I still believe interactivity like this is the future of TV, but the real killer app hasn’t been found yet.
HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
81–90 of 99 posts
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#82This should be surprising to precisely no one. And this is nothing against HQ Trivia (although the founder seemed like a tool [1]) but any sort of format has a shelf life. Long-lasting shows like Jeopardy are outliers. The more typical case is where a given show will play for a few years, people will get bored with it and it'll be replaced by something else. That's really all that happened here. HQ Trivia had a novel…
> Just like Alex Trebek is probably a big part of the reason for Jeopardy's longevity
Considering Jeopardy has spread and become immensely popular with similar longevity all over the world, I don't think that's true. It's about the format, not the host.
We also see the same thing happening with the Swedish version of HQ Trivia (called Primetime). It started out extremely popular but lost a lot of momentum fast. They haven't changed hosts so I think that what you say about shelf life is much more intrinsic to the format itself.
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trebek had a strong vision of what the show should be that would be at odds with what most studio execs might prefer. When he's gone, there will be pressure to dumb it down, make the questions easier and more trendy, make it more flashy. If they do that it will no longer be special and will wither away.
> there will be pressure to dumb it down, make the questions easier and more trendy, make it more flashy. You could see this already in their recent GOAT primetime special. Someone did the numbers, it was like 12% of the questions were about Disney properties.
Do you have a source for that? I watched all the GOAT episodes and would both say that they were MUCH harder than typical Jeopardy games where I can typically answer 60-80% of questions and did not notice such a high percentage of questions being contextually about Disney.
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#84Same thing happened to Draw Something and Words with Friends. The trick is to get the 9 figure valuation, raise as much funding as possible and then put as much in your pockets before the hype dies down.
Words with Friends managed an actual exit (8 figures, mostly cash): https://venturebeat.com/2011/07/05/zynga-paid-53-3m-to-buy-w...
Wordfeud (similar app) made $4M in ads in 2018, not shabby for a single person company. It's now ten years since it launched and had the hype. Crazy.
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#85Shameless plug for my new open source trivia PWA Just Trivia[0]
It has no ads, tracking, social integrations or monetization of any kind. It can never go out of business, it already is out of business! It's an MVP, I just stood it up two days ago.
The whole app bundle is around 700k before splitting. Each 10 question uses about 7kb of additional data. No CSS frameworks, minimal 3rd party deps. Uses the awesome illustrations from undraw.co
I'm working on an offline mode, with the db cached and the service worker acting as back end.
Sorry that got long. I'm going to do a show HN soon. But check it out if you want a simple trivia game on phone or tablet. It's a passion project, in case you can't tell.
Repos: Front github.com/jeremy21212121/trivia-frontend Back github.com/jeremy21212121/express-trivia-server
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#86What are the best trivia apps nowadays? Have been looking but haven't found anything great. Still feels like there is an unmet need. I still love Quizup though ...
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trebek had a strong vision of what the show should be that would be at odds with what most studio execs might prefer. When he's gone, there will be pressure to dumb it down, make the questions easier and more trendy, make it more flashy. If they do that it will no longer be special and will wither away.
> there will be pressure to dumb it down, make the questions easier and more trendy, make it more flashy. You could see this already in their recent GOAT primetime special. Someone did the numbers, it was like 12% of the questions were about Disney properties.
Questions about Disney products sound more like efforts to promote Disney products than attempts at a trendy style.
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#88This should be surprising to precisely no one. And this is nothing against HQ Trivia (although the founder seemed like a tool [1]) but any sort of format has a shelf life. Long-lasting shows like Jeopardy are outliers. The more typical case is where a given show will play for a few years, people will get bored with it and it'll be replaced by something else. That's really all that happened here. HQ Trivia had a novel…
> Just like Alex Trebek is probably a big part of the reason for Jeopardy's longevity Off topic, but I do wonder what will happen to their ratings when he retires in the next few years. The Price is Right pulled it off, their ratings are apparently higher now than they had been, since they started putting clips on YouTube and other types of "millennial marketing".
There is a similar discussion going on about Just A Minute, since Nicholas Parsons died earlier in the month. Can it even survive without him, since the very few shows without him were, well, sucky...
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#89Same thing happened to Draw Something and Words with Friends. The trick is to get the 9 figure valuation, raise as much funding as possible and then put as much in your pockets before the hype dies down.
Words with Friends is not dead I think: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/words-with-friends-2-word-game...
Last time I tried it it was so cluttered with ads I had to often force close it to get it to work. Total rubbish.
Re: HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through
#90Some of these consumer startups should be financed and built like a movie, not a company. Use off the shelf tooling, experienced staff, and expect the thing to die off in revenues over a couple of years with some residual revenues in maintenance mode.
This is a great idea and I'd definitely invest in a vehicle that was making these types of investments.