Fortune Cookie

Art by JasperTheCrab

*(This page is undergoing major reconstruction due to me adding more information. **Said information may not be accurate**; I need it checked by the community as needed. **If you wanna see the Do Not Pick list, scroll down.** Thanks! - Faye)*

> "Random games, almost every Saturday As it comes with random games, the Fortune Cookie can be quite chaotic.  Who knows what could appear and what the chat deems worthy to be played?  That's for YOU to decide!"
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Originally under the name of "Backloggery Streams" the Fortune Cookie is Jon's stream for most Saturdays.  Pulling from Jon's game collection, at least 5 games are voted on by the chat audience on what will be played next for about 30-45 minutes.  From Nintendo to Steam, Sony to Microsoft; almost every console is an option!

This stream type is brought to you by the Fortune Cookie feature of Backloggery, letting you pick from your own list of games if you and your 10,000+ (or less) game collection leaves you with choice paralysis on what to play. The co-commentators on call are also allowed to place a game into the voting poll, thought will have to sit out a round should their pick win the poll. In 2022, viewers can do the same for 110,000 Channel Points, bumping the potential number of games to at least 8!

On the chances that the 1st and 2nd place are about 1% (but less than 2%) apart in votes, the 2nd place game will be carried over to the next poll (even between streams) as an extra option regardless of how many games are on the poll already. *In the past, both games were played in the case of a tie, but the system was abused a bit and caused the need for such a rule.*

## A Brief History

* The first stream, under the name "Backloggery Stream" happened on March 8th, 2013, which was a Friday.
* The first time the stream was called "Fortune Cookie" was this stream in 201X.
* The 1% rule was first put in place on ?????, 201X.
* In 2021, Jon swapped over to using DeefDragon's StreemTech to conduct the polls due to Strawpoll.com no longer being sufficient for the stream's purposes. This lets Jon automatically add games to the poll directly from the "fortune" without copy-pasting the game name (or a mod writing it down) onto the poll. Also, the StreemTech bot automatically posts the poll link to chat with pride heart emotes (if it works right). Jon's game collection data and Fortune Cookie were also ported to StreemTech for Jon's use, even having a message for the very rare chance that a game is pulled twice in a row. Jon still uses Fortune Cookie on Backloggery on occasion (like if StreemTech were to fail).
* Starting 2022, due to the introduction of viewer choices to the poll, the number of poll options has increased from 5-7 to around 8-10 if you count co-comm choices.

## Variations

There have been multiple variations of this on Jon's stream:

