twitter + trivia = twivia
February 22 2009, 6:11pm
If you would rather just start playing twivia rather than hearing the back story on the project, I won't hold it against you. Click here to go to http://www.twivial.com and start playing!
A while ago, I was having a chat with Wade Tinney (@largeanimal, CEO of Large Animal Games, where I work) about game play possibilities on twitter. I've likened twitter to a mainstream IRC in the past, so a flood of text-based games came to mind.
The first and simplest game play possibility that came to mind was a trivia bot. I've worked on and used a couple of trivia bots on IRC and figured it would be pretty easy to create something similar on twitter. Talking through the idea with Wade made the project seem very exciting for a couple of reasons.
- Neither of us had seen a game based on twitter yet.
- The potential for a massively multiplayer trivia game was way too compelling.
- There were a bunch of other game ideas floating around between us and this seemed like the easiest proof of concept to get out into the world.
Since our conversation, I've been experimenting with the Twitter API and working on a bot to serve trivia questions to people that followed it. I've had a fun time developing the game and I appreciate everyone's help testing it. I also want to thank the lead artist at Large Animal Games, Brad MacDonald, for coming up with the logo.
So without further adieu, I'd like to introduce twivia. Genius, right? Thanks to Wade for coming up with the name. To play, simply follow the bot at www.twitter.com/twivia_bot. If you want to view other player's stats and learn more about twivia, go to www.twivial.com
If you have any feedback, feel free to tweet @mattwkelly or leave feedback on my site or the twivia site.
Like I said, twivia is essentially a proof of concept and will help us determine if twitter is a compelling gaming platform or not. If it is, I have a ton of other ideas I'd enjoy trying out, so stay tuned.
- Tags:
- twivia
- large animal games
