Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Big for Your Britches

This afternoon (in SL time), relative newcomer to the trivia scene Aiden Falmer held his first ever trivia event at the Victoria Pub in Eudora sim. He enjoyed a nice-sized turnout with a number of trivia regulars in attendance. Aiden seems very enthusiastic about hosting trivia, and on many levels, his first effort was promising. He seemed to enjoy himself, most of his questions were perfectly competent, and some of them were quite good.


This event was better run and more enjoyable than many off-the-beaten-path events I've attended, such as the one I wrote about in this space last week. Aiden has a lot of room to grow, however, and he'll need to do so if he wishes to continue attracting a competitive group to his games. No one's first time is ever perfect (which of course could be said about a lot of things). If Aiden continues attending other events and taking note of what makes some questions work and others not, and if he pays attention to when his own questions are met with confusion or frustration, I trust he'll be able to iron out some of the wrinkles that were evident in the small number of questions that suffered from vagueness.


A larger number of his questions were rather straightforward, such as, "What tree is used in the cultivation of silkworms?" There were no stumpers; the questions that were not immediately answered could be spammed. A few particularly good ones took a little bit of thought, for example, "Which American President was the first not to have been born in the Thirteen Colonies?" The questions appeared to be written by him, which always deserves credit and, I believe, patience for weaknesses when a host is just starting out.


There was some confusion about the start time for the event, as some attendees had heard that it would start at 2:30 but at 2:45 were told it would begin at 3:00. Aiden was prompt about kicking off at 3:00, however, even running through a few "warmup questions" for L$5 each in the few minutes prior. He kept the event running at a suitably brisk (but not rushed) pace, though he has yet to master the transition time between countdown and question.


All of these minor flaws are the sorts of things sharp hosts can repair as time goes on. There was an additional set of drawbacks, however, that I'm afraid will be more difficult for Aiden to recognize and contend with. In brief, Aiden's approach to hosting trivia is ego-driven in nearly every respect. I cannot know for certain what grounds his understanding of how trivia works or can work in Second Life, but so far he has not displayed a strong grasp on the social workings of the trivia community. Further, he does not seem inclined to put the time into figuring them out before pursuing his goal of becoming an SL trivia host.


Some small examples of Aiden's self-emphasis persisted from the time prior to the event all the way until after it ended. His bonuses were "Falmer Bonuses," he included a question on the topic of "Me" (that is, him), complete with capitalization, in which players were asked to guess his height, and he was conspicuously anxious about receiving tips even before he had given players a reason to tip him.


The crowning example, however, was that after his twenty mostly respectable (but nothing to write home about) questions, he informed us,


[2009/12/21 16:13] Aiden Falmer: I will soon be creating a group

[2009/12/21 16:13] Aiden Falmer: for followers, fans, stalkers etc


...not seeming to realize that in order to have a group for followers, fans, or stalkers, it is generally a good idea to have at least one of those first. This announcement explained a lot, though, about how Aiden perceives.. something. I'm only half-sure about what. It might be trivia hosting, it might be himself, or both. or, less likely, neither. He seems to see trivia hosting as possibly equivalent to a DJ gig. He mentioned later that he manages clubs in SL, so perhaps he was generalizing from his experience in that context.


It means, however, that he has not put in the mileage as a trivia player to notice that trivia hosts -- at least those in the contexts in which he is attempting to advertise -- do not have fan clubs. There are groups associated with events and venues, and most are flexible about allowing others to use the group chat to announce events (if they remain appropriately on-topic).


I asked him after most players had left what his interest in trivia stemmed from, and he answered, "It just seemed like a good way to entertain and so forth." Well, certainly, trivia events are a means of entertaining ourselves, but this response begs the question: why does he seem so confident that others already wish to be entertained by him? That is something he needs to earn, which doesn't happen simply by putting together a game stacked with adequate questions, paying L$10 each for them, and spending more time asking for tips than doing advance research on how to appropriately announce an event in Trivia Fiends.


Aiden is young, and I am optimistic. It's still possible for him to grow into the trivia scene, but he'll need to accept, before anything else, that he doesn't already know what he's doing. He can deliver an event that is stronger than what many non-trivia clubs have to offer, but really, that only counts for so much when you address a room full of seasoned hosts and players as if they ought to be excited when you offer to pay a whole L$20 for a bonus. He may at this point be best off at a venue where traffic is reliable, trivia questions are minimally competitive, and the events are not designed to be personality-driven. I have already suggested to him that he speak to a friendly man at such a place.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Southern Comfort. I could use some.