* **Cookie Jar - Fortune Cookie Viewer Choices:** A viewer could add ANY**\*** of Jon's games as a Cookie poll option for Saturday streams for 150,000 Eggs (Channel Points) once per stream per person. Up to three viewer choices per poll are used on a normal night, but they are usually not redeemed right away due to its popularity creating a backlog of them. The redeem can be used once per stream and only during any of Jon's non-charity streams (the stream going down mid-session DOES NOT count).
	+ *Channel Points are not available in all territories depending on certain local laws (see Twitch FAQ)*.
	+ Originally, it costed 110,000 Eggs and could be used as many times as you had points (*which had the side effect of potentially have two of your games on the poll, spreading apart one person's game's potential votes)*. The option was disabled in mid-January 2023 due to the backlog created, which was finally depleted on July 1st, 2023. It was re-enabled the next weekend on July 9th, 2023 with the rules above.
	+ **\* See the Do Not Pick section below for details on what can't be chosen.**
* **High Risk Cookie:** The game that is pulled MUST be played no matter what. If there is no stream-threatening reason to play that game (copyright or otherwise), Jon is allowed three re-rolls for the entire night if he wants to veto any.
* **Misfortune Cookie:** A rare variation that is often jumped on by Jon towards chat. In this, the leading game option is NOT guaranteed to be played. In the past this could be the LEAST VOTED game instead, and it may have been announced too late into the first poll of the night.
	+ **2023 Spiritual Revamp:** In June 2023, StreemTech added an option to spin the pie chart created by the poll results in which whatever game it lands on will get picked, further randomizing the chance of ANY person's pick to be played. More votes means a bigger slice, but votes during the spin can continue to adjust the distribution up until the game is picked.
	+ The last NAMED stream with this variation was August 22, 2018, over a month prior to PonPon's creation.
* **Chaos Cookie:** A variation Jon only does for charity events such as TRG Colosseum, where donations controlled what games are played. There have been two versions of this:
	+ The first time Jon did this, an individual game had to cross a certain donation threshold in order to be played.
	+ In 2016, Jon called this "**Charity Fortune Cookie**", where donors on Tiltify specified any game in Jon's game collection that is safe for stream (RPG rule is off). The top 10 donated games get added to the Cookie poll. HOWEVER, if a game reached a donation total of $5,000+, the game is played regardless of standings. There was a 30-minute limit on gameplay time before the next Cookie, but a game could get extended 30 more minutes with a $100 donation regardless of standings. "Social Eating" was not an option. As donation incentives, Jon and some viewers provided prizes for those who donate at least $10 or more (for shirts and Steam codes). A donation of $30 or more entered you to a then-current console of their choosing,
	+ Later adapting the format used in Stephen and Friends' Extra Life charity event for TRG Colo, Jon lets his entire game collection become a donation war on itself. When donating, the donor must state a game in Jon's Backloggery (that can be streamed). The amount they donated gets pooled together with other donations for the same game. At the end of 30 minutes of play time, the game with highest running donation total gets chosen to play. Once chosen, the running total reverts back to $0, but it can be played again as long as it wins the donation war another time. At the end of the segment, given an incentive is met, the the top 10 or 20 games being donated to (in terms of running total, not final total) are later played during two bonus streams later in the year in two sets of 10 (Top 10 and Top 11-20). At that point, it's like the way of deciding the games during Jon's "Charity Fortune Cookie", but ALL games are played in order from greatest to least running total.
		- As a joke, any peripheral disks Jon owns are available as an option even if they are rendered useless on their own. This spawned the joke idea in Jon's community in 2018 to donate for the standalone Game Boy Player disc ("just the disc", with no game inserted) at Stephen's Extra Life 2018 event, rendering it as a powered Game Boy Advance with no cartridge inserted. For Extra Life 2021 and TRG Colo 2022, this joke expanded to the Netflix Installation Disc on Wii, which was rendered useless many years ago due to the advent of the downloadable Wii Channel for Netflix and the discontinuation of support for Netflix on Wii. Both of these ideas became true during TRG Colo 2020 (Game Boy Player, no game) and the second bonus stream of TRG Colo 2022 (Netflix Installation Disc, *which has yet to happen at the time of writing*).
		- This and Sugar Rush Cookie (see below) was only made possible because of the COVID-19 pandemic keeping participants of the charity event to stay home. Jon stayed home for 2020, 2021, and 2022 so he had every game in his library available to him.
		- During TRG Colo 2023, the first fully\* in-person event since 2019, Jon did a limited version where only a selection of his library (mostly Steam via the Steam Deck, a few physical games, and emulation) was available for play during the event. The pool for on-stream games was separate from a pool SPECIFICALLY made for bonus incentive streams when he was back home, should they be met (spoilers: they all were). It was met with confusion as the link to donate for Chaos Cookie was SEPARATE from the general link used for the event for tracking purposes on StreemTech's end. Nevertheless, there were presets on said site to donate towards a tech crew or guest's picks for either or both the event and the at-home stream incentive.
* **Sugar Rush Cookie:** Another charity event variation that was first piloted at the 2021 Smile Time Charity event, the donation total determines when a new game is pulled and the current game must be changed IMMEDIATELY. With how low the trigger is for this, Jon ends up racing chat to see if he can set up and start the requisite game for stream and get past the title screen of that game before the donation total reaches a certain interval. If Jon can get to the main menu (or gameplay) in a game, Jon gets a point. If chat donates enough to change the game BEFORE Jon gets to the main menu of the current game, chat gets a point.
	+ During Smile Time Charity 2021, the swap interval was every $100 raised (during the segment). For TRG Colo 2022, this interval was set to every $500 raised (in even increments on the actual donation total on screen).
	+ In the 2022 Smile Time Charity version, while the threshold was still every $100 interval donated, extra game swaps per donation were allowed (i.e. $200 dono = 2 game rolls) and Jon now earns an additional point if two minutes pass in-game without any swaps. Additionally, chat can vote to use a point to force a 30 second poll to extend the game (up to 3 people in chat, with a cooldown of 3 minutes), and Jon could give up a point to force a game swap and he would match it twice (he would donate $200 for every game swap forced by him). These rule changes made the scores a lot more balanced.
		- *Due to Smile Time Charity ending production in mid-2023, this is the last Smile Time Charity version of Sugar Rush. It also didn't have a segment during TRG Colo 2023 since this only works when Jon has access to his entire collection.*
* **Cookie Jar:** Sometimes on Wednesdays, following the viewer-choice stream traditions of old, Jon chooses from the *Channel Points queue* of viewer-suggested game picks to knock out the backlog (up to five instead of three, but no co-comm choices). This helps lessen the backlog, but never enough to completely catch up.
* **No-Risk Cookie:** A complete deviation of High Risk where Jon just picks from whatever comes up on the Cookie. Unlimited re-rolls until he finds something he REALLY feels like playing. This means any genre is allowed, but it's purely based on his mood.

