I remember one season in the netherlands there was one player so bad that people thought they were the mole, eventually earning them nicknames like "assistent mole" and "second mole". He once hid an important piece of a game because he was ashamed of losing the complimentary piece.
I think some important context here, this is not an american gameshow returning after a single season, and now being on Netflix. The original was Belgian, and the show has since been adapted to many different countries. Over here in the netherlands, we have had 26 seasons by now
@@itisyerdad to maybe give some insight about the history of the show? In my honest opinion, the belgian and dutch versions of the show are way better anyway.
@@shenanitims4006 I think they just made a video on a show they liked, then gaining money from RUclips ad revenue and their patreon. Sorry if your comment was a joke I couldn’t tell.
It's happened a few times internationally but with the caveat that the Mole only wins the money if no-one suspects them at the end. They've never won the money they've kept.
@@Ratstail91 Well yeah, it goes against the entire point of the show. Production don't want a Mole to never be found, because it's fundamentally disappointing. The problem with giving the Mole any money that the group don't get is they don't have any incentive - it leads to weaker Moles because they just let the group mess up and earn them money rather than be an active participant.
@@RTVWarriors I would argue it lead to smarter Moles. It wasn't uncommon for the mole in a challenge to completely help the team just to throw off suspicion so later on they can wave off their sabotage as just a mistake.
@@Hurricayne92 In theory yes, but in practice it makes Moles play a lot more conservatively. The Mole should be (and usually is) the most relaxed person in the room - they know what's coming, they know the intricacies and their one job is to mess up and it's a bit of fun for them. They get paid the same no matter what happens, and short of a last minute switcheroo, someone doing something unexpected or there being a twist which adds pressure, the Mole should be fairly relaxed. If you then completely flip it on its head and the Mole has a financial incentive for a challenge messing up, that adds pressure. It means that Moles go from being generally very relaxed to being stressed and letting the mask slip a bit - especially when you're talking the ludicrous life-changing amounts of money required in an average American show. The only way that a Mole is relaxed in that situation is if they themselves do very little - allowing everyone else's natural inadequacies to win them money. Every time this twist has been offered (and I think it's about five or six times worldwide), the Moles have ended up playing less aggressively because they have a direct stake in what happens. It's a rare example of stakes actually being a bad thing on a show like this - as an arm of Production, the Mole should be as calm as possible because they're well-prepared. It also adds another unintentional wrinkle - in that the Mole is an arm of Production, but Production is in theory also working against them if they have a financial incentive for the team to screw up. The Mole is a show of Production + Mole vs the Players, and this twist makes it Production v Mole v Players. (The unspoken element of this as well is that production-wise, they don't want to be guaranteed to have to pay out the 250k or the 1m or whatever - shows are budgeted for people to win maybe 30-40% usually of the max, and it massively increases production costs if they know they're gonna have to pay everything out regardless.)
What absolutely drove me up a wall, especially in the 2nd season of The Mole US on Netflix, is that so many players were so bent on *acting* like the mole in order to draw suspicion, that the group was hemorrhaging money for the whole game. It was so counterintuitive to me that players were willing to sabotage the entire prize pot just to win. Like, congratulations, you won a grand sum of twenty bucks. Good job!
This is the trend in the Netherlands, too. People will willingly spend 2500 or more for a single correct question on the test. You can see the winning amounts on wikipedia and they just keep getting smaller. People stopped playing the game through spotting the black sheep and instead all painted themselves black in the hopes others would think they were the black sheep. At the cost of the paint, and an enjoyable viewing experience.
I have too say I massively disagree with this take. If you are playing the mole to win the most money for yourself it's better to be there at the end to win $20, then help someone else win $10,000. Like at the end of the day $20 > $0. You do what you have to do to maximise your chances of being in the finale. Like what's the point of having a massive pot if by doing so you get yourself eliminated?
@@Nixahma And it gets worse when the group isn't actively winning the money back. They kept spending and losing. All while playing games with 'the highest prize pool' ever.
The stakes for the mole are indeed incredibly high. In a previous season in Belgium, the original mole stepped out early, because he was caught talking in his sleep, and was scared he might accidentally reveal his identity while sleeptalking, and was then scared to fall asleep, before his roommate did
One of my favorite shows that didn't run for very long was The Hustler on ABC. There's a small-ish group of people, and one among them is the Hustler. Each round, the group gets one trivia question that the Hustler knows the answer to. It's usually about their interests or habits; for example, there was one Hustler who used to work at a Starbucks, and the question was "Which of these Starbucks treats has the fewest calories". Every correct answer they get adds $1,000 to the cash pool, which the Hustler either takes at the end or the remaining two contestants split. Between every round, a fact about the Hustler is shared with the group (i.e. past experiences, there was one Hustler who was raised in a cult), which gives them a hint as to who it is. After three rounds, a voting takes place; the players vote for who they think the mole is. The thing it, none of their votes matter-- the only one that does is the Hustler's, who votes for who they want out of the game. They usually boot out the one who is onto them the most. Eventually, the game whittles down to three players: the Hustler and two other contestants. Everyone displays who they think the Hustler is on a wooden tablet, and everyone argues with each other for a solid two minutes about who the Hustler is. Two people need to agree who the Hustler is. If they're right, they split the cash. If the Hustler successfully convinces another team member that the other person is the Hustler, then they take the entire prize for themself. Anyway yeah, thought it was similar.
as soon as you introduced the quiz where you get eliminated by KNOWING ABOUT THE MOLE... my eyes widened so hard, what a GENIUS MOVE damn super impressive I love this
It's such a good mechanic! One season in the Netherlands had a guy in the final still completely oblivious to who the mole was only to find out later he scored second to last on the test nearly every episode, once even tying for last place but finishing the test a few seconds faster
I just did an online version of this with friends. I figured out the mole early on due to the sacrifice of my ally (had a correction and still got out early game). I was able to figure out the mole, and spent the rest of the game doing counter intelligence. I tricked my final opponent into believing the mole was me, and got the win. Such a fun game to do with friends.
@@elsa_g There are many computer games that are versions of this concept. "Among Us" was a popular one a few years ago. Most of the players are crew members of a space ship and must complete a list of chores. One or a few players are imposters and must kill the other players before they all finish their chores. Imposters can sabotage various aspects of the ship to interfere with the crew members. Any players can call group meetings when they find a dead body or by returning to a central area and pressing a button. After the group meeting, each player can vote against a player or pass. Crew members win if they complete all chores or vote out all imposters. Imposters win if they kill all crew members. There are also many different settings for number of players and experience, such as: number of imposters, number and difficulty of chores, size of level, cool down lengths for sabotages and reporting, revealing or keeping votes secret, revealing or keeping secret if a voted out player was an imposter.
The show can be a little up and down, but the second season (in the original US run with Anderson Cooper, not the 2nd Netflix season) is probably the strongest one I've seen. I've heard the Dutch version is quite good, I think it's run for like 30 seasons?
@@koernerkomedy it's gone through it's ups and downs, but yes, especially the first seasons they started doing dutch celebrities were amazing. Pure chaos.
I think this video slightly missed out on another strategy similar to spreading answers: go to the majority. For example, if the question is "is the mole male or female", and there are 6 other males and 2 females, even if you are ALMOST CERTAIN that the mole is one of the women, people would pick "male".
This even goes so far that when looking at the gender of the first person who get's eliminated you can reasonably say the Mole is the opposite gender. At least when there are just as many males as females at the start of the season. Cause the first elimination is almost random cause the 9 candidates just don't have enough information yet. So if the Mole is male that means there are 5 female and 4 male candidates which means there is a slightly higher chance a female candidate is eliminated in the first episode. In all the Dutch series of the Mole there have been made, 70% of the time the Mole was of the opposite gender of the first eliminated candidate.
@@blastdragon1991That's not enough to explain 70% odds. But when you add in the fact that, with very low information, it's easiest to just do the math "there are even numbers, but I'm not the mole, so there are more of the opposite", and know you have slightly better odds if you pick the opposite. Then, you get eliminated if the mole was your gender, because you guessed that bit wrong, while anyone using your logic from the opposite gender guessed right.
That's not just a similar strategy, that's _the same strategy._ In that scenario answering male _is_ spreading your answer across the maximum number of people.
there's also a strategy that arises from breadwinners existing themselves, Lets say the mole switches behaviors around episode 3 to that of a breadwinner, if they do their sabotage subtly enough then people might not realize that the mole has become a breadwinner, but then since they are the mole, but simultaneously a good player, people may stop suspecting them, and on top of that, they are immune from elimination. thus by becoming a breadwinner themselves, they can take back the money for production, while also being portrayed like a breadwinner. this may backfire in the last 2 rounds, when the 2 other people left may still be pretending to be the mole.
