For the past handful of months, my friend Doug Wreden has been working on putting on an event called Shufflemania, a game show where participants compete in games that are rotating across multiple different save states.

For example, if the players are in a round of Tetris, there would be five different games of Tetris happening all at once, and the “shuffler” would switch among the five different games of Tetris in a random order and in random time intervals. The challenge is to keep track of all the games at once, while also making crisp inputs so that button presses are not carried over to the wrong copy of the game.

There were several days of in-studio preparation and rehearsal for the event, and I joined Doug for the final rehearsal before the show. I hadn’t seen the build process, so I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived, and the set was a lot nicer than I was originally expecting.

I also went to visit on show day.

There was a professional photographer on-site so I usually don’t bother taking regular event pictures, considering I would never be able to keep up with their skill and equipment and the quality of their photographs. However, if you’ve been a long-time reader of my blog, you probably know that I do like snapping shots from a behind-the-scenes perspective to help people immerse themselves and see what it would be like had they been there working the event—shots that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see from the live broadcast or a well-polished set of professional photographs.

If you know me, you might know that I very rarely show up to an event unless I have some sort of active role in it. Luckily, the people there didn’t know me too well.

There was a very small live studio audience composed of some close friends of the on-screen talent, so I just sat with them, had some snacks, drank some Red Bull, and pretended like I was also just a regular spectator. However, we had a surprise in store for everyone.

The show was obviously marketed as Shufflemania, with the allure of the concept being the game shuffler. The “reveal” was supposed to be that the shuf­fler wasn’t actually an artificial intelligence model, but instead, was Jeremy Elbertson, professionally known as Jerma985, “hiding” in the computer sys­tem the entire time. Considering how advanced the shuffler was during the show and how well it interacted with players, it was blatantly obvious that it was a real person running it—and the players already knew this going into the event.

What the players didn’t know was that there was an actual real reveal planned. After the winners of Shufflemania were announced, it was disclosed that the event wasn’t actually about gaming or the shuffler, but instead, it was designed to find tennis partners for Doug and Jerma. That obviously made ab­so­lute­ly no sense and was so far-fetched that nobody believed it, but then Doug said they were playing tennis, right then and there, and led everyone outdoors.

In the chaos of the shuffler reveal and Jerma popping out of the box, I had quietly exited the studio, put on my referee jersey, grabbed the championship trophy, and went outside to wait for the real reveal. In utter bewilderment, the players navigated their way outside where we had a literal tennis court set up. I was standing by the net to explain the rules in my iconic dry and matter-of-fact manner, mixing in an arrogant implied undertone of “this is tennis, what else were you expecting?”

I was very pleased watching the players’ reactions, because it was very clear that we did a great job at hiding the plot twist. There was a nice mixture of people who were confused, people who were appalled that we committed to a gag so hard, and one person who exclaimed “Parkzer, you were in on this?”

I opened the segment by laying a foundation for the gameplay and then ordering Ludwig Ahgren to quiet down and maintain his composure because we need to uphold a level of professionalism. From there, I did a coin flip to determine who would serve first, chucked the coin far behind me, then declared that it landed heads-up even though it was blatantly obvious that the result of the coin flip was impossible to see unless you had binoculars. I then called for the match to begin and climbed up on my referee chair two and a half meters up in the air.

Throughout the match, Doug kept repeating phrases like “haven’t you ever played tennis before?” and “why did we even do this then?” to continue push­ing the idea that Shufflemania was all about tennis the entire time, not about the video games. Doug, Jerma, and I continued emphasizing how seriously every­one needed to take tennis, and at one point, I proceeded to ignore a point that Ludwig had scored, and then on top of that, also issued a one-point penalty for “improper use of verbal correspondence” after a small outburst from him.

Eventually, Doug and Jerma won, so I descended from my referee chair with the trophy and awarded it to them.

The more you think about this, the more ridiculous it gets. For example, tennis referees don’t even wear jerseys, they wear suits; the jersey top I was wear­ing was a basketball referee jersey. Tennis referees also don’t use whistles, they just talk into a microphone. We were hardly even following the rules of tennis, and I wasn’t using the proper tennis scoring system.

On top of that, Doug and Jerma, the hosts of the show, technically won their own event by winning the game of tennis.

I think the show turned out great. I’m personally not really into streamer and influencer culture, so this genre isn’t something that I would usually watch on my own, but the way Doug executed on his creative ideas was unique and compelling.

