| | | | Spoiler alert: It’s quite electrifying to play as the One in 1 vs 100 Live. Contestants have described anything from nervousness, to shaking, to victory-fueled elation. No surprise there, as everyone in the game – tens of thousands of players – focuses on the trivia content, as one player is onstage attempting to outlast 100 others. Oh, and don’t get nervous when Chris Cashman chimes in on your personal style and gamertag, pondering aloud the choices you’ll need to make, and whether you “have what it takes.” It’s a special moment for any Xbox LIVE gamer. We saw many contestants rise and fall, and there were many Mob members begrudged by that One player who denied them victory. The One attains minor Xbox fame the moment they’re selected, and where it goes from there is all about how well they can fare against the competition. Some players in the beta received a torrent of friend requests, Party invites, and other assorted messages – perhaps more than they would’ve expected. So, what about Season 2? 
The new experience starts when players are notified that they have been selected to be the One. A golden interface pops up, providing additional information about the role. It also notifies players that their status will momentarily be set to “Busy” while they are the One onstage. “There's a lot on the line, and it can be quite intense. We wanted to make sure that the One is able to focus on the game without distraction,” said Brett Johnson, 1 vs 100 Live’s game designer. Engineering a good solution for reducing the One’s distractions was a priority for improvement from day 1 of the beta. For everyone else, the new One’s first appearance in a 1 vs 100 Live Season 2 round will be a more dramatic moment this time around. Their avatar appears at the top of a staircase, just like in the TV program, and you’ll see them strike a pose before strolling down to center stage. “We added some face time for the One,” said Matt Van Gorder, the game’s art and design lead, “It’s a real player stepping onto the stage; one of our most exciting moments.” 
I have no additional details at this time, but we’re sure to see another cast of tough competitors step up to tackle 100 formidable trivia opponents with prizes on the line. Soon. Season 2’s added features for the One will hopefully mean more great game show moments for everyone who steps into that role. Share your feedback! 1 vs 100 forums Facebook Page Twitter |
| | It’s time for the weekly season 2 blog! Let’s talk about something important: statistics. Competitive multiplayer games are very much driven by player stats: accomplishments, kill counts, victories, score, and more. 1 vs 100 is no different, as your personal profile of stats detailing your trivia proficiency (or lack thereof) emerges over the course of a season. Season 2 puts these types of stats at your fingertips -- literally -- while you play any given round of Live or Extended Play. Brett Johnson, 1 vs 100’s game designer (we’ve heard from Brett in previous blogs) says he knew that many players were interested in obsessively tracking their stats. As Brett summed it up, “Fast twitch stats are now available with a flick of the Right Trigger.” It’s the same basic functionality as pressing Back in Season 1, but with better stats to track, plus the ability to quickly and effortlessly browse stats in-game without missing a beat. There’s not much more I can share about the deeper Season 2 stats and scoring at this time, but a good example of a new way to score is the introduction of the Bonus Question. In each episode of Extended Play, Jen Taylor will, at certain times, announce the presentation of a Bonus Question, which will provide extra points for a correct answer. 
Bonus Questions are harder than your average question. “It creates more separation in scores, allows opportunities to make up for lost points, or gives you the chance to use a well-timed Safety,” said Matt Van Gorder, the game’s art and design lead, “Ultimately, it’s always fun to get more points.” There’s more in store. Soon, there will be little left to reveal about Season 2, but I’m excited to share more and more each week as we prepare for the launch. See you next time. Share your feedback! 1 vs 100 forums Facebook Page Twitter |
| | Last week, I revealed changes to the Extended Play set for 1 vs 100 Season 2. I’m going to blog about more game changes this week, and in the coming weeks, as I detail more of my discussions with the game’s art and design team. The changes made to the core game in season 2 are far from just cosmetic, and today, we’ll begin to take a look at some new things you’ll see in the game design and interface. Skip No More One of the first design changes you’ll notice in Extended Play is that Skips have been replaced by Safeties. Brett Johnson, 1 vs 100’s game designer, is excited to introduce the change. “Hmm, the easiest way to describe it…” said Brett, “Safeties can be exchanged for a correct answer.” In the season 1 design, this wasn’t necessarily the case with Skips; they kept you on a streak, but the trade-off was that you would earn no score for “skipping” a question. 
