milion pound drop

I’ve been investigating the overlap between tv and games at the moment (more on the reasons behind that in the future). Nickolodeon and the BBC are doing some pretty interesting things. Mostly not to be monetised, but more as a supplementary service to their tv campaigns. For doctor who on the bbc they created four episodic games that correlated to the tv program. These were played over 2.4 million times.

This is cool, but to get an authentic second screen experience . I like the example of the million pound drop. The million pound drop is a new tv series from Channel 4. Essentially what it is is “who wants to be a millionaire” upside down; you start with a million pounds in cash, and get asked 8 questions, each time you have to guess and put a cash amount on a number that you think is the right answer. You can hedge your bets by putting it on numerous numbers, but every question that has a wrong answer has a trapdoor below it that your cash disappears in. this makes it more exciting for people watching because losing money is more tragic (and more entertaining) than winning it.

The gaming side is great because it taps into human behaviour around quiz shows. I always shout the answers at the tv, and this allows the same thing. You play along at the same time as the tv show, so you get to answer in real time. The presenter shares this during the show (i.e. They’d say you answered that as well as 50% of the playalong audience). If you at home keep more money than the person on tv you can play through till the end of questions (or until you lose). They’ve also partner with bet365 to offer betting games, which you can play to win money. This seems to really work with a maximum of 8.6% of the TV audience playing along.