Why Survivor is an Awesome Game and Not Lame Like You Probably Think It Is · 3:01am Sep 15th, 2015
I have two blog posts finished, actually, and since I missed one last week I’ll post one tonight and one tomorrow. Tomorrow’s will be about writing, so more likely to be of interest to most of you. But right now I’ve got hype, so I’m gonna take a minute to fangirl and try to convince you to like what I like. Okay?
I felt really dumb getting ready to rave about a 15 year old TV show no one cares about. Then I saw this on io9 today, and I felt a little better. But I have a much better argument for why you should watch a 15 year old game show than that person writes about.
Survivor is most commonly thought of as some combination of “the first huge reality show,” “that show where people bicker, then they give the biggest asshole a million dollars,” or “that show where they pretend to strand people on an island but the producers won’t let them really starve or anything.” It is sometimes all of those things, but it’s not worth watching for any of them.
It is worth watching because it’s the closest thing we have to a sport based on “the game of thrones.” It’s a social strategy game that throws people into a stressful setting that requires some level of dependence on one another; weights the situation slightly for strength, endurance, speed, and puzzle solving; and then lets 20 people see who can convince the other people competing to give them the prize.
For those of you who have never bothered to watch Survivor, or watched it long ago, or never paid attention to the mechanics, this is how the game works:
Twenty (or so) players are divided into two to four teams, called tribes. Each tribe is dropped off in a separate part of an unoccupied area with limited food and tools, and access to the natural resources in the area (usually bamboo and palm trees, some fruits, a body of water for gathering seafood, and a fresh water source.) Each team works together to make a campsite and gather food and water.
The first half of the season involves the tribes competing against each other in challenges (usually involving strength, speed, endurance, puzzle solving, and/or teamwork.) The losing tribe has to go to tribal council and vote for one of their members to leave the game.
Once ten people (or so) have been voted out of the game, the tribes merge into one tribe and move to one camp. They have to continue maintaining the camp, often with dwindling food sources. From that point on, the challenges are every player for themselves, with the winning player getting immunity at the next vote. All of the players attend each tribal council and someone who doesn’t have immunity has to be voted off.
When the game gets down to nine players (or so,) each person voted off becomes a part of the jury, and watches the behavior at tribal council. They also stay together at a separate location and share notes on what happened when they were playing.
The last two or three people left in the game attend final tribal council, where the jury each get to ask them a question. Then the jury votes, based on whatever criteria they want, for the winner.
Those are the basics. There are a few things that have been added to throw some randomness into the mix; for example there’s usually a point when the tribes are competing where they trade a few members, and it’s become standard for there to be some hidden immunity idols in the areas around camp, which can be played after the votes are cast but before they’re read in order to save someone who might have been voted off. These can make people targets or be used as bargaining chips.
From the very first season, it’s been recognized that winning doesn’t depend on being better at survival, or stronger, or smarter than anyone else. It depends on who everyone is voting for. This is the single most important part of the entire game, and the one thing that runs through every part of it: The only way you can lose the game is to lose at votes. In theory, you can lose every challenge and still win the game. You can suck at every aspect of camping and win the game. But you only lose the game if you can’t convince people to keep you around until the end, then vote to give you the money.
Does this reward manipulative people? Well, yes, but manipulative doesn’t always mean what you think. On Survivor, in various seasons it’s meant happily lying to people then stabbing them in the back; being mostly honest with people and turning on them only when it’s absolutely necessary; laying low and being underestimated; making a promise to a small group and staying with them to the end; being really damn likable and attaching themselves to someone who does the dirty work; or being so damn disliked that everyone thinks they can beat the person. And, in the end, it’s a full-contact social game. Everyone who plays it knows that everyone else needs to vote them off, just like everyone who plays football knows the other team would like to tackle them. At least no one gets concussions from being lied to.
I think it’s an awesome game. There have been winners I love, and winners I hate. The game has changed as players have learned from the past, and as the producers have changed the game to keep them on their toes. In the tenth season they started occasionally bringing back people who had played before, sometime to compete against each other, sometimes to compete against fresh faces, and that’s another layer: they already know the game, but everyone already knows their game too.
To address some of the major criticisms other people seem to have:
The survival aspect isn’t “real,” but it’s important to the game. Survivor is not a game about survival, but the living conditions contribute to the tension, and provide context to evaluate the players. Who does what work around camp, who used up or lost what resources, and how people hold up mentally and socially under hunger, sleep deprivation, and weather conditions are all things that players have used to influence votes. Someone who’s useful and considerate is important to have around in a camp, but they’re also someone who might win.
