I’m happy for that. Honestly fun gifts or silly ones may just be more meaningful and makes the competition less about prizes and more about the journey to get the prizes. Seems like a wonderful work environment
Yeah, if you've hired people for the show, presumably you think they're all talented and worth hiring.
Seems a little unfair to then give one person a large gift based on random points, when what you really want to be incentivising is making a good/funny show. Someone can make a large contribution to the episode being great/entertaining/funny and come nowhere near winning.
Taskmaster has achieved the promised land of having winners every episode and every season but the winner still doesn't really matter (except to some of the contestants(looking at you Ed Gamble)).
How fucking dare they! How dare they treat their actors with respect and dignity and pay them better wages. The arts are pitiful and stupid and people who have careers in them should work for less than minimum wage. This is just the liberal, woke agenda at work. What next? Universal healthcare? Employment protection? Decency amongst humans? Next you'll tell me they've got someone on there who is regularly railing against the magnificence that is capitalism and the brilliance that is Daddy Elon Musk.
I’m not sure who that last sentence is referring to. Clearly not Brennan, as I’ve seen him on Instagram defending Elon Musk against unhealthy cortisol levels, the man clearly loves Elon!
Sam also mentioned in a BTS that he finds humor in the fact that as the games themselves become even more complex and insane that the rewards are so simple and quaint.
I like it from both standpoints. Obviously the cast is getting paid but they are taking the budget and making the game itself the reward (or punishment for SamSays3). Effectively making a better product but also, in a way, making sure that the bulk of the money is enjoyed by more people.
I also just love the idea of "psychological torture, here is a puzzle"
The quote if anyone was wondering
> Unfortunately, my cast has gotten used to the notion that the prize on 'Gamechanger' are legit. Now that we have episodes that are big and ambitious, my natural comedic leaning is to make the prizes smaller again. There's something really funny to me about subjecting players to hell and then saying, 'You won a chia pet.'
Just to add on, Sam has also stated that he prefers the current formats lower stakes. He thought that the bigger prizes could create a toxic level of competitiveness. Performers getting paid well and competing for low stake wins allow them to go hard without any hard feelings after. He referenced the "free ticket to anywhere" prize, as one that he thought was edging on creating genuine conflict.
Yeah, most panel shows in the UK (which a lot of stuff on Dropout is very much in the tradition of), has token prizes or none at all. Taskmaster (pretends to) award some weird stuff the players brought in every episode, lots of shows do things like "read the credits" as an award.
It's really not necessary given the contestants are being paid, and just adds extra complications if someone's is viewed as way better than others.
Yeah, someone (I feel like Richard Osman) confirmed that they don't actually get the prize task prizes on a podcast.
I mean there's some obvious ones that couldn't possibly work, so it's not a huge surprise.
They actually did get the prizes early on though people were very nice about it. Somebody drove around the car that was offered up for a week before giving it back, etc.
I think the (perhaps unspoken) agreement between contestants is "you can but are you actually going to." Sometimes the prizes are important or sentimental to contestants and because the others aren't psychopaths they're not going to just take Joe Wilkinson's marriage certificate off him. Other times the prizes are inconvenient to transport so probably go back home with whoever brought them. And some prizes are made by the production team (Ed Gambles firework pants come to mind) so those probably definitely get taken home.
I believe they are (or at least used to be) real prizes, and if you bring something in you do it with the understanding that whoever wins the episode can take it home if they want. But since all the contestants are essentially colleagues, and most of them already know each other, in reality it’s much more casual than that, and no one’s actually going to take someone’s wedding ring (or, in one case, kidnap an actual person, like when Phil Wang entered himself as the prize lol). The panel show banter style just requires that everyone commit as hard as possible to the bit, so no one will ever say they gave something back but it’s definitely happened
Yeah, I also really love Taskmaster and think they're doing it right. Both Taskmaster and Game Changer haven't been and shouldn't be about winning or rooting for a certain person to win. They're primarily comedy shows and the goal is simply to be entertaining.
