Is it that time again? Priceless summer where there's nothing but speculation and maybe a couple new episodes sprinkled in here and there? Good.
Pricing game frequencies can be a bit finicky. There's a reason Double Prices, Money Game, and Squeeze Play hit 1700, 1600, and 1500 plays respectively this season, while Rent just hit 100. Some games are just naturally quicker than other games, and thus they get played more.
The same holds for pricing games in the same category: One Wrong Price and Most Expen$ive take less time to play than Eazy az 123. So, when it comes time to choose a 3-prize game for a lineup, Eazy gets chosen less.
The same can be said for most of the 2-prize games. Bargain Game, Do the Math, 1 Right Price, and Switch? all have one quick 50/50 action, so you see them more than Double Cross, a game that involves dragging along a touchscreen.
Then there's Magic #. It's shown up twice this season, on October 8th and November 17th, and peaced out. This isn't unheard of for our little PoundChamp: back in Season 42, it had two playings early in the season, and then disappeared until May. We haven't had that third sighting this season, leading to talks about it maybe getting retired.
I just feel it's odd that it's gone now, when since Season 42, the game's been played at least six times. However, before its long absence this season, the general feeling I got from this board was that something was fundamentally flawed with the game. Why exactly is it being neglected?
I just want to hear your thoughts on this. Here are a few starting points from me:
The game takes too long to play:
I don't know if anyone keeps track of timings anymore? The latest data I could find is from Season 45. Here were all the 2-prizer timings, and a couple games that are more 1 big prize and one small prize, but added for the sake of comparison (min:sec):
2:55 Switch?
2:56 1 Right Price
3:15 Do the Math
3:18 Bargain Game
3:38 2 for the Price of 1
3:39 Double Cross
3:40 Safe Crackers
3:59 Magic #
To be fair, back at the start of Season 49, they recalibrated the range on Magic # to go faster than before. I don't think that's enough to make it even quicker than Double Cross.
It's hard to make a "middling" setup / it's either too easy or too hard / $5,000 minimum:
Starting in Season 42, the show imposed a soft minimum of $5,000. COVID broke that rule a couple of times last season, by less than $25 both times, but with that change, the show also seems to avoid having two prizes with the same thousands digit offered in the same package.
I originally thought a combination of the two was part of the justification for why the ranges were so big, but looking at the win/loss ratio overtime, it seems like that alone isn't the reason.
In Season 37, the game had a record of 2-5. In Season 38, 0-5. In Season 39, 1-4. Out of those 17 playings, only two had a range over $1,500. Fast forward to Season 41, and the game had a record of 8-2. From that season onward, aside from one playing in Season 43, the spread never dipped below $1,500. Since then, the only two losing seasons for the game were Season 42 (1-2, I'd chalk that up to small sample size) and Season 46 (3-5).
Since Season 45, the majority of setups hovered around the $2,000-$3,000 range, with the occasional $6,000 range or so that gets some of us complaining. The game has a record of 18-4 since then. Wins seem to be easier to set up than losses in this game.
People hardly ever overshoot, just undershoot:
On June 16th, 2021, Magic # was lost by overshooting the target. This was the first time this happened since April 25, 2003.
Maybe that sole over is a side effect of the aforementioned speedup Magic # got last season? However, for most of the losses, it's definitely a case of people underestimating the cheaper item and just going too low.
I've seen people propose a Do The Math/Check Game -esque bonus, where the contestant gets the magic number in cash if they win? That would probably fix the problem of people going to soft, but that would have to be balanced with the difficulty.
The game's electronics are outdated, making it a pain to work with:
This is mainly here for the "maybe it's getting refurbished" crowd. I guess the set uses eggcrates, and it's in that group of games that are never played first or second, probably to make sure the electronics work right away. (I've never liked the video wall between the two games or the design on the price tags either. What is it supposed to be, lightning? Lightning going with a magic number with images that feel like they're torn from an early-2000s website feels clunky nowadays, but that's probably out of scope of this discussion)