Editorials

1 vs 100 Beta: Mob mentality

August 24, 2009, Author: Neil Hughes

Despite everyone knowing that 1 vs. 100 is in beta testing, this has not stopped tensions running high on the Xbox Live community about the online quiz show 1 vs. 100.

Following on from my article back in July when the game was launched, I thought it was time for a follow up, especially as so many people have said that despite playing the game most nights they still have not made an appearance in the mob.

When playing the 1 vs. 100 game you are reminded that to get into the mob you need to ensure that you play often, answer quickly and correctly. Having played the game on a regular basis since the launch and only being in the mob once I find this very hard to believe, especially considering the very low lifetime score of some of the mob.

Anyone who has spent time playing this game will be all too familiar with staring at the screen in disbelief as the majority of the Mob and the One get the most simple of questions wrong. The same kind of opening question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Example tonight was:

The 200th anniversary of whose birth was celebrated on February 12, 2009?

• Charles Darwin
• Gordon Ramsey
• Fabio Capello

As Ramsey and Capello are quite a few years short of their 200th birthday, there can be only one answer, and yet many people answered this incorrectly. If we believe the blurb then “The One” and “The Mob” are people that have been doing nothing but answer questions quickly and correctly for the last week, so why did they answer this and many even simpler questions than this wrong? Why has the One NEVER beaten the mob?

A little thought on the subject made me realise if the mob and the one were the best of the best, then each game would last for a much longer and could ruin the format, which seems to want to turn games around quite quickly. If the mob was full of people who are known to get a few questions wrong, then the games moves along much quicker with a new mob chosen frequently.

So just how do you get into the mob then?
I e-mailed the team behind the game, and Twittered their page but received no response, so decided to run a straw poll on Twitter to see how many 1 vs. 100 players had made it into The Mob or even to become the elusive One.

• 62% of people replied despite playing on a regular basis, they have NEVER been in the mob.
• 30% said they had been in the mob on one occasion
• 8% of people had been in the mob more then once.

One person had not only been “the one” but also claimed to have been in the mob 8 times. I quickly asked him, what is your secret? He said “I play every single extended play and I am in the high scores once in a while”, but so have so many not so lucky others I have spoken too, so my findings are next to useless.

The only thing for certain is that it is hard to be in with the mob or the one, and most of the time you spend playing will be in the crowd. Although fun to begin with, after several weeks it’s just not the same and I personally am starting to find it a little boring or uninteresting. Afterall the game is called 1 vs. 100 and I want to be either in the 1 or the 100, I want to be part of the game.

In the crowd it seems no matter how good you are or how quickly you answer the question it will never be good enough to win a prize as some people answer every question within 1 second, a talent I have not seen since Johnny Number Five in the movie Short Circuit.

It seems I am not on my own either as the last few nights, the figure of people answering the questions has taken a massive tumble to only 16,000.

There are other issues too, with the game randomly quitting for some poor people just as they finally make it into the mob and the sound for the host seems to work on an intermittent basis. However maybe we are all forgetting one major aspect of all of this and the problems highlighted, and that is the game is currently beta testing.

Beta – An unfinished version of a program released for users to test before the final version is released.

With this in mind, I will reserve judgement on the game until the problems have been ironed out, the format tweaked and it returns for the official release.

Please let us know what your thought’s are on this subject too, we would love to hear your experiences both good and bad of playing 1 vs 100 Beta.

Tagged 1 vs 100, prime time, Xbox Live