Paradise Hotel 2010

Paradise Hotel has for a long time been one of my favorite things to hate. It is full of stupid people who are only there to become famous and/or drunk on TV. However during a game design lecture by Miguel Sicart, it was pointed out to me that Paradise Hotel is actually a very well designed game. This of course required further investigation and therefore i decided to watch the newest season of the show – and to my surprise it turns out that it really is an awesome game!

To the people who might not know Paradise Hotel, its a program about young people who are put into a hotel with a lot of alcohol, and then need to form couples with each other. The person who ends up being without a partner each week, gets kicked home. The first few seasons where incredibly dull, but then something happened – they added an evil game designer to the production crew (my theory). Also it should be noted that i am basing all of the following on the danish version of the show, because the American version is a bit nicer to the players.

So in what way is Paradise Hotel a well designed game?

First of all the show is based on a fine balance between known rules, and unknown rules. The players only know a subset of the ruleset, but they also know and accept that these rules can at any time be changed by the game master – who in this case is the producer of the show. By having an overall rule stating that the producer is always right, the game ends up mimicking what we often see in roleplaying games. Here the game master is the supreme authority.

Secondly, Paradise Hotel has a very clearly defined set of goals and constraints. The overall goal is to get to the final show and win a bunch of money, but to get there it requires that the player fullfill a whole set of subgoals. The interesting thing about these goals is that they change on the fly, and are NOT created by the shows producer. Actually these goals can be said to come from a combination of human nature (sex drive & emotion) and social interaction. The players set goals for themselves in the form of “Tonight i must have sex with X” or “Tonight i must make sure that X and Y get in an argument so they split up and i can become X’s new partner”. The brilliant thing about these sub-goals is that the producer of the show is apparently very well aware of these, and by introducing obstacles they actively manage to alter the outcome of actions related to these goals. But the constraints of the game are as much involved in the forming of the gameplay as the goals are. Being ‘locked’ in a hotel is of course a constraint in itself, but constantly having to participate in a social circle while simultaneously trying to make private alliances becomes a feat in itself for the players. The hotel itself is structured so it is actually possible to listen in on conversations taking place inside closed rooms, and as such the players need to be very well aware of not just what they are talking about, but also where they are doing it. In a way the hotel itself becomes an interfering character.

And then of course on top of these well defined, and secret rules, lies a advanced set of social constraints. The players themselves are deliberately picked to be the most shallow, and emotional participants as possible. This means that often things like how you look and dance becomes an incredibly important aspect of how you play the game. Some players are therefore naturally better suited for playing the game than others. Aggressive players often become the favorites of the hotel because they manage to position themselves as leaders of groups in battle with other groups. Usually the hotel splits itself into two groups who are then trying to beat each other, much as we see in regular multiplayer video games as well as board games like monopoly. I believe that this split comes from a mixture of personality traits that the producer is very well aware of. It seems that there is always – no matter how many get voted out – at least two strong personalities in the game at all times. If one is voted out, the producer ensures that a new one joins the game. If one team ends up having the majority of the social power in the hotel it is not uncommon for the producer to invoke one of the ’secret rules’ to force players on the more powerful team to switch sides. And as such, Paradise Hotel actually becomes a game of balance.

The whole game is about balancing the social interaction of a group of people, by using goals and constraints to directly affect them. With this in mind it can then be discussed; who is actually playing a game? The producer or the players?

More on this as the current season of Paradise Hotel moves on….