Last month I voiced my opinion about the new Channel Ten game show named The ConTest and noted that I thought it was some what anticlimactic.

A month after my initial review of The ConTest game show and one of the items on my hit list have been addressed. This makes me think that either Channel Ten deliberately launched a crap game show, knowing they were going to make improvements or they’ve been scanning the headlines on the internet and maybe they’ve stumbed across my ever so slightly critical view of their game show; who knows but it is one less thing on the list so its definitely improved the show.

You’re probably wondering which item on the hit list was addressed, well it was the one regarding knowing whether the contestants story was real or not. It’s such a small thing but knowing if they are telling the truth about that helps set the scene for their future habits on the show. The thing I find funny or interesting is to see just how far a contestant will push the truth about their story – some tell the truth, some stretch it a little bit while others try to reinvent themselves for the duration of the show. There also seems to be a reasonable relationship between how far someone pushes the truth regarding their story and what their behaviour is regarding the con.

Now Channel Ten just need to work some sort of a challenging system into their new game show and it’d get really interesting. The obvious implementation involves a contestant being able to optionally challenge an opponent once per round. If they get the challenge correct, they get to keep their opponents money; if they get it wrong they lose all of it.

On the surface, implementing a challenge system into The ConTest is nice in theory and hard in practice as it’ll add other problems which would change how the current game is played. First off, if a contestant bluffs and gets caught out and loses their winnings – how would they bluff during the elimination if the other contestants know they don’t have any money.

One possible solution might be rolling the challenge and elimination into the same event. At the end of a round, the winning contestant can, if they choose, challenge one of their opponents about their winnings. If they get it right, they person caught out is eliminated. If the contestant gets it wrong – the normal elimination takes place.

I’d personally love to see them implement the challenge system into The ConTest but I appreciate that it might be a relatively complex task. However, if they are confident that it’d improve the game – then I’m sure Channel Ten could hype up a new feature which would let them change the rules a little.

Either way, I’m glad to see the small slice of information about the truth behind each contestants story being presented; it definitely improves the game I think.