Electonic trivia like back home with a cool game system developed by local expat Antony Jackson.
He's Got Games: Trivia at HQ
By Lynsey Bolin
A Canadian expat who has called Korea home for the last ten years, Jackson realized that there are times when people want to just go to the bar for a couple of drinks and could do without hearing about someone’s day at the hagwon.“I think there are a lot of times where you get off work and you just want to have a beer and you don’t want to really talk with anybody or you haven’t got time to hook up with your friends or whatever.”
BUSAN, South Korea --Funny he should say that. Once a game gets going between friends or strangers, the words generally tend to flow without end.
The beauty in Jackson’s Isis is its simplicity. Not to be confused with other weekly quizzes that have guest hosts and require a full on team to answer questions, Isis is fully automated and allows up to 20 individual players a chance to test their real or fake college degree against other trivia enthusiasts. And players can jump in or out at anytime.
Questions range from general knowledge to music to logic to, well… anybody’s guess. Although anyone can take their best shot, there is a requisite knowledge of world events and Western pop culture. To date, Jackson has over 8000 questions and adds more all the time. The intent is to build a large enough data bank to allow 52 weeks’ worth of trivia. While most of the questions spring from Jackson’s own creativity and research, he welcomes those who would like to create their own questions to add to the game. For now, Jackson seems readily apt to handle the stockpile himself.
“I always keep a notepad with me in case I get an idea. One question seems to lead to a dozen.
The basics of the game are relatively simple: there are four 25 minute sections a night with a five minute break in between. Each game is made up of three rounds. The first two rounds have 15 questions: Round 1 = 100 points/question; Round 2 = 200 points/question. The final ‘tie-breaking’ round has only one 500 point question.
Sounds simple enough, right? Just head on down and bathe in the adoration of standers by. Actually, according to Jackson, who is also a teacher, there is a hitch.
“It’s important to level the field by throwing in a couple of very difficult questions that nobody is expected to get correct. Not unlike marking for my students. 100% is an imaginary number that nobody should achieve. As of yet, nobody’s come close to getting 100%. My system tracks the results, so I can look at the database and analyze the answers afterwards to assess the difficulty and read
whether or not I need to dummy-down the quizzes or make them harder. The highest percentage is 72% -- which is pretty good considering it’s very general, across the board knowledge and most people are specialized in one area of knowledge.
As to the future of Isis, Jackson is gunning for a bigger market. That would make it worth my while. I’m putting in thousands of hours to do this, so I want to make it worth my while. I plan to approach all of the Western bars across the country."
Check out eTriv every Thursday @ HQ Bar. If you want to learn more about eTriv: isis_etriv@yahoo.com
Calendar Event:
Thu, 2011-01-06 20:00 - 23:06
