This thread has been closed to new replies by moderator Terry.
121 replies. On page 3 of 7 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
121 replies. On page 3 of 7 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Subject: Complain about questions in games here
Posted by: Terry
Date: Sep 03 23
I want to hear your whines here. My goal is to have question pools for each game that everyone can enjoy. I think most games we hit the sweet spot, but thought I’d check in to see if we have some room for improvement.
What games do the question pools leave you feeling frustrated or make you not want to return to?
What games have questions that are too difficult?
All gripes are invited, but please be as specific as possible. I need to know the exact game(s) that need question pool tweaks, and the specifics about what types of questions are problematic.
This thread will be locked once sufficient whining has been collected.
Thanks :)
Posted by: Terry
Date: Sep 03 23
I want to hear your whines here. My goal is to have question pools for each game that everyone can enjoy. I think most games we hit the sweet spot, but thought I’d check in to see if we have some room for improvement.
What games do the question pools leave you feeling frustrated or make you not want to return to?
What games have questions that are too difficult?
All gripes are invited, but please be as specific as possible. I need to know the exact game(s) that need question pool tweaks, and the specifics about what types of questions are problematic.
This thread will be locked once sufficient whining has been collected.
Thanks :)
121 replies. On page 3 of 7 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
brm50diboll 
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I agree with samak on this one, and have stated the same opinion in various threads at various times over the years. A contestant in a game show or a reality show is not now and never was a celebrity, no matter how popular a show might have once been. It is one thing to know the names of the hosts of a show, it is quite a different thing to know the names of the contestants, and that fact should have been apparent to authors of quizzes at the time of their writings even at the height of the popularity of those shows. To restate in another way: writers should know that the "staying power" of questions about names of contestants would be quite short. Furthermore, it is a completely spurious argument (and I'm mentioning it because people keep dredging it up) to say that because an occasional contestant on such a show became famous later (for totally unrelated reasons on another show where they actually acted) that being a contestant made them a celebrity. No it didn't. Tom Selleck isn't a celebrity because he was on a game show once. He's a celebrity because he had a long and successful acting career, beginning with "Magnum P.I." His game show appearance would be long forgotten were it not for his legitimate acting skills. There is nothing more dated and irrelevant than questions about reality and game show contestants. I agree with samak. This sort of stuff should be culled from FunTrivia games. Such questions are awful enough even in "Impossible" in the Global Challenge, and should have been recognized as future "Impossible" material at the time they were written, no matter how popular a show might have been at the time. Reply #41. Sep 05 23, 8:20 AM |
| Terry
Head Honcho 
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It is not up to authors to care about how games use their questions. Authors can write on whatever topic they want, no matter how obscure or niche. I can use all sorts of creative methods to weed out (or de-prioritize) questions that may annoy a majority of players. Again, the single question database is quickly becoming the standard pool for our games, and we use correctness data to determine how many people can answer any given question. Reply #42. Sep 05 23, 8:53 AM |
| brm50diboll
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I'm not saying the quizzes shouldn't have been written or need to be retired. I'm saying questions from those types of quizzes should be culled from games. With regard to using accuracy of questions as a criterion, my issue with that is how much that accuracy depends on recent data. If a question has appeared in a game for years, and got a great deal of play early on but now appears only sparingly, its overall accuracy rate may not (depending on exactly how that rate is determined) reflect the true obscurity of the question today. I wasn't criticizing authors of the quizzes, I was criticizing the arguments made by the current defenders of the use of those questions in the games - they should be aware that some types of questions grow stale faster than others - and questions about game and reality show contestants grow stale very fast. If the data isn't showing that, I respectfully request that that data be examined more carefully, because something is wrong with it. Reply #43. Sep 05 23, 9:15 AM |
kyleisalive
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Which games are you finding these questions coming up in the most? Is it one or two specific ones? Reply #44. Sep 05 23, 9:23 AM |
| brm50diboll
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I'm seeing those kinds of questions in certain Expert games - Mixed TV stars, or something like that. I apologize for not remembering the specific title of it, but it was definitely in Who's the Expert games. Reply #45. Sep 05 23, 9:25 AM |
LadyNym
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I remember finding such questions in TV-based Team Heroes games rather than Celebrity-based ones. As I am not a TV watcher, they are only marginally harder for me than the more "mainstream" ones :D. Reply #46. Sep 05 23, 9:34 AM |
| kyleisalive
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Regarding WTE, the 'TV Stars Mixed' subcategory is logged as a General (ie. not-specific) choice, which means it comes up in regular rotation, but it is specifically built-out to exclude the 'Survivor' and 'Celebrity Chefs' subcategories within it. Behind the scenes we can run simulated question sets to make sure it's executing properly. Looking at these now, in the first five sets, the only reality TV questions I'm seeing come up are about "Dancing with the Stars", which typically only brings on celebrities (though again, it's completely subjective as to whether or not people treat people from "The Bachelor" or "Jersey Shore" or different Olympic sports as celebrities). Terry might be able to triple-check if "Survivor" questions are slipping through, but theoretically, with that route, it should not be possible unless those questions are in quizzes specifically in the 'TV Stars Mixed' section (and not the subcats nested deeper). Team Heroes, to my understanding, were supposed to pull from the lists and exclusions we built for WTE. Not sure if that was followed through on. Reply #47. Sep 05 23, 9:55 AM |
