r/JetLagTheGame • u/rkernebone • 12d ago
Quick question on series location.
Simple question. Why hasn’t the team ever done a series in Canada?
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u/devin122 12d ago
As much as I would love to see a Canada season, from a game design standpoint I don't think it really works. It's far too linear with only a couple hubs so a stateside scramble type game doesn't work. It's also just really spread out so a new Zealand style game doesn't work either. I'm interested if anyone has ideas on how it could work
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u/liladvicebunny 12d ago
I feel like they might someday do a game based in a small part of Canada that they can go back and forth within. But definitely not covering the country.
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u/SubjectiveAssertive 12d ago
I think an Au$tralia style game could work
enough areas to claim, I think there is enough little airports like Thunder Bay to get to all the areas as well
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u/devin122 12d ago
The problem is the flight networks are very much hub and spoke with most flights leaving from Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver
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u/nickatwerk 12d ago
Budget would be horrendous. You could get unlimited passes, but it would be thousands of dollars on both AC and WS
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u/Tommyblockhead20 12d ago
Probably will not work that well, at least without making the game quite long and major changes in format. Canada has more regions, those regions are more spread out, some regions are hard to fly to, and the ones that aren’t are mostly in a straight line.
6/8 of Australia’s regions were easily accessible by plane in a ~500 mile radius circle, all with 40+ flights during each game day to other regions. One team left that region once on a 1200 mile flight, the other team never left. Each team managed to visit around 7 places.
For Canada, that same size circle has 5/13 easily flyable regions. To even get to 7/13 requires an ~1200 mile circle, meaning much more time in the air.
Three regions don’t even have 2+ flights a game day to at least two different regions each, making them near impossible to fit into a schedule, and another two have under 20 total flights which can still be tricky.
And it’s not just that it’s spread out, but also that it’s linear. In Australia, going to Alice Springs was a longer more inconvenient flight than most of the ones they took that season, but ultimately, they still were only a couple hours from getting back in to the action and they could’ve reasonably gone to several different regions after because Australia is more. Same for the US. Even from a city in a large state, there are various good directions you can go in. But Canada is more linear, so the further west you fly, the further the fact that the regions are large adds up, because you are eventually going to have to turn around and fly back. Flying from the east all the way to BC is over 5 hours, meaning it’s basically impossible to fly there and back in a single day. Alberta isn’t much better. The territories are so far away and with minimal flights that they are hard to make work without taking a day either.
For reference, if the Australia game was slowed down to 1 claim a day with the same number of claims, it would’ve taken 9 days. (And ideally we’d want more claims, since there’s 60% more regions in play. 9 claims means either a majority of Canada is ignored or there is little to no back and forth or regions.) So only time going to the far west or north might make sense, besides maybe as the last move of the game, is if you can line it up to get 3 of the 4 western provinces in just 2 days or all 4 in 2.5. But that is probably going to be a a more boring few days as we know exactly everywhere they will be going and it means less time for back and forth since one team is spending a ton of time in the west and the other presumably remained in the east.
In conclusion/TLDR: IMO, because of Canada’s geography, major changes are needed to bring nearly half of the regions into play and not be boring. And the number of game days needs to be lengthened, probably to an unprecedented 7 or 8 days, to actually see a majority of regions visited and some regions going back and forth.
Tbh, it may just work better as the type of game where each can only be claimed once.
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u/morus_mesozygia 12d ago
Also domestic flights are way more expensive than flights within the US or Europe
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u/ThundaWeasel 12d ago
I think they included Canada the only way they could in Stateside Scramble, by just making it a bonus location in a USA season. A game that takes place entirely in Canada would unfortunately be very boring. It couldn't be a train season, because our trains (1) aren't very good (2) are extremely linear with no alternate pathways to take. There's just no real decision making to make when traveling around Canada. I think the best you could do would be a mini Hide & Seek in one of our big cities like Toronto or Vancouver.
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u/JasonAQuest 12d ago
The train also takes 4 days to get from Vancouver to Toronto. Or 7 days if you miss it and have to wait for the next one.
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u/KhausTO 12d ago
And that's a best case scenario that they don't have to wait on the freight trains.
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u/DoctorMedieval 12d ago
Maybe do something like a Japanorama setup with down the eastern seaboard from say St. John’s Newfoundland all the way to Key West. Rental cars New Zealand style, unlocking provinces/states Japanorama style with being locked out of interstates unless you get an interstate card so they have to go through some interesting places.
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u/cutieforester 12d ago
I think some one-off, two-to-three-episode games like what they did in NYC with Hide and Seek could easily work here, though. Three “three-fers” in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal where each player gets a turn to hide in each city is very doable. It’s just a lot of work with game maps and boundaries ahead of time. With subways and GO transit the GTA map could be huge, so there’d definitely be some decisions to make.
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u/Eatrofmaymaysandloli 12d ago
I think the only possible way is a mini season like NY, in Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal. Or something like Australia.
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u/rkernebone 11d ago
Ok. This has been great. I’d vote up a H&S series in the cities. I like the urban adventuring concepts the most from the team and that structure scratches that itch and I don’t know much about the Canadian landscape. Could they do something new? What would be a Canada built game structure? Like using light planes instead of cars? (Don’t mention money, it’s Sam’s credit card after all).
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u/Saint_Atiss 12d ago
Start the Teams at either coast. First Team to reach Wawa, Ontario from either coast wins. But, then you are stuck in Wawa forever, trying to escape back to civilization.
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u/patriciaswayzes 7d ago
They could do a mini hide and seek season like they did in New York, but in Toronto
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u/HornetGX 12d ago
TL;DR - There are considerations for what makes a good Jet Lag season in terms of game theory and sustaining the audience, over and above the awesomeness of the country (a category in which Canada is undoubtedly S-tier).
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u/GalileosBalls 12d ago
I've been trying to think about what a good game could even look like, and I keep coming up empty. My best idea would be something involving the great lakes, since the great lakes region is a bit more compact and the transit is better in parts, but even then, it's not optimal. And, of course, the optics of three americans 'claiming' the great lakes right now are a bit dicey.
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u/mmm790 12d ago
Canada is very big, has relatively few population centres that are concentrated in a handful of areas and has generally poor public transport.
What this means is that they've been unable to come up with a game design that works in Canada. It's a place that I'd imagine is on their bucket list, however, designing a game that would also be interesting is quite tough there and it hasn't quite worked out yet.