I’m not ashamed to admit that
lately I’ve been using an app which trawls its extensive database in order to
pair me with a suitable partner. When a match is found, a few questions are
asked, some brief answers given, but—generally—after spending a few minutes
with them via my phone, I never talk to that person again.
Sure, there are more ‘traditional’
ways to get what I want without resorting to a phone app. I know for a fact that
on Wednesday nights my local pub puts on an event for people who are after the
same thing as me. But the truth is only QuizUp can give me twenty-four hour access
to other people who want to play general knowledge trivia. It’s just the kind
of connectedness I’ve come to expect in our ADSL2+ 100mb/s 4G society.
QuizUp is simple. You pick a
category that interests you and are then paired against an opponent. There are
seven questions per game, and you have ten seconds to answer each. Since you’re
playing against somebody else, speed is important. The quicker you answer, the
more points you get. If you both get the question right, and answer at the same
time, you will both be awarded the same amount of points. If you answer
incorrectly you get nothing.
Things get interesting towards the
end of the game, because the last round is worth double points. There is a
special QuizUp-specific type of frustration that arises when you’ve been
leading the entire game only for Susie from Ireland to overtake you in the last
round by somehow correctly remembering that James Buchanan (1791-1868) was the
only U.S President to never marry. Interestingly I’ve found the only way to
soothe this frustration is to play another game. And another.
Part of the addictiveness comes from
the game being based around the XP model, in which players can level up as they
play (and win) more games. As with all XP games, the points are meaningless
outside the game itself, yet it soon became incredibly important to me that I
acquired as many of them as quickly as possible. I began to find myself becoming
unreasonably agitated when I found myself in situations (studying, showering,
sleeping) where it would be inappropriate/impossible to answer questions re
past winners of Canada’s annual film awards (aka The Genies).
The real fun begins when you start
challenging your friends to play. What better way to destroy a friendship than
by challenging your otherwise mild friend to a three-minute battle for
knowledge supremacy? In fact I imagine QuizUp is second only to being asked by
someone to help them move house on the ‘Best Ways to Strain an Otherwise
Perfectly Nice Friendship’ list (other items on the list include being asked
for unreasonable discounts from your place of work, and being forced to help
them entrap a large spider that has made its residence in their glovebox ((for
what it’s worth my plan is always to incinerate the entire car immediately.
Spiders in enclosed high-speed metal boxes =/= life longevity))). I estimate
that within the first twenty-four hours of playing I directly influenced/forced
no less than five people to download the app. Couple that with this keyword-heavy
post and I really feel that QuizUp owe me something (NB: I will accept payment in
XP points).
WRT to the first two paragraphs,
and at the risk of overdoing the whole dating app thing, playing QuizUp has
made me think there might some sort of market for a combined dating/general
knowledge app. What better way to weed out potential mates than by forcing them
to display at least a basic level of intelligence? You can even choose specific
categories on QuizUp, which makes me think that Tinder should have some sort of
quiz tailored for your own purposes. Anybody who answers ‘yes’ to the questions
‘Do you sometimes leave Vegemite-covered knives on your pillow?’ or ‘Do you
ever find yourself wearing football
jumpers when not explicitly involved in a game of football?’ will be instantly
deleted.
I’ve now had the game for three
days, and times are tough. I’ve destroyed my data limit. I’ve developed a nasty callous on my answering
thumb. I process everyday conversational questions in multiple choice answers (What
should we have for lunch? Sandwiches. Burritos. Salad. Soup.) I’m not looking
for sympathy. I just want answers.