Challenge 9 recap:
This challenge was a series of flash games, where players divided themselves up into teams. The losing team produced the elimination candidates which the winning team voted on.
The mafia alliance was in shambles. Left with only Viper, Dusk, and AJ, they had too few people to be a threat, but still somehow had a target on their heads from...I guess residual fear from when they comprised half the game. Duskfall in particular was in very bad shape. He had just not only watched Om go home, but watched Om genuinely consider putting him up as an easy victory. When talking to Josh and Isa last round, both told Dusk to his face that they would vote him if he was put up. Josh didn't feel like the two of them worked together a lot, while Isa called Dusk out for working with too many people and for only reaching out to Isa at opportune times. Dusk knew that his social game was unraveling.
Dusk was considered at this point in time as a social threat who was able to play all sides. Given contemporaneous developments, this was just not true. Josh's closest allies, for instance, were at this time AJ (mafia camp), Isa and Reds, as well as Drey and Conrad. He had close ties to every faction in the game, and was considered by both the euros and the swingers as their closest friend. Zorbees had worked with pretty much everyone in the game, Drey was incredibly social (although she was consistently frustrated by her inability to establish a working relationship with the mafia camp). I think that the depiction of Dusk as a two-faced social player was just a strategic move by Josh/Zorb/Isa last round to guarantee the elimination of a mafia alliance.
Regardless of the reason for his situation, Dusk knew that he needed to go on a TOL streak. Since the mafia alliance were comparatively stronger at flash games than the rest of the game, Dusk and Viper quickly identified that they (plus AJ) needed to get on the same team. That way, if all went according to plan, they could secure the fates of all three players if they could make sure that their team did not get last. Dusk and Viper signed up together, and told AJ to do the same.
But then, a mere two minutes before AJ was able to come online, Drey made a snap decision to join Dusk and Viper's team, thereby robbing AJ of the last spot on the mafia alliance's team.
11:12 AM] drey1991: ok so
[11:12 AM] drey1991: I joined Viper's and Dusk's team
[11:12 AM] drey1991: One of you need to join red's team and the other needs to join Aj's team IMO
[1:53 PM] Josh: I have done
[1:53 PM] Josh: I would rather your team gets last, personally
[1:53 PM] Josh: I really want Drey and Vooper out
The swingers alliance demonstrated a really high strategic awareness more than any other alliance in the game. With an alliance like Drey, Conrad, and Josh, none of the three were really in danger of being voted out against anybody outside of the alliance. So long as the three of them weren't stuck on the same team, then, there was no danger since they would win against whoever they were up against, even if their team lost. The euros and the mafia alliance didn't have the same social capital, and so couldn't replicate the strategy. But even then, I think that given the relative weakness of Reds and Isa at this challenge, the two of them should have split up so that even if (e.g.) Isa's team lost, Isa at least had a chance to get first on his team and earn a TOL, and even if he didn't, Reds at least had a vote to help him out.
After AJ was blocked from joining his team of choice, Conrad joined Reds/Isa while Zorb/AJ/Josh were on team C. Conrad identified that Kanyezone was the most important game due to the tiebreaker mechanic, and somehow worked out a strategy for the game that allowed him to get and maintain first place almost effortlessly. Josh found his stride in Love, while Viper was able to game multitask by having his sister play with him.
Someone in each team found a game that they were good in, and this contributed to a very even match between the three groups. As time for the challenge wound down, the teams were tied 4-4-4 in points, but AJ's team would lose on the tiebreak. Dusk and Viper had no way to help their friend.
Less than three hours before the deadline for the challenge, AJ (while in call with me and a few other friends) realized that lagging his computer made multitask slow, but quite trivial to beat. The decreased speed of his computer made the objects easy to react to, and turned what was supposed to be a game of focus and reaction into an endurance test. AJ opened up every application on his computer and went to work, lagging the game to maybe a quarter of its usual speed. Thirty minutes in, AJ had barely passed 7 minutes of ingame time, and realized that he was almost guaranteed the high score in multitask. But now AJ had a problem: Since Viper currently held the top score in Multitask, dethroning Viper would mean that Viper's team would be sent to elimination. This was an untenable result for AJ. The game by now was moving so slowly that AJ could literally tab out for a while and come back to the next frame, so he messaged Viper asking him whether or not he should just aim for second place in Multitask. However, this distraction caused AJ to lose in Multitask, and netted him a score of only 590.
There was still time before the challenge finished, so AJ kept at it. As slow as the game became, AJ became more and more distracted by conversations in his voice call and by discord messages. Additionally, the lag on his computer was eating inputs and made it difficult to gauge what commands he actually entered into the game. He lost three times more, but while he previously was lucky to get to 200, he was now getting consistent scores over 500. But each attempt cost AJ upwards of half an hour. He was cutting it very close to the deadline of the challenge.
About thirty minutes before the deadline hit, AJ lost again in his game, and realized that his next attempt would be his last. AJ closed out of all his applications and played the game at normal speed until the game got difficult, at which point he started opening applications and lagging his computer. He was now not only fighting to get a high score in the game, but to do it before the deadline for the challenge ran out. As the game got to 240 ingame seconds, AJ was playing at the lag speed he was at previously. Nobody else in the game was fighting for top scores at this time: if AJ got this score, then he would save his team and himself from elimination.
As the ingame timer approached 600 ingame seconds, AJ realized that there was only 6 minutes left in the challenge, and began risking his game by closing out of applications to speed up again. Minecraft, twitch, and discord were all closed, and while I and some other friends were watching his attempts live, we now could only wait and refresh the high score leaderboard hoping not to see his name come up.
Time ticked down, I revealed to a very anxious Reds that AJ was on a multitask run that might beat his score. One minute before the deadline, we got a text: it was AJ, and he had fallen short of the required score by 40 points, the game was too fast for him to keep up.
As a result, AJ and Zorbees were put up for elimination. Viper and Dusk sided with AJ, as well as Josh but he did not have a vote. The others made a relatively painless decision to eliminate AJ. He was sent home 4-2. And somehow, miraculously, after everything he went through last round, Dusk found a way for his game to get even worse.
The evening before the vote:
6:02 PM] hal: @Duskfall98
[6:02 PM] hal: it's confessional time
[6:02 PM] hal: whats going on with your alliances
[6:02 PM] Duskfall98: Who the fuck knows LMAO
[6:02 PM] Duskfall98: Viper is hard
[6:02 PM] Duskfall98: Drey is second best
[6:02 PM] Duskfall98: AJ is dead
[6:02 PM] Transmuter:
AJ was an infinitely fun player to watch and to root for. I think in this particular game, he was held back by a survivor mentality, where he only socialized with other players during the votes. In a game with social main matches like this, relationships were built and tested during a different phase of the game than what he prioritized. Regardless of any of that, it was particularly upsetting to see AJ go home in a round like this, where he missed out on his team of choice by mere minutes and lost the challenge on a matter of minutes. But I think what I enjoy most about the way AJ plays the game is the grace with which he wins or loses. He was a very enjoyable player to host, and as unlucky as his existence was this game, I'm glad that I got to have him in my game!
