I love the concept of those games. Watched the UK and US version and recently finished the Australia version.
The game was staged at first perfectly, and the choice of the original traitors we pretty good, although Claire seemed to not be comfortable with this role. Maybe her choice wasn't the wisest one but they got 3/4 right.
There were some serious flaws though, which makes the show much less exciting (and suspicious).
First of all, the concept is supposed to be for the faithful to try and find the traitors and banish them. As for the traitors, they must remain hidden and last until the end. So, a fair result should be if the faithful find the traitors, then they are the only ones left and they should split the money. But in this game, someone wanted to give all the money to one person (since apparently its more exciting to say someone won 1/4 million rather than 4 people won 62.5k each) so they kept recruiting traitors even though the faithful took out all 4 original traitors.
One more thing, the faithful in the final table are not supposed to know how many traitors are left. And in the other versions when there is a recruitment, it is not announced, so nobody will know how many traitors are left. Here they did something to ensure the faithful have zero chance of winning. After 4 traitors are gone (and already announced there is one recruitment) with only 5 people left, they decide to recruit another one, but not tell the players. So within the 5 people 2 traitors (one of them hidden) all they had to do is work together, since they only needed one vote to banish someone and then 4 players with 2 traitors included, its a definite win.
Another one, the amount of the prize money (being exactly 250,000 dollars) shows that they had already in mind how much they would give. Even if a mission failed, they would make an extra mission to give the rest of the money (since the last one was simple and was worth 40,000 dollars, if they needed more could be 60 or 70). Which makes all the missions unimportant, so why do we need to watch them?
I understand there were a lot of players, so no time to show everything, but I literally reached episode 6-7 and I saw Paul and Craig, and I honestly couldn't remember having seen them before. Paul stayed until late stages, I must have heard him speaking 3 times total and that's it. Imagine Paul's family, who will sit down to watch the episodes and they will see him for like 1-2 mins total, when he stayed until the last 6. Again, very bad execution.
Finally, the worst thing about these games is when the game master has not thought through the game and just decides randomly whats next. In the last banishment there were 4 people to vote. Even number. Not 3 not 5. So, what if they voted 2 people with 2 votes each? The concept of the traitors is that first night someone gets murdered so that we always have an odd number of votes for every banishment. That way, if the votes are split between 2 people, they need to revote and someone will have more votes in the end. But if here we had 2 votes for Alex and 2 for Craig for example what would they do? Toss a coin? Amateur planning.
Faithful deserved to win, but keeping a passive player like Craig (Who wouldn't be able to shoot an elephant in an elevator) all the way and the production trying badly to make sure one person gets all the money, they stood no chance.
Congrats to Alex, she did not deserve to win simply because she took out all the traitors very quickly, she should have left Nigel for the last 5. Without the second recruitment, she would not have won, since the other 4 people would know there is one traitor and she wouldn't have Kate's help to survive at that point.
The best players in the game were Nigel, Kate as faithful (she was bad as traitor), Mark and Midy. Too bad the first banishment was for a very promising player, I would like to see how a chess player would deal with the game.
The game was staged at first perfectly, and the choice of the original traitors we pretty good, although Claire seemed to not be comfortable with this role. Maybe her choice wasn't the wisest one but they got 3/4 right.
There were some serious flaws though, which makes the show much less exciting (and suspicious).
First of all, the concept is supposed to be for the faithful to try and find the traitors and banish them. As for the traitors, they must remain hidden and last until the end. So, a fair result should be if the faithful find the traitors, then they are the only ones left and they should split the money. But in this game, someone wanted to give all the money to one person (since apparently its more exciting to say someone won 1/4 million rather than 4 people won 62.5k each) so they kept recruiting traitors even though the faithful took out all 4 original traitors.
One more thing, the faithful in the final table are not supposed to know how many traitors are left. And in the other versions when there is a recruitment, it is not announced, so nobody will know how many traitors are left. Here they did something to ensure the faithful have zero chance of winning. After 4 traitors are gone (and already announced there is one recruitment) with only 5 people left, they decide to recruit another one, but not tell the players. So within the 5 people 2 traitors (one of them hidden) all they had to do is work together, since they only needed one vote to banish someone and then 4 players with 2 traitors included, its a definite win.
Another one, the amount of the prize money (being exactly 250,000 dollars) shows that they had already in mind how much they would give. Even if a mission failed, they would make an extra mission to give the rest of the money (since the last one was simple and was worth 40,000 dollars, if they needed more could be 60 or 70). Which makes all the missions unimportant, so why do we need to watch them?
I understand there were a lot of players, so no time to show everything, but I literally reached episode 6-7 and I saw Paul and Craig, and I honestly couldn't remember having seen them before. Paul stayed until late stages, I must have heard him speaking 3 times total and that's it. Imagine Paul's family, who will sit down to watch the episodes and they will see him for like 1-2 mins total, when he stayed until the last 6. Again, very bad execution.
Finally, the worst thing about these games is when the game master has not thought through the game and just decides randomly whats next. In the last banishment there were 4 people to vote. Even number. Not 3 not 5. So, what if they voted 2 people with 2 votes each? The concept of the traitors is that first night someone gets murdered so that we always have an odd number of votes for every banishment. That way, if the votes are split between 2 people, they need to revote and someone will have more votes in the end. But if here we had 2 votes for Alex and 2 for Craig for example what would they do? Toss a coin? Amateur planning.
Faithful deserved to win, but keeping a passive player like Craig (Who wouldn't be able to shoot an elephant in an elevator) all the way and the production trying badly to make sure one person gets all the money, they stood no chance.
Congrats to Alex, she did not deserve to win simply because she took out all the traitors very quickly, she should have left Nigel for the last 5. Without the second recruitment, she would not have won, since the other 4 people would know there is one traitor and she wouldn't have Kate's help to survive at that point.
The best players in the game were Nigel, Kate as faithful (she was bad as traitor), Mark and Midy. Too bad the first banishment was for a very promising player, I would like to see how a chess player would deal with the game.