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The emphasis of the editing for both Survivor and The Amazing Race changed significantly after the first few seasons of each show. The turning point for Survivor was the Thailand season which was critically panned. Not only was the gameplay overly conservative and predictable but also production realized that they could not rely solely on the cast to make entertaining television for the average viewer. The average viewer did not find Helen's recipe spouting and Jake's Roy Rogers tales to be entertaining. Starting with the next cycle, which was the Pearl Islands season, production started putting more emphasis on the game itself by introducing twists and making the game more complex. The attitude was that the average viewers were more interested in watching the action, drama and suspense rather than watch people lying around and not doing much of anything

As time went on, the producers continued to put more emphasis on the game itself with the addition of the HII, Exile Island and also by making the challenges more complicated (starting in Palau). Things went to the extreme during the Cook Islands/Fiji cycle. The challenges in Cook Islands were so complicated (often involving multiple stages) and lengthy that nearly half the cast was ignored. The Cook Islands season has the fewest average number of confessionals per episode of any season. The challenges weren't as lengthy in Fiji but the Haves vs. Have not twist turned out to be a really bad idea. Also, the Fiji cast was among the worst.

After the disappointment with the Fiji season, they took a hard look at what went wrong and scaled back on the lengthy challenges and some of the gimmicky twists in favor of more cast development. Tle fire making challenge in the last Gabon episode is as basic as it gets. China and Gabon have been better balanced between cast development and gameplay than the previous post ASS seasons. Micronesia was a departure with returning contestants so like All Stars its not a typical season.