GameShow Night reminder

November 17th will bring about the first Pastapadre.com GameShow Night. For details on what it’s all about read up on it here. The time frame to play is between 6pm and 2am ET on Saturday.

The t-shirt that will be given away is pretty cool. I snapped a picture of it and you can check out what it looks like by clicking the thumbnail below.

I thought I’d post a link to FloridaPerson’s GameShow blog. For those who don’t know, FloridaPerson has been one of the most dominant players out there. He created a post on the official GameShow forum that was basically referred to as the guidebook for anyone who wanted to learn how to play and maximize their success. Now FloridaPerson is posting about it on “The GameShow Observer”. I’d recommend anyone who is interested in the strategy aspect of GameShow along with just learning the ropes to check it out. You can get to it by clicking here.

GameShow Night this Saturday

Saturday 11/17 will bring about the first Pastapadre.com GameShow Night. Up for grabs will be an EA GameShow t-shirt. Join in by playing during the 6pm ET to 2am ET time frame which is the live broadcast portion of the day.

This is a good opportunity for those who haven’t tried out GameShow to do so along with some of the regulars from the last couple weeks. Not only will you be gaining tokens through normal play to use towards the raffles but you’ll have the chance to come away with the t-shirt. Currently items such 360 versions of The Simpsons Game and Madden 08 and an iPod nano are on the clock raffle wise.

The winner of the shirt will not be determined by how well you do in GameShow. The idea was to make it fair to everyone and avoid it being favorable to the ones who have experience playing.

Soon after the end of GameShow play for the evening I will post up a 15 question multiple choice trivia form along with a tie-breaker. These questions will not be sports trivia, however they will be crafted based on the events of the evening. Things covered may include point totals, winners, category topics, poll results, host chatter and so on.

Those who play for longer and pay the most attention will have the best chance of knowing the answers. And even if you are only on for a shorter period of time, you’ll at least have a feel for it and may be able to make some educated guesses.

Entries will then be accepted until Monday 11/18 at 6pm ET. The person with the highest score will win the GameShow t-shirt.

Go here to read up on everything I’ve written about EA GameShow so far. Hope to see a lot of people in playing on Saturday!

Suggestions for EA GameShow

Here is a list of suggestions/ideas I have come up with for GameShow. Most of these were just noted as I was playing and I feel could make GS even better. If you have any of your own feel free to leave them in the comments and I can have those passed along as well.

-Friends lists so you can find them when they’re on and invite them into rooms or easily pull up their stats.

-It would be nice to have chat ability. Even if it is just for in between sessions.

-Have updated leaderboards/stats on the website.

-Have the full day’s session schedule on the website.

-Keep track of region and overall wins in stats.

-Changes to the power-ups (this is something they’re well aware is needed). I think a cool one would involve it only working on the star question which is generally the toughest or one that is used on a random question so it’s riskier. Maybe a streak one, where it pays out big if you get 5, 10, however many right in a row. I’m sure if I thought about it I could come up with a few cool ideas for power-ups.

-Guest hosts, or have players call in and go on the air with the hosts.

-I know its probably a userbase thing, but Mac support would be good. I’ve gotten a couple responses from people who have Macs and are disappointed they can’t get in on it.

-I think its cool that there will be avatar items that are there one day and gone the next. Hopefully keep the items fresh and updated on a constant basis. Nothing new has been added since I started and there isn’t a big variety right now.

-Tokens seem a little easy to come by. They come in handy for the raffles, but if they were a little tougher to earn they would seem more valuable. The balance would still be the same. I am already at a point where I can buy any power-ups and avatar items I would want from here on out and never come close to getting low.

-Rather than only being able to go into rooms that are in your favorites, maybe open up all states to select from.

-Add arrow to scroll when selecting options. Right now its just the bar and it is a little tough to control.

-There isn’t a way to change or set the time and/or time zone and right now mine is an hour behind.

