New Scaratings

When COOGS and I got our first chance to play on the tablets a few weeks ago, the event included two rounds of live trivia. As it was in Austin at the beginning of SXSW, the first was a Countdown-style game based on questions about past and current festival performers, and the other was a "Family Feud"-style that apparently was making its debut as a game outside of Carlsbad's testing group.

My ultimate conclusion was that this could be a very powerful tool for selling the system to bars interested in live trivia events, and thus to retaining them as customers, but only if BT recognizes that what they've got is a blend between live trivia and BT trivia, and treat it appropriately. In the positive column, it is easy to sign on, and as in other live trivia events, choose a team name. For this particular event, the team size was held at 5 players for the trivia game, but apparently it can go up to 10 players. For the first game, COOGS picked "Crimea Don't Pay" as our name.

The trivia questions for this special event were well-written and fair (i.e., more in the line of such-and-such a group, who appeared at the festival in such-and-such a year, had a hit with such-and-such a song, rather than "who appeared at SXSW in 2009?"). As such, our three-person team made up of two Houstonians and a former Houstonian now living in Austin were not at any particular disadvantage.

But here is where BT needs to step back and let the product be itself rather than superimpose on it the usual live trivia format: as with a regular trivia game played on a tablet, both question and answer appear on the screen. It is therefore not necessary for the live trivia host to read the question or answers. Also, when there are only five possible answers, the discussion time per question is not as long as in live trivia when people are generating possible answers rather choosing among ones that are given. Between the questions having to be read aloud, the host repeating the answers when everyone's tablet was locked in and the right answer appeared, and the very long intervals of discussion, the game seemed to drag.

At the end of 15 questions, we and two other teams were tied, so we went into what the screen kept telling us was a sudden death playoff on extra questions, but that wasn't actually treated as such by the host. BTW the host was not a BT person but rather a local live trivia host (he didn't seem to know much about BT). At the end we were still tied with another team, when the host announced the tiebreaker would be a "dance off." As one of team has a prosthetic foot, and neither of the other of us had any interest, we told the other team we conceded. However, instead they combined the first and second place prizes and distributed them out, which we were happy about.

The second live trivia game (which we played under "Crimea Don't Dance") went much more quickly, perhaps because it's easier to come up with an opinion on a "Family Feud" style question then the right answer on a trivia question. The only problem is that we had no idea who had been surveyed to provide the answers, so it was more of a guessing game. We came in second.

Apparently at least the trivia version composed of general content is currently selectable by the location, and I could see it doing well, if the live host's role is minimized to getting the game started, announcing the teams, and announcing the winners (actually one could do the whole thing without a host at all, but that might not have the feel of a live event). That way anyone who could pronounce the team names could be the host (as an aside, despite all the news coverage, we have yet to find a host who correctly pronounces "Crimea"). There are undoubtedly locations that would love to have a live trivia event that doesn't require the host to do so much, and where the speed of the game would allow for both early and late rounds.

All in all, we were happy we went and would participate in both game formats again. If only BT had more reps like Beth Kite of Central Texas, who set up this event, I'm sure they would see a lot more locations not just getting the system but retaining it, and a lot more people playing, as she's doing a terrific job publicizing both Buzztime in general and specific games, and getting players involved.

Brooke/AARDVK