Science and Technology

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BY PAUL VONG

My first experience with the live mobile game show occurred around August of 2018 when I found out about a new game called HQ Trivia.

Every weekday at noon and 6pm, I’d grab my phone, launch the app, and hop on to the nicely animated lobby while the game’s expertly crafted music filled the room. Then at around game time, I’d hear the countdown start with the words: “And now, very soon…,” and the timer which counted down at a quicker pace than normal.

The intro would play, and a stand-up comedian in a nice suit would appear to talk over the rules and present the jackpot for that game, which was usually around $5,000 a game.

The questions would come after, easy at the start, but they’d get harder and more people dropped out after answering incorrectly. The game would occasionally wipe out a large group of people on one question, leading the host to declare it a Savage Question, along with a nicely animated graphic.

It would glitch every once in a while, which sometimes tripped me up. I didn’t win this first time around, but for me, the experience was exhilarating. The game then grew due to word of mouth, and then it started failing in front of a live audience.

Many people online share the same experience with me, all hopping on at relatively the same time just to escape reality for 15 minutes or so every day, and also to make a little something for our time and effort.

I’ve seen comments from people reminiscing over the game on social media, sharing their past wins, and the frustrations with the money they believed they were still entitled to after all these years. Despite that, general memories are positive.

Today, we really don’t have something to fill that gap, the need for escape, or at least to the caliber that HQ was able to bring us each night. We could use something like it again, especially in today’s fractured world.

It’s known that social media isn’t very social, with many citing it as a reason for their declining mental state. So how could HQ even work?

The game was live, and that you were really competing with others, and the prize made playing the game worthwhile. Families and friends would get together and pool their answers in the hopes of having someone win.

Then there came the copycat games that tried to steal the spotlight away from them. SwagIQ, Confetti, and The Q, the list simply goes on.

It’s sad to see regardless, but many of these knock off games simply couldn’t exist for too long. But HQ was bound to start failing soon for another reason. Player count dropped week after week until it went under 100K and never recovered.

They’d add new features and power ups, which they later sold. Then there was talk of a subscription service for their spinoff game, Words, which never materialized. Sponsors stopped promoting their products, and the game still had its trademark bugs and glitches.

After all that, people would still play. I would know, since I stuck around to see what would happen. Some at this point started to experience light burnout. The developers expected this from its players, so they started toying with the format.

Me and my Discord friends certainly found this out for the first time ourselves too, and they continued to play not only because the game itself was fun, but also because it was nice to hang around with other people who share an interest in the thing you loved too. It seems that everyone was playing with those around them, making HQ a really social experience that no other game has tried to capture to that scale since.

“[Game shows] are looking to find their unique twists in that formula and capture people’s imagination, and HQ was able to scratch that itch in a unique way that it hadn’t happened before,” said game show author Mike Miley.

Alyssa Bereznak of the Ringer podcast “Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia” had this to say, “It was filling an entertainment need that most people didn’t even know they had.”

HQ and other games kept people’s attention, which is especially important in today’s world. Despite this, HQ shut down in February 2020.

In March of that year, a pandemic held many indoors. Later that month, HQ surprisingly came back from the dead for more games. There was an audience again, so much that many say that HQ would’ve been a bigger success thanks to this new captive audience.

It wasn’t. Not that many people showed up, people instead entertained themselves through new streaming services and saw no interest.

HQ shut down again the next year, only being open for non-official games which themselves were later shut down after the developers closed the game’s mainframe.

Streaming offered audiences the ability to watch whatever they wanted whenever, something that HQ tried to emulate with their daily challenge, a short hostless quiz that was playable every six hours. But nothing they tried could work.

This was sad news for people like me, we’d stuck it out until the last game. And now it and others like it were gone. Everyone was on their own thing now.

I’d joined a Discord group earlier on in my time playing as I couldn’t find anyone in my household that’d be interested in playing, and there we supported each other towards large, and mostly small wins. I’d be there practically every day, and I’d stick around after losing to help those still in.