IIRC one of the moles was just a "nice guy". like a lovable charismatic teddy bear that everyone loved. and if they failed everyone still went "aww well they did their best" even though they didnt. and that hid that mole SO well, to a point where in the final episode reunion there were multiple candidates going "NO WAY!"
I happen to be old enough to have watched the first season when it aired. I loved the show and since that first season every reality and/or game show has never captured my attention like that. This analysis explains why I loved it so much.
You should watch the Dutch or Belgian version. They have a lot of episodes and on RUclips, there are channels that make English subtitles for them. Like WIDM English Subs
I remember the OG season too. And I remember the final challenge fell apart. They had to walk through and explain how it was supposed to be solved and it was kind of a bummer. Season 2’s final challenge went smoother but it wasn’t as interesting. One player got so lost they had to ask the camera crew for help.
@@GhostWriter520 I'd check out The Genius, a korean reality show. Some of the games aren't strong, but it hit a similar box in terms of clever challenge design.
is anybody gonna talk about how good the editing, scripting and visuals of this video are? maybe the source material is just already good (as explained by this video LOL) but i really wanna watch more of this channel and the mole so, good job girl ^_^
Originally, this show was cooked up in Belgium in 1998 to run for only 3 seasons, but the idea got sold to over 50 countries with the Netherlands being the biggest adopter playing it non-stop every year since 1999. Belgium itself only restarted the making of the show in 2016 releasing every year since.
What you are forgetting is that people can get accidental correct answers. Some questions ask: which group was the mole in during the task this morning. If you had two or three groups of 3 people, someone who cut the mole from their list, might actually have 1-2 correct answers, compared to someone who risked everything on a completely different player.
I haven't watch the show but I assume the opposite is important as well. If you get multiple people who are 100% certain who the mole is but can still miss finer details like what are the color of their eyes/shorts/shoes etc. since there is so much information you have to pull for what I assume is too many questions to leave tiebreakers.
In other versions of the show (Netherlands and Belgium), the role of playing The Mole is a VERY prestigious title to have. It's even gotten a kind of meta around what sort of Mole you want to play. In one season in the Belgium version, one Mole sunk THE ENTIRE prize fund midway through the season for an exemption and everyone forgave them because they brought in so much cash before that. One thing you will see in versions are jokers and exemptions. Exemptions are free passes into the next episode, and jokers turn incorrect answers in the quiz to correct ones but don't tell you for what questions. These are a massive point where players can sink the prize fund for immunity, or to go against the challenge for a small amount of safety, another great twist in the game. TL;DR The Mole is great, watch the Belgium version. One of the best tv shows out there
@@mistymysticsailboatTrue, you got me there, lol. But I would still argue that Jet Lag doesn't fit in the reality genre, even if it's recorded in the real world.
While that would be rad, we've actually got something close! On Nebula there's a show with a similar premise called 'The Getaway', where the twist is... Oops All Moles! There's literally no normal player, EVERYONE is the secret traitor. It's an absolute blast watching the double-triple-guessing everyone constantly makes.
The first time I saw that intro, I thought it was going to be a very basic analysis of the show, but the slow buildup as the possibility of this show working seemed to dwindle, and yet knowing the title and premise of the video kept me on my toes, until I got to 3:00... And then the drums kicked in, and shivers were sent up my *SPINE* as the screen split and bright red burst onto the screen! That intro was the best hook I've ever seen, and it may stay that way for a while!
This video has like the exact venn diagram of things I'd watch a bajillion hours of. Subscribed! The video editing is also really nice, reminds me of BobbyBroccoli.
That's partly because season 3 of the mole Belgium released in 2003 while season 4 started in 2016 and then onwards became yearly. Because of this massive hiatus, while it is still really popular, it's less popular then in the netherlands.
the design you did at 3:04 is wildly interesting and took me on a rollercoaster of thoughts it feels weird complimenting something that appears for 10 seconds out of this 20 minute video, but ive gotta appreciate the details, yknow?
We've covered 25+ seasons of the Dutch/Flemish versions (which are available with English subs!) and the American one doesn't hold a candle to any of them. The Netflix reboot was based off the Flemish reboot seasons, but with a lot of the subtlety, nuance and charm removed. Everything has consequences in the Flemish version, and not all of them have to be monetary (for example, the challenge where someone has a chance to come back actually comes from the second episode of the rebooted Flemish version - in that version, if the person who was executed doesn't succeed at escaping the locked taxi, a paint bomb goes off over them and their luggage). The Netflix reboot is utterly charmless in comparison.
The Netflix reboot is pretty terrible so I’m surprised to see a video praising it so much. I did enjoy the original US run and thought it was a lot better.
@@itisyerdad Their version of the Mole is uniquely charmless though, because they were offered help (or at least advice) from the Flemish team but rejected it.
its stuff like this that make me so disappointed... Netflix has so many opportunities but denies anything in favor of the most bland and soulless stuff because its safer monetarily (or something similar).
@@ISamAtlas We're lucky to be (best) friends with the Flemish host so I had a looooong chat with him about it at their finale last year. They chose to interpret it in their own way, which is their right, but it's a shame that this is the way a lot of fans are able to see the show.
This is a fantastic breakdown, well-explained and demonstrated without spoiling a single thing! (Except, I suppose, the quiz mechanic.) Nice job. *subscribes*
Delightful analysis video, love the cuts to "The mole is good". Great job explaining the game design behind the quizzes and how it encourages you to both hedge your bets but also to slowly cut down options
I really like that the elimination system puts final control in the hands of the person being eliminated. The breadwinner is at an inherent disadvantage and he might be deceived, but the tricksters cannot simply conspire to vote out the person who has contributed the most once they feel they've got enough out of him.
Great video! Absolutely love the animations and narration. I like the choice of not using any clips from the show, making it spoiler-free too. I'm just gonna go and watch every single other video you've made haha... it feels like I've discovered a hidden gem, this is genuinely so damn good.
I never heard of The Mole before watching this video, but its insane how well thought-out the game design is for this show. This was a really good analysis and i loved the animation :)
I don't know if any of the umpteen versions of mole did this but one of the best ways to take care of 'everyone acts like the mole' while avoiding mole acts like a normal person is to set some proportional money limit in the entire game. If the team manages to raise money above the certain limit then the players win and they are eligible to win the prize. But if they fail, the mole takes whatever money that was made in the pot plus some kind of bonus. In that way, the players are actually incentivized to commit to the task, because certain competency is required to win the prize at all, and the mole is committed to sabotage the task, because they need to keep the prize amount below a certain number to receive payment. The bonus is there to prevent the players doing some kind of 'let's screw everyone tactic'.
This makes sense, but it makes me ask a different question - why would Mole *not* act like a Breadwinner in this scenario? I don't remember video ever going about what are the stakes for the Mole player, why do they need to sabotage other than because they've been assigned a role? Wouldn't everyone get all questions wrong and be eliminated if they exclude Mole thinking they're the Breadwinner? This is the issue that happens in some hidden role games that lean into semi-coop nature more: if the game is hard enough that you will lose most of the time *without* Mole's influence, why would the Mole ever reveal themselves?
The more money the players win, the less the mole gets. So the mole has an incentive to lose some games so less money goes into the player's pot. Furthermore, only one person gets eliminated per round, so no matter how they play, they will be facing off against the same number of people at the end, and have less money in their pot.
@@LightPink The game ends with the two last remaining players and the mole all doing a massive exam more than twice the length of a normal quiz, and are asked about questions throughout the entire series. So in the end, it ends up being a 1v1 quiz with the winner of that quiz winning the show.
@@nodrance This is not true. They are paid for their role, but nothing is added based on how much they sabotage. They aren't a player in the traditional sense; they sabotage the game because that's what they signed up for. Their incentive to do a good job is the same as the host's incentive to present the show well or the production team's incentive to design fun challenges.
Godammit, THIS VIDEO IS GOOD, The punchline with the music got me, insta subd, and yeah, i think i saw this reality, if not this, something very similar, and it's AWESOME. And i remember the strategies clearly
Well, this channel is a hidden gem. Your visuals are comprehensive while still appearing simple, your audio is pleasant to listen to, and your video topics are fascinating. Cant help but hope a comment boosts the algo and more subs come.
