's left me away from my computer.
Second off, the winner's totals:
JhayPrice: $36,752 (a chaise, $4,000, a sofa and chair combo, a karaoke set, a baby grand piano, and a 13' trailer)
rockyboy34: $3,340 (a pair of smartwatches, a chess set, a child's go-kart, a collection of Edgar Wright Blu-Rays, a dumbbell, and a board game)
...and, that's it! I didn't intend for everything to be won by two people, but that's how it happened!
Showcase 1 breakdown:
Industrial vacuum: $2,300
Greenhouse: $1,299
Sauna: $3,447
Dodge Ram 2500 Tradesman: $35,335
Showcase 2 breakdown:
Living Room group: $6,000
Karaoke set: $919
Baby Grand Piano: $5,860
Trailer: $18,003
Notes on the bidding system
So on the bidding system. I had noticed that on most HYOs, where bidding contestants are predetermined and everybody goes in a certain order, quite a bit of time is spent waiting for one person to bid. Don't misunderstand me--on a real TV show, with four people present, the format is perfect. It's easy for viewers to follow, it moves quickly, and it serves its real purpose of moving the game along and rewarding somebody without taking too much time or focus away from the pricing games.
But I wondered if there was a way to retool bidding so that it would be a better suited for a forum, with people checking in and checking out at different times during the day.
I was looking for bidding system that
- Allowed a “jump-in” bidding format, instead of mandating people go in a certain order
- Allowed multiple people to bid at once, since I thought that might be a good fit for a forum format
- Mitigated the “fourth bidder advantage” and gave people a reason to bid/freeze early if they thought they knew the price.
I playtested three different formats with 5-6 friends. One where you raise to whatever amount you wanted, as long as it was >$20 more than your previous bid; One where you could raise to whatever amount you wanted, but must freeze immediately if it was below the top bid, and the Cullen-style rules that we settled upon, where raises must be over the top bid
In a way, I felt option C was the simplest and most orderly. Either you make the bid you want and lock it in and never worry again (just like the one-bids on today's show work), or you raise over the top bidder and try to get closer and closer to the ARP. Plus it was the format that seemed to work best with 5-7 people, and that's honestly the turnout I expected for each IUFB.
Did it work? Yes, to a degree! It got a lot of participation, I felt there was some added strategy to the bidding, and it made bids get more tense as the top bid drew higher (is it too high NOW? is it too high NOW? etc.)
However, I probably won't be doing this again for two reasons.
1) It’s a mother to host—you gotta be on top of things. Keeping the bids straight, refereeing bids, making frequent graphics to guide people along. It requires significantly more involvement than the one-bids, and I admit I was pretty exhausted by the end of it.
2) I feel the open-ended format ran into some growing pains that were much more severe than I thought.
What do I mean by growing pains? Well, when you have five or six people active raising and freezing, it works well! There is a reason Cullen TPIR lasted so long, after all. But it turns out translating it into a forum format with 12+ bidders doesn’t scale nearly as well. When you have 12+ bidders, at the liberty to bid whenever they want, and one person makes a high bid, it’s less a game of pricing knowledge and more a game of “who was lucky enough to be online at the right time”.
For example, somebody can place a bid, log off for a few hours, and log back in only to find that somebody else bid $25 more than they have, and the top bid is now $1,000 more than it was originally. Their options are now 1) pray they got lucky and freeze with a $25 range or 2) raise their bid an extreme amount. Through no fault of their own, they’re likely to find themselves in situations where they obviously have zero shot at winning.
On the other hand, the best way to play it is just to treat it like a normal one-bid, by placing the bid you want and immediately freezing if you know the price, or waiting until the last minute to underbid and snipe the bidder of your choice if you don’t. This is counter-intuitive to the whole “auction” presentation. If many people do the optimal strategy, bidders who play the game as intended get punished.
Maybe this could be fixed by raising the cushion or not allowing raises over a certain amount or by getting rid of the “all raises must be higher than the top bid” rule, but I think it’s time to head back to the drawing board and stick with something more traditional for future go-rounds. It was an interesting experiment but I don’t think I’ll repeat it.
Setups & Lineups
The key consideration behind the lineup was "how to keep qualifiers for the showcases interesting".
Step Up was first. It was a hard setup. I assumed there would be a bailout and somebody would get on the board.
Make Your Move was second--a good quickie with a decent prize package that would edge out Step Up for top winner if it was won.
It's In The Bag was third--depending on how the first two games went, I wanted somebody to either be required take some risks to become one of the top two winners (if the first games were won).
Finally, Switcheroo fourth so even the last contestant of the day would have a shot at making the showcases.
Music
I had quite a terrific time putting together the soundtrack for the show! The vibe I was going for was to keep the jazzy, brassy feel of the TPIR cue library, but to otherwise not to try to closely emulate the show too closely. Think "College Marching Band Halftime Show" mixed with "Disneyland Main Street U.S.A." It was fun looking through all sorts of crazy German brass band covers on Spotify and finding tracks that you'd never expect to hear on TPIR, but captured that energetic, jazzy feel in a way.
Again, thank you so much for everybody who participated and was being willing to entertain this experiment! I'm happy that so many of you were willing to give it a shot and try something new over this long break. Thank you all so much for playing and watching!