Some game shows, like Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, feel like they were born to be played at home, with consistent structures and easy-to-grasp rules; Game Changer, a show where not even the contestants know the rules before the game starts, is not one of them. Still, host Sam Reich wanted to transform his hit Dropout show into a board game for some time now, and with the launch of the Game Changer: Home Edition Kickstarter, it seems he and his team think they have finally cracked the case.
“We thought there might be an opportunity here,” Reich tells me over a Zoom interview. “For like over a year, we were taking pitches from game designers. I had half a vision for what I wanted this to be, which was […] this idea of like, a modular game with episodes inspired by the show. A game designer named Joshua Balvin came to me, shared that vision with me, went away, worked on some game design, [and] came back to us. We played them in the room with my writers and my producers. We were like, ‘Oh my god, this really works.'”
Game Changer: Home Edition, if fully funded on Kickstarter (UPDATE, 12:41 PM ET: the campaign has already decimated its goal), will launch with three games inspired by episodes of the show: Name A Number, Bingo, and Sam Says. Reich describes it as “the only game where the game changes every round,” where players can swap the order of the games each time they play. This maintains the show’s varied nature, though the difference here is that everyone is on the same page. The surprise doesn’t come from the rules themselves, but the subversive nature of the game’s prompts.
On Game Changer, Reich acts as the host but also a game master of sorts, adjudicating the rules, assigning points, and guiding players through each round. I asked Reich if the team considered making a hosted version of the game, and he said no, though in a comedically self-deprecating way.
“As we were trying to dream up what Game Changer would be in home game form, my feeling was like, if we couldn’t figure out the version of it that didn’t have that person who was left out, I would feel sad for that person,” he says. “Like, I am very content to be that person in the world of Dropout slash Game Changer, because I always feel like the least funny person on stage who should show their worth in that way. It’s like, how I show my value. But, you know, depending on how you structure it: not necessarily a very fun or creative role. Like, at least in Dungeons and Dragons, the DM is the storyteller, right? But here, if you’re not careful, that role becomes merely mechanical.”
To Sam’s point, his role as host means wearing different hats depending on the episode, and it’s not necessarily a clean conversion to a board game. Some episodes of the show have simple rules, while others require more subterfuge, like those when the rules of a game are very slowly revealed. They’re fun to watch, but harder to play, and therefore harder to host. It’s important, then, for the games in Game Changer: Home Edition to be based on the episodes with cleaner premises.
“There are times, even in the most recent season, where Game Changer becomes a little bit more like performance art than true game,” Reich says. “I actually think in the next season of the show, the one that’s to air, we drive way back in the other direction, where it’s like a very gamey game, game game. And you know, the show is based on novelty and variety, so we’ll always, like, steer around a little bit and end up with some episodes that color outside the lines a little bit in any direction. But, like, [the games in Home Edition] are incredibly playable. There will not be ambiguity about winners and losers in Home Edition.”
Despite the lack of ambiguity around winners, scoring in Game Changer: Home Edition isn’t always cut and dry. For instance, Sam Says, a more complicated version of Simon Says, might lead to arguments over whether or not a player correctly followed (or ignored) an instruction. With that in mind, the board game comes with rules for these scenarios, allowing players to call each other out for “overly creative thinking,” as Reich puts it.
He mentions that when he and some Dropout cast members played the game on an upcoming episode of Dropout’s board game show Parlor Room, this ruling method came into play. “There is one moment [when we played] Name A Number where Brennan and Demi come up with a particularly creative answer to a prompt, and it ends with me chasing Demi out of the room and tackling him. Trying to tackle him. Trying unsuccessfully to tackle him.”
Brennan Lee Mulligan yells, “I don’t think I’m f—ing crazy” in a clip from the trailer for the upcoming season of Game Changer.
Reich also mentions that Smosh (a popular family of YouTube channels) also filmed some videos playing Game Changer: Home Edition, and it sounds like both videos will launch during this Kickstarter campaign.
The game is currently “80 percent” done, according to Reich, and the Kickstarter should take them across the finish line. While it’s unsurprising to see him as the public face in this press circuit promoting the crowdfunding campaign, I asked him to clarify how much involvement he had in the board game’s actual design. As Dropout’s CEO, the host of two of its shows, and the producer of basically every other one, he’s publicly very busy, but it sounds like he couldn’t help but add another project to his plate.
“I am too in the weeds on absolutely everything,” he says, joking but also not joking. “Help me. Please, for the love of God, help me.”
Despite his joke about being overwhelmed, he goes on to explain just how Dropout plans to make this Kickstarter special. “As you could imagine, we can’t run a Kickstarter campaign without that Kickstarter campaign being a game in and of itself,” he says. To be honest, reader, I hadn’t considered that at all. Reich continues, saying, “So now we’re designing those games, and I’m also too involved in that process.”
Sam Reich schemes in the dark in the trailer for season 8 of Game Changer.
I’ll cut to the chase: the Game Changer: Home Edition Kickstarter won’t have monetary stretch goals. “What if there were other things that people had to do in order to achieve those stretch goals?” Reich posits. “Like, some of them could some of them could be tangentially monetary or like, have to do with the extent to which the campaign is shared. But what if they were silly, and what if there were a lot of them?”
Day one will begin with “easy” things the community can do, but further goals will increase in complexity. Reich also insists that his team will stand by the specific requirements of each goal. ” So like, if we don’t get one donation from Antarctica,” he says, trailing off and giving me a serious look. I ask if Antarctica is the peak of the stretch goals’ difficulty. He replies with a low-pitched, drawn-out, “No.”
At the time of writing, the game’s Kickstarter has yet to launch, and I am endlessly curious to see what sorts of goals Reich and the team at Dropout come up with. I appreciate the crew’s insistence on creativity, especially since it’s so core to Game Changer’s identity. According to Reich, the show’s specific goals are “kind of a moving target,” based on the season and the game is similar, but their broader priorities – humor and surprise – are shared. “The hope is really that this game can continue to feel like a spiritual extension of the show,” he says, “And so it’ll be fun to continue to answer that question.”