My wife and I have not had cable at our home for our entire married life. As a result we have one channel which happens to NBC. I only tell you this so that if my references are on shows you’d in no way watch, you’ll understand why I do.

When it comes to games, I like to try and take them to the next level at least in the presentation of them, and in order to that I like to go to the experts. I’ve found that great ideas in titles and often in types of games or humorous ideas can be found on the network talk shows. I have three that come on before 10pm on our channel. Ellen, Rachael Ray, and the Jay Leno show. I’ll give you an example of one that we did. Ellen had a game awhile back that was called

“You Want me to do WHAT?” (“What?” was said really high)

We took that  idea and had a month long segment during our summer services called “That adult can do WHAT?” we used the same voice inflection on “WHAT?” and had a photo slide with the title on it. We had a desire for our students to get to know the names of our adult leaders, and we thought rather than make a student play the game we’d challenge an adult to compete in a random challenge.

Each week we surprised one of our volunteers and had them compete against the clock. We made an adult put “depends” on stuffed animals, dress a raw chicken in a build-a-bear outift, carry jell-o eggs on a spoon through an obstacle course. Simple, cheap-o, fun to watch games with the added benefit of getting our adult volunteers up in front of our students. So next week when your struggling to come up with a game for Wednesday, relax turn on the TV and see what the experts are doing. Put your own spin on it and try it out. Trust me if you’ve got a title and a name for your game it’ll feel like a bigger deal, even if your just rocking Gorilla, Man, Gun.

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT IN APPROVAL OF EVERYTHING THEY DO ON THESE PROGRAMS, I’M MAINLY REFFERING TO THEIR PRESENTATION. PLEASE USE YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT ON WHAT YOU USE, STEAL THE GAME NOT NECESSARILY THE CONTENT.