The bickering is sometimes annoying, but it’s also important to the game. Survivor is a game about relationships. Every crack is an opportunity for someone, and the question is if they’re good enough to know how to play it. When one player snaps at another, they might win allies or they might make enemies, or they might give another player a chance to do the same depending on where they side in the situation.
Physical ability is important at times, but not that important to the game as a whole. It’s possible for someone to make it to the end by winning immunity over and over, but everyone playing the game knows that, and they don’t want the people stronger than them to stick around. What more useful is for someone to be able to pull off a challenge win when it matters and buy themselves time to get in a better spot socially.
Being a manipulative jerk often backfires. Being a complete ass is a really good way to get second place in Survivor. The only way to do that and win is for the player to make sure the person sitting next to them is even more disliked, which has really only happened twice in 30 seasons. And it’s totally backfired twice (with the same player, in fact.)
The “reality” is edited, but the game isn’t. Sure, the producers pick and choose scenes to try to construct drama, on both an episode and season level. Some people come across nicer than they really are, some people look like bigger jerks than they really are. But the producers don’t mess with the votes; if someone is wins, it’s always going to be because they managed to not get voted off, and they convinced the jury to vote for them. The producers know that, and they’ll always try to make sure you see how they did it.
Some seasons suck, some seasons are great. Just like any sport, sometimes one person dominates and the competition is boring. Sometimes an undeserving player gets lucky at the right time and wins the whole game, and it’s unsatisfying. Sometimes the player you were rooting for loses early, and you have to decide which of the remaining players you think is least bad. But the next season is always a whole new game.
So, I think you should give Survivor a shot if social intrigue interests you at all. The upcoming season (Cambodia) is looking awesome, but it is a spoiler for a lot of previous seasons; it’s all players who have played before, but didn’t win their seasons.
If binge watching is more your thing, or you want to see some of the best examples of what I’m going on about, my picks for the best seasons are:
Season 2 - Australian Outback
Season 7 - Pearl Islands
Season 13 - Cook Islands
Season 16 - Micronesia (Contains returning players and therefore spoilers for previous seasons)
Season 20 - Heroes vs. Villains (Contains returning players and therefore spoilers for previous seasons)
(It’s hard to judge more recent seasons, because they’re fresh in my memory, so I don’t know how they’ll hold up. But as of now I also enjoyed Season 28 - Cagayan and Season 30 - Worlds Apart, both of which are original casts, so spoiler free.)
I think Seasons 12-30 are streaming on Hulu Plus, but I don't know what other places around the net might be showing them.
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Damn... Haven't watched that series in a looooooooooooooooong time...
Amazing it's still going strong, really.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Incidentally, David Sirlin wrote a really interesting article about Survivor from the standpoint of "playing to win" many years ago which I thought was pretty fascinating.
Bloody hell...
That series is still going?!
It is almost old enough to get a driver's license.
3394084
Like I said, it's less a TV show and more a sport. Each season is a new playing field, with new challengers and strategies.
3394064
That article is totally true. But his predictions in the last paragraphs are equally true-- the game has gotten much messier (and more interesting) as everyone involved knows how to play. That's what makes it so good; these days there is no winning strategy to go in with-- everyone wants to make alliances, almost everyone knows that alliances are weakest when the tribe is at odd numbers (if you know you're at the bottom of a four person alliance, at seven people left you want to grab the ones not in your alliance and form a new one where you're at the top.) And when everyone is trying to play the game, it comes down to who has the best new strategy for this particular group.
And that's my problem. For a show called survivor, they sure don't have to survive much. Where's my Survivor: Detroit edition, where they live in a subway and the last person to not get shot gets an all-expenses paid trip to a warm hotel room for a weekend? Put a pack of twelve homeless people in that situation and you get the best survivor show ever.
There's something I'm discontented with, in the one season of Survivor which I watched from start to finish (a new eps was always on at the exact time I'm in the gym every week, so I managed to get hooked while training). Survivor: Cagayan, the 2014 season, winner Tony Vlachos.
So in this season, the winner Tony was an openly treacherous asshole, and his sidekick (the 2nd place guy) was a nice Asian dude who was basically hoping everyone would vote for him because he wasn't a treacherous asshole. At least, if the editing can be believed. Everyone knew this. Tony's plea to the final voting council was that he should win exactly because he's manipulative, because that's the acknowledged goal of the game, and he should be rewarded for playing the game faithfully. The contest hosts also cut in, agree, and tell the audience the same thing.