I live in the Netherlands so this show has been a yearly part of my life for over 10 years (it took some time for me to warm up to the show). I am intimately familiar with it, but you have still shown me many different perspectives to it. Thank you for that. Also: some of the most fun seasons are when the Mole is posing as a breadwinner and people just don't catch all of the things he is doing in plain sight because he's so incredibly driven and competitive.
The 4 people who made the show are in the closing credits: Bart De Pauw, Tom Lenaerts, Michiel De Vlieger and Michel Van Hove. Those 4 made a lot of memorable tv together between 1995 and 2010.
Watching this reminded me of one of my favorite shows when I was a kid called whodunnit. It’s been a while so I don’t remember all the details, but basically how it worked was the contestants all live inside a manor and are told that they will be solving puzzles to win money. They all go to bed to prepare for the next day but when they wake up they soon discover one of them is dead. Now the contestants split into 2 groups to investigate the body and the crime scene and at the end of the investigation they are individually interviewed where they give their theory on how the murder was committed and who is the murderer. The 2 people who were the farthest from the truth are then given letters at dinner marking them as the next potential victims. Really good show that I unfortunately don’t think can happen again due to the nature of the premise, really recommend it to anyone interested.
incredible video oh my GOD i was so invested in this. i figured as well that you’d spoil the actual show but you DIDNT!! you just convinced me to watch it
This video is great, but there's one really big aspect here that you failed to mention that I think absolutely shapes how players act: Exemptions and Corrections (known as Jokers in the Dutch version and others). For those who don't know, Exemptions are items in the game that can be used before the elimination ceremony, that guarantee a player a pass into the next round no matter what they score on the quiz - basically making them immune for that episode. They're also sometimes awarded automatically to players for that night's quiz specifically, as part of a challenge. Meanwhile, corrections/Jokers are simple, adding +1 to a player's score on the quiz. Because they're lower stakes and don't guarantee safety, they're easier to come by than Exemptions. The _twist_ is, earning an exemption *almost always* comes at the cost of the group's pot, directly. Sometimes it's as simple as a two-team challenge where one team is playing for exemptions while the other is playing for the money. Other times it's more dramatic; both Netflix seasons have had a challenge where players were asked to bet money directly from the pot, and whoever bet the most would win the exemption, at the cost of that money being removed from the pot. This obviously massively affects player psychology, because going for an exemption is _explicitly_ only useful for the players, who unlike the Mole aren't immune... but that comes at the cost of being seen more as a player, and therefore risking being written off as a suspect alongside the Breadwinners. Of course, this acts as a very good cover for the real Mole; I've seen a Minecraft version, for example, where the Mole played the whole game as a nervous player who was desperate for exemptions, allowing them to keep money out of the pot while still looking innocent, and it worked so well that one of the _finalists_ didn't realise until _after_ the final quiz. It's also great for drama. So many episodes across versions have players in the hot seat, torn between guaranteeing a step closer to winning the prize pot, or making that pot bigger at the cost of their own safety. It's similar to how Tricksters are OK losing a little money to increase their odds of surviving a quiz.
Yo this video was awsome, im subbing. Would love more stuff like this, also the visuals are so good, this video litterly sucked me into it, I couldnt stop watching it until it was finished. Great pacing!!!
The only wrinkle is, if anyone does go “all in” on the Mole early (despite this being a bad idea) and by chance guesses RIGHT, they basically cannot lose since they know who the Mole is (otherwise they would have been eliminated). This happened in Netflix season 2, where one candidate figured out the Mole this way and basically guaranteed themselves a spot in the final
I'd actually argue the game design of the Mole is fundamentally flawed. The incentive for non-Moles is to appear suspicious so that other people are less likely to figure out who the actual Mole is, so all you're left with is figuring out the difference between "this person is sabotaging the game because they're the Mole and production told them to" and "this person is sabotaging the game because it will help them win". So finding the Mole becomes mostly arbitrary since they aren't really going to be acting any differently than anyone else. The only actual clue to the Mole's identity is the quiz itself, which narrows who the Mole could be based on who the eliminated players were suspicious of.
(quick disclaimer that, while ive seen many seasons of this show (both original belgian version and the dutch one), i still havent gotten around to netflixs version, so i cant guarantee that this is accurate to what youve seen - but this is approximately how its usually played.) with this shows structure and the incentive to find the mole, you get a lot of different strategies for moles and players alike. both may act overly suspicious to throw people off, or act like the perfect little candidate to keep people off their backs, or really anywhere in between - they can be loud or quiet, sharks for the position of treasurer or stay as far away as possible, and many other things. and, well, of course this is going to make it much harder to discover the mole - that is the whole point of the program! thats the fun behind it! its what creates the tension and the mystery is played in such a way that viewers at home - as stated in the video - can easily play along. it is up to the players (in-game and behind their tvs) to both get a good read on the people surrounding them and pay close attention during games to see when and how a person might be able to sabotage, including what role a mole might want to take, where and how they might be able to easily keep money away from the pot, etc. this is the whole foundation the show is built on. the games are secondary, they only form the medium to earn the money, for the actual game at play - who is the mole? the quiz isnt necessarily too big of a hint, either - for most of the game, candidates will split their answers across different people, and they wont completely tell or show you who voted for who every single time. besides, people can simply get their facts wrong. plus, within the game, it isnt common to share suspects with anyone, unless they formed an alliance with someone (which is something the mole can do as well, of course) - so the candidates dont have those hints. if this isnt how the netflix version worked or came off, thats not on the concept of the game. if it is and you didnt enjoy it much anyways, then the program just probably isnt for you!
@@panainpublic You say it makes it difficult to figure out who the mole is, my point is that it is essentially impossible. Imagine, for a moment, a scenario where the mole isn't told they're the mole. They play the game just like anyone else. In that scenario, how suspicious/innocent anyone acts is irrelevant to finding the actual mole. That's how I'm saying the show essentially works. The mole does actually know who they are, but they are driven by the same incentives as the other players (to sabotage occasionally). It only seems like there's progress towards figuring out who the mole is because the people with arbitrary suspicions in the correct direction are the ones who remain. The winner at the end might say "I suspected X all along!" but that's just because they made it to the end because their suspicions aligned with the game declared "mole" and, again, you would have the exact same situation even if the mole didn't know who they were and there was no actual evidence to go off of. The winner is simply the one who happened to be most suspicious of the person who was "pretending to be a mole because production told them to" over the people who were "pretending to be a mole because it would help them win the game".
@@Clumbobin the Dutch version, there are some things that make it more fun for the audience. Our version is done with Dutch celebrities, and the production throws in tons of hidden clues related to that, so people form their own (almost conspiracy) theories. I know for a fact that there was a year where the wheel of candidates in the app was rainbow and people immediately went “oh the mole is gay” (which, if I recall correctly, was even *right*, though I don’t know if it was an intentional hint?). I know that for me, one of the contestants once made a Lady Gaga reference in episode one, and I had a whole conspiracy theory about it because there was also an important telephone in that season and Lady Gaga has a song named Judas - I was COMPLETELY convinced that it was that contestant (I was wrong). People dig into everything that is out there about these celebrities in order to connect it to possible clues, from song lyrics to birthdays to star signs to possible connections to past moles. They dissect each outfit, each sentence, and each episode to look for clues. Each season is a whole big whodunnit, and all the viewers are the detectives. I can see how a lot of that might be lost in versions of the show that don’t have celebrities as contestants (and thus may have a harder time throwing in clues for the audience and contestants)
I agree, I watched the Netflix version and this is the part that made it fall somewhat flat for me - while it makes sense on a meta level that the mole should avoid suspicion from the audience (seeing the mole more as a member of the production crew than a member of the cast), there's no incentive within the world of the game for the mole to either deflect or arouse suspicion, since there are no consequences other than "contestants get bored" if they're too obvious, and also no incentive to either sabotage or not other than "it's their job". What I really want is a metric for judging a level of gamesmanship of the mole. The actual players have two competing interests - throw suspicion on themself, for all the reasons detailed in the video, but contribute to the prize fund. The mole has no interests at all within the world of the game; they're not *playing*, and this makes it less interesting for me. I saw some other comments about how in other versions sometimes the mole may get a cut of the prize if they are not correctly identified. I like this, but I think to make it truly compelling they need a competing motive as well, just like the players. I'd suggest something like: the mole must be personally responsible for the removal of at least a certain amount of money from the prize fund, or they're unable to take any cut of the prize fund regardless of if they remain unidentified. This then gives them the inverse motivations of the other players, but will result in the same behavior (sabotage enough, but not too much). I don't think this is a perfect solution, but I am not a reality game show designer and I'm sure others could come up with other possible incentives.