| Terry
Head Honcho
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Just checked. Heroes does not use expert exclusions. I’ll change it to use the same pools as expert. But yes, we can fine-tune expert /heroes (soon) categories to filter out obscure stuff from the pool. Reply #48. Sep 05 23, 11:22 AM |
MiraJane
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Please some how fix Science Fiction Literature in Team Heroes to keep out Star Wars books. Reply #49. Sep 05 23, 12:22 PM |
| kyleisalive
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Same thing-- if the game pulls from WTE, it excludes those. Keep in mind that this does affect the viability of question totals. There are 213 quizzes in the Sci Fi subcategory, but when you remove Star Wars, Star Trek, and Halo, it's only 92, and because the difficulty is likely variable, not all of those questions are likely usable. The more that gets cherry-picked out for preference, the more the same questions will start appearing over and over again... unless authors write more to fill in those sections. Reply #50. Sep 05 23, 1:00 PM |
Shadowmyst2004
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"these sort of questions are junk trivia." Maybe we need a "junk" trivia game (or badge), like one that is specifically pulling from reality TV and obscure older sports (specifics like games and older seasons, not just championships). It would likely be a better badge than recurring game, but could be fun. Reply #51. Sep 05 23, 1:41 PM |
croghaneer
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To catreona and others; I never said cancel anything! I was voicing my opinion on this thread about questions I don't like. That is what was asked for and that is what I responded to. Please go back and READ THE INTRO!!!!! Reply #52. Sep 05 23, 1:56 PM |
| MiraJane
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With Sci Fi Lit, one of the problems is that quizzes that qualify are categorized not in the Science Fiction subcategory but are categorized alphabetically under author's name like Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke. Reply #53. Sep 05 23, 2:15 PM |
| kyleisalive
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Individual books maybe, but it's hard to find authors who consistently stay in their genres without branching out occasionally. Stephen King, for instance, has written horror, mystery, fantasy, non-fiction, etc. There's not going to be an easy way to split that out on an author-by-author basis, and it's likely to get into more minutiae than a mixed subcategory because you're looking at finer details of book plots. Re croghaneer: My question, following up with you earlier, was simply any reasoning you might have for wanting those omitted. The conversation since your post has regarded fine-tuning the games, but my curiosity was with whether or not there was reasoning behind omitting those ones. If it's personal preference due to subject matter there's not much we can do there unless, as others have said on different topics, the questions within those sections are notably difficult or obscure. In the ideal circumstance we can take a look at those question pools and make it work. But again, if it's just a personal preference thing, then no amount of tweaking is going to fix that. Reply #54. Sep 05 23, 2:30 PM |
| croghaneer
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It was said mainly in jest, although I don't particularly like fantasy as I have never had an interest in it. Same for Hinduism, I just don't know anything about it. I don't play because I don't like guessing randomly. Please, for the sake of everyone, keep them! Reply #55. Sep 05 23, 3:17 PM |
UKMikeyA
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A question in today's New Question quiz: IggyPop12 asked: What famous European Choir sings the opening to "You can't always get what you want" by the Rolling Stones? The answer is given as the Vienna Boys' Choir but according to Mick Jagger in Dora Loewenstein and Philip Dodd's "According To The Rolling Stones" it's sung by the London Bach Choir. I've sent a correction notice. Reply #56. Sep 06 23, 4:22 AM |
| Shadowmyst2004
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@UKMikeyA I thought it was the London one as well, but hadn't double checked, just assumed my memory was off. Thanks for checking. Reply #57. Sep 06 23, 5:07 AM |
| UKMikeyA
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As for junk trivia, the difference between esoteric sports questions and reality show questions is that the former are a matter of record and can be researched more easily than the latter. I'm personally not a fan of either but I can certainly see how reality show or old TV show questions can be irritating and frustrating to complete for a greater number of people, particularly when they show up in timed team quizzes like GMM which are unavoidable in daily play. Please bear in mind that many TV shows aren't shown outside of their home countries and I think it's unfair to expect quizzers to seek them out on DVD just to complete a quiz. Reply #58. Sep 06 23, 5:08 AM |
andymuenz
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"A contestant in a game show or a reality show is not now and never was a celebrity, no matter how popular a show might have once been." As Kyle pointed out, Elizabeth Hasselbach who spent many years as a host of The View was first on Survivor. Super Bowl winning coach, Jimmy Johnson, NL MVP, Jeff Kent, NBA All-Star Cliff Robinson, and multiple Olympic Gold medalist, Shane Gould (for those reading this from Down Under) have all been on various iterations of Survivor. While Hasselbach was the only one of those on Survivor before they were famous, these examples and many more (especially from Australian Survivor where they have had seasons where half the cast were celebrities) show the original statement to be incorrect. Reply #59. Sep 06 23, 8:58 AM |
| Terry
Head Honcho
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Over 100 new topics have been added to Who’s the Expert, and over 30 added to Team Heroes. Good luck! Reply #60. Sep 06 23, 1:36 PM |
| This thread has been closed to new replies. |
121 replies. On page 3 of 7 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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