Event Profile: Triana's Music Trivia

It seemed that if I am writing a blog entirely about SL trivia, it would make sense to include a profile of the event that is billed every week as the longest running trivia game in Second Life, Triana's Music Trivia. This event takes place Sundays at 7:00pm in a sim called Velda. I was curious to find out how it is that such a long-running event could be so absent from the chatter and recommendations of the trivia crowd that I am accustomed to. When I started telling people I was planning to go to it, a few told me they'd been once or twice but weren't too keen on it, mostly because the organizers use a buzzer system instead of awarding the fastest typists. I was willing to keep an open mind, however, because I was mostly talking to fast typists.

The room the trivia takes place in is cozy and mostly adorable, with all sorts of food furniture (I sat on a doughnut) and comfortable stairs and alcoves. It's a great little hangout space. There was a voting mechanism for selecting a trivia theme. That night, the options were Random Trivia or Fleetwood Mac. I voted for the latter, but unsurprisingly, my gal Stevie wasn't too popular, and the votes were heavily in favor of Random questions.

I didn't end up being too frustrated with the buzzer device. There is an object that you click if you want to answer the question, and it selects someone randomly among those who've done so. If that person is right, they win the money; if they're wrong, the buzzer is reset and you can start volunteering to answer again. It's a pretty good system for slow typists, certainly. And it makes sense that those who normally do well in fast games would not entirely enjoy it. I don't have any serious qualms about it in theory. In practice, however, there is one aspect of it that can potentially ruin someone's game regardless of how fast they are: the random machine makes it possible to spend an hour at Triana's Music Trivia and never even have the chance to answer a question.

Sample questions, by the way:

[2009/05/17 19:24] Triana Caldera: QUESTION 5. What singer is featured in the song Rock 'N' Roll Shoes by Ray Charles?

[2009/05/17 19:29] Triana Caldera: QUESTION 7. This new age singer and composer is one of Ireland's most popular and best selling artists. She won her fourth Grammy Award in 2007 for her album Amarantine. What is the popular name that she is known by?

[2009/05/17 19:55] Triana Caldera: QUESTION 18. Finish this line from a famous TV theme song: "Movin on up, to big time to..."

It's possible to have a good time at a place with such a system, if you go for more than just the trivia. And the event at Triana's is packed with other things going on. In fact, in some ways it's the cousin of Chaos Trivia/Truth or Dare: some of the people there wore onigokkos, the attachments that we use in Chaos to cause everyone to run amok during the trivia questions (hence the name "Chaos"), and set the onigokkos running every once in a while. There was also a truth or dare machine that someone periodically hit, and anyone who wanted to could respond to the truths (I don't remember anyone performing a dare). There was also a lot of raunchy conversation, a guy dancing in tie-dye undies and fishnets, and the distracting and somewhat cliquey bantering of the regulars in voice chat.

...which, I must note, annoyed me a lot more than the buzzer system. The atmosphere at Triana's was hectic, noisy, and seemingly geared toward the general amusement of a group of friends, with a smattering of outsiders sitting around awkwardly and silently like significant others invited to a wedding in their loved one's distant family. After an initial and very brief greeting, no one really addressed the new people directly except during questions. Those who were on voice, which included host Triana Caldera, inevitably became the focal participants in the conversation, and though they sometimes responded in voice to text people wrote in local chat, the interaction was still unbalanced and not very newcomer friendly.

At one point, a first-timer who had come in late and didn't hear the rules caused a bit of confusion when he answered a question out of turn. The locals (I was never sure who was staff and who was just a regular there) started referring to the mistake-maker entirely in the third person. "Hold on, that's not right." "It's one of the new people." And then the canned announcement pasted in local, "FOR THOSE JUST JOINING US, WELCOME! TO GET RULES ON GAMEPLAY, CLICK THE OLD LADY SIGN FOR A NOTECARD." The poor guy didn't even play for the rest of the game. At another point, a player's answer was met with comments in voice such as, "That was googlicious," while the host mused out loud over whether she would directly accuse the player of googling or not, saying in text, "and that was supposed to be my stumpy of the evening." This conversation, too, took place in voice and in the third person. The player hadn't been answering a stream of tough questions; this was the only one. If this were a place that didn't mind, I would have assumed they were teasing, but the rules warn, "IF I THINK YOU ARE GOOGLING ANSWERS, YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED FROM GAME PLAY." With the player's participation in the game at stake, such conversations should be kept in IM until a decision is made.


Not only was the use of voice by some alienating to others but it added to the sensory overstimulation. If you had all of your sound tracks on, you would hear the music stream, the onigokko, the buzzer blaring out, "Wrong!" and the chatter of the voice chatters all at the same time, while trying to answer trivia questions. Or at least to pay attention to the machine and the chat so see whether you even can.

The dynamic with the voice chat was such that if I or another new visitor were to put on our headset and join in, it probably would have felt just as awkward as sitting around the room, listening to the Triana and Friends Show. Theirs was a conversation that added nothing to the atmosphere for some of us and could have taken place in a private conference call.

Still, if Triana's is the longest-running trivia event in SL (and I haven't heard of anyone trying to contest that claim), then they must be doing something right, even if it's for only a few core people who return consistently. In a room of approximately sixteen people, I counted five whose names were in the parcel's name and only five (including myself) whom I've ever seen at other trivia events. They have a system that works, at least for themselves and some enthusiasts, and it's likely that a few new people come through who click with their vibe immediately or who at least prefer the buzzer system over speed-typing. I would thus hesitate to draw any generalized conclusions about whether this is a good or a bad place to visit.

Any game is worth checking out once. Possibly twice. I'd like to return to see if I like it any more if I turn my sound completely off (I turn music off during trivia, especially music trivia, anyway). I've mentioned the use of voice chat to others who've tried Triana's, and it seems that I might have arrived on a fluke night, since no one else remembers them having used it before. We tried voice chat for anyone who wished to use it in Chaos briefly last fall, but we jettisoned it in response to complaints that it was exclusionary. After experiencing Triana's, I understand where that complaint was coming from.

To sum up, I found the buzzer system interesting but potentially frustrating, which shifts more emphasis to the other aspects of the event. It's possible to go to a trivia event, never get a question right, and still have a good time, if you enjoy the crowd and/or the music and/or the other things going on (like in this case the truth or dare game). If you go to Triana's and you find that you're on the same wavelength as the regulars, then it's possible you'll quite enjoy it. My sense is that voice chat makes it more difficult for newcomers to surf that wavelength, but it isn't impossible. Go to Triana's at least once, if it's in your schedule to do so (it's a bit late for Europeans), even if it's just to say that you went to the longest-running trivia game in SL.

Specs:
=> Time: 7:00pm Sundays (one hour)
=> Location: Triana's Music Trivia
=> Host: Triana Caldera
=> Prizes: twenty questions, L$25 each

Answers to the sample questions:
=> B.J. Thomas (this one was the stumper)
=> Enya
=> that deluxe apartment in the sky