Is fifteen questions just about right for a themed game? Should it be longer? Do you find yourself combining multiple themed games if fifteen isn’t enough? If not, how many questions would you like to see in each library game?
Just curious for feedback from those that make regular use of the trivia library.
Fifteen seems like a good solid number to me for themed quizzes. Not too long, not too short.
@RossN :
I run a strictly-multiple-choice game based on my users’ feedback from other formats. I run two games a week: General Knowledge trivia (20 questions) and Topics (3 topics, 12 questions each).
To get my GK trivia questions, I start with Kitchen Sink and Everything Bagel, and throw out numerical and text answers. I always have to raid at least two different pre-made games to flesh out one session. I have already mined most of the earlier Kitchen Sink and I find myself raiding other games flagged “General” to fill out my quiz.
All of this context to say - if the games were bigger, it would certainly make my job easier. I would think KS/EB type quizzes are easier to get to 20 than the themed categories. And if the quizzes are too long, the TJ (trivia jockey) has the ability to tweak it down.
One more somewhat unrelated comment - sometimes the questions (and answers) are too long. It takes the players time to read and process the question, and if you run a decreasing points timer, it can make a generally easy question take an unpleasant amount of time to process. I find myself going in and trying to simplify the questions as much as possible.
An example:
Only the second pitmaster to win a James Beard award, Rodney Scott is arguably the best modern BBQ chef, and was profiled on the Netflix cooking show ______________.
How about:
James Beard award-winning BBQ chef Rodney Scott was profiled on the Netflix series __________.
does for basic account, cant have preview on trivia/quiz?
because whenever i want to see/test how is my quiz via crowd life, it always says: the quiz is not activated yet.
where is the activation anyway? is it time based?
I agree that the question (and answer) lengths should be kept to a minimum, in order to minimize the processing time of the players, thus allowing them to quickly parse and select their chosen answer in the fastest possible time (thus giving them a higher point value upon getting it correct).
x15 questions is great. With new questions every week, plus always adding my own, my games stay fresh. I mentioned on the Facebook page I like to add Conundrums or other word play games similar to those on NPR’s Ask Me Another. Could Crowdpurr add some functionality to show a scrambled word, set a timer and then animate the scramble word unscrambling to reveal the correct word? Likely. To specific too my needs to be profitable. But boy is it fun to add unexpected questions types to trivia games.
Hi Jeff.
I wondering why not just read the question, with answers revealed, then start the timer when you’re done reading. That allows for the question to be digested, and the maximum amount of points to be earned. You do a lot of games so I am sure you have a good reason for not doing what I suggest. Just curious about your game design thinking. Its fun to talk shop with another game host.
Hello!
Thanks for your post. I appreciate any and all suggestions. I am the new trivia manager for crowdpurr, so my job entails editing questions for our writers and also doing some writing myself. I agree with you that brevity is a good idea when it comes to this and I’m working on getting that down to a correct level for you all.
I think the problem that always crops up for me is that I come from a hosting background where I’ve written trivia game for various live events for almost a decade now, these games tend to be long form and have longer questions because my job is to keep people engaged and buying drinks and food. So, in my experience, it has always been context is king. However, coming into this job, I realize that is not the way everyone likes to do things and some of our customers are running huge games with lots of players, or running several games in succession so it is for sure a moment for me where I am trying to learn what is acceptable and what needs to be tamped down.
I appreciate the feedback though and we will continue working on making this product as great and as useful for you as possible!
If you have any concerns or questions I’d love to hear them, you can DM me on here or email me from my profile if you’d like. Thanks for engaging with us!
I’m thinking maybe we just double down on adding more general trivia games and keep the count at 15 questions per library game? Having different amounts of questions could get confusing, unless we possibly add in some “callout” that better indicates how many questions are in a game. I could see maybe having longer “marathon” games, or “master quiz” games that are perhaps 100 questions, etc.
There’s also the fact that you could go in and proof-read any trivia game you make from our library (which you should do anyway for production events) and perhaps adjust up the question time for longer-form questions. Sounds like there’s some hosts who like rapid-fire, quick-pace and others, like our Trivia Manager extraordinaire who like a slower-form long-pace game.
Good feedback! Hey @jimmie, glad to see you on here!
And @rcdpanjaitan, it sounds like you may need customer support. To activate your game press the green Play button on the Experience Dashboard. If you need more help, email us at help@crowdpurr.com or chat with us in our Help Center.
