New Scaratings

Well, to report on what happened, it wasn't too bad. The Buzztime Live Trivia game consists of 30 questions, in six rounds, with ten points for each correct answer. Each "team" has one box on which to enter the answers. The host reads the questions and answers aloud, but if you can see the screens, you can read them for yourself, so the host is essentially superfluous. Mad River did attract some local superstars, in that MEGUMI and his friend DGRIL showed up to form their own team. The regular team (us) was a little short-handed tonight, but we recruited a player whose handle is RICKTV, who had arrived because he saw the promotion on Facebook. There were also the three guys and some girl who always play at the bar in our regular sessions, as well as a few other teams from the bunch who usually come for bar trivia and ignore Buzztime.
The first 15 questions gave none of the good teams any problems. We slipped up on one in the next round that involved an obscure sports award, but in the last two rounds the difficulty increased, and we won by about 30 points as I recall. Kudos to RICKTV, DAR, and HPYNDG, all of whom contributed important answers. I would say that of the 30 questions, about half were what I would call current pop culture.
There were several Buzztime honchos there, including Vladimir, the chief content officer, who impressed me because he had to have flown in from California. When he stopped by our table to say congratulations, I said I would incur the wrath of all long time players if I failed to ask him to end the split between east and west. He started nodding before I finished, because he knew what I was going to say, but he made no promises.
So that was it. The game ended in time for us to turn our attention to Showdown, and the local bar trivia host started his own game, for which you write answers on paper. DAR and I won two tickets to a local off-Broadway show, and all in all pleasant enough, but nowhere near as fun or challenging as Showdown and Brainbuster. But I fear that challenging the players is not #1 on Buzztime's list of things they want to do.
XT

And how awful that NTN/BT would schedule this experiment during a time when if nothing else it will be distracting for people trying to focus on Showdown and Brainbuster.

Good to hear your host could pronuniciate the questions.

As the Buzztime employee, who likely hosted at Triviapalooza or at the other Bargo event - I appreciate the helpful feedback. I must have forgotten to mention my favorite game- every time I mispronounce a word- everyone should take a drink. Ideally by the end everyone is having fun.

More than anything your product feedback on the live game was extremely helpful. Much appreciated.

The event I attended was at the Craze Tavern in Duluth, Ga, highlighted by folks paid to wear Buzztime tee shirts.

The event I attended was at the Craze Tavern in Duluth, Ga, highlighted by folks paid to wear Buzztime tee shirts.

Well glad it wasn't me, I still try to turn my fowl ups into a game for the audience.

To those that attended last week, thank you very much! I didn't get a chance to meet a lot of the attendees but it was fun.

As far as the feedback in general about our live trivia, thanks to everyone for all the helpful feedback. As previously pointed out, the games are available on both Trivia and Cards channels and hopefully we can do our best to bring new players to the Buzztime universe without stepping on our premium games. At the Mad River Bar, last week, we ran the game on the cards channel and the team of players who won, were playing the premium game while dominating the live trivia! Hopefully that is a win-win!

Thanks again guys, I get my best (most productive/helpful) product feedback right here.

The most productive idea would be to find a way to not show any answer choices for Live Trivia, only the question. Then have the teams type an answer into their playmaker that would show on screen when the question time is up. It would be easy to see who got it right. Could be fun to see the wrong answers too.

Actually if we wanted to go to longer questions and introduce open ended questions for the live experience, we could do that. It requires some work but it is possible.