Are we having a ball yet?

Bubblegum Factory club host Tiffy McMahon.

What do you think of the automated side of trivia? Or maybe I should start by asking, do you think of the automated side of trivia? Sometimes I go to listed events and find that the game is trivia ball-powered, and though it took me a while to figure out how I felt about that, I've recently realized that my reaction is overwhelmingly neutral. If I had tried to imagine overwhelming neutrality prior to that realization, I probably would have been stumped. But it is true. Trivia balls are like the frozen dinners of the trivia circuit. They're good to have on hand when you're in a pinch, and you always know what you're getting, but they're nothing like the real thing.

I've mostly taken trivia balls and their like for granted, and at many events with live hosts, that's exactly what you're supposed to do: the random trivia machine at Sharon's Diner runs in the background while the "real" trivia is delivered by a host. Honey Potez once combined a trivia orb with her live game during her stint at Club Shiraz for a humorous effect after being called a trivia bot at her previous event.

Because these respectable hosts use them as finger food but not the main course, I sometimes need to readjust my thinking when I walk into a new venue where they constitute part and parcel of the advertised trivia. They're what clubs often have when they're more interested in casual trivia play than in something innovative and competitive. And it's hard to argue that there's anything wrong with that. They're a completely unpretentious means of tickling the brain for lindens.

Moreover, I would take automated trivia over a poorly hosted event any day. If, for instance, someone ran a trivia ball with L$100 per question in the 7:00pm slot, you know where everyone would be... and where they wouldn't be. Clubs that use trivia machines, however, aren't all the same in a lot of other respects. Some places have a more involved or more competitive group of regulars than others, and it's much more enjoyable to go to one of those than to be the only person answering, having your own little conversation with the machine, which may be economically profitable, but it's otherwise not very interesting and would make a lot of people feel self-conscious.

Bubblegum Factory DJ Dusk Griswold.

There seem to be ways to make automated trivia more appealing, though. While I haven't been to Envy's Pub in a long time, I remember the Saturday noon trivia being as good as automated trivia gets, for three main reasons: the question frequency, the audience, and the fact that the questions were changed regularly. The questions were only L$7 each, but the machine's timing was rapid enough to get through sixty questions in an event, making the possible winnings comparable to those in many other games. More importantly, the pub consistently attracted people who were there for the trivia. Between the group's focus on the questions and the quick pace, it was some of the most concentrated paid trivia I've experienced, with the Zoo Bar's occasional Gogomodo contests the only other games comparable.

More common are automated games like the one Honey and I went to at the Bubblegum Factory on Wednesday. There were thirty questions for L$10 each and a somewhat participatory group. It was better than most machine-driven events I've attended in that a variety of people were answering, and people weren't afraid to guess when they weren't sure of the answer. I asked if they ever had trivia with a live host there, and it actually sparked a small discussion:

[16:42] Staffmember: the host or dj used to do it but trivia ball is much easier

[16:42] Player 1: you cant argue with the trivia ball ;)

[16:42] Staffmember: lol exactly

[16:42] Player 2: gigglesss

[16:43] Player 1: and you have to spell right - thats why i like it

[16:43] Staffmember: yeah unless the person putting in the questions spell it wrong

[16:43] Staffmember: which has happened but we will pay the person if that happens

These are all good points. And they all factor into why I used the frozen dinner analogy at the beginning of this piece: It works fine, occasionally it can use a little manual adjustment, the portions are precise, and it's much easier. But it's not the same as the real thing. It might sound harsh to refer to live trivia as "real" and automated trivia as therefore not real, but I mean it much like the food analogy: in a literal sense, the edible stuff in a frozen dinner is real food, but in comparison, a meal that you or a family member prepared or that you smelled cooking while you waited for it in a restaurant will always feel more real. There's no substitute for a host you can interact with, who writes questions with his or her audience in mind. There's more room for innovative and alternative formats, including multiple-winner styles and methods for alleviating fastest-typist bias. Repeated topics are common in any kind of trivia, but automated trivia will give you the same questions over and over if you don't take care to change them occasionally.

Automated trivia is also seldom informative and sometimes out-of-date. I prefer trivia questions that were written with their informational context in mind over random facts floating around in textspace unattached to additional meaning. Trivia machines cannot give follow-up information or provide nuance or explanation to the questions unless it's programmed into them, and I haven't yet seen one that did that. Although there are certainly trivia hosts who are unable to do any of these things either, simply being present in the game makes it possible to try.

What are your thoughts on automated trivia machines? Like 'em? Hate 'em? Never really thought about them? Do you regularly attend machine-run events or do you enjoy live hosts exclusively?

The trivia ball.

Event specs:

=> Location: Bubblegum Factory, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lion/128/53/25

=> Times/days: Check event listings

=> Host: Club host when I went was Tiffy McMahon. The trivia "host" was the trivia ball.

=> Payouts: Thirty questions, L$10 each.