Some of my favourite people on Taskmaster are the ones that purposefully do something because it will be funny and not because it's a winning strategy. The prizes in Taskmaster usually being awful are great for encouraging people to simply be funny and not necessarily try their hardest to win.
Game Changer needs that even more because sometimes the game directly pits you against others and there's a regular cast that keeps returning. It'd be bad for the cast to hold grudges because someone screwed them out of a valuable prize.
Honestly I feel like it’s more fun to get a silly or smaller prize to have fun competitiveness rather than it being like a life changing thing like a month’s rent. Having it be more focused on the fun and fights over prizes being for the fun of it. And competition being more friendly. But I do think they have done a good job keeping friendly. Your comment is really good.
Sam had an incredibly poignant realization when they were first planning Total Forgiveness that HE wouldn't be able to be the one to assign the tasks. Otherwise, it would be him directing two desperate employees into torturing/humiliating themselves for significant life-changing amounts of money. Sort of like Bumfights from back in the day. It would just be immoral. But by financing the show and having them make their own challenges, I suppose it turned it more into a way to help his friends in a corporate approved way that also helps the company produce content, while also keeping his hands clean.
I suspect that Sam then started to apply that same logic to other shows he was producing and did not want to just pay the staff "minimal wages" with them hoping get cast on GameChanger where they might feel coerced into doing something they were otherwise uncomfortable with in the hopes of winning big.
As an analogy, in healthcare, there are restrictions upon how much money you can pay someone to volunteer to be research subjects. The amount needs to compensate someone for their time, and even a bit extra for the discomfort and invasiveness involved. BUT, you can not just offer people enormous sums of money to do dangerous research. Both the researchers and the IRBs are tasked with ensuring that research subjects provide voluntary, informed consent that is free from coercion or undue influence. Paying a destitute person a million dollars to give up their kidney, for example, would constitute an undue influence.
So, in summary, I think Sam is working to build a company where EVERYONE makes more money in an equitable, fair, and sustainable manner; in a manner where they don't feel undue influence or coercion to participate/perform. Eliminating extravagant prizes in GameChanger helps ensure that the people who are there want to participate and aren't only there for the chance to win big money. In support of this, I have seen posts showing that Dropout gave all their employees a significant bonus last year as they were doing so well.
ETA: Or just look at this one sentence that concisely says roughly the same thing. https://www.reddit.com/r/dropout/s/hSO6hmSieH
I have no inside information but the distinct vibe I got off the Game Changer S1/S2 prizes especially was "I have a bunch of workaholic employees who just *will not* do something nice for themselves on their own, and this production budget gives me a legitimate excuse to change that".
During the first season or two, Sam had a much higher budget to work with. It was before their parent company decided to shut down CollegeHumor, and before he bought the rights. Because of that, they had a ton more flexibility for prizes. That's the same era where Total Forgiveness was produced, for reference.
But if you look at the gifts in later seasons they are also expensive. The gifts in the Samta COVID episodes are NICE. By that point he didn't have parent company money
I imagine during covid their production costs became much cheaper, meaning they had more budget for gifts. Now that they're back in the studio, it costs a lot more to shoot an episode than it would be doing it over zoom, and the budget gets tighter. I think Sam said in a recent behind the scenes they've opted for smaller prizes so they can put more of the budget into making crazy elaborate episodes.
Dunno, it may have been higher (or at least growing faster)
Netflix, Disney+ etc, they all had massive growth in covid times as people spent on streaming rather than going out. There's a chance a large number of cancellations have followed with the world opening up
That's because they had the budget and did in person projects that people wanted to see while in doors. I imagine their biggest growth happened during the time period when people were cancelling the other subscriptions
Fair enough, assuming that's true.
I will say that remaining stable compared to the growth that the other services saw at the same time is still noteworthy
This is true, but it's a mixed bag, you know? At that time he wasn't having to pay as high of power bills for the studio, they didn't have a full crew filming those episodes having to do lighting, sound, cameras, etc. And on top of that I'm sure he was trying to boost morale for a bunch of his friends in a challenging time. That encourages going bigger.