Okay, just stopped at the title card to say: wow! The music drop, the dramatic explanation, the motion graphics! I am so amazed by quality of this video that it's blowing my socks off! Holy shit!
This is such an amazing video! I loved the Mole when I watched it and this summed up and explained why its good perfectly. Also I love how you didn't spoil it for those who havent watched it yet
Great video about my favorite tv show. RUclips recommended the Dutch version a couple years ago and since then I have watched about 19 seasons and learned quite some Dutch. I hope the next season will be on here as well. They changed their way of broadcasting so it‘s unclear at the moment.
And this way they can get away with having people eliminate each other as there will always be moles left. Spoiler ahead : At some point, one person actually realises that "mole might get eliminated" problem and concludes everyone must be moles for the show to not be broken.
But this introduces another problem: They cant make a second season, without fundamentally rewriting the basic premise of the show. Because anyone who agrees to go on "the getaway, season 2" is just 1 "i googled the show before signing the contract cause i dont want to be on Fear Factor" away from the oops all moles conclusion. In a passing glance, it seems like a genius solution. But anything more then a passing glance and it makes a show that doesnt so much have "seasonal rot" as that it has a seasonal half-life. Which means either season 2 fundamentally overhauls the basic premise (at the cost of audience buy-in), or season 2 probably falls flat on its face (at the cost of all audience buy-in)
@@ripopol Not sure how legal this would be, the players on the Getaway S1 were told the show was called "The Snitch." Just tell them a similar story that it's a different show. Joe Schmoe did something similar.
We're missing something. The next step. The mole who acts like a normal player. Not just acts like one, but for all intensive purposes sans quizzes is one, and uses the tricksters, which will always be there, to sabotage for them.
Good video, though I think there's a major oversight when talking about the quizzes and spreading probabilities. The vast majority of questions don't point at particular players but groups of players (is the mole male or female, was the mole in Team A or Team B, is the mole married, etc). This creates enough fuzzyness that you can never fully work out why someone got eliminated; if player A and B are both spreading their questions over 4 people, and player A has the mole among those 4 people but player B does not, that does not guarantee that player A is safe from elimination. Even though they aim a quarter of their answers on the mole, if the people player B suspects happen to overlap in the questions with the mole, player B might still get more correct answers than player A. And fundamentally, the specific questions are unknown to the players before taking the quiz, and unknown (in full) to the audience, so nobody can make a spreadsheet and know for certain based on eliminations why a player got eliminated.
This is the first video I've seen from you and WOW this was so cool! Great pacing and production quality, on such an interesting topic too! I'm definitely checking this show out now, and I'm definitely subscribing to you.
I'm watching this show now because you made such a compelling argument for why its good. I have never even heard of it before. But i think i'm going to enjoy it immensly. Thank you so much!!!
I just stopped playback at 2:29 to see if I've anticipated what the improvement in the renewed _Mole_ is. I shared the frustration of viewers of the previous _Mole_ entries in that the Mole hirself didn't have sufficient play motivation, and was just responding to producer instructions. What was needed was a scoring system similar to that of the card game Eleusis, in which the Mole's payoff would depend primarily on how much spread in performance s/he caused between the other players, and secondarily on the amount of player pot s/he deprived them of. A lesser frustration was that the quizzes that eliminated players along the way were something the viewers couldn't fairly play along with, because of getting only snippets of the living-in experience the players had. However, it was a good enough game for viewers to simply try to figure out who the Mole was, rather than remember details like who was literally standing where in relationship to others at time X.
Never watched The Mole but was curious about it so I clicked on this video. Thank you for such a great explanation, I think I’ll watch it now! On that note, it reminds me me of one of my fave shows of all time ‘Whodunnit’ where similarly there is 1 “murderer” among the group and everyone has to figure out who it is and how the murder occurred (what weapon, etc). The problem is they can only investigate a small area and need to rely on the (mis)information of others to piece together a theory. The worst detective is the one to get “killed” (eliminated) next, similar to the quiz format of The Mole.
the added rule of "if there is a tie, the contestant who finished the quiz the slowest will be eliminated" is also great because it can give false hope to contestants who survive and think they got some answers right but actually they didn't and just finished the quiz faster. There is no information gained by the results of the quiz
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
I remember one season in the netherlands there was one player so bad that people thought they were the mole, eventually earning them nicknames like "assistent mole" and "second mole". He once hid an important piece of a game because he was ashamed of losing the complimentary piece.
Can you state which season please?
@Monte_de_Cristo 2020 I believe. It was Ron Boszhart IIRC. I stopped watching around that time.
i think a fake mole would go hard in this show, a fake jester who only gets cash when they're accused of being the mole.
@@MisterBrick42real! I would like it if there’s supposed to be someone like that, but other players are suspected of being the fake
R
I think some important context here, this is not an american gameshow returning after a single season, and now being on Netflix. The original was Belgian, and the show has since been adapted to many different countries. Over here in the netherlands, we have had 26 seasons by now
@@evelinedereu I did not realize this. Thank you for informing me that the first American season of this was not the original (also, not surprising)
@@the10thiris US wasn't even the first English-language one - Australia was.
Why is that context necessary to understand the game? It’s cool trivia but I don’t see how it informs the video further.
@@itisyerdad to maybe give some insight about the history of the show? In my honest opinion, the belgian and dutch versions of the show are way better anyway.
@@pandaurrr7970yeah they definitely are, the shit they come up with is insane, like there's some crazy creative minds behind it
i absolutely adore that this video was able to give me every detail i needed without showing a single clip of the show itself
Me too! The production on this video was top tier
There's nothing better than a spoiler free deep dive
I was gonna ask how much do you think this creator was being paid by Netflix to advertise their show?
@@shenanitims4006 I think they just made a video on a show they liked, then gaining money from RUclips ad revenue and their patreon. Sorry if your comment was a joke I couldn’t tell.
BTW: The Mole in Australia had the mole as a normal player who simply won any money that the team failed to win.
It's happened a few times internationally but with the caveat that the Mole only wins the money if no-one suspects them at the end. They've never won the money they've kept.
@@RTVWarriors The caveat is silly - everyone will figure it out eventually.
@@Ratstail91 Well yeah, it goes against the entire point of the show. Production don't want a Mole to never be found, because it's fundamentally disappointing.
The problem with giving the Mole any money that the group don't get is they don't have any incentive - it leads to weaker Moles because they just let the group mess up and earn them money rather than be an active participant.
@@RTVWarriors I would argue it lead to smarter Moles. It wasn't uncommon for the mole in a challenge to completely help the team just to throw off suspicion so later on they can wave off their sabotage as just a mistake.
@@Hurricayne92 In theory yes, but in practice it makes Moles play a lot more conservatively.
The Mole should be (and usually is) the most relaxed person in the room - they know what's coming, they know the intricacies and their one job is to mess up and it's a bit of fun for them. They get paid the same no matter what happens, and short of a last minute switcheroo, someone doing something unexpected or there being a twist which adds pressure, the Mole should be fairly relaxed.
If you then completely flip it on its head and the Mole has a financial incentive for a challenge messing up, that adds pressure. It means that Moles go from being generally very relaxed to being stressed and letting the mask slip a bit - especially when you're talking the ludicrous life-changing amounts of money required in an average American show. The only way that a Mole is relaxed in that situation is if they themselves do very little - allowing everyone else's natural inadequacies to win them money. Every time this twist has been offered (and I think it's about five or six times worldwide), the Moles have ended up playing less aggressively because they have a direct stake in what happens. It's a rare example of stakes actually being a bad thing on a show like this - as an arm of Production, the Mole should be as calm as possible because they're well-prepared.
It also adds another unintentional wrinkle - in that the Mole is an arm of Production, but Production is in theory also working against them if they have a financial incentive for the team to screw up. The Mole is a show of Production + Mole vs the Players, and this twist makes it Production v Mole v Players.
(The unspoken element of this as well is that production-wise, they don't want to be guaranteed to have to pay out the 250k or the 1m or whatever - shows are budgeted for people to win maybe 30-40% usually of the max, and it massively increases production costs if they know they're gonna have to pay everything out regardless.)
