The Love of Trivia: A Timeline from 1970s TV game Shows to Today
At what point in your life did you first become acquainted with the world of quizzing? Growing up in rural England in the 1970s, my first experience was centered on two things: a television show called Ask The Family and a game invented by my father called General Knowledge Handicap.
Ask The Family was one of a glut of TV programs dedicated to unearthing the capabilities of ordinary members of the public to display their faculties of information recall. Even with just three channels, there was already a wide variety of shows in this genre.
What I liked about Ask the Family was its ability to be inclusive. Some questions were aimed at just the children in each competing family; others depended on mental recollection of the details in a painting that would be displayed for 30 seconds. The families would confer over their answers, and it was striking, for example, how often one of the kids would be the first to remember the color of a small vase in the background.
As for my father’s game, typically played after dessert had been served during Sunday lunch, it was also geared to provide tailor-made questions for each competitor (in this case each of his own children). Starting with the youngest child and a question along the lines of “Name six colors in the rainbow”, it proceeded to entail a more complex examination of each child’s mental agility one by one by age order.
If Dad had done his homework, he would remember at what stage of their education each of his seven children was. Then, he could even subtly check they’d been reading up on their Shakespeare/Joyce/Bronte or been paying attention in chemistry/physics/R.E. classes. There was no scoring system as such, but it was a fascinating examination.
Some siblings shriveled in the spotlights; others blossomed. The real jackpot was if you could correctly find an answer that had eluded an older brother or sister. Things have changed rather a lot in 40 years. Quizzing has become a staple of Monday evenings in pubs, a boredom alleviator on a quiet evening spent online and as for television, well things have certainly moved on considerably since the softly spoken Robert Robinson interrogated, in only the gentlest way imaginable, the middle-class families of middle England.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? was the high point, without question, in terms of TV quizzes. A format designed in the late 1990s when linear television still ruled the roost, it introduced for the first time the carrot of spectacularly big rewards. There was a catch though: a player had to gamble his accrued winnings if he wanted to proceed to each new prize on the ladder, working towards the ultimate jackpot.
This left players in mental turmoil, which only added to the stress and tension brought about by the glare of millions of viewers on their living-room sofas. Laden with jeopardy, the premise of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? spawned the mega-hit movie Slumdog Millionaire that turned Dev Patel and Freida Pinto into breakout stars. It even triggered a real-life court case on the “Coughing Major” Charles Ingram in the UK. Now, the mobile gaming app SuperOne has entered the digital gaming landscape, testing competitors in a whole new way while adhering very closely to the basic concept of knowledge-based quizzing.
SuperOne provides immediate access to a world only previously experienced through the medium of TV. Winning huge amounts of money no longer has to be a fantasy. By playing a SuperOne game you are no longer a bystander. You are the one in the spotlight. With a swipe-friendly format that takes its roots from Tinder, SuperOne provides the opportunity to earn big rewards on specialist subjects. Contemporary culture, showbiz, and sport all feature prominently.
But if you are a geography nerd or are mad about cars you’ll also find big opportunities to win big with SuperOne. Developed out of a forerunner first launched in 2013, SuperOne makes the time-rich and cash-rich millennial market its prime target audience. Gameplay features hi-res imagery and offers the prospect of social interaction alongside high levels of engagement and retention.
The prospect of mega cash prizes in pay-to-play tournaments will keep players coming back for more. SuperOne truly is a revolutionary product in the mobile gaming space and one that you simply cannot afford to overlook.