## Limitations / Do Not Pick

As chaotic as this is, there are rules in place. Similar rules are also in place for the Power Trip Streams, especially the !donotpick list.

* **Jon must own the game.** Check https://backloggery.com/ProtonJon for his official list of owned games.
* Jon can't stream games that can take his channel down (no Twitch Banned games, music-centric games like Just Dance and DDR that have a central focus on licensed music, etc)
* Traditional RPGs are usually re-rolled on NORMAL nights due to slow pacing (like for tutorials or a long exposition/intro arc). Action RPGs, picks through the Channel Points redeem, and any roll from the other variations of Cookie, do not have to follow this rule.
* Keep in mind that Jon streams from the original console if possible. Thus, Jon can't stream certain games if the system can't be captured easily, is not easily accessible, or (in rare cases) out of service. If you type "**!donotpick**" in chat, the StreamElements bot lists the following systems from his game collection as unstreamable **as of July 2, 2022**:
	+ Adobe **Flash** games (due to the end-of-support of Adobe Flash at the end of 2020, this is for safety reasons even though archive players exist)
	+ **Intellivision**
	+ **Vectrex**
	+ **Arcade** games
	+ **Game & Watch** (*does not include the Game and Watch collections on later Nintendo consoles*)
	+ **Atari Lynx** (*may become available after Analogue Pocket*)
	+ **NeoGeo CD**
	+ **Virtual Boy**
	+ Sega **32X** (*requires additional hardware or cables to capture properly*)
	+ **NeoGeo Pocket** (*may become available after Analogue Pocket*)
	+ **Wonderswan**
	+ Nintendo **DSiWare**
	+ the **PC** category (Steam and Epic Game Store are OK; *he means PC games on physical media--CD/DVD/Floppy Disks*)
	+ Nintendo **3DS Virtual Console** (*because of both availability and opting for the original carts or Nintendo Switch Online*)
	+ Nintendo **3DS Downloads**
	+ PS **Vita** (*PS TV is fully HDCP'd with no way to turn it off*)
	+ The Wii U is selectable with the knowledge that it is the console owned by Lucah and does not contain any of Jon's save files due to his system's disk drive failing. This includes the emulated Wii side of his console.
* For games with multiple releases or versions, Jon may choose to "upgrade" or "downgrade" a given release of a game depending on what is most convenient or desired. For example, if Star Fox 64 (N64) is rolled, he could choose to boot up Star Fox 64 3D (3DS) or the Virtual Console/Nintendo Switch Online release of Star Fox 64 instead of the N64 cart.
* Orb 3D is out of the Backloggery Fortune Cookie rotation. (*If you don't get why, look the game up or watch clips of Jon playing it.*)
* The Ubisoft version of Uno is banned. (*This is only a half-meme*.)
* Since Jon doesn't have a permanent camera setup for his TMNT pinball table, Jon does not consider it a Cookie choice.
* If the CURRENT Game Clearing game is rolled, it may be re-rolled.(?)