Competitiveness has been ingrained in our souls and bodies since the dawn of mankind. We’ve constructed events around the idea of proving who’s the best in whatever activity is being judged, whether it be spelling bees or the Olympics. It should come as no surprise then that there are a veritable plethora of apps that pit us against each other in an effort to aid us in becoming, as one Pokemon trainer once said, the very best.
This week I’m looking at the app that’s at the top when it comes to figuring out who in the world is best at whatever topic they think they’re good in. That’s right, this week I looked at QuizUp.
Now I’ve used QuizUp before, advancing in levels and, where concerning the topic “Harry Potter”, becoming the best in the UAE (he typed modestly). So for the purposes of this review I decided to start afresh and, ignoring my original account,I signed in with my Facebook profile and dove back in.
The first thing to do in QuizUp is to choose a topic, or topics that you would like to get quizzed on. Predictably I chose Harry Potter again and thus started my quest to get to the top of the UAE charts once again. Choosing the main Harry Potter topic (there are numerous topics, some focusing solely on the movies, others on quotes and so on), I hit “play now” and was given the option of either challenging one of my Facebook friends or a random fan from around the world. I went with the latter option and was treated to a rather nice scrolling panoramic of the world which featured pictures of other players of QuizUp. Before I had a chance to have another sip of tea I was paired up with my opponent, a level 29, “member of Dumbledore’s Army” player hailing from Australia.
The interface for QuizUp is absolutely wonderful, from the get go it’s easy on the eyes, simple but when you delve into opens up to show how complex it can get. For the casual user, you can head straight into a match with two taps, while a more competitive user can pull up the rankings, graphs of matches and even tweak the demographics of who you’d want to compete against.
A game of QuizUp is based on seven questions with 20 points being awarded for choosing the correct answer with the last question awarding 40 points. You have a space of ten seconds to answer each question, resulting in me panicking and heavy thumbing the wrong answer with alarming frequency. Choosing the wrong answer gives you no points and choosing the correct answer late will result in a deduction of points depending on how late you answered the question. Choosing the correct answer with only one second left will award you only 11 points instead of the cursory 20 (9 points being stripped away for the 9 seconds you spent Googling the answer).This is the shoot off of the future. Ultimately the one who hits the answer quickest wins. There was one match where I lost with the final tally being 159-160 and compared to the matches where I lost by a larger margin, this one hit home the hardest.
The questions asked are numerous, though not infinite, in the time I spent on QuizUp, a few questions would be repeated over the rounds yet there was always one unexpected question that came from nowhere and often cost me the game. Still, I trudged onwards. Desperately wishing for a pensieve, I went head to head with numerous opponents, with matches being boringly easy or borderline hair ripping. At the end of every match I was shown a screen that measured how much XP I had gained (You can pay to have the amount of XP gained to double), with leveling up rewarding you with the ability to display titles specific to the topic you were competing in. I managed to get the “novice” title, something I was pretty chuffed about. In addition to all this talk about XP and levels, you were given the option to chat with your opponent, share your results on social media, have a rematch or continue playing against other randoms. You’re also shown a rather nifty graph detailing your progress (or lack thereof) during the match.
Another feature of QuizUp which is relatively new (it wasn’t there when I played it eons ago) is the “People” tab. It essentially transforms QuizUp into a social platform by connecting you to people who share interest in the topics you like, allowing you to find people to compete against or just have a chat with.The first time you open the People tab, you’re given the option to change how the filter works, picking what sort of people you’d like to see pop up in your People’s tab. To be honest I found myself comparing this to the multitude of hookup apps that populate the Appstore. In fact QuizUp itself has a lot of social media traits to it, you can even post status updates that your followers, who are your Facebook friends who use QuizUp, can see.
In the end, QuizUp is a great little app to hone that competitive edge of yours while connecting you with people who share similar interests as yours. Plus, I got ranked at the top of the UAE for Harry Potter yet again (though this was on the 1st of the month so it was fairly easy).
