What streaming service made its first move into interactive programming in 2018 with «Black Mirror: Bandersnatch»?
That would be Netflix, which on Friday added to its small library of interactive entertainment with «Trivia Quest,» a daily animated show where viewers must answer quiz questions correctly in order to help Willy — a rainbow-bright wheel-like character with a smile — save his Trivia Land friends from the clutches of the evil Rocky, who takes the form of a sword.
«Trivia Quest» — which premiered a little more than a month after the streamer released «Cat Burglar,» a take on interactive trivia from «Black Mirror» creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones — marks Netflix ‘s entry into the daily interactive game space, which has grown in popularity in recent years with the short-lived HQ Trivia app and New York Times-owned Wordle.
Andy Weil, Netflix’s vice president of interactive and comedy, told Insider that his own love of such experiences started the conversations that resulted in «Trivia Quest.»
«I was talking to one of our VPs in product, Todd Yellin, about our mutual love of trivia and how it can be deployed on the service,» he said. «It was even before we were really in games. It was more of a just, ‘Hey, let’s try this. We both love trivia and we have the technology.'»
It just so happened that two producers already working with Netflix, Daniel Calin and Vin Rubino of Sunday Sauce Productions, had licensed the IP from the Etermax mobile game Trivia Crack, which became the basis for «Trivia Quest.»
The show will launch one new episode daily through April. Each installment features 24 questions — 12 easy and 12 hard — and encourages viewers to play through multiple times if they want to challenge themselves or improve their score.
«We want to see how people take to it,» Weil said of the daily rollout, a departure for Netflix, which pioneered and has stayed faithful to the series binge model. He added that «Trivia Quest» will still ultimately feel like a Netflix show because previous days’ episodes will be available for viewers to play on demand whenever they want, unlike Wordle where the puzzle refreshes every day. There also is an overarching storyline designed to encourage Netflix subscribers to come back day after day, though the narrative is «pretty light,» Weil said.
Though «Trivia Quest» acts like a hybrid between a TV show and a game, it is separate from the slate of games Netflix launched in November. The interactive experiences, for example, live on multiple platforms including smart TVs, whereas Netflix games are available only on mobile devices.
«We’re looking at this very much as a 1.0 experience,» Weil said, adding that he wants to learn from audiences interacting with the show.
To create «Trivia Quest,» Netflix engineers used the same product — internally known as the Branch Manager — that they developed to create «Bandersnatch.»
Though a trivia game unfolds differently than the branching narratives Netflix has released in the past — it has 18 interactive titles including «Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale» and «Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend» — Weil said «Trivia Quest» used the existing technological architecture.
The New York Times previously reported that as many as 40 people, including developers, animators, and engineers, worked behind the scenes to create «Trivia Quest.»
«Differently than anywhere else that I’ve worked, I feel comfortable sharing content with the product people as they feel comfortable sharing their learnings with the content people,» said Weil, who previously worked in comedy development at Universal Television.
One challenge when creating «Trivia Quest» was generating questions that would translate around the world. Netflix, after all, has 222 million subscribers in more than 190 countries.
Weil said the show has been translated into multiple languages — in some cases, the creators came up with alternate questions for specific regions. «We didn’t want to make it global because that’s how you bland up the questions,» he said.
Weil said that the company’s push into gaming has informed its thinking about interactive content. «We’re in conversation all the time with the games side,» he said. «The lines are blurring.»
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider’s parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.
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