The Bus

We'll be seeing results for Round 3 soon and I've got the fifteen questions for the next round ready.

I had some ideas for this round. There's a few (1-2) questions that are pretty broad and have a large multitude of answers. For these, I wanted to set up a "lightning round" where basically the score is multiplied by 2. Say the question is something like "Name one of the fifty states" and most people have unique answers but two people named California and three people named Rhode Island. Those people would get four points and six points each respectively. The person that named Puerto Rico would get seven points. Do you like that idea? I'll determine this via the poll. Note at most there will be one or two "Lightning" questions.

Second, I wanted to play as well. If there is someone who is not playing who would like to vouch for me, as I will send them my answers before I put up the questions. All you need to do is hold on to the PM and verify that, indeed, what I'm putting down as my answers in the thread (once it's over) matches what's in the PM.

Third, although I already have all the questions, one or two are a tad weak or repetitive. If you have any suggestions, please PM them to me. I can't guarantee I will put them in. I'm looking for questions that are not "Name a game..." since those comprise about half of what I have.

Michael Corvin

You can send me your answers. I won't open it though, so that I can play as well.

As for questions, what's the theme?

JasonF

Can I cast yet another vote for "Please allow googling/wikipedia/whatever"?

orangecrush

+1

fumanstan

Not a fan of allowing googling. I'd rather people not just search for answers and try and pick the most obscure ones and like people just trying to go off what they remember, even if they aren't experts at certain things.

-1

orangecrush

For JasonF it isn't about finding the most obscure answer, it is about finding any correct answer.

fumanstan

Doesn't change the fact that opening it up like that will lead to people hunting for obscure answers. For instance, the "best selling games" questions become easier if you can look them up on Wikipedia, and turns every question into being just about trying to out think what other people won't pick while eliminating any aspect of trivia.

Guess it depends on what the goal of the game is, but I think its fun to see things like 5 different people coming up with Gyromite in their heads.

And maybe it's just me, but reading gaming news regularly at least allows me to come with decent answers for 90% of the questions. I never played Pikmin, but have seen the little guys before.

orangecrush

gaming news won't give you the names of planets in Metroid

Rockmjd23

Keep the same rules. I did good at the Nintendo one because that was my entire life from about 1987-2002, but I will fail miserably at the Xbox and Playstation ones.

fumanstan

Yeah, but for that one where I had no idea, I just guessed Earth and it worked out! I also didn't know what guns were in Goldeneye so just tried to think of any basic gun

Really though, it would just surprise me that if there were more then 3-4 questions that people some people had no clue on, and of those you can probably guess a "correct" answer for a couple of them. And i'm someone that until this generation with the 360 and Wii, hasn't owned a system since the original NES.

pinata242

Indifferent on the lightning round concept. At first I thought it was going to reward players for submitting PMs quickly, but I guess "quick" is relative to when you read the questions anyway...

No googling - it spoils the fun.

The Bus

Remember, I didn't write any of the questions for the Nintendo or Xbox rounds. The only one that was sourced from Wikipedia is this one:

I'm trying my best to do questions where a novice has at least several choices available to them, but if you know the subject, you'll have a lot more.

maxfisher

If googling is allowed, I don't know what the point is. I mean, the whole challenge is racking your brain to think of an answer that, hopefully, few other people will think of. If we can look up every possible answer and pick one, the organizer might as well just write them on slips of paper and randomly draw one for each person.

The Bus

There needs to be a balance. When people are saying googling should be allowed, what they are saying is the questions are too hard. Hard questions don't make this a fun game, either.

JasonF

That's it exactly. I was basically out of console gaming from the late 80s until 2007, so I'm not going to do too well with "name a wepaon from a 10-year-old game you never played" or "name a launch title for a console that you bought a year after it came on the market." That's particularly true when we get tricky questions like "Name a non-playable character from a game with 'Super' in the title that was developed by Sega but not published by them and doesn't include the ability to jump." Seriously -- some of the questions that have been asked I would have a hard time answering with Google.

Anyway, for me the fun of the game is not trying to dredge up the name of a vehicle from Halo from the obscure depths of my memory. I remember driving around in them, but knowing their names? Not hardly! There was the ATV-looking thing, the hover-thing, the other hover-thing ...

Instead, the fun (for me, anyway) is playing Vizzini by trying to figure out which answers other people are likely to give and then zig-zagging the other way (even as I know everyone else is doing the same thing).

JasonF

See, I think the challenge is trying to figure out what others are going to guess and going the other way. Otherwise, you might as well do a straight trivia contest instead of the reverse-sheep aspect of it. But it's obviously a YMMV type of thing and I certainly don't want to ruin the game for everyone else.

nickdawgy

No Googling, but I am sure people do it anyway.

maxfisher

Maybe for a compromise, split it down the middle and have google allowed on half of the questions? Or we could let people look up answers, but say no google and limit it to a site that would take a little work?

redbill

no googling. I don't see the point. Then it just becomes an internet scavenger hunt. But Bus has the point that the questions shoud be able to be answered w/o looking.

Michael Corvin

My 14th place finish in the Nintendo round says otherwise.

The Bus

My take: A well-written question will not be answered easier with the use of Google.

orangecrush

You need to level up your Google skill point tree.

BlueCC

Not to sound too paranoid, but how is that fair, exactly? Unless you didn't write the questions, I guess?

pinata242

It would be multiplied for everyone, therefore fair. "Lightning" is sort of a misnomer and it implies you should answer quick, but really you'd want to take your time on those to really weigh the possibilities to make sure you're as unique as possible.

BlueCC

I just thought it was suspect that The Bus creates the questions, some with a possible 2x score, AND he submits his own answers. It seems like The Bus is setting up an advantage over everyone.

Anyhow, I voted yes in the poll and have no problem with The Bus also playing.