I guess this also begs the question… How many library trivia games would you prefer to see each week?
In the past we released ten. We’re now down to five. We can turn the knob back up to ten if it works better.
15 questions seems to work pretty good. Most hosts I talk to most often use 10 to 15 questions per round.
One suggestion I would appreciate is to more general knowledge or everything bagel categories. Many of the themed categories you create I will never use as an entire category. 15 questions on WWE superstar The Undertaker, or Sonic the Hedgehog is way too specific unless I’m working a private gig with an audience that has those interests or knowledge base.
In my 20+ years of hosting trivia, your audience at public venues (bars, breweries, restaurants) will not engage if they think a category is “boring,” i.e. they don’t think they have a shot to at least be competitive. A table of Gen Z or Millennial audience members is not interested is spending a minimum of 15 minutes (question, answers, correct answer, leaderboard review) answering questions about NBA legend Patrick Ewing, who retired in 2002. Only a hardcore basketball fan is interested in that kind of category.
All of that said, I will pull a couple of questions from those super specific categories (e.g. Patrick Ewing) and sprinkle them into a general knowledge quiz or a basketball-themed game.
I do like your more general or mainstream themed quizzes. I used the McDonald’s one last night, and it was a hit. The breakfast foods quiz was also popular. So please keep doing those.
Thanks for putting together such an awesome software service! It has really improved audience engagement at my shows.
I like the idea of more libraries. Some of your libraries are super niche (Patrick Ewing, for example) that don’t work well for for a diverse audience (See my comment below). producing more libraries gives the host more options for their gigs.
Good feedback. We are actually doubling down on general trivia games and will be releasing a new series where the actual trivia game is general questions, but they abide by a specific theme, such as “Down on the Farm”, “At the Hardware Store”, “A Seat at the Bar”, and “In the Jungle”, etc. So they will be general topics everyone can answer, but will still rally, loosely around a given topic.
A good example of this is this week’s “Friday the 13th” game.
That’s wesome, thank you!
Hey Jimmie!
I run a game over Twitch streaming, which there is a 2-5 (sometimes more) second delay between what I say and when people hear it. To reduce issues with timing, I give the audience 7 seconds to read the question on their phones/computers before the timer starts. If I read the question out loud, there would be either an awkward silence before I activate the question, or the question would activate before I was done reading, just based on the delay.
(We won’t talk a out whether I can pronounce all the words in the question, which has been an issue from time to time… 
)
If I were doing it live, I absolutely agree that your approach is best. And I do hope to do live events at some point, if only this damn pandemic would just give us a break…
Makes sense. I haven’t branched out to the Twitch platforms.
I can absolutely see the value of having robust questions, especially in circumstances where timing can be variable (everything is controlled live by the TJ).
For me, I use the macros in my Elgato Streamdeck to manage the timing and interactions with Crowdpurr, StreamLabs, Voicemod, and a few other utilities, to manage controlling all of those pieces. It is infeasible for me to change the question timers on a per-question basis, because then I would need to have a different macro (and thus another button) for each different timer.
That being said, maybe there could be an option for “long form” versus “short form” questions. The alternative, of course, is that I continue to edit down the questions to strip out the fluff.
The answers, however, are shown when the timer starts. Long answers are the pits, when you’re trying to decide which of the answers is correct, it can take some time to review and decide, particularly for tricky questions. Constructing the questions so that the answers are short and to the point would be good in any decreasing points timer game, IMHO.
Hey Ross,
I have THOUSANDS of general knowledge questions (and answers!) on file, if you’re ever in need….let’s talk.
I could keep crowdpurr in stock for years…… 
Hey Jeff,
Just a quick suggestion to resolve those “long read” questions… when we notice the heavily worded questions, we go into the question setting and increase the time for that question by 5 additional seconds.
For instance, our trivia games are set to 15 seconds each question. As we prepare the game, any “type in” answer is upped to 20 secs and any wordy question, ( only a few) are upped to 20, sometimes 25 seconds. (Rarely)
And to answer the ORIGINAL question. We do approximately 70 questions per game, with 2 “pee” breaks lol and 1 bonus point horse race which ends up being about a 2 hour show.
Our games are either Gen Knowledge which i why everything bagel or fun facts are my fav!, but alot of our venues want specific themes around here, office, friends, disney, star wars, marvel, harry potter are probably our most attended themes