Trivia happens in Second Life in myriad forms, and so I am no longer dramatically surprised when a venue holds an event with a format completely different from what I'm used to. Becki Verne's "Trivia with Dancing" and "Dancing with Trivia" distinction usually turns out to have very little gray area. Today, though, I attended an event that stretches the applicability of the "with Trivia" part of the latter classification.


The club is called Maggie's Southern Comfort, and the inside dance area looks like a country/western bar. The event was held on the roof, in a space called Ivor's Oldies. The listing advertised '50s to '70s music with some trivia. As Josh Schism later noted, the word "trivia" appeared three times in the listing. Any more than that, I'd suggest, and it would have been false advertising, since only three questions were asked during this two-hour event.

I've profiled events before that would be perfectly enjoyable if you attend for the music or the dancing or the socializing and not so much for the trivia. I wish I could be that charitable this time. Rach Borkotron and I were the only two people there unaffiliated with the club until more than an hour into the event. The DJ, Tryxie Seetan -- who was also asking the trivia -- and the hostess, Candee Baily, were very nice, and I was glad we were there for their sake. Running a successful club in SL is hard, and they were doing what they could to send out notices and teleport friends. I don't know what makes the difference when it comes to the longevity of non-trivia clubs, so I don't feel it's my place to critique Southern Comfort on that level.


I do, however, know what I look for in a trivia event, and I can say with confidence that this isn't it. The three questions were spaced about half an hour apart. The prizes were not in cash but in gift cards, which is fair: the listing did refer not to lindens but to "prizes," and if the gift cards were, in fact, awarded in lindens, they would have been well worth waiting half an hour for. The questions, meanwhile, weren't ground-shattering:

[2009/12/14 12:39] Tryxie Seetan: WHO RECORDED KATMANDU?

This one was preceded by the hint that it was related to NASCAR:
[2009/12/14 13:17] Tryxie Seetan: HOW DID FIREBALL ROBERTS GET HIS NAME?

[2009/12/14 13:35] Tryxie Seetan: WHAT IS THE BIGGEST ISLAND IN THE WORLD AND WHO IS IT OWNED BY?

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but the first question, as written, has several possible answers, and one could challenge the use of the word "owned" in the third. I wouldn't hold the trivia at a dance club up to the same standard as one expects at places that are all-trivia-all-the-time, but if I were asking players to wait for such a long span between questions, I'd want the trivia to be worth their time or, at the very least, not hugely flawed.

As I've mentioned in the past, I don't usually listen to the stream during trivia events, but I had the music on this time because at the beginning, we didn't yet know if the trivia would be about the songs being played. When Rach and I came in, Tryxie said it was a sock hop; she had '50s tunes playing and soon had a poodle skirt on. She spun some great oldies for an hour and a half but eventually ran out of era-appropriate tracks and began playing anything within reach. I believe she kept mostly (though not entirely) within the '50s-to-'70s range that the event listing ensured, but I still found it odd that a DJ at a club called Ivor's Oldies would run out of songs that are typically considered "oldies." And even if "Kokomo" is by the Beach Boys, the song is still very much a product of the late '80s.


I had a nice time hanging out with Rach, and since we each won a gift card to a store that an in-world search determined to be for biker clothes, we plan to spend it together on something Chaos-appropriate. Josh arrived only minutes after Rach left, and it was fun to be with him there, as well. It's never a bad thing to say that spending time with friends was the best part of an event. I do wish, though, that there was more I could say for the event itself. Regardless of how friendly Tryxie and Candee and the other staff were, it doesn't balance out against the mediocrity of the trivia.

The Specs:
=> Where: Ivor's Oldies @ Southern Comfort, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Southern%20Magic/133/89/36
=> When: This event was at 12 noon to 2pm on Monday, but I don't know if the trivia is a regular feature. When I asked what type of events they usually held there, the only answer I received was, "It depends."
=> Host: Tryxie Seetan
=> Prizes: A gift card for each of the three questions. Two were for L$299 to a store called V-Twins, and one was for L$400 to Sweet Creations and P&S

Answers to questions in article:
1) The answer accepted was Bob Seger, though Cat Stevens has approximately the same number of Google hits for the song title, and I was able to find a few other recordings.
2) His pitching: he was a baseball player before he was in NASCAR.
3) Greenland/Denmark.

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