What has happened?
Trivia is a game genre that has been sacrificed to the teen-driven comic character and role-playing games that are the mass market today. Having studied the market, I realized that one of the most widely used and socially accepted game genres was in real danger of being abandoned. Hopefully the advent of Big Bucks Trivia and other sites based on trivia games will change that and regenerate the game of trivia on a global scale. The market for cash games of skill is growing at an exponential rate and the traditional trivia game is being pushed aside.

Online trivia technology
Very little thought was given to developing a new trivia game product. For several years I oversaw the development of a Trivia site that would contain the best components of what the market had seen before. I wanted to see an engaging game, with unique gameplay mechanics and, most importantly, fair to everyone who plays.

There is MMOG payment technology to play live cash tournaments for the Trivia audience. The obvious questions are “will they be safe?” and “will they be fair?” Sophisticated auditing and security applications have eliminated a large number of risks for both the game operator and the user. The mechanics of the game is the engine in terms of creating the differential for the user. What new things will Trivia lovers bring back to the game? I think the answer is a multi-linked MMOG pay-to-play tournament.

Changing the face of online gaming
Typically, to enter a television production trivia program, one had to dial a premium toll phone number. This alone could cost hundreds of dollars. Then, if you were lucky enough to be randomly selected, you can come to the studio for a recording. All of this did not guarantee their participation in the game and was time consuming. The growth of file sharing, think “YouTube” has made it possible for Mister or Miss Public to become a media star (see below). Website communalization has yet to penetrate the casual gaming market and this does not appear to be happening in the short term. The headlines of the casual gaming websites offer nothing new, the same mush with a different label. There seems to be a real fear of being innovative on these websites.

Here, a website like Big Bucks Trivia is trying to break new ground, not only in terms of the style of the game, but also welcoming the user to become part of the game.

Be an online trivia host
YouTube has bought the user’s face from the website. This “community” aspect has instilled a trust factor in communications over the Internet. Instead of being a faceless answering machine, the website can now offer real people to interact with. At Big Bucks Trivia, which has a unique focus on the pay-to-play market, the user can submit a request to host game sessions even without having played a game. Give the community a chance to show what they can do. Organizing a game session can be the great opportunity they were looking for to enter the media. Opportunity is a very real and obviously novel option.

The future of online trivia games
This is the future of what the best trivia-type games should offer, live sessions against the world, not against a software application that orients profit to the operator of the game. Requests for rewards, financial or otherwise, have fallen on deaf ears in the past. Cash games of skill are king right now. There are real people who win very tidy sums of money, not just from online poker sites, but from the growing number of cash games of skill.

Trivia game developers, in particular, have been delayed in their entry into this market. The issue that preoccupied game developers and publishers was “how can we make money?” And “if it’s not a download game, we can’t do it.” Certainly a very shortsighted prospect. If you watch the Big Bucks Trivia game, for example, for a relatively small payout, log into the game session, and over time, the jackpot jackpot can run into the millions. Everyone has a reward. Also, when reading the rules of the game, there is no possibility that a player can summon artificial help to fool other players!

Contestants can host game sessions … this is a real community game. The past has not been kind to a game that has made millions and millions of people of all ages enjoy a simple structure for years and years. The revival has begun and is moving.