What is Game Changer and why has it completely revolutionized television with its originality

Since the beginning of time, television contests have had one main principle: not to confuse the viewer with new challenges or particularly strange concepts. If your show is about culture, then it’s questions and answers. If it’s about skill, physical challenges. But always, every week, there was an effort to have an oasis of calm with something you knew how it was going to work, phase after phase, until the end. Many contests have gone years without changing their mechanics, repeating the same thing over and over without their audience getting tired, from Jeopardy to The Wheel of Fortune. However, the arrival of the Internet has disrupted an entire generation, which is not willing to see the same thing all the time. And that’s where Game Changer comes in.

¡Es hora de un cambio radical!

Since 2019 (it started at College Humor and soon after became part of Dropout), Game Changer has shocked the entire industry with an unyielding principle: when the show starts, none of the contestants know what they are going to play, how it works, and what they need to do to win. They must, in fact, discover it along the way. What began very innocently, with fun episodes that did not go down in history, quickly turned into a madness filled with strategies, top-level comedy, epic improvisations, and, above all, off-the-cuff anti-capitalist speeches. We wouldn’t want it any other way.

One day, Game Changer can bring together nine contestants to set up a homemade Survivor game. Another, they must do everything the host says (if preceded by “Sam Says,” and it seems easy but it is not). Over time, it evolved into episodes that took a year to make or even an adventure in a castle exclusively for the host that the contestants set up in their free time alongside the show’s crew. Because, it is important, the contestants are actually collaborators, they don’t win anything and are on Dropout’s payroll, which allows the tension to dissipate and they simply focus on having fun and making the best show possible. The result is, almost always, out of the ordinary.

Conventional television has not been able to react to the impact of Game Changer, its success on social media, and its feeling of absolute freedom and continuous surprise. Anything can happen at any moment, and when you start the episode, you don’t know what will come during the next 40 minutes. These are meticulously prepared shows, taking into account all possible variables and an oasis of joy amidst the tumultuous waters of the Internet. They can just as easily do a completely musical episode (my favorite, by the way) as they can spin a roulette to impose cumulative orders: it’s comfort, yes, but in a different way. The kind that stimulates.

The program itself has had four spin-offs (the most well-known, Make Some Noise) and has created something vital for making what you do go viral: an immense sense of closeness with the audience. That’s why they can even afford to set up a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with the sole purpose of financially helping one of the most beloved cast members, Jacob Wysocki. In the end, it has become so popular that it even had a crossover with The Rookie and has based an entire subscription system on its popularity (and that of other shows like the role-playing game Dimension 20, or the aforementioned Make Some Noise). Season 8 is just around the corner, and it’s the best time to catch up because, when someone copies it in Spain, we can always say that we know exactly what they are doing, and it goes against the rules of the game.