After HQ failed, people started to leave. I recall there were only about five of us left in late 2020. Even though we weren’t really together in person, it still felt nice to interact with those who shared the same interest in the game as much as I have. Chances are that you’d be there not only for the 6pm game on HQ, but notice that there were others just like it and check those out too. And if you needed help, there’d be at least one other person there who’d be playing too for support.

“Even with the bounty of content available to choose from today, there’s still a hunger for something participatory. As the game got bigger, having that reminder that thousands, eventually millions, of people were doing the same exact thing, at the same exact time, was just thrilling,” said Bereznak.

A common issue cited with the game was its payment system, which had a hard time paying out with small winnings, and barely paid out for large winnings.

A lot of this issue can be tied to the game’s poor management and funding attempts, HQ could’ve benefitted with good backers, and better management and payment system. It was just dealt a bad hand of cards in every situation.

Since then, multiple apps have popped up with live games once again including the previously mentioned Daily Trivia Live, along with Savvy (cofounded and hosted by original HQ host Scott Rogowsky), and Netflix’s recently launched Best Guess Live.

It’s too early to tell how long these new games will go for and for what reason, but the live chats on these games still show interest. These new games still bring back good memories, memories of time spent with others.

If such a thing like HQ came back and became just as popular, mobile trivia night might just become a community affair worth setting time out of our busy days for again on that once packed Discord server we called home for so long.

I still believe live shows are still relatively successful formats, especially in a time where people like me feel disconnected with others more than ever.

Many of us are still hoping for that day, we still have the HQ app on our phones despite it being of no use any more since early 2025. Fingers crossed though.

BY MOLLY JONES

In the winter of last year, junior Nova Taylor lost her phone on the bus going home. She spent over two hours running around the city trying to track down where her phone was in the dark, which to most teenagers would be devastating; however, to her it was an opportunity. Nova reminisces on how it felt to spend less of her time on social media and learn to use it in moderation during the time she was without a phone. At first, the days without her phone felt difficult, especially when trying to communicate with her friends and stay in the loop, but over time she learned the importance of being online in moderation.

As social media becomes ever-present at GWHS, it’s important that we understand that it can become unhealthy at a point. Social media can go from a way of connecting with friends to an unhealthy coping mechanism for stress among students.

The Washington Wellness Center sees many students on a daily basis; the center has become a place where students are comfortable having conversations with staff. When students visit the wellness center, they are required to put their phones away. “Sometimes that distraction can lead into the rabbit hole of following something or falling into rumors, stressors that don’t leave room for just pure resting time,” said wellness coordinator Veronica Garcia. In addition to the no-phones rule, they make it a point that there should be a balance between social media and having moments of peace in daily life.

Nova is a prime example of a student who took a break from social media and found benefit in it. She described how “sometimes it didn’t feel great not understanding the new trends or feeling out of the loop, but at the same time it felt nice to take a break.” Nova spent over two months without her phone, which for most people is too long for their comfort. Instead of taking the unfortunate series of events in a negative way, Nova took it as an opportunity to take advantage of that uncomfortability and grow, even if at times it felt difficult.

While Nova was completely without a phone, other students in SFUSD are required to put their phones in pouches at the start of class. In addition to San Francisco teachers making an effort to tackle social media and phones with pouches, so does California’s curriculum. Within the required freshman-year health classes, there are topics regarding social and mental health that deal with social media many times throughout the units. In these classes, students are taught about healthy social media usage in their daily routines, cyberbullying, and how phone addiction can impact not just their mental health but also their physical health. Universities have done studies on what actually needs to be done within the classroom to tackle the issue of social media. “Beyond Bans,” a study in February 2024 at Fielding University conducted by Pam Rutledge, says, “Restricting devices in schools doesn’t solve the broader issue of teaching kids to use technology responsibly.” They stress the importance of not restricting students fully but instead teaching how to manage social media use and use it healthily.

Finally, after over two months without a phone, Nova got a new one, and it started to feel less like she always needed her phone with her. Over the time she had without her phone, she learned that while having your phone and using social media is great for connection, it’s also good to take a break. While her break wasn’t optional, it had an impact on how she goes about using her phone now and her screen time, and she’s a great example of how we can learn to use our social media in moderation.