In the end, everyone voted for Tony to win. Ostensibly because they agreed with him. I don't get that mentality. So what if the game is geared for assholes to win? So what if the hosts also seem to encourage this? Why should I respect the desires of a show that made me suffer mosquitos, sand ticks, and tapeworms? WTF would I care as an already-lost loser? I should be intentionally snubbing the hosts and everyone who pissed me off. To hell with the system, as a loser who holds the power for revenge, I would make sure Tony goes home in tears and the nice Asian guy gets the money! I still don't understand why the council of losers didn't think the same way I do.
The reason I'm not eager to watch more seasons is because it seems contestants have bought into the hype of "reward the asshole", and so any true psychological plays are lost.
3394214
Remember, they were all there to play the game. When you get juries like that, most of them were thinking "If I could do it over again, I'd do exactly what Tony did." Woo, on the other hand, was great at challenges, but mostly he just followed Tony. He's not innocent, his strategy was to let Tony do all that, and take all the blame, so he didn't have to. Like I said, this is full-contact, they all went there knowing that people were going to lie to them. Woo misread the jury; some juries in the past have hated how someone played the game and voted for the quiet, nice player. But this jury thought Tony was the one who did the work to get there, so they voted for him.
I wasn't a fan of Tony or Woo (team Spencer all the way.) But Woo and Spencer are both back this season (along with Kass and Tasha) so we'll see how that plays out.
3394214
(I think you'd probably like Season 20, if you get the chance to check it out.)
3394228
I know that's what the jury was thinking, and that's why they voted for Tony. What I'm discontented with is the sheeple mentality of it. A big ugly parallel to the illusion of the broken American Dream: "I shouldn't punish these winners even though they stepped on me to get there, because one day I'll be a winner too." Shyeah right, now not only are you a loser you're also a moron.
It reminds me of the John Oliver episode on the Wealth Gap. Ordinary Americans opposed the estates tax even though 98% would never be rich enough for the tax to ever touch them, because they're all dreaming about the day when they would beat the house and roll out of the casino showered in millions.
If I was a contestant on Survivor, I'd make it clear I would vote against the guy/girl who betrays me the most/worst. And I'd try to convince everyone on the island that if everyone does the same I'm doing, we can break this stupid ugly game and drag President Snow off his throne. His throne made out of the skulls of contestants.
3394362
Well, first of all, some people do that. And that's fine! There are several seasons where someone has drumed up the jury against someone who was an ass. Who "deserves" to win is decided by the people playing it.
But when you're asking people to give up 40 days of their life to play the game, most people want to be playing it. And people who want to play it tend to admire people who play it well. If you're not willing to betray peopl yourself, you're never going to make the jury. There is literally no way to win at Survivor without turning on someone eventually. You need a majority of votes to stay in the game, and only one person wins. Those other people aren't going to vote themselves off, and every person on that jury knew that when they landed on that beach.
These aren't tributes. You're in the wrong universe. These are people who stepped up all on their own to play the game of thrones.
Edit: Once again, I don't like Tony. He's not a clean player, there are other winners who were much better socially, and faced a jury that actually mostly liked them because they kept in control the whole game. But the person who wins Survivor is the one who made it to the end and the jury thought should win, and since Tony made the jury want to give him the money, Tony won.
3394392
Based on what you've been saying, I think I watched precisely the wrong Survivor season as a first-time viewer who also has a Libertarian bent. I watched precisely the right season to turn someone of my philosophy off of it.
I understand that, and that's my point: I don't see how Tony made the jury want to give him the money. IMO Tony didn't convince the jury, the hype convinced the jury. The toxic hype which said "I should vote for the worst asshole, because that's the game. If I don't vote for the worst asshole it means I don't believe in the game and I wasted 40 days of my life."
They can't imagine that the game can be played any other way. If everybody just acted like this was a real survival situation and worked together to make their time there as comfortable as possible, they can still all vote for someone at the end -- the best leader, the most trustworthy and reliable person, etc. The network would hate them for it because they neutralized the bickering and drama, but who cares they still gotta pay the winner.
This has nothing to do with anything, I just want aattention.
Survivor is originally a swedish idea. Expedition Robinson. Eyup. Sweden-fycking people up since -45.