Safeties, like Skips, are earned for three consecutive correct answers, they preserve your Streak Bonus upon use, and you can hold a max of three at a time. The only penalty for using a Safety is that you forgo the opportunity to earn speed bonuses. Everything else is tallied the same. Colin Riley, technical artist, added, “We listened to feedback. Now you can get past an answer you don’t know without losing too much score, so you can stay in the running for the Top 10.” Help Replacement: Trust the Top 10 The One choosing to “Trust the Brain” (the round’s top scoring player) was often a source of amusement for players in the season 1 beta episodes of 1 vs 100 Live. It turns out that it’s no guarantee the best-performing player in the game will be reliable, for a variety of possible reasons. Still, it was a Help that got many contestants out of a jam, and it’s being improved for season 2. “Trust the Top 10,” when used, will return an answer of X, A, or B – whichever is most-selected by the game’s ten highest scoring players – and lock it in as the One’s answer. “Relying on ten really good players, instead of a single player, is just a better idea,” said Matt Van Gorder, the game’s art and design lead, “It will be a better experience for the One.” Stay tuned. I’ll be back next week with more, as we gear up for 1 vs 100 Season 2’s winter release. Share your feedback! 1 vs 100 forums Facebook Page Twitter |
| | Make no mistake: big changes are in store for season 2 of 1 vs 100 on Xbox LIVE. I had an exciting talk this week with Matt Van Gorder (Art and Design Lead), Brett Johnson (Game Designer) and Colin Riley (Technical Artist) about what's new. When covering it all in a single discussion like we did, the main thing I can say is that there will be no doubt that you're in a brand new experience. "As soon as you launch the game," said Brett, "You're going to notice changes." I'll be able to go more in depth about the season and our discussion in the coming weeks. For the first blog, though, I decided to focus on one of the main things that will get the attention of fans of the beta season: 1 vs 100 Extended Play's massive new set. "We knew we could make Extended Play games feel bigger," said Colin. In the beta season, sessions of 1 vs 100 Extended Play regularly attracted tens of thousands of players, all answering the same trivia questions at the same time. Each half-hour game was an event unto itself. He continued, "We decided to make the set reflect the size and scope of the game mode." 
There is a distinct difference between 1 vs 100 Live and 1 vs 100 Extended Play. "We wanted to visually portray how different it is," Brett said. Added Colin, "We wanted you to know you're in Extended Play." In addition to the 3D changes - upping the scale, modeling a much more massive set, adding more grandiose types of set feedback - the team knew there was more they could do with cameras. "From perspectives, sweeping angles, the massive feel, the stats on the quad screen..." said Brett, "Mob Elimination will feel more impactful." In season 2, when thousands of people show up for 1 vs 100 Extended Play game sessions, the atmosphere will be that of a huge avatar event. Said Colin, "We wouldn't have changed anything unless we did it this way." Share your feedback! 1 vs 100 forums Facebook Page Twitter |
| | Two years ago, our team was asked to develop and implement a new kind of game. Our guiding principles: it had to be scheduled like a TV show, it had to be social, and it had to support hundreds of thousands of players at once. "Above all," we were told, "it has to be big. It has to be something nobody has seen before. Go big or go home." Now, as we've wrapped up 1 vs 100 Beta and are getting ready for launch, I think we've accomplished that goal. We've faced some big challenges along the way, and done some things no game has ever done before. We've hosted a game with over 100,000 concurrent users in the same session. Doing that required designing a new server architecture, different than that used by traditional MMOs--we didn't want to shard groups of users into their own sessions on their own servers. Everyone gets to play together! Speaking of servers, 1 vs 100 is synchronous in a way no other game is. Hundreds of thousands of users playing a game show together means that most of the players, most of the time, are making the same server calls. 1 vs 100 is so synchronized, in fact, that everyone is making those same calls within a couple of hundred milliseconds. Our server was designed to handle that kind of traffic. Some of the other services we use are not; they handle heavy load by assuming that requests are evenly spread out over time. This required some fancy footwork on our part not to overload our partners' servers. Then there was Chris Cashman. We knew we wanted to have a live host talking about the action; we knew it would make the experience really come to life. We didn't realize just how much the host added until we had our first beta session in Canada. For that session, most of the team and our families stayed after work to play on the three or four consoles in our common area. Everyone listened, rapt, as Chris introduced the show and talked through breaks, mentioning (and making fun of) players by name. That seemingly effortless banter which adds so much to the game was a huge challenge in terms of technology, design, and production. The host audio tech is a delicate balance between bandwidth and end-to-end latency. The show production team and Chris had to learn how to do breaks given delays that varied night to night based on the vagaries of the Internet. Think about that the next time you hear him say "Back to you, Jen" and Jen's audio starts to play with natural timing. There are many other challenges I could talk about. The game would not have been possible without a team of incredibly smart, dedicated people solving new problems every day (plus a large number of pizzas and subs delivered to Microsoft after hours). 1 vs 100 also would not have been a success without the players. Thanks to all of you who stuck with us through the beta, put up with some hiccups along the way, and helped us make history. We look forward to seeing you all again in our launch season! vboy Share your feedback! 1 vs 100 forums Facebook Page Twitter |
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