HQ Trivia is my new obsession… and will soon become yours too!
How habit-forming principles can turn familiar ingredients into something unique
What are you doing at 3PM EDT this afternoon? I know where I’ll be:
Glued to my iPhone ready to play the new insanely fun quiz show HQ Trivia. Every day at 3PM and 9PM, you can compete for free against over 35,000 other players and even score some cash in a live “TV game show-for-your-phone”.
So, what are you waiting for?!
Okay, I know. It’s easy to get jaded when someone talks about a hot, new app. In fact getting people to try new apps is seemingly harder than ever before.
Even those rare few apps that do take off are fleeting in their success — often facing sharp declines when their hype turns negative or merely wears off. Who still uses Peach or Flappy Bird or even last summer’s craze, Pokemon Go? My personal favorite was Yo!, the messaging app that let you send a “yo” to your friends — presumably until they stopped being friends with you for yo-ing them too much.
Fully aware of the crowded graveyard of uninstalled apps and mobile games, I’m excited about HQ Trivia and confident they will have real staying power —if not in its current manifestation, then definitely in its unique format.
Here’s just a few reasons why:
A Breath of Fresh Air
HQ’s first draw is in its simplicity. Only two games each weekday (one on weekends). Between 12 and 15 questions per game and multiple choice questions with only 10 seconds to answer. Pick the right one and move on to the next round. Answer wrong and you’re out, though you can still watch along to the end. Just like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” questions get progressively trickier but players left standing at the end split the prize pool and collect winnings via PayPal.
Scarcity gives HQ a powerful draw. The games last around 15 minutes and typically 3 to 15 players win each night. Games only happen at the stated times with the app largely dormant for the remaining hours. With average prize pools of $500 each game (for now), this isn’t life changing money. It’s merely, as founder Rus Yusupov puts it:
“A way to give people a chance to have fun, maybe win, maybe learn something new.”
HQ is a breath of fresh air in a world of copycats and is building a unique mobile entertainment experience that takes advantage of features optimized for the phone while breaking a lot of commonly held beliefs about mobile gaming today.
First, it is defying the platitude “nobody downloads apps anymore”. Not only that, while most mobile games stick to head-to-head or small groups, HQ pulling in 35,000 concurrent players. Beyond that it’s creating “appointment television” in a world where both television and appointment viewing have been slowly dying.
It’s a show for the peak millennial ‘Snap-and-GIF’ generation but still feels like something from a bygone era of mass audience TV. And as far as I can tell, they’ve spent very little on marketing — growing to 35,000 players as of last night almost organically.
Feeling Safe In Expert Hands
A big reason this all works is that HQ founders Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll are the minds behind Vine which Twitter acquired in 2012, neglected, and eventually shut down last year. Veterans of virality, they are obsessive about working in and experimenting with mobile video content. After leaving Vine, they founded on Intermedia Labs, the app studio that launched Bounce and before that Hype, which allowed people to broadcast a live stream, meshing recorded video clips in late 2016. This certainly isn’t their first rodeo.
Part of app’s charm is also in host Scott Rogowsky’s eccentric but endearing personality. There’s clearly a rough script or vague outline as he read the questions and peppers in fun facts about each answer (right and wrong). However the best part is Scott making quips and improvising segues from one question to the next. Rogowsky is equal parts Jeopardy’s Trebek, Wheel’s Sajack and @Midnight’s Hardwick — and the show is made better for it.
Finally, it came as no surprise to me that Lightspeed Venture’s Jeremy Liew (previously investor in Snap, Mic, and Giphy)had invested a few million in HQ Trivia’s undisclosed seed round. I first heard Jeremy’s awesome perspective on active vs. ambient TV and his call for mobile-first video content of both kinds, when he discussed leading their investment in Cheddar with Kara Swisher in March. To summarize briefly (though I highly recommend you listen to the whole interview) Jeremy talks about different consumer behaviors for different screens, keying in on the fact that the phone demands all your attention while the monitors or TV often live ambient and in the background.
In many ways, we’re quickly moving from the phone as the second screen, to the phone as the first or most popular — and there is even research to support this.
Combining a thoughtful investor that understands the nature of viral mobile-centric content businesses and with experienced founders that built an organically viral video sharing platform, seems like the perfect recipe for a popular, sustainable app — which I believe HQ Trivia will fast become
Creating Products That Actually Stick
So how does HQ make sure that their platform keeps users engaged and coming back? Well, one way is by making it a habit.
I really love Nir Eyal’s book Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products and often revisit certain chapters or blog posts every few weeks. I do this most especially when I meet startup founders with a compelling consumer-facing product that promises sustainable downloads, growth and user engagement.
It’s why the building blocks of The Hook Model and the basic principles of habit forming were fresh in my mind as I played HQ Trivia for the third or fourth time this week. The way the app and quiz show is designed, perfectly the follows the model’s sequence of experiences and with some repetition will manufacture the user stickiness that HQ desires.