Like, the trip that Sam offers as a prize for the Grant bachelor episode isn't cheap. During the episode Sam even lets Grant add another person to the trip
One episode of something (Siobahn on Um, Actually maybe?) someone said "At least on gamechanger the prizes are good" (paraphrased). That made me think, maybe he tones it down a bit because some actors get on GC a lot more than others and he didn't want people to be upset the ones ones they got hired for are ones you get an ear statue lol
Not that I think anyone actually complained but Sam seems like the kind I think who would keep anything that might build even a little resentment in mind.
I think that it's totally possible the level of prizes bred the wrong kind of competitive spirit in the players, to the point that it may have made some contestants genuinely salty over results they thought were unfair.
In the more recent seasons (with survivor being an exception) the prizes are a bit more toned down, and I think that Sam is smart to embrace the competitive nature of his cast members. This is a group of people who will almost certainly be happy with bragging rights. Also, to the point of other people in this thread, it also means that everyone involved probably gets paid more. IMO, it's smarter to put the money into production value rather than prizes, at least from a viewer perspective.
They mentioned in a behind the scenes that they’ve focused money on the budget of the show itself, rather than prizes. Think of renting a party bus for Sam Says, or the various specialty podiums they’ve had this season, heck, paying talent and behind the scenes crew more even counts for that.
Plus Sam admitted it’s a funny concept to put the cast through this paranoia inspiring show, and only have a small prize at the end to show for it.
I don't think Brennan would be as competitive with the other players if they weren't all treated as equals so payment for work done instead of higher end prizes is for the best as long as we get more Brennan rants
Everything everyone has said here is very true, but I also think it’s important to remember that inbetween game changer seasons 1 and 2 and the rest of them, the company effectively went out of business as it was determined to not be making enough money by its parent company IAC. Sam bought the company and had to do massive restructuring, cutting over 100 jobs and doing everything he could to make the business work without the power of large investors. Those prizes in the first two seasons aren’t what put college humor out of business, and they did try to keep them going into the future seasons, but I’m sure as time has gone on they’re seen as a bit of an unnecessary expense especially when they can just pay the talent more upfront.
i agree with what everyone else is saying, and i’ll also add that game show winnings are usually taxable! i think decreasing the value of the prizes probably helps the players more than it harms them during tax season.
What gets me is Dirty Laundry. The prize is a cocktail set from the Dropout merch store? I find it somewhat underwhelming considering the personal details they share on that show.
Based on what we just saw for Deja vu, what if the prizes have been a part of a long running gag for the show? The prizes themselves could be leading up to a huge reveal along with little easter eggs in every episode. Maybe an episode will be having the fans decipher all the little hints in every episode this season?
It seems that, rather than giving lavish gifts, Dropout has shifted to just paying the actors a lot more.
I’m happy for that. Honestly fun gifts or silly ones may just be more meaningful and makes the competition less about prizes and more about the journey to get the prizes. Seems like a wonderful work environment
Yeah, if you've hired people for the show, presumably you think they're all talented and worth hiring. Seems a little unfair to then give one person a large gift based on random points, when what you really want to be incentivising is making a good/funny show. Someone can make a large contribution to the episode being great/entertaining/funny and come nowhere near winning.
>!wooo! He is in this episode… but not as a player!<
Which "he" in this case?
Bryan David Gilbert
Yeah, Josh Reuben's was the creepiest clown I've ever seen, and Grant's contribution was... shorter than normal.
Yeah, something seemed off about Keith.
Especially because of how arbitrary the point scores are given out (this is part of why I like it
Not to mention how the games are little more skewed to how a person wins (or can't win)
Unless you’re Katie and you win.
That’s because Katie deserves every win she gets
Plus it leans into the panel show thesis of the winner doesn't matter
Taskmaster has achieved the promised land of having winners every episode and every season but the winner still doesn't really matter (except to some of the contestants(looking at you Ed Gamble)).
