Commentary: Season Nine, Project Two

Hello, one and all. What a project that was, eh? All I can say is, I'm EXTREMELY relieved that we got through it with little to no causalities. I'll start where I left off, with my thoughts on the Team Pick 'Em. From the get go, this concept was one of the main driving forces behind planning for Season Nine. In the past seasons where we've had teams, the teams have either been divided up pre-game (Season Six) or was new players vs. returning players (Fans vs. Favorites, All Stars vs. Wild Cards). For the first time ever, I really wanted the Team Leaders to get in on picking their teams. I must say, there were a few surprises. First off, I never expected the mysterious Eskimokyle (who is currently DOA) to be the first one picked, and I also never expected Basketbuddy to be the one picked to go to Outcast Island.

But alas, this season really does have a backwards feel to it compared to what we usually expect, doesn't it? I mean here we are, just starting out the third project, and my pre-game cast assessment has been proven completely wrong. I listed Basketbuddy as the most likely person to win, and MickeyMania as the most likely newcomer to go far. BOOM! Both gone the first round of team play. Talk about shocking, huh? I'm REALLY going to miss MickeyMania. He just seems like a genuinely good person and a multi-talented Imagineer in training. Really hoping he'll show up for Season Ten. Basketbuddy, on the other hand just got bogged down with a personal schedule, but it's pretty shocking to me considering all throughout the pre-game he really seemed in this thing to win. These two being eliminated definitely evens the playing field a bit.

And speaking of my expectations being thrown off...seriously, MAD PROPS to Futureimagineer. This guy has gone from the single person in the cast I was LEAST excited about to becoming a major power player almost overnight. He put together an amazing presentation, contributes tons of ideas, and has a crafty, strategic side to him. I seriously just LOVE this new addition to our cast.

But the thing I know you guys all want me to get to is the most controversial event in the history of the game. I never expected things to EVER get as chaotic as they were during the fatal and infamous Season Eight, Project Eight. Well...they did. All I can say is, I kind of feel like a kid who has just gotten caught with his hand in a cookie jar. I wanted to see some serious alliances and major power moves this season, but I never expected anything on the mass level of hysteria of the event that we shall officially call "PM-Gate".

PM-Gate started when I got two PMs, one from MEW, one from Imagineer2017, explaining that they had been offered multiple alliances and were on razor's edge with not being able to trust anyone. As soon as you could say "Johnny Fairplay" the entire game came to a screeching halt as we tried to figure out exactly who was behind this mass string of PMs. There was a point where I really wasn't sure if the game could even survive this madness. I've explained this before, I'll explain this again. The key difference between PM-Gate and my "Mastermind" gameplay during Season Eight is that nothing that I did was malicious. I targeted Disneyson simply because he was a HUGE threat, no other reason. Sure, I had my fair share of mindgames, but I never directly made any sort of "hit-list" or at any point rubbed any one person the wrong way so much that they'd want to quit. There were certainly people who disagreed with my playing style, most notably AdvBlueDude and Imagineer2017, but these were more or less friendly rivalries, not open ended warfare.

That being said, I have to give it to StarWarsGeek. This kid is like...the MAIN character of the entire season. Who would have thought? He's spent the entire last season studying my game and preparing himself, and came up with a strategy that blew anything I did completely out of the water. It was only when I saw exactly how much harm this aggressiveness caused the main game that I kind of sunk in my chair a little bit and realized exactly what I had done. That phrase "I've created a monster...", yeah, it was very much in effect here. StarWarsGeek, however, is no monster. He's a dedicated fan of the game and a crafty, unpredictable player. He's got some major lessons to learn about how to socially integrate into a team, but he's a player who is out to win, and will be in it as long as he can. While his actions caused things to get slightly out of hand, I applaud him for being so ambitious with this game to begin with.

So now that PM-Gate is over with, I obviously don't want to hear anything else about mass PM warfare going on behind the scenes. The magic of this game in the first place, and you should all know this by now, is the fact that ANYONE can win and there are multiple routes you can take to get yourself to the finals. Make no mistake, I'm not FORCING you to have a strategic game and big moves, but what I do want to see, should you make the allusive Final Three, is a layout of your plan to get yourself there and how you accomplished it. This doesn't have to involve slitting throats less and less, but I definitely want to see you guys have an awareness of your position and steps you took to get yourself to the finals. Even if it was "avoid strategy at all costs...", that's still a GAMEPLAN. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

Anyways, I want to talk a little bit about Outcast Island. I think for now on, if you don't contribute anything to the Outcast Island brainstorming thread on a project to project basis, you should be eliminated on the spot. Players like Eskimokyle, who mysteriously dropped out of thin air at the start of Project Two, and DisneyParksFanatic, who has been floating along by dropping ideas every so often, are on thin ice, and if I don't see them post anything, they'll both be eliminated this round, no questions asked. Getting sent to Outcast Island should be your wake-up call. If you don't do anything to improve your standing the project after you get sent there, you don't deserve any more chances. I'm hoping the amount of activity on Outcast Island will improve as more people get sent there. I kind of expected the first project to be a blow out. Let's see if Adv and SWG can avoid last place this time around.

And...that's about it. All I can say guys, is that there's not really a lot I can do about "strategy". I understand that it can potentially be a pitfall for the game, but I think the think we all have to work on is just making sure it doesn't get out of hand. If we can all be mature about it and, above everything else, avoid directly targeting people and other sorts of malicious activity, we should be fine. I want this season to be FUN, not a stressful warzone. I'll be monitoring this situation very closely and will let you know the SECOND things start to get out of hand if they do, so we can collectively make steps to fix them. The one thing I can think of is just eliminating voting all together and just having the judges chose who gets eliminated every project, ala Season Six, but I want to give you guys another shot at this, as I think how you integrate yourself into a team is just as important as any creative merit you might possess. Alright, well...let me just say I'm still really proud of you all and I'm LOVING this cast. It should be obvious by now that eliminations will come a little faster than you're used to just because we are currently behind schedule, but overall I think this season is going to flow really well. Now, get back to brainstorming!