I haven't watched Survivor, but I own ten seasons of Hell's Kitchen on DVD and obsessively rewatch them for very similar reasons
There's the additional level of people having to cook food properly, and then some recurring things that provide an interesting twist, notably that the final two end up competing using mostly their previous rivals as line cooks. Several people have won the whole thing through winning the loyalty of their previous rivals and motivating them to work hard, and some have blown it through being huge assholes that inspire no loyalty. Fitting, since Gordon Ramsay by all accounts is a super-demanding leader who does inspire intense loyalty (back in his early days an entire restaraunt quit their jobs to go with him when he asked)
Gives it a kind of focus in that all the cooks are trying to do a particular difficult thing well, and judging themselves and each other based not only on personality but also whether they're able to do the thing as well as they THINK they can.
Not only have I been a revamped fan of the series very recently, but I've also been putting in applications online to get on the show myself (I doubt I'd ever get on, but I'm still hopeful
). Honestly, the biggest reason I want to get on is because it's one of those shows where ANYONE could win. Like you said, you don't have to be the smartest, strongest or most social; you just have to be clever/lucky enough to make it to the end however you can. It might not be the most feasible dream to reach, but dammit if I don't try.
3394405
That's the thing, what Tony convinced the jury of was that he was the best leader of the choices they had; he was the one who led Woo to the end. He made the decisions, and they were the right decisions to get there. Woo was nicer, but not as effective a leader. And Woo had clearly followed Tony, so he couldn't argue that he would have been a better leader except... whatever, because he could have stepped away at some point and tried to lead, and he never did. That really what a lot of the juries are looking for-- the person who was able to control the game, who, within the game, is the de facto leader.
To play the game like you're suggesting, so the nicest people or the people you would want to lead make it to the end, would require people to forget that they're playing for a million dollars. It sounds nice to say that, but if you're not the nicest person, or the person who's leading the camp, or the best at survival, (and statistically, chances are that you're not,) and you get the chance to vote one of those people off and get them out of the way, you're going to take it so that maybe now you are the smartest or nicest or best leader left, or at least you're closer to it.
Edit: If you're libertarian, let me put it like this: There can be no non-aggression principal in Survivor, because the rules of the game require an aggression at every tribal council. At some point you're required to act unethically by voting for someone you don't think deserves to go home. You only get to choose whether you're voting for that person based on them being the least worthy of your current options, or based on them being the most likely to beat you in the end. Most people will do the latter, so most people won't blame someone like Tony for doing the latter.
3394537
You still think I don't get the psychological game behind Survivor. I do. I understand that while you're on the island, you would ofc be selfish and vote out the best leaders, the best survivors, the most charismatic and kind ppl... because you don't want the competition. I get that, and I have no problem with the contestants doing that. While on the island.
But the final jury? None of them are on the island anymore. None of them have a million dollars at stake. This is their best opportunity to thumb their nose at The Man, i.e. the network behind Survivor. Their chance to say "You can't dangle any more carrots in front of my face, so now I get to act like a human being. I'm going to point to the worst asshole on the island and say FUCK YOU."
Was Woo a good leader? No. But he was not a treacherous tyrant. Tony fucked over pretty much everybody. Here was their chance to say, "You know what, you showed that you're Top Psycho. But you know what else? Fuck you, and fuck this game. I'm purposely going to give the money to the person who didn't screw me over, because why shouldn't I? What do you think of that, huh?"
They owed no loyalty to the network. But they acted as if they're a jury on a court of law and this is srs bsns, and they had to condone injustice for some higher principle. What a bunch of sheep.
(Excuse me for getting heated. Nothing against you, ofc.)
(It's kind of fun to rant about that season. The finale made me so pissed off in the gym.)
3394064
This is the kind of thing I mean. The comparison to fighting games is false. In a fighting game you win by beating others. In Survivor you stay in the game by beating others, but you win the endgame on the goodwill of the others alone. You don't get to call others scrubs, because their "useless made-up values" really do matter at the endgame. If all of them hated infinites, but you the oh-so-mighty pro player got to the endgame by abusing infinites, you have no cause to celebrate.
At least, that should be the way it goes. But it seems the jury bought into the hype starting right from season 1, when they had no obligation to.
Though to be fair, at least just from the article, it seems like Rich wasn't treacherous. If he had explained himself well enough at the end, I can see how the jury would admire his play and reward him. But I don't feel Tony earned anything like that. Like I said, I feel that the hype helped Tony skate by, legitimizing his crap by allowing him to say "I'm just like Rich." And the jury followed the culture of "Survivor pro" like sheep, and gave Tony the win.