What absolutely drove me up a wall, especially in the 2nd season of The Mole US on Netflix, is that so many players were so bent on *acting* like the mole in order to draw suspicion, that the group was hemorrhaging money for the whole game. It was so counterintuitive to me that players were willing to sabotage the entire prize pot just to win.
Like, congratulations, you won a grand sum of twenty bucks. Good job!
This is the trend in the Netherlands, too. People will willingly spend 2500 or more for a single correct question on the test. You can see the winning amounts on wikipedia and they just keep getting smaller. People stopped playing the game through spotting the black sheep and instead all painted themselves black in the hopes others would think they were the black sheep. At the cost of the paint, and an enjoyable viewing experience.
Wait, The Mole is on Netflix?
I have too say I massively disagree with this take. If you are playing the mole to win the most money for yourself it's better to be there at the end to win $20, then help someone else win $10,000.
Like at the end of the day $20 > $0. You do what you have to do to maximise your chances of being in the finale. Like what's the point of having a massive pot if by doing so you get yourself eliminated?
@@Nixahma And it gets worse when the group isn't actively winning the money back. They kept spending and losing. All while playing games with 'the highest prize pool' ever.
@@papersonic9941yep, the american version so it's quite a bit different
The stakes for the mole are indeed incredibly high. In a previous season in Belgium, the original mole stepped out early, because he was caught talking in his sleep, and was scared he might accidentally reveal his identity while sleeptalking, and was then scared to fall asleep, before his roommate did
Yes, it's super mentally draining
Did they turn one of the remaining players into a mole?
@@ziwuri yea
@@ziwuriyepp, made it way harder for all the other players tho, but the "replacement mole" did a great job
@@nurailidepaepe2783 might wanna edit that to change the pronoun to they so it doesn't spoil people
you mean to tell me that this is a game show where "third imposter"ing is not just a valid strategy, but *optimal?*
One of my favorite shows that didn't run for very long was The Hustler on ABC. There's a small-ish group of people, and one among them is the Hustler. Each round, the group gets one trivia question that the Hustler knows the answer to. It's usually about their interests or habits; for example, there was one Hustler who used to work at a Starbucks, and the question was "Which of these Starbucks treats has the fewest calories". Every correct answer they get adds $1,000 to the cash pool, which the Hustler either takes at the end or the remaining two contestants split.
Between every round, a fact about the Hustler is shared with the group (i.e. past experiences, there was one Hustler who was raised in a cult), which gives them a hint as to who it is. After three rounds, a voting takes place; the players vote for who they think the mole is. The thing it, none of their votes matter-- the only one that does is the Hustler's, who votes for who they want out of the game. They usually boot out the one who is onto them the most.
Eventually, the game whittles down to three players: the Hustler and two other contestants. Everyone displays who they think the Hustler is on a wooden tablet, and everyone argues with each other for a solid two minutes about who the Hustler is. Two people need to agree who the Hustler is. If they're right, they split the cash. If the Hustler successfully convinces another team member that the other person is the Hustler, then they take the entire prize for themself.
Anyway yeah, thought it was similar.
That show was fucking amazing and I'm furious with ABC for canceling it.
this seems like mafia/among us with extra steps, where the impostor gets one automatic kill per round until the final 3
as soon as you introduced the quiz where you get eliminated by KNOWING ABOUT THE MOLE... my eyes widened so hard, what a GENIUS MOVE damn super impressive I love this
It's such a good mechanic! One season in the Netherlands had a guy in the final still completely oblivious to who the mole was only to find out later he scored second to last on the test nearly every episode, once even tying for last place but finishing the test a few seconds faster
I just did an online version of this with friends. I figured out the mole early on due to the sacrifice of my ally (had a correction and still got out early game). I was able to figure out the mole, and spent the rest of the game doing counter intelligence. I tricked my final opponent into believing the mole was me, and got the win. Such a fun game to do with friends.
That sounds fun! Is there an online version of the game, or did you and your friends just make it up yourselves?
@ two of our friends set it up and the rest of us competed. There wasn’t a set thing but we did it over discord
This has happened in the show as well. In an All start Dutch season - one candidate figured out who it was and easily made it to the finale
@@elsa_g There are many computer games that are versions of this concept. "Among Us" was a popular one a few years ago.
Most of the players are crew members of a space ship and must complete a list of chores. One or a few players are imposters and must kill the other players before they all finish their chores. Imposters can sabotage various aspects of the ship to interfere with the crew members. Any players can call group meetings when they find a dead body or by returning to a central area and pressing a button. After the group meeting, each player can vote against a player or pass. Crew members win if they complete all chores or vote out all imposters. Imposters win if they kill all crew members.
There are also many different settings for number of players and experience, such as: number of imposters, number and difficulty of chores, size of level, cool down lengths for sabotages and reporting, revealing or keeping votes secret, revealing or keeping secret if a voted out player was an imposter.
Jesus, what an unreasonably good video
100% agreed.
IKR? 15k subscribers and started last year. You'd think production value like this would take about 3 years to cultivate. Ellie is very talented.
funny seeing I-OGameDev here :D
wow, really? it was extremely hard to watch for me, only got good near the end
@@cleanseroftheworld right!! this is the very first video by her i've ever seen but wow i rarely subscibe this fast after discovering a new channel
I love how your narration gives off the feeling of a continnuous, unending mindblown meltdown. That's the kind of enthusiasm I want in video essays
Definitely overstimulated me, made it tough to watch. Would prefer something more relaxed/ easy to listen to. Just my experience
this video is SO interesting i kinda feel that if i were to watch the show id be disappointed by the final product
The show can be a little up and down, but the second season (in the original US run with Anderson Cooper, not the 2nd Netflix season) is probably the strongest one I've seen.
I've heard the Dutch version is quite good, I think it's run for like 30 seasons?
@@koernerkomedy it's gone through it's ups and downs, but yes, especially the first seasons they started doing dutch celebrities were amazing. Pure chaos.
@koernerkomedy where can i watch it?
Yeah hahaga
You 100% would be disappointed. I’m confused by how excited this video is about a Netflix game show that is pretty poorly done.
I think this video slightly missed out on another strategy similar to spreading answers: go to the majority. For example, if the question is "is the mole male or female", and there are 6 other males and 2 females, even if you are ALMOST CERTAIN that the mole is one of the women, people would pick "male".
This even goes so far that when looking at the gender of the first person who get's eliminated you can reasonably say the Mole is the opposite gender. At least when there are just as many males as females at the start of the season.
Cause the first elimination is almost random cause the 9 candidates just don't have enough information yet. So if the Mole is male that means there are 5 female and 4 male candidates which means there is a slightly higher chance a female candidate is eliminated in the first episode. In all the Dutch series of the Mole there have been made, 70% of the time the Mole was of the opposite gender of the first eliminated candidate.
@@blastdragon1991That's not enough to explain 70% odds. But when you add in the fact that, with very low information, it's easiest to just do the math "there are even numbers, but I'm not the mole, so there are more of the opposite", and know you have slightly better odds if you pick the opposite.
Then, you get eliminated if the mole was your gender, because you guessed that bit wrong, while anyone using your logic from the opposite gender guessed right.
That's not just a similar strategy, that's _the same strategy._ In that scenario answering male _is_ spreading your answer across the maximum number of people.
can you do a video on Half As Intresting's Jet Lag the Game's The Getaway
@@somdudewillson No, the video was treating it like each answer could only refer to 1 person.
there's also a strategy that arises from breadwinners existing themselves, Lets say the mole switches behaviors around episode 3 to that of a breadwinner, if they do their sabotage subtly enough then people might not realize that the mole has become a breadwinner, but then since they are the mole, but simultaneously a good player, people may stop suspecting them, and on top of that, they are immune from elimination. thus by becoming a breadwinner themselves, they can take back the money for production, while also being portrayed like a breadwinner. this may backfire in the last 2 rounds, when the 2 other people left may still be pretending to be the mole.
IIRC one of the moles was just a "nice guy". like a lovable charismatic teddy bear that everyone loved. and if they failed everyone still went "aww well they did their best" even though they didnt. and that hid that mole SO well, to a point where in the final episode reunion there were multiple candidates going "NO WAY!"
@@MelficeOne omg which season
@@deansbian5607 us season 5 I wanna say
Your editing style is absolutely fantastic and made this such an enjoyable and informative viewing experience! Please keep making videos like this
holy crap, i love your videos! you got me into these kind of games (?) (no idea what to call them)
I happen to be old enough to have watched the first season when it aired. I loved the show and since that first season every reality and/or game show has never captured my attention like that. This analysis explains why I loved it so much.