We start with a trigger and the first time is likely from a friend who invites you to play (HQ’s marketing is near-entirely organic to date). From there, the external triggers take the form of a push notification when it’s time to play.
While external triggers are fine, there is a crucial internal trigger that must exist within the user as well. Why are thousands of us playing this game? Likely not for the meager dozens of dollars. In fact money has very little (although not nothing) to do with HQ’s appeal. People participate each day because its’s a fun, welcome distraction from daily routine or they’re competitive and want to prove we’re smarter than our friends. The leader board feature feeds this ego-based internal trigger quite well.
The action required is simple, log on at the right times and play to win money. HQ’s ephemeral nature means that the fear of missing out (or FOMO) is alive each day. Waiting for these discreet times also builds anticipation and heightens eventual pleasure from gratification.
Moreover,what really impresses me is how many people stay to watch the whole game even after they get knocked out in the earlier rounds. Scott occasionally prompts this action with gift drops in the form of extra lives — a way to “buy back in”after getting a question wrong. On October 31st 9PM show over 25,000 people started the game and just around 9,000 stuck it out to the end.
And the reward? Well monetary gains are obvious but there is also the microdose of dopamine released in getting a tricky questions right. Better yet, is when you see just how many people got it wrong (see: ego-based trigger point above).
Last and most important is the investment. Too often “viral” apps skip this step which severely hampers their staying power. It’s precisely why I keep coming back to certain apps and specific behaviors over others and also why these behaviors go on to become unconscious habits. To quote Nir himself:
“After a user has been triggered into action and duly rewarded, the investment phase is where the user is asked to do work and starts building commitment. It is here that the user is prompted to put something of value back into the system, typically in the form of time, money, physical effort, social capital, or personal data.”
Candidly, I’m not sure what that ideal investment for HQ Trivia just yet but I think they will figure it out.
While right now HQ’s free to play, perhaps users staking their own money (or signing up with a monthly subscription) will unlock extra lives, let me play more often in the day or give me some other kind of an advantage that would keep me hooked. Maybe the more I play, the better prizes I can earn for my loyalty. Better yet, setting up consecutive day streaks as a reward mechanism would ensure I come back as a daily active user and turn HQ Trivia into habit for me and countless others.
Or, Maybe Nothing Gold Can Stay
HQ is not without it’s challenges though and while some are more pressing than others, all could hamper the app’s sustainability.
- System Overload: HQ’s biggest immediate challenge is that they can barely keep the service up due to concurrent traffic overload. My whole team gathered around the conference room on Oct 30 at 3PM only to have our hearts broken as HQ experienced technical difficulties for 40 mins. The game glitches between questions every so often ruining the experience. Regardless of how fun it is when it works, players won’t turn HQ into daily behavior if they cannot be confident of the app’s reliability.
- Monkey See, Monkey Do: Trivia on smartphones isn’t a new concept as QuizUp and Trivia Crack both had their moments and OTT game shows aren’t new things either. That said, just because the format works on one medium however, it doesn’t mean it will work on another — CBS tried to bring Candy Crush to prime time but it just didn't resonate. Today, HQ works because of how unique it is but there isn’t much of a moat stopping Facebook or Snapchat from creating their own daily gameshows.
- Paying The Piper : HQ can get by on VC money for only so long. Over time they will have create revenue opportunities that feel organic enough to retain users but also allow them to cover the server costs and sustain their growing user base. As a test, HQ ran a sponsored prize pool a couple Sunday’s ago and of course they want the prizes to grow, meaning they will need to bring in a partner to limit their own downside. For all the great things I can say about Vine, it never figured out how to monetize it’s audience meaningfully.
I’ll See You at 3PM!
As HQ’s investor Jeremy Liew says:
“Build a product that users love. Find a way for them to discover it. Everything else is details.”
HQ Trivia is on to something really special mobile-first entertainment and that they are adding 10,000 new players every week through word of mouth just reinforces how well received it is by their audience. What remains to be see is if they will sustain this growth and how the will retain and engage user base when the novelty wears off. Whether that’s creating new draws for this game, new game formats in the future or something totally inventive again, I am confident the HQ team will figure it out.
But seeing is believing.
So in case you’re reading this before 3:01PM EDT today, why not join me, Scott and likely 30,000 other players as we indulge our new favorite pass time. Here — you can even use my referral (code: jaykapoor) and better yet, you should share it with your friends too.
Extra competition will just make it sweeter when you all watch me win! 😈
Thanks for reading this article! If you liked it, please *clap* 👏 and share or leave me a comment below with your thoughts on HQ Trivia or my analysis. Also, please follow my Medium site for more musings and actively researched theses on tech, digital media and live entertainment!
