Slashdot Mirror
ABC's 'BattleBots' Reboot Will Come Back For a Second Season (thewrap.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Good news if you're a fan of watching robots fight or just flail around in a corner. ABC has renewed BattleBots for a second season. According to The Wrap: "Following the summer ratings hit "Celebrity Family Feud," the six-episode first season of "BattleBots" earned an average of 5.4 million total viewers and a 1.7 rating among adults 18-49. Season 2 will keep the single-elimination tournament format of the first, but will double the size of the field to include expert roboticists, garage builders, families on a mission and past winners returning to defend their turf."
I just wanted to say I watched Battle Bots over the summer and was pleasantly surprised at how much more energy has gone into it. Finally we get some robot gore!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Do the Mythbusters or Will Wright have robots in this competition?
Someone needs to steer the production in favor of greater emphasis on the engineering side.
Someone needs to steer the production in favor of greater emphasis on the engineering side. A format with an in-depth design & build episode per battlebot followed by the competition and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of competitors would be an improvement and an opporytunity to promote STEM education.
1. They aren't actually even robots. They are remote-controlled.
2. Any weapon that could possibly damage a metal-armored bot is banned as it could also kill a cameraman or spectator/audiencemember.
So instead of say, a 30mm tank cannon, they carry, uh, a wedge, that might, uh, lift the enemy bot up an inch or too and then, well, it won't actually damage anything, but you might get some "points" for "aggression."
The ratings weren't that great, even during the summer. They were quite a bit lower than, say, CBS' Big Brother, which still does decent ratings after 17 seasons. Part of the reason it got renewed is that a show like this is very cheap to produce. It was filmed over a span of three days, with no need to pay writers or actors. They did have commentators and Molly McGrath did a good job as the host. BattleBots basically replaced Wipeout, which I thought was far more entertaining. At least Wipeout had the entertainment of epic fails as people fall off the obstacle course into mud, sometimes repeatedly. A lot of the damage inflicted to the robots during BattleBots wasn't even by the robots, but by the various hazards built in to the arena.
Each battle was basically like one round of a boxing match between a couple of remote controlled robots. It would have been more interesting had the robots been more durable in order to last multiple rounds and the operators been allowed to service the robots between rounds. At least it would have felt more like a boxing match between heavyweights. It also would have placed more emphasis on the ability to construct and service robots rather than simply steering the other robot into the various hazards.
It's not a bad show, but I would have preferred ABC kept Wipeout for an unscripted program in the summer. I'll probably watch it, but if I'm going to watch unscripted programming during the summer, I'd rather watch Big Brother or the Bachelorette.
We've had this shit in the UK for over a decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or is this some other kind of battery operated carnage?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The ultimate bot stays low to the ground and tries to flip the other bot over. An angled Roomba. Yawn.
Rapist nigger? But you repeat yourself.
Please, just have the fights and keep the 15 minute back stories to a minimum. I don't care about the plight of some person in their garage who's only dream is to be in a robot fight.
Just another excuse for the media to use words like "epic" and other superlatives favored by the less than literate lowest common denominator.
Enough of this BattleBots chitchat. I want to hear more about Family Feud!
I remembered the original, which sprang from hobbyist competitions, so I watched this. Not only did I rather quickly start fast-forwarding through all the yakity yak yak tak to get to the actual competition, but I found it terribly predictable who was going to win. Sorry, but it's all mature technology now, there are a few designs that are more or less guaranteed to win, and the only variables there seems to be are whether they were competently constructed, whether the materials used were appropriate, and to a small degreee, how well they were driven. I'd go through a whole episode in less than 15 minutes.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I am going to generalize based on appearance here but lets face it, it needs nerd hosts. It was painful to watch the jock, the cheerleader and the bully try to fake enthusiasm for robot fighting. It is far easier for me to picture the hosts stuffing the builders into a locker or giving them a swirly than cheering them on. Maybe I am wrong and the 90lb weakling grew up to be a UFC fighter but I doubt it. I could do with less of the back story nonsense as well. More engineering, more tech and more fighting please.