-All of the sudden the last two couple times I’ve logged in all my preferences have been reset/completely different. That includes the ticker, full screen view, and the keys that correspond to the answer selections and power-ups.

More thoughts on EA GameShow

Night number two of GameShow and once again I got locked into it for over four hours. Thought I would add some more observations. Again if anyone has feedback or suggestions I can have that passed along to the team at EA. I made a couple notes on things I’d like to see below as well.

-I’ve added a tag page for GameShow. So any postings related to it can be found there in one place. Just click gameshow in the tags section of the sidebar. Right now it includes the initial news that GameShow had launched with some of the details on it, my full impressions from the first night, and now this one.

-GameShow has a myspace page which can be found here.

-You can text the show at 85186. At different points the hosts may ask for feedback or comments via text.

-I was joined in the room for part of the evening by rdogg1026 and marinerman. I think there was one or two others but I’m forgetting the names. Pretty neat to see some of the guys who visit here get in on it.

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EA GameShow impressions

I have a major problem with EA Sports GameShow. It is way too addictive. I didn’t expect to be, but I got hooked on it within minutes of firing it up. I had planned to feel it out and run through a couple of the sessions, but ended up staying on for almost four hours right through the end of the live broadcast portion of the day.

I used to enjoy trivia type games. I loved the different versions of You Don’t Know Jack when I was younger, but I didn’t anticipate having that same interest now. I had followed along with some of the info on GameShow but almost felt indifferent towards it. But now having tried it out, it has far exceeded my expectations in every area and I really didn’t want to stop playing. And that isn’t a feeling that I’ve had much of over the past couple years.

As I mentioned in the previous posting, it took about 6 minutes to download the program and was quick and easy to install. After a minor hiccup with the EA ID I started it up and right away was amused that they have some funny statements that display as its loading (such as Chuck Norris “facts”).

Once in you’re asked for a state you want to represent. It doesn’t have to be your home state, but I’d assume most would choose theirs as I did. After that, one of your available rooms will be for that state. You can also go in and edit your options which includes selecting your favorite teams for different sports. Once I entered in mine new rooms appeared in my list for each. So for example I could’ve gone into a room for Washington or Seattle Seahawks. I believe you can set up private rooms as well. No matter what room you are in you will represent the state/region you originally signed in with.

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EA GameShow has fully launched

It appears that the launch of EA GameShow has come and gone under the radar. It had been in closed beta for a short while but now is fully operational and open for anyone to play. The free sports trivia PC game is now available for download at the official website.

You’ll need to create an EA ID, but if you already have one you’ll be able to skip that step. I have no idea how my EA ID wasn’t already registered but it didn’t come up so I had to do that anyway. Then download and install the program. The 161.5 MB download took about 6 minutes for me.

The live host aspect of this is really cool (I’ve added the times below for that) and the rest of the time it goes through “reruns” where the point totals you can score aren’t as high as during the live periods. Trivia sessions amount to 15 questions over the span of about 15 minutes. There are a few 15 second ads that will play after a handful of questions as GameShow is free due to the advertising support.

If you try it out make sure to return and post your feedback on it. It’s something that I could pass along to the team working on it and I’d be interested to hear what everyone thinks. I’ll be posting my impressions once I get enough time in with it, and I’ll be on during some of the live session today.

Live-Hosted Session
Monday 7pm - 1am
Tuesday 7pm - 1am
Wednesday 7pm - 1am
Thursday 7pm - 1am
Friday 5pm - 2am
Saturday 6pm - 2am
Sunday 6pm - 1am

Music-only Sessions (no host)
2 hours before and 1 hour after every normal, live-hosted session

No Programming Session (no music or host)
All other times

PC Requirements
Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista
DirectX 9.0c or later
512MB of RAM (1GB for Windows Vista)
A processor speed of at least 1.4GHz*
Video card with 128MB VRAM (ATI or NVIDIA recommended)
Broadband Internet connection (Cable, DSL, etc.)
500 MB of hard drive space

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