You should watch the Dutch or Belgian version. They have a lot of episodes and on RUclips, there are channels that make English subtitles for them. Like WIDM English Subs
The only other show I've found that came closest to scratching this itch was Whodunnit, though it's much campier
I remember the OG season too. And I remember the final challenge fell apart. They had to walk through and explain how it was supposed to be solved and it was kind of a bummer.
Season 2’s final challenge went smoother but it wasn’t as interesting. One player got so lost they had to ask the camera crew for help.
@@GhostWriter520 I'd check out The Genius, a korean reality show. Some of the games aren't strong, but it hit a similar box in terms of clever challenge design.
is anybody gonna talk about how good the editing, scripting and visuals of this video are? maybe the source material is just already good (as explained by this video LOL) but i really wanna watch more of this channel and the mole so, good job girl ^_^
Originally, this show was cooked up in Belgium in 1998 to run for only 3 seasons, but the idea got sold to over 50 countries with the Netherlands being the biggest adopter playing it non-stop every year since 1999. Belgium itself only restarted the making of the show in 2016 releasing every year since.
What you are forgetting is that people can get accidental correct answers.
Some questions ask: which group was the mole in during the task this morning. If you had two or three groups of 3 people, someone who cut the mole from their list, might actually have 1-2 correct answers, compared to someone who risked everything on a completely different player.
That's explicitly in the video
I haven't watch the show but I assume the opposite is important as well. If you get multiple people who are 100% certain who the mole is but can still miss finer details like what are the color of their eyes/shorts/shoes etc. since there is so much information you have to pull for what I assume is too many questions to leave tiebreakers.
In other versions of the show (Netherlands and Belgium), the role of playing The Mole is a VERY prestigious title to have. It's even gotten a kind of meta around what sort of Mole you want to play. In one season in the Belgium version, one Mole sunk THE ENTIRE prize fund midway through the season for an exemption and everyone forgave them because they brought in so much cash before that.
One thing you will see in versions are jokers and exemptions. Exemptions are free passes into the next episode, and jokers turn incorrect answers in the quiz to correct ones but don't tell you for what questions. These are a massive point where players can sink the prize fund for immunity, or to go against the challenge for a small amount of safety, another great twist in the game.
TL;DR The Mole is great, watch the Belgium version. One of the best tv shows out there
I don't watch reality, but as an avid board gamer, this was fascinating! Thanks for putting it together!
You literally analyze JL:TG trailers mate
@@mistymysticsailboatTrue, you got me there, lol. But I would still argue that Jet Lag doesn't fit in the reality genre, even if it's recorded in the real world.
Imagine if there was a SMALL chance of No Mole At All.
Imagine. If.
The classic red herring.
wait so how would quizzes work?
@@Person.1234 Whoever has the most unique set of answers, maybe?
While that would be rad, we've actually got something close! On Nebula there's a show with a similar premise called 'The Getaway', where the twist is... Oops All Moles! There's literally no normal player, EVERYONE is the secret traitor. It's an absolute blast watching the double-triple-guessing everyone constantly makes.
@Ariamaki Oh wow!
The animation at 12:53 is a masterpiece.
The first time I saw that intro, I thought it was going to be a very basic analysis of the show, but the slow buildup as the possibility of this show working seemed to dwindle, and yet knowing the title and premise of the video kept me on my toes, until I got to 3:00... And then the drums kicked in, and shivers were sent up my *SPINE* as the screen split and bright red burst onto the screen! That intro was the best hook I've ever seen, and it may stay that way for a while!
This video has like the exact venn diagram of things I'd watch a bajillion hours of. Subscribed! The video editing is also really nice, reminds me of BobbyBroccoli.
DUDE the editing is INSANE. AND the music oh my god- it's crazy this video is crazy i'm so hooked i **loved** that outro
Liked and subscribed! This was a quality production
I love how Dutch people are united by this video. The Belgians may have started it but somehow we are just extremely passionate about the mole.
That's partly because season 3 of the mole Belgium released in 2003 while season 4 started in 2016 and then onwards became yearly. Because of this massive hiatus, while it is still really popular, it's less popular then in the netherlands.
don't underestimate us, the mole is a HUGE deal in belgium too
the mole is HUGE in belgium...it's just a small country
the design you did at 3:04 is wildly interesting and took me on a rollercoaster of thoughts
it feels weird complimenting something that appears for 10 seconds out of this 20 minute video, but ive gotta appreciate the details, yknow?
We've covered 25+ seasons of the Dutch/Flemish versions (which are available with English subs!) and the American one doesn't hold a candle to any of them. The Netflix reboot was based off the Flemish reboot seasons, but with a lot of the subtlety, nuance and charm removed. Everything has consequences in the Flemish version, and not all of them have to be monetary (for example, the challenge where someone has a chance to come back actually comes from the second episode of the rebooted Flemish version - in that version, if the person who was executed doesn't succeed at escaping the locked taxi, a paint bomb goes off over them and their luggage). The Netflix reboot is utterly charmless in comparison.
The Netflix reboot is pretty terrible so I’m surprised to see a video praising it so much. I did enjoy the original US run and thought it was a lot better.
Also, almost all Netflix shows are charmless. They cast a bunch of wannabe influencers with no game skills or personalities.
@@itisyerdad Their version of the Mole is uniquely charmless though, because they were offered help (or at least advice) from the Flemish team but rejected it.
its stuff like this that make me so disappointed... Netflix has so many opportunities but denies anything in favor of the most bland and soulless stuff because its safer monetarily (or something similar).
@@ISamAtlas We're lucky to be (best) friends with the Flemish host so I had a looooong chat with him about it at their finale last year. They chose to interpret it in their own way, which is their right, but it's a shame that this is the way a lot of fans are able to see the show.
This is a fantastic breakdown, well-explained and demonstrated without spoiling a single thing! (Except, I suppose, the quiz mechanic.) Nice job. *subscribes*
Delightful analysis video, love the cuts to "The mole is good". Great job explaining the game design behind the quizzes and how it encourages you to both hedge your bets but also to slowly cut down options
I really like that the elimination system puts final control in the hands of the person being eliminated. The breadwinner is at an inherent disadvantage and he might be deceived, but the tricksters cannot simply conspire to vote out the person who has contributed the most once they feel they've got enough out of him.
If i hear a single person say “oh this is like survivor meets among us” im gonna FREAK OUT
Great video! Absolutely love the animations and narration. I like the choice of not using any clips from the show, making it spoiler-free too. I'm just gonna go and watch every single other video you've made haha... it feels like I've discovered a hidden gem, this is genuinely so damn good.
The way this video essay just devours. You're killin it out here Ellie!
I never heard of The Mole before watching this video, but its insane how well thought-out the game design is for this show. This was a really good analysis and i loved the animation :)
I think The Mole was crafted by Mensa? I remember them being mentioned in the credits of the US show
I don't know if any of the umpteen versions of mole did this but one of the best ways to take care of 'everyone acts like the mole' while avoiding mole acts like a normal person is to set some proportional money limit in the entire game. If the team manages to raise money above the certain limit then the players win and they are eligible to win the prize. But if they fail, the mole takes whatever money that was made in the pot plus some kind of bonus.
In that way, the players are actually incentivized to commit to the task, because certain competency is required to win the prize at all, and the mole is committed to sabotage the task, because they need to keep the prize amount below a certain number to receive payment. The bonus is there to prevent the players doing some kind of 'let's screw everyone tactic'.
you are among the peak of youtube right now. its all so nicely laid out and not in your face at all. i love it.
This passionate explanation is a video design masterpiece
This makes sense, but it makes me ask a different question - why would Mole *not* act like a Breadwinner in this scenario? I don't remember video ever going about what are the stakes for the Mole player, why do they need to sabotage other than because they've been assigned a role? Wouldn't everyone get all questions wrong and be eliminated if they exclude Mole thinking they're the Breadwinner? This is the issue that happens in some hidden role games that lean into semi-coop nature more: if the game is hard enough that you will lose most of the time *without* Mole's influence, why would the Mole ever reveal themselves?
The more money the players win, the less the mole gets. So the mole has an incentive to lose some games so less money goes into the player's pot. Furthermore, only one person gets eliminated per round, so no matter how they play, they will be facing off against the same number of people at the end, and have less money in their pot.
the mole is a member of the production team, right? so they have more wiggle room to cause chaos
@@nodrancehow does the game end?
