Quiz❤p

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.