Yo, so all in all I honestly think this season is one of PBB's best and I had a huge amount of fun hosting it! The vast majority of this cast were really fun to watch and interact with over the course of the season, and ultimately Lorde and I have agreed that this is probably our second-favourite season ever, behind BB7 (which coincidentally was the game I got robbed smh smh). So a huge thank you to the cast for being awesome! Even though everyone (besides Hermes rofl) made significant mistakes in their gameplay this season, that's honestly a lot of the charm of Big Brother. People weren't afraid to take risks, and almost no week ended how we thought it was going to end at the start of the week, which is the sign of some cool gameplay!
So Lorde is giving more general overviews of the season. This season was one of her many drafts, and so the overall structure and most of the twists are hers, so they're up to her to discuss. I made minor edits here and there and just discussed her ideas with her, but my responsibilities this season above all else were the competitions and I threw in the pinata as a twist too. Lorde had influence over comps too, of course -- she chose most of the flash games and some of the returning forum comps like Web of Lies and Stormwatch -- but most of the rest were mine. So I'll discuss them:
Competitions
I think this season was important with its competition structure for a few reasons. First, we had a roughly 50/50 split between flash and forum comps. This is fairly groundbreaking compared with earlier seasons, where we have had seasons with solely flash comps, and others with about 80% of them. I think looking toward the future, this move toward diversity in comp selection is very important. Partly, just from a gameplay perspective, it's way more interesting for players who aren't as adept at flash games to occasionally win power. A wider diversity of comps does encourage this, though with comp beasts like Anna, Flour, and Hermes, with a wide skillsets, it didn't end up panning out as much as it should have! However, it did lead to some exciting wins, like Jabber being a quizmaster and Sen winning power in W3, and these are ultimately great for the wider gameplay. In the past we have had alliance stomps where the best flash game players just group up and win every comp, giving no one else a chance. Diversity in comps prevents this from happening, or at least if an alliance does stomp it's more deserved as they've had to prove their adeptitude at a variety of skills.
Even more than that, is that I made a real attempt to have as few grindable comps as possible. Rewarding whoever has the most time is, in my view, a flaw of online Big Brother that is important to try and overcome. PokéBeach Big Brother has a long tradition of flash comps, but I'm a fan of having more and more flash comps hosted semi-live (meaning the host sends the comp and starts a timer, and houseguests have to do as well as possible within the given time limit). You'll notice that the later in the game that things got, the more semi-live comps appeared -- that's intentional, as I find them fairer, and comps generally become more important to win the later in the season that things get. And this might sound intimidating for hosts, but think of comps like Counting Sheep. That was essentially a bit of fun that still tested skill, but is very brief for both the players and hosts to participate in. My philosophy on this is primarily based on personal experience; I loved the social side and cast of BB7, but I was atrophied immensely by only ever being handed flash comps to grind. Granted, this was backed up by the reputation twist that meant I usually had to do 1.5x better than anyone else to win, but it meant that if I really needed a comp win that I would need to spend all evening grinding it, and it made the game overly serious and honestly less fun. Diversity in comps is better for everyone because, every now and then, being able to play a board game or throw your fellow houseguests into funny categories for half an hour to an hour keeps the game feeling more fresh and enjoyable. I wouldn't say we should eradicate flash games completely, since many of them are fun too, but the less dependent on flash games we become, the better the quality of flash games we get to choose; there are only so many good ones out there, after all.
My personal favourite comp from this season is the Scavenger Hunt. It was a lot of fun to host and for the people who took it seriously a lot of fun for them too, and I straight up think it should return every season. I understand one or two people were intimidated by their parents being like why tf are you taking a picture of a fork, but I played in a Scavenger Hunt in a different ORG about 2 years ago and it ended up not being an issue once you break the seal. And that was while I was digging through the shed to find an iron bar to put a clothes iron on top of. Scavenger Hunts will always be fun because you can change what people need to take a picture of every time, and particularly the more abstract items that I had required some great creativity. Besides Scavenger Hunt, I think boardgamearena is an amazing site and should be used more. Previously, we have had these duel-style boardgame comps through things like Ultimate Tic Tac Toe, and personally I just feel like having board games with actually deep mechanics is an evolution of the idea.
I genuinely think every comp this season was a smash besides How Bad Do You Want It? and NP's frog documentary lol. A punishment comp is something I'm glad we tried here, and wish I had thought of earlier into the season; it's extremely interesting in concept and features in quite a lot of real Big Brother seasons. It was a last-minute comp decision due to a necessary change to the draft, and if it ever returns it should absolutely be early in the season and edited to be like the actual show, which is that only the person who submits the highest score has to deal with the punishment while the lowest is still eliminated, so the strategy comes from trying to land yourself in the middle of the pack. I thought that would be worthless with it being so late in the game with so few players, so in the future if it's hosted earlier, that's a good addendum to make to the comp.
Pinata
Since the pinata was something I added to the season, and is marked down as a twist, Lorde asked me to discuss it. This is naturally something that cannot return every season, but I think it was a fun addition to the season. It's designed around rewarding dynamic gameplay and a risk vs reward element, since houseguests were not told what was inside the pinata and it could have been something negative too. It fulfilled its purpose this season thanks to Anna, as she mailed the pinata out of Chaos Blossoms into Hermes' pocket, where it stayed for the rest of the season. It had more potential than this, as Anna could have asked Hermes what his plans are for the pinata, or anyone from Blossoms could have asked Anna where it ended up, but I'm still content with its effect on the game. It was another thing that ended up benefitting Hermes' stellar social gameplay as he managed to acquire it just through having a long and fun casual conversation with Anna. I'm down for it to return at some point, but ideally in between then and now a pinata-like twist would feature something actually negative so that people don't just remember this and go "oh it's HOH". Perhaps even have 2 floating about, one positive and one negative.