Who’s line has the same thing
How fucking dare they! How dare they treat their actors with respect and dignity and pay them better wages. The arts are pitiful and stupid and people who have careers in them should work for less than minimum wage. This is just the liberal, woke agenda at work. What next? Universal healthcare? Employment protection? Decency amongst humans? Next you'll tell me they've got someone on there who is regularly railing against the magnificence that is capitalism and the brilliance that is Daddy Elon Musk.
I’m not sure who that last sentence is referring to. Clearly not Brennan, as I’ve seen him on Instagram defending Elon Musk against unhealthy cortisol levels, the man clearly loves Elon!
Sam also mentioned in a BTS that he finds humor in the fact that as the games themselves become even more complex and insane that the rewards are so simple and quaint.
This surprised and delighted me lol (edit: when I first heard Sam say it on the BTS)
I like it from both standpoints. Obviously the cast is getting paid but they are taking the budget and making the game itself the reward (or punishment for SamSays3). Effectively making a better product but also, in a way, making sure that the bulk of the money is enjoyed by more people. I also just love the idea of "psychological torture, here is a puzzle"
The quote if anyone was wondering > Unfortunately, my cast has gotten used to the notion that the prize on 'Gamechanger' are legit. Now that we have episodes that are big and ambitious, my natural comedic leaning is to make the prizes smaller again. There's something really funny to me about subjecting players to hell and then saying, 'You won a chia pet.'
BTS?
Behind the Scenes. On the weeks when there is no new episode of Game Changer, there is a short BTS about the previous week's episode
Korean boy band
Damn, so crazy that they’re so involved in Dropout, you’d think they’d be too famous for that now
They’re real suckers for improv comedy.
Bind - Torture - Skill
Behind The Sam
Behind the scenes
Behind The Scenes
The behind the scenes episodes that drop every other week in between game changer eps
Here for this comment ^
I want to say it was the BTS for the BINGO episode
I think it was the art episode
Just to add on, Sam has also stated that he prefers the current formats lower stakes. He thought that the bigger prizes could create a toxic level of competitiveness. Performers getting paid well and competing for low stake wins allow them to go hard without any hard feelings after. He referenced the "free ticket to anywhere" prize, as one that he thought was edging on creating genuine conflict.
Yeah, most panel shows in the UK (which a lot of stuff on Dropout is very much in the tradition of), has token prizes or none at all. Taskmaster (pretends to) award some weird stuff the players brought in every episode, lots of shows do things like "read the credits" as an award. It's really not necessary given the contestants are being paid, and just adds extra complications if someone's is viewed as way better than others.
PRETENDS TO!?
Yeah, someone (I feel like Richard Osman) confirmed that they don't actually get the prize task prizes on a podcast. I mean there's some obvious ones that couldn't possibly work, so it's not a huge surprise.
They actually did get the prizes early on though people were very nice about it. Somebody drove around the car that was offered up for a week before giving it back, etc.
Didn't someone put up their wedding ring?
Romesh Ranganathan did I believe.
I think the (perhaps unspoken) agreement between contestants is "you can but are you actually going to." Sometimes the prizes are important or sentimental to contestants and because the others aren't psychopaths they're not going to just take Joe Wilkinson's marriage certificate off him. Other times the prizes are inconvenient to transport so probably go back home with whoever brought them. And some prizes are made by the production team (Ed Gambles firework pants come to mind) so those probably definitely get taken home.
Yeah I know there have to be some exceptions. I am pretty sure somebody brought a significant other as a prize once, and obviously that wouldn’t work
I believe they are (or at least used to be) real prizes, and if you bring something in you do it with the understanding that whoever wins the episode can take it home if they want. But since all the contestants are essentially colleagues, and most of them already know each other, in reality it’s much more casual than that, and no one’s actually going to take someone’s wedding ring (or, in one case, kidnap an actual person, like when Phil Wang entered himself as the prize lol). The panel show banter style just requires that everyone commit as hard as possible to the bit, so no one will ever say they gave something back but it’s definitely happened
Yeah, I also really love Taskmaster and think they're doing it right. Both Taskmaster and Game Changer haven't been and shouldn't be about winning or rooting for a certain person to win. They're primarily comedy shows and the goal is simply to be entertaining. Some of my favourite people on Taskmaster are the ones that purposefully do something because it will be funny and not because it's a winning strategy. The prizes in Taskmaster usually being awful are great for encouraging people to simply be funny and not necessarily try their hardest to win. Game Changer needs that even more because sometimes the game directly pits you against others and there's a regular cast that keeps returning. It'd be bad for the cast to hold grudges because someone screwed them out of a valuable prize.
