My Philosophy on Game Shows (Part 1/3)

Greetings, folks:

I'd like to share with you some basic standards that I keep in mind whenever I design a new game show. If you watch "Jackpot Trivia Bowl" and "Try Your Luck", you'll see that I follow these standards closely, where applicable. This was originally going to one post...but considering how much explanation is involved, I decided to make a series of it. Here's Part 1:

1) No contestant who plays one of my games, unless he/she completely blows it, will go home with nothing. In some cases, what a contestant gets may not be much, but it will be something. The reason I do this is to make sure the contestants don't feel as though they wasted their time appearing on a game show, particularly considering the general limits on game show appearances: in most cases, a contestant can't qualify for a game show if he/she has appeared or will appear on another game show within a year; and he/she can't appear on more than 3 game shows within a 10-year period. Thus, I think it's important to do my best to make it worth the contestant's while.

In "Jackpot Trivia Bowl", there is no penalty for missing a question...though a contestant does have to give back the money (if this were real money) he/she has won if said contestant chooses to "Reset" the game and start over. A contestant can only end up with nothing in "Jackpot Trivia Bowl" if he/she misses the very first question after resetting the game...though I do my best to make the first 3 questions easy enough to prevent that from happening. In "Try Your Luck", even when a contestant decides to take the risk and ends up getting burned, he/she still earns the minimum of $100 for every pick earned. In two such cases on my show, this translated to $1,400 and $2,000...neither of which is bad, even though they were nowhere near the $14,000 and $20,000 each respective contestant was playing for.

Stay tuned for Part 2!