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Posted by Chris Hibner at 04/20/2001 9:07 AM EST


Coach on team #308, Walled Lake Monster, from Walled Lake Schools and TRW Automotive Electronics.


In Reply to: Hard to explain? Yes...that's why they need to SEE it...
Posted by Nate Smith on 04/19/2001 11:22 PM EST:



TV networks don't want a game that you have to explain for 15 minutes to understand. If you walked into the competition this year without any prior explaination, you would never understand how the scoring works until someone explained it. The problem with this year's game is that it takes literally about 10 - 15 minutes of explaination before someone understands it. First of all, the TV networks aren't going to sped 10 minutes every episode explaining the game. That means that if you miss the first episode, you have no idea what is going on and you're never going to watch again. Even if they do spend 10 minutes explaining the game, if you don't watch right from the beginning of the show, you're not going to know what's going on and you're going to change the channel.

A good TV game would capture an audience as they flip through the channels. It should take less than a minute to explain and someone should be able to figure it out on their own with a few comments from the commentators. Take last year's game, for instance. You could figure out 95% of the game in one match if the announcers say, "there goes team 66 putting in a black ball for 5 points and a yellow ball for 1 as team 308 hangs from the bar for a very valuable 10 points." With that one sentence during the action, the audience knows over 95% of the game. The only real thing left out is 5 pts. for being on the ramp, but that would become clear when someone attempts it. With this years game, there are too many ways to score base points, and too many ways to multiply. Then you have to explain that the multipliers compound instead of add together. Not to mention that no one wants to do multiplication in their living room while watching TV. In the end, you've lost your audience before they've caught on. If you could guarantee that everyone would understand the game, it would work, but this really isn't going to happen.

A great example is found in sports: football. No one outside of the U.S. watches football. I'm a HUGE football fan so I talk about it with all of the people I meet from outside the U.S. The reason that everyone gives for not liking football is because they don't understand it and they can't follow it because it is too complicated. The only reason the U.S. understands football is because it has been around for 100 years. The FIRST game is around for 2 months.

If you want people to watch a FIRST game, they need to be able to figure it out for themselves with only a few comments from the announcers. They should be able to flip through the channels, land on the broadcast at 23 minutes past the hour during the 8th episode and know exactly what is going on before 25 minutes past the hour (in other words, you have the length of one commercial break on a different channel the catch interest). If not, the person will change the channel. That is what makes BattleBots so TV friendly - within a minute you can tell what the object is, so your interest is held.

Sure some people watch TV in a different manner than described here, but a good majority of viewers channel surf. TV networks these days realize this and try to gear their shows so that they hook the channel surfers on their show. If you don't have the quick hook, with few exceptions, you're dead.

-Chris