The role I played of the very serious and “normal” person—just exaggerating how different real life is from the Twitch and YouTube bubble—fit me perfectly. And of course, considering my recurring appearances in Doug’s videos and live streams, it was a nice touch to see chat excitedly spamming “PARKZER” once the camera eventually got close enough to me for people to realize I was the referee.

If you haven’t watched the show, I recommend checking it out on Doug’s YouTube channel—if not for the entire event, then at least for the silly reveal at the end.

Hello, Megan. Thank you for your contribution to this year’s Monterey Bay Aquarium charity event, and congratulations on being a raffle winner. Your prize, as you probably already heard from Doug’s administrative assistant, is the spoils from Doug spending US$100.00 on arcade claw machines. They are now in the mail and should be arriving on your doorstep in a few days.

I guess the plushies are great if you really like plushies, but I wanted to try and make this a bit more special for you than just receiving a bunch of generic arcade machine plushies that you could’ve easily bought yourself online from a wholesaler for less than $5 each. So, fighting through my ha­tred of claw machines, I joined Doug anyway at Round1 Bowling & Amusement so I can tell you a story in photos.

Doug went into this with great confidence. He said that, with a hundred dollars, he can usually win anywhere from six to eight plushies in an average run.

Although arcade games are overwhelmingly games of chance, there is still technically a skill element to claw machines as well—any amount of good luck on the strength roll of the claw isn’t going to help you if you plop it down on the wrong spot. Doug has built up some solid competency in consistently drop­ping the claw in an optimal position.

Unfortunately, the first few machines didn’t go too well. He started out with some traditional tri-prong machines, but he just wasn’t getting lucky—the claw would be too weak to pick up the plushie at all, or it would be strong enough to lift it but not quite strong enough to retain the plushie while it moved to the reward chute.

Eventually, he went over to a bi-prong machine where he had to pick up and drop a box into the chute to win the prize. Unfortunately, the box was seated squarely in the center of metal bars and the spacing between the bars was wide enough that it would mitigate any amount of vertical motion, i.e., when the box was picked up, it would tilt and the edge would get caught in one of the gaps, then fall right back down atop the bars.

Doug spent a lot of time trying to win this particular machine, and after looking back at the photos, I’m guessing it’s because the prize was an otter plushie. Unfortunately, he did not succeed and he moved onto another machine.

The next attempt was on a machine where a dinosaur plushie was tied with string to the control arm and you had to swing it around to knock over all six boxes to win a prize. On Doug’s first attempt, he managed to hit one of the boxes at such a perfect angle that it rotated 90°, remained upright, lodged in between two other boxes, and created an unmovable pillar that functionally made the entire game unwinnable.

If Doug was hired as a municipal architect, the city of Los Angeles would become immune to earthquakes and we would never see a collapsed building ever again.

We were still at a grand total of zero prizes at this point, so Doug took a different approach—he picked out a game where, eventually, you have to win at some point. This was a game of scooping ping pong balls into cups, and with enough card swipes and enough tries, you would ultimately get a prize.

After an unsettling number of ping pong balls falling out prematurely from the claw or missing the plastic cups entirely, Doug finally accrued the re­quired six points and earned his first plushie.

Next up was another “you will eventually win” kind of machine—this was a single-prong claw that you use to push the prize off the platform, and as long as you land your drops properly, you are guaranteed a little bit of motion on the plushie every time. After three swipes of his arcade card, Doug emerged victorious with plushie number two.

“Parkzer, stop deflowering Megan’s plushie.” —Doug

With the final remaining play credits on his arcade card, Doug tried to win a panda, and even though his claw drops were on point, luck wasn’t with him and he could not secure any more prizes.

Doug felt so badly about his insufferable performance that he went to the prize redemption area and cashed in some of his reward tickets from prior Round1 visits to purchase a Pikachu plushie. In addition, our friend Dani, who also joined us at the arcade, donated the two plushies that she won as well—a penguin in a carrot costume and a penguin in a shrimp tempura costume.

Five plushies were still less than Doug was hoping for, but definitely better than just two. He signed them, packaged them all in a cardboard box, and shipped them to Azerbaijan.

Just kidding, we didn’t ship them to Azerbaijan; they were sent to your actual address. But I’m guessing you would not be particularly fond of me pub­lishing your location on my (very public) website.

And thus concludes our odyssey of war and plunder.