"I'm With Stupid" Game Spreading :D

[ISiddiqui]

Hey all. One of the most fun things I've taken from this site is the I'm with Stupid game. I actually post on another forum (apolyton.net/forums - the Off Topic), and one day decided to take the game there.

What'd ya know, it's taken the place by storm. 5 games in about a month or so. I changed the rules a little (it's the sum and not the multiplication of your answers that counts in the end), but it's the same game.

Now, one of my friends from that site wants to take it to the Straight Dope (www.straightdope.com) message boards.

Just wanted you guys to know how much of a SMASH this game is :D. *thumbs up*

[Sybot]

Actually there is a fairly good reason for using the product instead of the sum. This will split some people out in favor of those that answered overall the most highest questions correctly. Take for example these results. In both product and sum.

Product.
7, 13, 6, 20, 18, 13 = 2,555,280
7, 13, 4, 20, 20, 13 = 1,892,800

SUM:
7, 13, 6, 20, 18, 13 = 77
7, 13, 4, 20, 20, 13 = 77

Just to point that out for your other game. The user that answered the highest rated questions across the board will get priority.

[Abe Sargent]

Wanted to point out that IWS is based on an actual party game. It's called "Hivemind." It was released by Wizards of the Coast and was designed by Richard Garfield, a big name in gaming. So, if you have people who like it, you could buy the game, or recommend that they do.

-Anxiety

[QuikSand]

I, too, prefer using the product to the sum - but I don't see it as a huge issue.

[korme]

It seems you'd get an awful lot of ties if you used sum.

[QuikSand]

More than ties, I think it's a matter of perspective that you get by implictly using the ratios of the answers, rather than their absolute values.

Take an extreme pair of examples to make my point:

QUESTION #1
Player A scores 20
Player B scores 16

Assuming there were something like 40 or 50 playrs in this game, it seems that both players did a pretty good job here. This is a bit like the question I once asked "name a color on a stoplight" - which ended up a pretty close split between red and green. Both are pretty good answers, but one obviously did a bit better.

QUESTION #2
Player A scores 5
Player B scores 1

Here, whatever the case may be, Player A submitted an answer that at least had some company - at least a few people shared the response. Maybe this was a question like the one we saw recently: "Fill in the blank: Blue ______" For that question, there were about six or seven answers that got multiple points, but nothing over five or six. In that question, getting five points is a pretty good answer, getting 1 point is the worst you can do.



Using the sum of the individual scores means that each of these is essentially the same- Player A did 4 points better.

For my money - I think that Player A ought to get more credit for doing well in Question #2 than in Question #1. To me, a 5-1 difference is a much bigger deal than a 20-16 difference. 20-16 is nearly a random difference... but 5-1 means that one person was with a group of answerers, while the other person completely booted the question.

That's whay using the product of the numbers - and implicitly using the ratio of the individual scores - is what I think makes the most sense. Here, essentially the scores for the question become:

#1
A = 1.00
B = 0.80

#2
A = 1.00
B = 0.20

...and to me, that's a much fairer reflection of how well the two players compared.

[cuervo72]

Originally posted by Anxiety
Wanted to point out that IWS is based on an actual party game. It's called "Hivemind." It was released by Wizards of the Coast and was designed by Richard Garfield, a big name in gaming. So, if you have people who like it, you could buy the game, or recommend that they do.

-Anxiety

I like it's similarities to Family Feud...

"We surveyed 100 people and asked them to name a character, besides Jerry, from 'Seinfeld'. "

Show me......KRAMER!

[Sybot]

Yeah... I'll go with what QuikSand said.

[QuikSand]

Originally posted by Anxiety
Wanted to point out that IWS is based on an actual party game. It's called "Hivemind." It was released by Wizards of the Coast and was designed by Richard Garfield, a big name in gaming. So, if you have people who like it, you could buy the game, or recommend that they do.

I am not familiar with "Hivemind," but don't doubt that the games have similarities. I respect Richard Garfield quite a lot as a game designer... I might give a look for this one next time I visit a Wizards store.

It might be a little off to say that IWS was "based on" anything in particular. It's certainly possible that these all sprung from a fairly obvious idea... Family Feud, Hivemind, IWS, and any number of other similar game concepts.

[Abe Sargent]

"Based" may have been a poor choice of verbage. I remember when we were first knocking around the idea that it was mentioned that someone wanted to do the opposite of Scattergories type answers where you want to come up with unique answers to questions. Instead requiring people to come up with the same answer to score. I mentioned then that Hivemind already does that, so just call the post game Hivemind and be done with it. But, I guess the title "I'm with Stupid" is easier to remember...

So based, no. But I mentioned it at the inception stage so it may have influenced.

-Anxiety

[ISiddiqui]

Well, I just made it sum based... it's easier to follow for some, I guess :D. I don't consider it that big of a deal.