Exactly. I don't necessarily agree that less is more. I think with Heroes, more is more. I think in that state of things, there will be more obscure categories come up but on those days most people won't know much about that topic and a few people have a chance to shine, who maybe otherwise wouldn't. I think the state of things right now is too close to sanitizing topics. We want only "sanitized" topics that have some broad degree of appeal as to not be too obscure, but where broadness isn't the criterion per se which we are emphasizing to the neglect of all others. We're just saying that some sanitization is required. I think that backfires in a way because what ended up happening is there is a clear preference being demonstrated, maybe not through any deliberate action but just because of the proliferation of the categories, it more easily draws one instead of the other, at as great or greater a representation than the 4/14 or 5/14 would suggest. Thus I think broadening is called for while taking care to avoid hopelessly obscure categories from emerging while also taking care to tamp down on the preference from re-emerging. Obviously some people enjoy that. But not everyone does. Heck if this is a democracy, let's just go ahead and make the Heroes category movies every single day since OBVIOUSLY people prefer movies more to anything else else anyway according to some of our members who are privy to data the rest of us have not seen and can read and interpret data to arrive at conclusions the rest of us have not arrived to. So we could do movies on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Then television on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and then Sunday could alternate every other week. Then no one will have any room to complain.

I don't think the point was brought up just as quote-unquote OBVIOUS empty rhetoric.

Everyone on the site is privy to seeing the player totals on quizzes. Besides a handful of outliers in General (usually Mixed and Thematic) and the site's more popular Brain Teasers, pop culture topics get a disproportionately larger amount of plays.

In terms of submissions, we also see more quizzes come in on topics in pop culture subcategories. Even if we're not looking at players, our collective authors actually sent more quizzes to Music and Television and Entertainment than they did to Movies in the last quarter of records.

Personally, in my top 20 most played quizzes, 11 are pop culture themed. Of the ones that aren't, they're artificially boosted by being Editor's Choice picks (3 of them) or being featured in low-level badgelets both of my own inclusion or otherwise (6 of them).

Three authors have more plays than I do-- looking at Skunkee alone, whose main category tends to be Movies, her top quizzes have more plays than ANY of mine.


Everyone has their own preferences and their own experiences with trivia that probably go beyond this site (I do as well, and those tend to echo what others have already said about a weight on pop culture), but I promise we're not pulling these assumptions out of thin air. I spend a lot of time on this site specifically keeping my eyes on where people are writing.

For the record, I don't disagree with *more* Heroes topics and I never have. I've conceded that VG will probably never show up (even if it's my topic of choice) because for everyone who asks for more topics, there is an equal number of people who will complain about the exact same topics. There's no making everyone happy.

A lot of people mention that movies and TV are a lot more popular than sports, but the movies and TV categories have about 22,000 and 15,000 quizzes written for each category respectively. Compare that to sports which has about 13,000 quizzes written for it. I am aware some of those sports quizzes are probably way too obscure, and maybe those quizzes don't get a lot of plays but there is clearly a high number of people who care about sports since the number of written questions is almost as high as movies. And I also feel the point of Team Heroes is too have slightly more obscure categories so individual people can support their team.

Wesley, did Terry ever make a decision on your proposal on whether sports would be coming to Team Heroes?

It's always good to see a niche topic come up that gives some members who are not the speed demons a chance to really shine and help the team.

But that's just me.

Still no sign of sports appearing

Yes, I’d like to see some sports and TV... in fact any of the missing categories.

Also, musicals mixture or whatever it was called, was too easy. Surely there are some harder musicals questions?? I am seriously weak on the topic of musicals but they were so easy that I managed 15/15 in 40ish seconds... in my mind this really detracts from the players who do know their musicals well but are unable to do any better than someone clueless on the topic like me. It just becomes a speed contest which I don’t think suits this team game.


Mixed Lit from today was also too easy. Again, I’m not great in literature but I hold the team record at 1473!! That totally spoils it for those who really know their Lit but can’t go as fast as some of us.

I think the Mixed Lit. topic is supposed to be easy. It's more general lit. questions. There are other more specialized ones that come up.

You agree though right? After all, you posted this not long back:

“ It's always good to see a niche topic come up that gives some members who are not the speed demons a chance to really shine and help the team.

But that's just me.”

I think the fewer heroes speed contests the better. The difficulty pool could presumably be tweaked slightly so that it pulled more difficult questions from that pool?

Maybe you're not as weak as you thought.

Haha! Trust me, I am. :-)

Yeah, not buying it.

And I can see my own post on this page still, so I don't need a reminder of it.

My point was that there are other lit. topics that are already what you want to turn Mixed Lit. into and that it's not necessary to change a entire topic to fit the bill. Mixed Lit. is supposed to be comprised of questions that the majority of people out there would know the answer to.

People play for different reasons. Some are competitive, while some just want to be able to say "Yay, I knew them all!" now and then. A lot of players are both, depending on various factors. So the easy, general topics have a place in the game along with the more niche ones.

Are you sure?

Reminded me of:

I said grave danger, you said, “is there any other kind?”




So another highly challenging topic today.... oh hang on it’s another speed contest..

Yes I'm sure.

I don't need reminded of many of my posts. Can still remember forum posts I made here 10 years ago, and the replies to them.

Can we return to the topic now? Thanks.

Sure! Any word on including more topics in Heroes?

If it were up to me, it'd be using Expert categories for at least a month now. Unfortunately I don't have code access :P

I like the sound of that Wesley, I really do!

Finally we'll have Team Heroes categories like 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' back in the mix alongside 'Stargate Universe', 'House of Plantagenet', 'RMS Titanic', and 'NCAA Football'.

I've learned that no matter which side of the line we go (more categories/less categories; more difficulty/less difficulty) there are vocal players who ask for changes. My suggestions for the game (dating back about ten or so years) have been relatively unpopular, so I've stopped trying to shoot for them. I'm excited for when these changes are made so that we can go back to the 'these topics are too niche' discussions that we used to have.

Stargate! Yes, Stargate! But, please, not Stargate: Universe.

'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' 'Stargate Universe', and 'NCAA Football'. How emetic!
Sounds like the game is about to be ruined

So would it really be a bad thing to have a specialized category every now and then? Using Expert categories doesn't mean using the specific ones at the same chance as the general ones. They'd be just as uncommon as in Expert (or even rarer - that's a knob that can easily be adjusted).

The point is to use the well curated Expert general sets for most games and maybe occasionally add a bit of spice. And maybe seeing Buffy or NCAA once in five years might be fun

But I'd still like to see the occasional "speed demon" category, too. I am not a speed demon, and won't do well on that day in terms of any competition, but it feels good to get a score near 1450.

I might point out that almost any category that makes some of us go "Nooooo!" is one that makes another player go "Yessss!" and that is part of the wonderful variety of life.

There'll certainly be options to speed demon in the Expert categories every now and then. We have 175 tier 7s (30 seconds) and 477 tier 6s (40 seconds) in that game, so fast games do happen.

While we're on question choices... some of my recent 50/50 sets felt more like Celebrities (Actors, Actors, more Actors and spiced with some Actresses) than mixed. Any chance to make sure a set will be taken from 15 different categories?