Game Changer is Great Game Design
Everything is made up but the points do matter.
Game Changer is my favorite new thing (well new to me anyway) of 2023. It brings back a flood of memories watching Whose Line is it Anyway on ABC Family as a kid.1
Fresh Takes on Improve Comedy
For those who might not know Whose Line…, let me explain. Whose Line Is It Anyway is an improvisational comedy show that aired on ABC and ABC Family from 1998-2007 hosted by Drew Carey. It was revived by Aisha Tyler in 2013 and has been running on CW (and is also available on HBO Max). As an improvisational comedy show it takes place over the course of a number of prompts, sometimes being scenes the players act out or short bits where they respond to ideas like “things you don’t want to see tattooed on your partner”. The trope is that it’s a game show but… “Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter”.
What made it vibrant and sharp to young me was how zippy it felt. Each segment would take place over the course of a couple of minutes and would often feature multiple takes on a single idea. If there were segments I didn’t like2, it was easy enough to not pay attention until something more interesting popped up.
The point of the show was (is?) to use these short prompts to give the actors free reign to say witty, funny, and boundary pushing things. And it was clear that the actors cared for each other and got along. There was heart to it.
Enter Game Changer
20 years later and my wife and I started watching Game Changer together after I spent an evening with some friends talking about the Game Changer clips on Youtube Shorts. They felt ubiquitous in my feed, and were equally funny.
Game Changer has that same zippiness and sharpness, with an extra layer of warmth and narrative. It’s a game show where 3 contestants compete to win prizes. It has the bright colors, the podiums, the setup and the layout of a traditional game show like The Price is Right, with one significant twist. Every show the players have to figure out what game they’re playing.
Yes that’s right. Every show is a different game. That means over the course of now five seasons the show’s producers have had to come up with dozens of game ideas. And it’s been incredible. Every episode the host, “I’ve been here the whole time”, Sam Reich tries to confuse, bamboozle, and befuddle his competitors with fascinating new challenges. There are episodes where contestants have to one up each other, episodes where they have to compete in a variant of “Simon Says” called “Sam Says” and even a recreation of Survivor. It’s wild and free and inventive.
The show has that same Great British Bake Off vibe because the competition is real, but the stakes are low. And, in this case, the contestants are all paid actors employed (in some context) by DropoutTV. But because they’re competing for real prizes. It’s not just clever prompts for fun improv, it’s a collection of playing in and around game structures.
My wife and I tried watching Middleditch and Schwartz on Netflix. It’s clear they are incredibly talent but we bounced off it because we couldn’t quite tell what was going to happen next. Game Changer creates that certainty in the form of the game show, and then subverts it by tweaking it slightly. It’s a concept and execution that’s bursting with joy.
It’s also definitely edgy. The topics can be crass and sexual and there are occasions where it feels like players have to put themselves into real vulnerability. At various points a contestant has to tweet at a porn star and at another a contestant has to text a group chat that they need a loan for a large sum of money.3 It’s the type of stuff that feels quite transgressive but also indicates the very real trust they’ve built up as a group. In a behind the scenes they talk about having safe words so that contestants and indicate if a challenge has made them uncomfortable or if they simply need to take a break.
The TikTok Era
Like Whose Line the show pushes the idea of improv forward within its current moment. Game Changer is a show about game design, which is just part of the common vernacular. Audiences are as interested in the vocabulary of game shows as they are the outcomes. And Game Changer is also a show that feels built for TikTok or Instagram Stories or YouTube Shorts. Most of the segments are condensed into snippets that can be easily shared over the vertical format (how we found out), and the big blocky text that sits next to Sam Reich is perfect for quickly settings the stage in a format that has minimal time to explain itself.
But while it’s “of the moment” it doesn’t feel trapped within it. The show flows together in a way that makes it fun to watch even if you’ve seen many clips from that particular episode. And, seasons feel like cohesive units with beginnings and conclusions, but it still has that (now old timey) television feel where you can drop into any episode and still have fun.
It’s Good Game Design
Getting too deep into talking about Game Changer is at risk of being someone who explains a funny joke. So I’m not going to go too far into it, but I want to talk about one specific thing: the way the show manages to use its “design structure” to free the players up to be funny.
It would be easy to frame this as the points do matter. Take some sort of interesting contrasting approach to Whose Line… and talk about the contrast in social interests. Viewers are more “into” game design now. But I think that’s too cute by half.
Beneath a polished exterior there’s a bunch of clever game design going on under the hood to make sure that the stakes of the game are tuned to the narrative goals of the episode. Games often fall into one or two concepts. Either it’s about free form play, like DND (like Dimension 20 that’s also featured on DropoutTv) or pure logic and gameplay that’s a logical knot. Trying to balance between the two can become nearly impossible. Either that narrative opens up dominant strategies that make the games unfun or players ignore the logic because the draw of the narrative is too strong.
But Game Changer, through thoughtful design, manages to split the difference and create a space where real competition and spontaneity can exist. Sam Reich and his team creates real challenges that are difficult for competitors to accomplish. In a couple “pandemic era” episodes he has contestants read a gift they’ve been given, and then ask them to describe it, while their competitors have to decide whether or not to steal the gift. The twist is that some of the gifts are actually penalties. The variation creates the space for spontaneous interaction between contestants.
Each episode doesn’t hit the same note, and each episode doesn’t feed the same goals. Some episodes are more game-y, like the Survivor Finale where contestants were really competing to win a two part game show. Some episodes are more pure improv, like Make Some Noise which has spun off into its own show. And some episodes are more a narrative arc like the destruction episode where the contestants over time have to destroy more and more of the set. The level of variation is what keeps interest alive. Knowing when to come back to old favorites and when to explore new territory is key.
Play Design For Audiences
From a viewer’s perspective, it’s quite a feat. When we think about “game design” in television it tends to be about either Reality Television or Sports. And what’s interesting about these is how important the sanctity of the rules is.4 The enjoyment of the show is dependent on viewer’s perception that fairness is core to the outcome.5 But there are lots of reasons to play games besides pure narrative or mathematical fairness.
Game Changer is a show that manages to play with the idea of games in television (yeah I’m going to call it television) in a way that feels as fresh and new to me as the idea of Colin Mochrie and Wayne Brady being silly on a stage together felt to me as a kid. It’s joyful and warm and brilliant.
I have so many questions about why Whose Line is it Anyway was airing on ABC Family.
I wasn’t a fan of the inviting audience members on stage. I know it’s a common trope in improv but it always felt strange and forced to me.
This is the place where we’d talk about the Magic Circle and how what happens inside the game and in real life can cross boundaries with one another. But the fact that Game Changer so expertly manages to blend the two is incredible. But again, I find myself diving into “explaining the joke” territory, so I will stop.
This actually came up in a recent conference about Roguelikes (a form of game design specifically dedicated to rules consistency and replayability), where one designer talked about how Love Island (the reality TV show) is a roguelike.
So much so that the NFL has had to poke fun at itself about “being scripted”.
