#10: Interactive Inner Circle
2005

Winner: Andrew
Runner-Up: Stephanie
Third: Julia
Fourth: Camm

The Cast:

Alicia (10th)
Andrew (Winner)
Anita (13th)
Babette (21st)
Ben (15th)
Brenda (19th)
Brian (11th)
Camm (4th)
Debra (17th)
George (12th)
Janice (18th)
Julia (3rd)
Kelly (6th)
Kevin (5th)
Lamia (16th/Quit)
Lavada (22nd)
Maggie (9th)
Melissa (14th)
Mo (8th)
Padraig (20th)
Paul (7th)
Stephanie (Runner-Up)


Description:

Interactive Inner Circle was the third and final game I hosted as Dean. I based it off of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge show, where everyone competed in challenges and the top three point-earners were the "inner circle" and voted out one of their tribemates. I still really like the concept of this game, and it definitely had its moments, but it was frankly VERY difficult to host. Everyone was incredibly intense, it was a very big cast (22 people), and every challenge decision I made was second-guessed by someone. I was also disappointed that some active players were eliminated early as threats.

Looking back on it, I would say this cast was interesting, and fairly diverse, if nothing else. A few of the people in this cast ended up becoming FGCers. Ben is benred1221, Kevin is KPM114, Lavada is kinkybrownsuga, and Stephanie is SC2427. However, Mo was an older lady and not Jukebox Blues. Brian was actually my younger brother playing an alias. I am fairly confident that Babette was a third personality of Toby/Zoey that I mentioned before. The best alias by far, though, was my pal Peter as "Julia Solari," a fat, bitchy Guidette who somehow made it to the final three without forming any real bonds with any of the "old" people, and making fun of them behind their backs.

This game was really a battle of the cliques. Many of the old-school Yahoo players (Andrew, Anita, Alicia, Brenda, Mo, Padraig, and Kelly) bonded together, as did some of the younger, feistier non-Yahoo players (particularly Janice, Lamia and Lavada, who I think were already friends coming into the game). The younger alliance self-destructed early when Lavada was eliminated in the first round, I expelled Janice for not doing any of the challenges, and Lamia quit because she was angry that I had expelled Janice. At that point, it looked like the Yahoo veterans were going to run away with the game. Thankfully, there were some surprises. A counter-alliance formed between several people I had been friends with before the game (Stephanie, Camm and "Julia"), and they started taking out the more powerful players from the other side.

Ultimately, Andrew, who was I think the youngest veteran in his early 20s, went on a challenge streak and kept himself out of the elimination zone through the end of the merge. Because of that, he ended up in the final three with Stephanie and Julia. Julia knew that she stood no chance at winning, and as best as I can remember, she didn't even really campaign for jury votes. It came down to a close vote between Andrew and Steph, the strongest members of their opposing alliances. I had never seen the end of the actual show on which this game was based (oops), so I decided that the finale should be a jury vote where the eliminated players could cast the points they had at the time of their elimination toward the person they most wanted to see win. I thought this would be the fairest ending because I believed that the weight of each player's jury vote should depend on how much effort he or she put into the game, but ultimately, it kind of backfired. Andrew's friends on the jury had more points, and they managed to give him the win over Steph even though she had been in the Inner Circle almost the entire game and was by far the better strategical player. I liked Andrew fine, and I think he played the game decently, but this one sticks out in my mind as one of my games where the jury definitely got the ending wrong.

For those reasons, Interactive Inner Circle comes in at #10.