There always seems to be one season of the year, every few years, when game shows become the only thing worth watching on TV. Whether it is the introduction of a relatively interesting concept that I latch onto, or the fact that the Game Show Network happens to be free to watch for a month or two, I do end up getting in too deep with ridiculous contests and quiz shows that I look back on with a bit of shame. Some of them don’t carry those same shameful memories, and those are usually the ones that I missed out on, or caught at least one or two and meant to keep watching but just didn’t. 1 VS 100 is one of the game shows that I found very interesting when it was first being marketed in the US. I’d seen the BBC version, which didn’t seem to have much of an impact on the public there while Deal or No Deal was taking off, but it never really stuck with me until they livened it up and added the perfect ingredient, Bob Saget.

The game is simple; one person is put on a large stage and given a set of multiple choice questions and must answer them in order to win the prizes. The difference is that the contestant is pitted against 100 other contestants who are answering the same questions. These 100 people, known as the Mob, have only a short time to answer and have no assistance or lifelines. If they lose, they are out, and the Mob shrinks down in size. For every question the One gets right, he is awarded a set amount of prize money for every Mob member that gets the question wrong. As the Mob dwindles, more prize money is dolled out for each elimination.

1 VS 100 has done very well in the United States, and has had at least one iteration of the show brought into video game form on the DS. Without a real Mob and a sense of reward or consequence, the game offers very little besides standard trivia thoroughfare. However, porting that idea into an online experience where the One and the Mob are real contestants, competing during scheduled events with a live host and for real prizes, now that’s a great concept for a video game port. And that is exactly what Endemol, the creators of 1 VS 100 and Deal or No Deal, have done with the publishing assistance of Microsoft Game Studios. Xbox Live Gold members are given access to this content with no added price, and are basically treated to a scheduled video game trivia experience that allows them to bring their Avatar onto a large stage and show off how much they know about etymology, entomology and Enimem to compete for XBLA games, Microsoft Points in one of the first large scale Massively Multiplayer Online Trivia Games (MMOTG).

The beta opened up last week in Canada, with the first official game getting play time and a considerable amount of interest. Starting this week, however, they’ve opened up a set of trials called 1 VS 100 Extended Play, that offer you a very minimal experience of the game in the form of a giant room where anyone can enter, answer 37 trivia questions in the hope of being selected as the One or to be part of the Mob when the show goes live again this Friday. Although the exact system for selection isn’t obvious – the announced encourages you to play well and play often to make the cut – it is an interesting way of gauging interest, and considering the schedule so far the audience that is has gathered it shows considerable promise. I took part yesterday evening during the two sessions that were held, along side another 11,000 or so Canadians, and did my best to answer questions on Prime ministers, obscure films and provincial animals. The game had a very obvious Canadian slant to gather the favour of the local audience, but it seemed to work rather well and did balance it out with some general trivia.

I entered the lobby knowing very little about the whole experience, expecting to walk into one of the live shows. When I realized the distilled experience I had come across, I was actually more excited at the prospect of competing without significant pressure or penalty. It works similar to something like Buzz for the PS3, although on a much larger scale, and while it doesn’t have the exact same experience of being the One, it does distill the game down to a very digestible level that works rather well. You answer the questions, gaining more points for answering questions in a row and hitting it big when the rest of the crowd gets a question wrong. Being fast, accurate and more correct than everyone is the key here, and good training for being part of the actual Mob. The game even incorporates the UK style question skip bonuses rather than the “lifelines” that are present in the US version of the show.

This concept continues to fascinate me, and it was interesting being a part of the whole experience. While I only got some time with the Extended Play portion of the 1 VS 100 idea, it is a good introduction and something you should try and check out if you are an Xbox Live Gold member. You can set reminders on the system itself, and there are usually one or two shows a night. It’s not quite something that may sit right with all gamers, considering it is something built on its own schedule and not yours, so you can’t exactly take the whole experience away. Still, it’s an online event and something new that sets a good precedent with what companies can do with online gaming that doesn’t require downloading gigabytes worth of files or even paying any base fee, just an add-on that looks like it could really work to gather people around the TV. In an age of PVRs and net streaming video for most of those who would normally be tied down to these kinds of schedules, however, it will be a lot of work to keep up the momentum.