Jeopardy! contestants talk buzzer technique and more in our comment roundup
Proper Buzzer Technique
Earlier this week, Sam Barsanti wrote about some of the problems with the latest video game version of Jeopardy!. Down in the comments, NakedSnake put out a call for readers’ Jeopardy! stories. The thread was soon visited by a few contestants, who talked about bathroom breaks, the consequences for revealing the results of your episode before it airs, and the wise words of the show’s “contestant wranglers.” Joining in on a conversation about the specifics of the show’s buzzer and proper buzzer technique, Arthur Chu, a current Jeopardy! champion, had this to say about showdown between Ken Jennings and IBM’s Watson computer, a John Henry-esque battle mentioned in Sam’s article:
One thing that made this a little more “fair” was that Watson was programmed not to buzz until it actually knew the answer, which meant that if it spent any additional time “thinking,” it was possible for a human to beat it (especially if the human is using the hammer-continuously-on-the-button-to-beat-the-lockout strategy). Humans, on the other hand, can and often do buzz without having any idea what the answer is, and then use the awkward pause after Alex calls on them to try to figure it out.
If you actually watch the games the humans do manage to beat Watson to the buzzer sometimes, whether by being supernaturally quick and accurate or because Watson, like many computers, sometimes got weirdly hung up “thinking” about something that wasn’t too hard for a human.
As I understand it, the question of how you could possibly make the game fair for a computer that can “buzz in” with superhuman speed was of major concern to the Jeopardy! producers. They insisted for this reason that Watson not be electronically connected to the signaling system but instead be given a real, physical buzzer and a mechanical “thumb” to click the button with, to simulate a human buzzing situation as closely as possible.
Still Mega?
Peter Malamud Smith brought us a piece about the litany of fan-made Mega Man games that have filled the void left by Capcom’s neglect of the series. Peter mentioned that while these efforts should be lauded, they also serve to remind players of the nuances that made the original Mega Man title pillars of classic gaming. For PaganPoet, however, they were a sign that maybe the special kind of difficulty in those old games doesn’t hold up:
I know I run the risk of blasphemy here, but I honestly don’t have the patience for Mega Man-style games anymore. Consider the Yellow Devil from the very first game. There’s a boss at the end of a punishingly difficult level that actually requires you to memorize the order in which its body parts fly across the room to avoid them. No rhyme, no reason, just memorization and trial and error.
That kind of thing could fly in the ’80s and early ’90s, because that’s just the way games were back then, and we accepted that. But now? Forget that. I expect creativity in the way a game challenges me. Even games like Rayman Origins and Super Meat Boy that seem to always be lauded for their “old-school difficulty” have tight controls, and your deaths always feel like they truly were your fault.