A lament for Xbox Live's "1 vs 100" - hist Blog - www.GameInformer.com
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A lament for Xbox Live's "1 vs 100"

As Game Informer (and many other outlets) recently reported, it looks like the second season of Xbox Live's "1 vs 100" will be its last.  I'm really sorry to see it go, actually, though as Dan Americh reported, it was a *lot* of work to pull off.  I didn't play it every week, though I tried to get in there a lot.  I also enjoyed playing the "bonus" rounds that were done during the week, just to get players points and to also help decide who would be in the Mob or "The One" chair when the show was actually on.

Sure, the host was a bit of a dweeb, and the commercials were annoying beyond belief.  Not the fact that there were commercials, but that they were all the same, and the ones for 1 vs 100 were *really* lame.  But they were cute for their lameness, and I was just waiting for more sponsors to chime in and allow them to vary things up a bit.  Sadly, that never happened.

The concept, though, was marvelous!  Scheduled online gaming entertainment, where you're potentially interacting and competing with tens of thousands of other players over Xbox Live?  Even if you don't like trivia (I *love* trivia), just the idea of it was worth at least taking a look at it before dismissing it as boring and stupid.  Thousands of people disagreed, though, and it was always busy.  I would read the questions to my wife and she would help me sometimes.  I knew the agony of hitting the wrong button because you're trying to be just that quick on the answer so you get the maximum number of points.  Many times I knew the answer, but my finger didn't go with my mind and I ended up breaking my 10-answer streak.

D*mn, that was aggravating.

Hopefully Microsoft (or maybe another company?) will take the lessons learned during the 1 vs 100 experience and come up with some other scheduled online competition, something that thousands of people can play.  Even if it's not trivia-related, I'll still check it out.

But if it is trivia? I am SO there.

I don't know how successful 1 vs 100 was compared to the cost of producing it.  Obviously something was wrong there, or we'd be seeing a third season.  Whatever the issues, I think the relative success of the format means that something will be coming.

Whether it's soon or in the not quite so soon future, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what they come up with.