Timezones, Comebacks, and Finding Allies
So this isn't that deep of a point at all, but something notable about this season is that 5/12 of the players this season were not American and... only Sen is not one of the first 5 boots LOL. Hell, Ephe was evicted twice within the first 5 boots. This isn't unique to this season or anything -- we have, in 12 seasons, had 2 non-American winners, with me being the only European winner and Ephe the only Asian one -- but I feel like I should bring up some game theory surrounding this. If someone is at a timezone disadvantage it means that it's probable that they are a little less connected than Americans. So if you're an American, it's in your best interest to sweep them up and ally with them! This is similar with Comebacks, where the last comeback not to be revolving doored was our new winner Flour in BB7 (OK Lorde told me BB9 Almonds fits this too)!! If someone was evicted, it means that they're unlikely to be returning to a bunch of allies, and so it's good gameplay to approach them and see if they want to relinquish their free agent status and ally with you instead. Ephe was evicted in a 6-2 vote on Week 2, so you know that there were 6 people in the game willing to throw them out the door that early into the season. When they returned, that's a great opportunity to forge a connection and add a number to your own side of the game. Anna was a little dicier, as it was later in the season and she had already betrayed every ally she had besides #WOATMars lmaoaoao but even still, Anna had also had 2 people hijack her HOHs at this point and is a proven comp beast, so I was shocked to see almost no one approach her upon her return. Every player in the game is potentially an ally of yours, and looking for these signs that someone may be in need of allies themself is a key part of the game. Furthermore, I think this applies to Ephe and not Anna this season, but let's not forget that I won BB2 after a comeback. Being evicted doesn't spell the end of your game, and that I'm the only player to win after winning a comeback 10 seasons later is somewhat shocking, but then again the only players to really have in-game success after coming back are me and Flour. My point is is that, from a hosting perspective, comebacks are basically intended to shake up the game and keep things dynamic. But the players need to use the twist to do that too, and revolving dooring the comeback is basically only the right move if you're solidly on top of the game and already have a route to the end; if not, work with them!
I think back to my BB7 game, where I developed strong alliances over the season with (I mean almost everyone but in particular) Ephe, Jade, Al, mirdo, Lily, and Nick. Of these, Ephe, Al and mirdo aren't American, and Lily and Nick were pretty inactive so I knew they didn't have many other connections. And then Jade betrayed me so lmao. It was only during this season that I noted how timezones may have helped this, as my entire inner circle (Ephe before they betrayed me too LOL and Al and mirdo for the whole game) was non-American and so the Americans didn't develop as powerful connections with us as we could each other. So basically what I'm saying is, inter-timezone alliances and connections will make for even more exciting seasons and higher level gameplay, and they can totally happen despite the difference! Ephe is still hours away from me, and it was common for me to message them a bunch before going to sleep, and then responding to their long response to me on the way into college the next day which is when we had mutual hours. I also think we need more #AntiAmerica sentiment as international members of the community LOL. We don't need to purge them or anything, but BB7 is considered the best season ever and 4/6 of the Top 6 were international!
Similarly, something that I think should be reiterated is that there are multiple types of relationship you can have in this game. PBB tends to default to very all-or-nothing relationships and bridges are burned pretty easily, and that's just not the best way to play the game! Enemies are dangerous, and a big part of why watching Hermes, Drask, and to a lesser extent Mars (since he just relied on veto wins he was acc bad at this) playing around each other this season was so fun is because at various points they were friends or allies or enemies but they would put differences or friendships aside for game reasons. This is also a significant part of why BB7 is considered the best season, because almost everyone in the game had frenemy relationships with everyone else. Strong alliances and friendships are of course the ideal, but in order to take control of your own game and eventually win you need to betray others at some point, and the right move when you're betrayed is to try and maintain the relationship anyway. There were really bad moves this season like Mars working to evict Ephe once he caught any type of wind that Ephe told the HOH to target Mars instead of themself, for example, which was just Mars deleting a number from his side for no reason. Flour and Anna is another relationship this season that I think was perfect frenemy potential, because they were never going to trust each other but at the end of the day were 2/3 of the comp beasts this season. Creating a temporary truce to go far with each other and have more firepower against Hermes was, in my view, the right play for both of them. But don't get me wrong, I'm just as bad at this and am known for being an emotional player lmaoooo I'm so bad at betraying people, y'all if you ever play with me I'll be frenemies if you betray me first but will not do it myself.
Closing Thoughts
Once again, thank you everyone for this amazing game! It was loads of fun to watch, and it was so cool to see such exciting and dynamic gameplay this time around! Older folks will know, but this is the second game I've hosted and the first was kind of a snoozefest. Literally everyone added a different spice to the season, and I love complex spice mixes so it worked great for me haha! Both newbies were awesome and did great for their first season in a cast full of vets, and I hope to see both of you return soon! I will scream #BraveRobbed into the void for the rest of the time, I adored seeing them step up to the plate and actually lead their alliance, since that is just not what precedent said that they would do. Hermes of course gave a masterclass, I loved seeing Flour's strategy finally work out too, and I also enjoyed Drask working from the bottom in action. Even earlier outs had learned from prior seasons and really tried to evolve their gameplay from the past, such as scattered wanting protection from two sides -- in the past he's been someone who has remained relatively contained within one alliance. So basically thanks for the great season y'all, if this season had been bad I might not have found the motivation to host again but you might see me hosting again soon! (Not during term time though and with a co-host more active than me so then again maybe not lol).