3394064 That link isn't working for me. Is this the same article?
3394594
No, what I don't think you get is that the people sitting on the jury like the psychological game of Survivor. That's why they played, 28 seasons after Richard Hatch. They aren't blindly following the lead of previous seasons, they saw previous seasons and thought "that looks awesome!" They wanted to be Richard Hatch themselves, and if they voted against Tony because he did it better, that wouldn't be fighting the system, it would be being a sore loser-- punishing someone for doing exactly what they came here to do better than them. They all know that.
If a majority of them really hated Tony, they had 37 days to vote him off. People have gotten people voted off before because they hated them, that's as good a reason as any. And if they really hated him, they wouldn't have voted for him. I bet they would have voted for Woo over Kass, if he brought her. And Tony probably would have lost if Spencer or Tasha was sitting next to him, because they were playing the game and people actually liked them. But the jury, and that jury especially (I think Spencer gave a great speech about it) really liked the psychological game on the island, and admired how Tony played it.
3394871
Yes it is.
3394673
The game is essentially competitive social manipulation. Rich was very good at it, and pretty much set the stage for all future competitions. No one goes on Survivor anymore who isn't like Rich, because if you do, you'll lose early and be out.
I have no idea who Tony is, I'm afraid.
It is also worth noting that they deliberately manipulate their editing to create storylines and interesting characters; it can be difficult to tell whether or not someone is "really" like how they are portrayed on a TV reality show in many cases.
That's ignoring the reality shows which are, in fact, more or less scripted.
Ah, I used to friggen love this show! My mom and I would always pick favourites and make bets on who we thought was going to win (Ugh, I still remember Rob. What an arse). I remember the time that guy burnt the crap outta his hands and had to be airlifted out (Season three - the African one, I think?). Challenges seemed to get a bit more tame after that, probably because the producers were scared of getting sued by someone. I may have to look it up again - it's been years.
3395295
That was season two, Australia. He wasn't even in a challenge, just tending the campfire! Challenges have gotten easier... or at least sleeker. They remind me of kind of a big, tropical themed Double Dare these days. And they have a lot more food rewards-- I don't think it's fun living on rice with a cheeseburger once a week, but people used to look kinda emaciated by the end, and now they just lost some weight.
As far as I know they haven't managed to make the fires less burn-y, but you know how edited these reality shows are.
3395378
Oh yeah, the fire-tending part - didn't he pass out or something and partially fall into it? And yeah, the food rewards did get more impressive as the show went on. The first bit they'd win, like, extra rice or something, and then later on it'd be like "and the winner and three guests of his or her choosing receive a four-course steak dinner! May the odds be ever in your favour!"
3394874
I think Woo really misread the jury, in that case. He sort of slipped back into a pre-season-1 mindset, thinking he'd be seen as slimy if he voted Tony out of the endgame rather than keep his word. He chose to keep his word (help Tony), when he had no need to, and he got punished instead of rewarded for it. He thought keeping one's word still meant something, when in truth the jury was waiting for him to betray Tony and was actually disappointed in him when he chose not to.
This is the subtle line I think the jury didn't see: Woo wasn't stupid and merely didn't understand how to 1-up Tony. At the end, Woo had gotten into a perfect position to warp into a snake, betray Tony, and likely win. He chose not to, and expected the jury to understand that he's not playing stupid, just playing clean. He's smart enough to put himself into a "pro" position, and that should have been rewarded. He's clean enough to not be an asshole, and that also should have been rewarded. No part of that is "being a scrub". Woo didn't give himself a good enough report at the end.
For future generations, I wanted to leave a note here.
Bookplayer convinced me to watch Survivor with this blog. So I've been watching it. And I just finished Season 13.
Survivor Season 13 is amazing and you should go watch it. And make sure you don't get spoiled on it. It is freaking incredible. Go. Now. Do it.
3396677
Hey, I came across this today, and I thought you might find it interesting. It puts that final vote between Woo and Tony in a whole new perspective:
The Mystery of Weasel Woo
So, maybe the hero really did win that one. The game is the game, but there are some lines you don't cross.
3428069
Thank you. That explains so much.
Even if that alleged breach claimed by the blogger wasn't the actual event which occurred (he cited no sources), the canon statements given by the ex-contestants do clearly point to incidents where Woo committed breaches which the TV show decided to cover up. And the only reason for that on a show like this, would be breach of game rules.
And if he actually stole medication, that's not just breach of rules that's criminal.
And it explains Woo's decision to keep Tony around for the Final 2. If he is that disliked, then his only chance was to keep around the person who may possibly be disliked even more.