@@LightPink The game ends with the two last remaining players and the mole all doing a massive exam more than twice the length of a normal quiz, and are asked about questions throughout the entire series. So in the end, it ends up being a 1v1 quiz with the winner of that quiz winning the show.
@@nodrance This is not true. They are paid for their role, but nothing is added based on how much they sabotage. They aren't a player in the traditional sense; they sabotage the game because that's what they signed up for. Their incentive to do a good job is the same as the host's incentive to present the show well or the production team's incentive to design fun challenges.
The ultimate mole strategy is to be a breadwinner. If a bunch of people are pretending to be the mole, the mole just needs to go unnoticed
The celebrity version introduced me to Corbin Bersen, which somehow led me to Psych my favorite tv show.
Also The Mole is awesome.
Godammit, THIS VIDEO IS GOOD, The punchline with the music got me, insta subd, and yeah, i think i saw this reality, if not this, something very similar, and it's AWESOME. And i remember the strategies clearly
Well, this channel is a hidden gem. Your visuals are comprehensive while still appearing simple, your audio is pleasant to listen to, and your video topics are fascinating. Cant help but hope a comment boosts the algo and more subs come.
your narration is very pleasing to listen to, great video
this is such a sick ass format and your editing is super good!!!!
I live in the Netherlands so this show has been a yearly part of my life for over 10 years (it took some time for me to warm up to the show). I am intimately familiar with it, but you have still shown me many different perspectives to it. Thank you for that.
Also: some of the most fun seasons are when the Mole is posing as a breadwinner and people just don't catch all of the things he is doing in plain sight because he's so incredibly driven and competitive.
the intro of this video alone had me automatically subscribed. excellent job!
Came for a game design breakdown of a show I never watched, stayed for the stylish as hell editing 🔥
The 4 people who made the show are in the closing credits: Bart De Pauw, Tom Lenaerts, Michiel De Vlieger and Michel Van Hove.
Those 4 made a lot of memorable tv together between 1995 and 2010.
Watching this reminded me of one of my favorite shows when I was a kid called whodunnit. It’s been a while so I don’t remember all the details, but basically how it worked was the contestants all live inside a manor and are told that they will be solving puzzles to win money. They all go to bed to prepare for the next day but when they wake up they soon discover one of them is dead. Now the contestants split into 2 groups to investigate the body and the crime scene and at the end of the investigation they are individually interviewed where they give their theory on how the murder was committed and who is the murderer. The 2 people who were the farthest from the truth are then given letters at dinner marking them as the next potential victims. Really good show that I unfortunately don’t think can happen again due to the nature of the premise, really recommend it to anyone interested.
This is such a great made video, good work 👍
incredible video oh my GOD i was so invested in this. i figured as well that you’d spoil the actual show but you DIDNT!! you just convinced me to watch it
This video is great, but there's one really big aspect here that you failed to mention that I think absolutely shapes how players act: Exemptions and Corrections (known as Jokers in the Dutch version and others).
For those who don't know, Exemptions are items in the game that can be used before the elimination ceremony, that guarantee a player a pass into the next round no matter what they score on the quiz - basically making them immune for that episode. They're also sometimes awarded automatically to players for that night's quiz specifically, as part of a challenge. Meanwhile, corrections/Jokers are simple, adding +1 to a player's score on the quiz. Because they're lower stakes and don't guarantee safety, they're easier to come by than Exemptions.
The _twist_ is, earning an exemption *almost always* comes at the cost of the group's pot, directly. Sometimes it's as simple as a two-team challenge where one team is playing for exemptions while the other is playing for the money. Other times it's more dramatic; both Netflix seasons have had a challenge where players were asked to bet money directly from the pot, and whoever bet the most would win the exemption, at the cost of that money being removed from the pot.
This obviously massively affects player psychology, because going for an exemption is _explicitly_ only useful for the players, who unlike the Mole aren't immune... but that comes at the cost of being seen more as a player, and therefore risking being written off as a suspect alongside the Breadwinners.
Of course, this acts as a very good cover for the real Mole; I've seen a Minecraft version, for example, where the Mole played the whole game as a nervous player who was desperate for exemptions, allowing them to keep money out of the pot while still looking innocent, and it worked so well that one of the _finalists_ didn't realise until _after_ the final quiz.
It's also great for drama. So many episodes across versions have players in the hot seat, torn between guaranteeing a step closer to winning the prize pot, or making that pot bigger at the cost of their own safety. It's similar to how Tricksters are OK losing a little money to increase their odds of surviving a quiz.
i cant believe he didnt talk about this! this wouldve been a great topic
New statistics/game theory channel found!! You are just as fun to watch as Primer, subbed and eagerly awaiting more :D
Yo this video was awsome, im subbing.
Would love more stuff like this, also the visuals are so good, this video litterly sucked me into it, I couldnt stop watching it until it was finished.
Great pacing!!!
I cant believe there was a mole among them
You pitched the show so well that I have to pause in the beginning and come back when I’ve watched it
FINALLY SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT THE MOLE , ITS AMAZING IN EVERY ASPECT , NOT ONOY IS IT GOOD BUT ENTERTAINING, KEEPING THE PLAYERS GUESSING
Bloody hell that was a brilliant video
Just binged all your videos, what an absolute gem of a channel
The only wrinkle is, if anyone does go “all in” on the Mole early (despite this being a bad idea) and by chance guesses RIGHT, they basically cannot lose since they know who the Mole is (otherwise they would have been eliminated). This happened in Netflix season 2, where one candidate figured out the Mole this way and basically guaranteed themselves a spot in the final
It’s just very dangerous to do that, and you also can’t always know what the mole was doing, because you’ve maybe been split up
Incredible video that you were able to wrap up in a very reasonable time frame. Please keep making content like this!!
I'd actually argue the game design of the Mole is fundamentally flawed. The incentive for non-Moles is to appear suspicious so that other people are less likely to figure out who the actual Mole is, so all you're left with is figuring out the difference between "this person is sabotaging the game because they're the Mole and production told them to" and "this person is sabotaging the game because it will help them win". So finding the Mole becomes mostly arbitrary since they aren't really going to be acting any differently than anyone else.
The only actual clue to the Mole's identity is the quiz itself, which narrows who the Mole could be based on who the eliminated players were suspicious of.
(quick disclaimer that, while ive seen many seasons of this show (both original belgian version and the dutch one), i still havent gotten around to netflixs version, so i cant guarantee that this is accurate to what youve seen - but this is approximately how its usually played.)
with this shows structure and the incentive to find the mole, you get a lot of different strategies for moles and players alike. both may act overly suspicious to throw people off, or act like the perfect little candidate to keep people off their backs, or really anywhere in between - they can be loud or quiet, sharks for the position of treasurer or stay as far away as possible, and many other things. and, well, of course this is going to make it much harder to discover the mole - that is the whole point of the program! thats the fun behind it! its what creates the tension and the mystery is played in such a way that viewers at home - as stated in the video - can easily play along.
it is up to the players (in-game and behind their tvs) to both get a good read on the people surrounding them and pay close attention during games to see when and how a person might be able to sabotage, including what role a mole might want to take, where and how they might be able to easily keep money away from the pot, etc. this is the whole foundation the show is built on. the games are secondary, they only form the medium to earn the money, for the actual game at play - who is the mole?
the quiz isnt necessarily too big of a hint, either - for most of the game, candidates will split their answers across different people, and they wont completely tell or show you who voted for who every single time. besides, people can simply get their facts wrong. plus, within the game, it isnt common to share suspects with anyone, unless they formed an alliance with someone (which is something the mole can do as well, of course) - so the candidates dont have those hints.
if this isnt how the netflix version worked or came off, thats not on the concept of the game. if it is and you didnt enjoy it much anyways, then the program just probably isnt for you!
@@panainpublic You say it makes it difficult to figure out who the mole is, my point is that it is essentially impossible. Imagine, for a moment, a scenario where the mole isn't told they're the mole. They play the game just like anyone else. In that scenario, how suspicious/innocent anyone acts is irrelevant to finding the actual mole.
That's how I'm saying the show essentially works. The mole does actually know who they are, but they are driven by the same incentives as the other players (to sabotage occasionally). It only seems like there's progress towards figuring out who the mole is because the people with arbitrary suspicions in the correct direction are the ones who remain. The winner at the end might say "I suspected X all along!" but that's just because they made it to the end because their suspicions aligned with the game declared "mole" and, again, you would have the exact same situation even if the mole didn't know who they were and there was no actual evidence to go off of.