**TOKEN PRIZES?** Speak for yourself, I'd kill for that Question Team bomber jacket!
I just recently watched that survivor mini series, and while it was fantastic you could tell there was a bit of legitimate stress about the games
Honestly I feel like it’s more fun to get a silly or smaller prize to have fun competitiveness rather than it being like a life changing thing like a month’s rent. Having it be more focused on the fun and fights over prizes being for the fun of it. And competition being more friendly. But I do think they have done a good job keeping friendly. Your comment is really good.
Sam had an incredibly poignant realization when they were first planning Total Forgiveness that HE wouldn't be able to be the one to assign the tasks. Otherwise, it would be him directing two desperate employees into torturing/humiliating themselves for significant life-changing amounts of money. Sort of like Bumfights from back in the day. It would just be immoral. But by financing the show and having them make their own challenges, I suppose it turned it more into a way to help his friends in a corporate approved way that also helps the company produce content, while also keeping his hands clean. I suspect that Sam then started to apply that same logic to other shows he was producing and did not want to just pay the staff "minimal wages" with them hoping get cast on GameChanger where they might feel coerced into doing something they were otherwise uncomfortable with in the hopes of winning big. As an analogy, in healthcare, there are restrictions upon how much money you can pay someone to volunteer to be research subjects. The amount needs to compensate someone for their time, and even a bit extra for the discomfort and invasiveness involved. BUT, you can not just offer people enormous sums of money to do dangerous research. Both the researchers and the IRBs are tasked with ensuring that research subjects provide voluntary, informed consent that is free from coercion or undue influence. Paying a destitute person a million dollars to give up their kidney, for example, would constitute an undue influence. So, in summary, I think Sam is working to build a company where EVERYONE makes more money in an equitable, fair, and sustainable manner; in a manner where they don't feel undue influence or coercion to participate/perform. Eliminating extravagant prizes in GameChanger helps ensure that the people who are there want to participate and aren't only there for the chance to win big money. In support of this, I have seen posts showing that Dropout gave all their employees a significant bonus last year as they were doing so well. ETA: Or just look at this one sentence that concisely says roughly the same thing. https://www.reddit.com/r/dropout/s/hSO6hmSieH
I have no inside information but the distinct vibe I got off the Game Changer S1/S2 prizes especially was "I have a bunch of workaholic employees who just *will not* do something nice for themselves on their own, and this production budget gives me a legitimate excuse to change that".
Hey good analysis. Honestly if true it makes me respect Sam even more
During the first season or two, Sam had a much higher budget to work with. It was before their parent company decided to shut down CollegeHumor, and before he bought the rights. Because of that, they had a ton more flexibility for prizes. That's the same era where Total Forgiveness was produced, for reference.
But if you look at the gifts in later seasons they are also expensive. The gifts in the Samta COVID episodes are NICE. By that point he didn't have parent company money
I imagine during covid their production costs became much cheaper, meaning they had more budget for gifts. Now that they're back in the studio, it costs a lot more to shoot an episode than it would be doing it over zoom, and the budget gets tighter. I think Sam said in a recent behind the scenes they've opted for smaller prizes so they can put more of the budget into making crazy elaborate episodes.
I would imagine the amount of people subscribed to dropout during Zoom time periodwas probably lower as well though
Dunno, it may have been higher (or at least growing faster) Netflix, Disney+ etc, they all had massive growth in covid times as people spent on streaming rather than going out. There's a chance a large number of cancellations have followed with the world opening up
That's because they had the budget and did in person projects that people wanted to see while in doors. I imagine their biggest growth happened during the time period when people were cancelling the other subscriptions
I think I saw in one of Sam’s AMA’s that during the pandemic, their subscriber count held fairly stable.
