Overusing the Tribe Swap

I want to still like the tribe swap the way that I used to. But I just don’t know if I can keep liking it the way it keeps being used over and over again. While I’d more than love to work for this show by being a creative twist designer or something like that, I have the feeling that the producers have hired a lot of really long Survivor fans to do twists and they wind up not working out well. Another problem is that it seems that the swap is used way too much. What can be done about it? I guess that I’ll see what the result of it is by analyzing the tribe swap and saying how it is now overused.

The first truly major twist in Survivor was the tribe swap. It first appeared in the third season and has appeared in more seasons than it hasn’t. It has also appeared in some other forms like dissolves of tribes and even the appearance of new tribes. Gabon was the first real time that it appeared twice in the same season. The last season it hasn’t truly appeared in was South Pacific, although Philippines counts enough in my mind since the dissolve of Matsing doesn’t count that much in my mind.

Maybe it is the addiction of more than one swap that has been the major problem with it in recent times it has been done. But that could be because of how lopsided things can get. Or it could be because of how short a time we get to know one tribe. Also, the addition of a third tribe was a good idea at first. But then it quickly became overused over the seasons.

I don’t want each season to have one tribe failing over and over in part due to swaps that always seem to benefit one tribe over the other. It seems mean in a way. Plus, more to the point, it doesn’t seem fair for these people on whatever the losing tribe may end up being. The fact that it has happened during all-star seasons in addition to all new player seasons doesn’t make me feel about it. If you lose early on, it could quickly turn into you always losing because the numbers will always be against you after one swap than another. At the merge, you will have almost no chance of winning if things were bad at one point and the swap keeps making things bad.

Maybe it is the fact that too many of the recent seasons have had some sort of theme to them of one group versus another group. Thus, a swap seems like it makes the most sense to put in there in order to shake up the game like it would need to be. All of those seasons wouldn’t work without a swap of some sort. But then you have to wonder why it keeps appearing in other seasons. Maybe I can understand wanting to keep any returning players on their toes. But does it have to keep appearing all the time? It just seems dumb to have it show up multiple times in a season when just once has worked in the past. Plus, not doing one every now and then makes sense too.

I think that’s all that I want to write for this post. I want to still like the swap, but if it is used too much and makes thing too lopsided for the rest of the game, then it isn’t the great twist that I thought that it was. Maybe they could improve things by not doing it every season. Or maybe it would work better if it seemed or could be more even in the future. That is my main thoughts on the matter. If it could be more equal, then it would work better. Otherwise, don't do it. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.