The winner is simply the one who happened to be most suspicious of the person who was "pretending to be a mole because production told them to" over the people who were "pretending to be a mole because it would help them win the game".
@@Clumbobin the Dutch version, there are some things that make it more fun for the audience. Our version is done with Dutch celebrities, and the production throws in tons of hidden clues related to that, so people form their own (almost conspiracy) theories. I know for a fact that there was a year where the wheel of candidates in the app was rainbow and people immediately went “oh the mole is gay” (which, if I recall correctly, was even *right*, though I don’t know if it was an intentional hint?). I know that for me, one of the contestants once made a Lady Gaga reference in episode one, and I had a whole conspiracy theory about it because there was also an important telephone in that season and Lady Gaga has a song named Judas - I was COMPLETELY convinced that it was that contestant (I was wrong). People dig into everything that is out there about these celebrities in order to connect it to possible clues, from song lyrics to birthdays to star signs to possible connections to past moles. They dissect each outfit, each sentence, and each episode to look for clues. Each season is a whole big whodunnit, and all the viewers are the detectives. I can see how a lot of that might be lost in versions of the show that don’t have celebrities as contestants (and thus may have a harder time throwing in clues for the audience and contestants)
I agree, I watched the Netflix version and this is the part that made it fall somewhat flat for me - while it makes sense on a meta level that the mole should avoid suspicion from the audience (seeing the mole more as a member of the production crew than a member of the cast), there's no incentive within the world of the game for the mole to either deflect or arouse suspicion, since there are no consequences other than "contestants get bored" if they're too obvious, and also no incentive to either sabotage or not other than "it's their job". What I really want is a metric for judging a level of gamesmanship of the mole. The actual players have two competing interests - throw suspicion on themself, for all the reasons detailed in the video, but contribute to the prize fund. The mole has no interests at all within the world of the game; they're not *playing*, and this makes it less interesting for me. I saw some other comments about how in other versions sometimes the mole may get a cut of the prize if they are not correctly identified. I like this, but I think to make it truly compelling they need a competing motive as well, just like the players. I'd suggest something like: the mole must be personally responsible for the removal of at least a certain amount of money from the prize fund, or they're unable to take any cut of the prize fund regardless of if they remain unidentified. This then gives them the inverse motivations of the other players, but will result in the same behavior (sabotage enough, but not too much). I don't think this is a perfect solution, but I am not a reality game show designer and I'm sure others could come up with other possible incentives.
Such a well-made video! The intro had me absolutely hooked. Great job.
Okay, just stopped at the title card to say: wow!
The music drop, the dramatic explanation, the motion graphics!
I am so amazed by quality of this video that it's blowing my socks off! Holy shit!
Babe wake up a new Ellie Rasmussen video just dropped
Hey Ellie, just watched this vid and I loved it.
Love love love The Mole! Great video explaining the game design and strategies!
Please make more videos about this sort of thing! The quality was great and the i love analyzing these games and what makes them succeed or fail
This is such an amazing video! I loved the Mole when I watched it and this summed up and explained why its good perfectly. Also I love how you didn't spoil it for those who havent watched it yet
Yo WIDM! I, as a Dutch person, love this show! There's a new season coming here in the Netherlands, and I'm exciteddddd.
Een nieuw seizoen komt elk jaar domme
zelfde, het is het beste ding in januari
Great video about my favorite tv show. RUclips recommended the Dutch version a couple years ago and since then I have watched about 19 seasons and learned quite some Dutch. I hope the next season will be on here as well. They changed their way of broadcasting so it‘s unclear at the moment.
This is so beautifully edited
i feel like i’m striking gold on youtube. this channel is destined to be a favorite
This was such an interesting watch! Definitely worth pushing back sleep
How you got me excited about the concept of a show I had not even heard of is beyond me. Nice job
I've only watched two of your videos and they are absolutely fantastic! Keep doing what youre doing!
amazing video. I am sold on a television series with out seeing a single clip of it. Great work!
I just stumbled on this channel and I'm super impressed! This channel will blow up, mark my words.
What a fun overview and really great production elements to make your point! Loved this.
There's also Wendover's The Getaway, which solves the mole problem by making everyone the mole
And this way they can get away with having people eliminate each other as there will always be moles left.
Spoiler ahead :
At some point, one person actually realises that "mole might get eliminated" problem and concludes everyone must be moles for the show to not be broken.
But this introduces another problem:
They cant make a second season, without fundamentally rewriting the basic premise of the show. Because anyone who agrees to go on "the getaway, season 2" is just 1 "i googled the show before signing the contract cause i dont want to be on Fear Factor" away from the oops all moles conclusion.
In a passing glance, it seems like a genius solution. But anything more then a passing glance and it makes a show that doesnt so much have "seasonal rot" as that it has a seasonal half-life.
Which means either season 2 fundamentally overhauls the basic premise (at the cost of audience buy-in), or season 2 probably falls flat on its face (at the cost of all audience buy-in)
@@ripopol Not sure how legal this would be, the players on the Getaway S1 were told the show was called "The Snitch." Just tell them a similar story that it's a different show. Joe Schmoe did something similar.
I just wanted to say this was an excellent video, and definitely deserves wayyyy more views :)
Superb editing
This channel has crazy good quality for being so young. Instant sub.
Damn I've seen all your videos so far and I love them all !
We're missing something. The next step. The mole who acts like a normal player. Not just acts like one, but for all intensive purposes sans quizzes is one, and uses the tricksters, which will always be there, to sabotage for them.
What an incredible video. Amazingly presented, about a really fantastic show, and broken down so well. You deserve so much success for this!
Good video, though I think there's a major oversight when talking about the quizzes and spreading probabilities. The vast majority of questions don't point at particular players but groups of players (is the mole male or female, was the mole in Team A or Team B, is the mole married, etc). This creates enough fuzzyness that you can never fully work out why someone got eliminated; if player A and B are both spreading their questions over 4 people, and player A has the mole among those 4 people but player B does not, that does not guarantee that player A is safe from elimination. Even though they aim a quarter of their answers on the mole, if the people player B suspects happen to overlap in the questions with the mole, player B might still get more correct answers than player A. And fundamentally, the specific questions are unknown to the players before taking the quiz, and unknown (in full) to the audience, so nobody can make a spreadsheet and know for certain based on eliminations why a player got eliminated.
This is the first video I've seen from you and WOW this was so cool! Great pacing and production quality, on such an interesting topic too! I'm definitely checking this show out now, and I'm definitely subscribing to you.
Amazing video! I love your narration voice and your animation!
Awesome video, impecable passing, even without paying full atention to it you can follow the train of thought it's trying to explain, keep it up
I'm watching this show now because you made such a compelling argument for why its good. I have never even heard of it before. But i think i'm going to enjoy it immensly. Thank you so much!!!
I just stopped playback at 2:29 to see if I've anticipated what the improvement in the renewed _Mole_ is. I shared the frustration of viewers of the previous _Mole_ entries in that the Mole hirself didn't have sufficient play motivation, and was just responding to producer instructions. What was needed was a scoring system similar to that of the card game Eleusis, in which the Mole's payoff would depend primarily on how much spread in performance s/he caused between the other players, and secondarily on the amount of player pot s/he deprived them of.
A lesser frustration was that the quizzes that eliminated players along the way were something the viewers couldn't fairly play along with, because of getting only snippets of the living-in experience the players had. However, it was a good enough game for viewers to simply try to figure out who the Mole was, rather than remember details like who was literally standing where in relationship to others at time X.
this video is so well done. ur def going to blow up
Never watched The Mole but was curious about it so I clicked on this video. Thank you for such a great explanation, I think
I’ll watch it now!
On that note, it reminds me me of one of my fave shows of all time ‘Whodunnit’ where similarly there is 1 “murderer” among the group and everyone has to figure out who it is and how the murder occurred (what weapon, etc). The problem is they can only investigate a small area and need to rely on the (mis)information of others to piece together a theory. The worst detective is the one to get “killed” (eliminated) next, similar to the quiz format of The Mole.
i binged all your videos and they are great
the added rule of "if there is a tie, the contestant who finished the quiz the slowest will be eliminated" is also great because it can give false hope to contestants who survive and think they got some answers right but actually they didn't and just finished the quiz faster. There is no information gained by the results of the quiz