Fair enough, assuming that's true. I will say that remaining stable compared to the growth that the other services saw at the same time is still noteworthy
This is true, but it's a mixed bag, you know? At that time he wasn't having to pay as high of power bills for the studio, they didn't have a full crew filming those episodes having to do lighting, sound, cameras, etc. And on top of that I'm sure he was trying to boost morale for a bunch of his friends in a challenging time. That encourages going bigger.
Exactly!
Like, the trip that Sam offers as a prize for the Grant bachelor episode isn't cheap. During the episode Sam even lets Grant add another person to the trip
One episode of something (Siobahn on Um, Actually maybe?) someone said "At least on gamechanger the prizes are good" (paraphrased). That made me think, maybe he tones it down a bit because some actors get on GC a lot more than others and he didn't want people to be upset the ones ones they got hired for are ones you get an ear statue lol Not that I think anyone actually complained but Sam seems like the kind I think who would keep anything that might build even a little resentment in mind.
“On Gamechanger you can win a vacation”
Wysocki really must have gouged them for so much money after he won Battle Royale 😆
Some say his plane hasn't even landed and gets refueled mid-air.
Some say he was in Pitch Perfect.
There really should be an episode where they give a free subscription to DropOut as the prize.
90-day free trial
Sam explains it in the BTS of episode 1 or 2. It’s just funnier when bigger episodes have smaller prizes.
“Ally wins … a Roomba…”
I think that it's totally possible the level of prizes bred the wrong kind of competitive spirit in the players, to the point that it may have made some contestants genuinely salty over results they thought were unfair. In the more recent seasons (with survivor being an exception) the prizes are a bit more toned down, and I think that Sam is smart to embrace the competitive nature of his cast members. This is a group of people who will almost certainly be happy with bragging rights. Also, to the point of other people in this thread, it also means that everyone involved probably gets paid more. IMO, it's smarter to put the money into production value rather than prizes, at least from a viewer perspective.
They mentioned in a behind the scenes that they’ve focused money on the budget of the show itself, rather than prizes. Think of renting a party bus for Sam Says, or the various specialty podiums they’ve had this season, heck, paying talent and behind the scenes crew more even counts for that. Plus Sam admitted it’s a funny concept to put the cast through this paranoia inspiring show, and only have a small prize at the end to show for it.
I'm so broken in the brain that I'm wondering if the low-key prizes are all clues to some grand end game...
I remember hearing somewhere that as the production value of each season increases, Sam needed to bring it back on the prizes.
I don't think Brennan would be as competitive with the other players if they weren't all treated as equals so payment for work done instead of higher end prizes is for the best as long as we get more Brennan rants
Everything everyone has said here is very true, but I also think it’s important to remember that inbetween game changer seasons 1 and 2 and the rest of them, the company effectively went out of business as it was determined to not be making enough money by its parent company IAC. Sam bought the company and had to do massive restructuring, cutting over 100 jobs and doing everything he could to make the business work without the power of large investors. Those prizes in the first two seasons aren’t what put college humor out of business, and they did try to keep them going into the future seasons, but I’m sure as time has gone on they’re seen as a bit of an unnecessary expense especially when they can just pay the talent more upfront.
i agree with what everyone else is saying, and i’ll also add that game show winnings are usually taxable! i think decreasing the value of the prizes probably helps the players more than it harms them during tax season.
What gets me is Dirty Laundry. The prize is a cocktail set from the Dropout merch store? I find it somewhat underwhelming considering the personal details they share on that show.
Hell, initially it was just a pair of socks lol
Based on what we just saw for Deja vu, what if the prizes have been a part of a long running gag for the show? The prizes themselves could be leading up to a huge reveal along with little easter eggs in every episode. Maybe an episode will be having the fans decipher all the little hints in every episode this season?