Here is how the main games have changed overtime, sort of a tengaged history lesson for newer tengaged players.
Hunger Games and Stars are pretty much the same as they always have been except strategy has obvously evolved somewhat since then, but the format has constantly remained the same. Survivor is the same way except that tribe swaps have only been around for a couple of years.
The main Rookies format used to be the same as Crookies except with 10 players and only 1 person going home each round instead of 2, and only one person being nommed by the algo instead of 2, and with the final 5 eviction being the last day, and the winner being the most active out of final 4. There were also no charity games, so betting was more of a gamble. Then Frookies became the sole format for Rookies, except that rounds would last hours if there were inactives that didnt vote. This is when Charities became a thing, since thats win there was more control among the players of who went up and who ultimately won. At the beginning charities were somewhat discouraged because if there was a large percentage of the bets on one person, then the payouts and game speed would be changed. this was done away with pretty quickly. Then they brought back the old rookies in a 13 player double vote out format.
Castings has gone through the most changes, with it beginning as only a 10 player game, somewhat similar to rookies except being based more on activity. This format was before even I joined the site so I cant say as much about it. Then the 20 player format came to be, but back then it was set at 9 12 hour days with 2 people being eliminated each day, the voted off person, and the very least active player. Then when challenges came, it went from being almost entirely based on being active, to being completely based on challenge scores, which kind of sucked because people who hardly talked to anyone would win just because they were good at challenges. Then the format of keys, and combining challenges and actiity came into play, although it was a couple of months after that before health came into play, which ended a period of inactives being carried very deep into the game. Similar to Rookies there then came a time when fastings became the sole castings format, with slow time if there were inactives, until castings returned along side it.
Personally even though it only lasted a pretty brief time, I actually really liked it whenwe had the frookies and fastings format but wih the time of a regular castings or rookies, because it was a good balance of getting to play a strategic game, but also having enough time to make a good social game.
Several years ago there was a duel game, which worked by having everyone rank all of their competitors from top to bottom, and the winner of a main challenge being safe from elimination, and then whoever they ranked at the top would be safe from being first nominee, and whoever they had ranked highest would be safe and so on and so forth, with the last person to be saved being the first nominee, and whoever they had at the bottom being the person they went up against for elimination unless of course it was the main challenge winner, and then the two went head to head with the winner staying and the loser being out. This continued until the final 3, wit the winner of one final challenge being the ultimate winner.
One last thing., frats didnt used to be a thing, but there used to be unofficial groups that would work together, and it was more like a secret club. honestly i kind of miss that too because it wasnt about getting a star seat, and it felt more intimate and secret.
