"A bar is one of those third places where you go to escape reality," says Koster. "The fact that Buzztime has been around since the mid-'80s, with people playing networked trivia indicates that people have been gaming at bars all along. Arcade games have always been big in bars, too."

But Buzztime has a big new competitor. "Everybody has a mobile phone in their pocket," says Koster. "It's super common to see somebody at a bar pull out a game and do something for maybe five minutes while they're waiting for somebody to show up. Because of the bite-sized nature of so much mobile and casual gaming, games are everywhere."

Koster works as an independent designer and consultant on gaming projects. Part of his appeal is his sharp perception of gaming trends. Apart from pioneering MMOs, he was also an early mover in design-platforms and social media games.

Part of the Buzztime challenge for Koster was getting his head around the needs of the players while they are in a bar.

"The player wants something to do, usually with their friends, often after work," he explains. "They want a lightweight distraction while they can catch up on the day or complain about their boss or whatever. A friends night out."

League of Legends Helped

Koster realized that the reason why fewer and fewer people were willing to play Buzztime's older game is one that is familiar to anyone who has ever played a multiplayer game.

"Think of this in terms of League of Legends," he says. "Trivia knowledge is a skill, just as any other PvP [Player vs. Player] game calls for a skill. You are trying to execute well on answering the question using your trivia skill.

"That isn't very different from any number of other PvP scenarios. However, while you get better at League of Legends or a first-person shooter by participating in them, this game doesn't teach you to get any better at trivia.

"The question databases are enormous. Odds that you'll pick up new factoids that you get to later use are really low, because questions just don't repeat. What that means is that the people who will tend to do well are the ones who were already good at trivia."

Koster is really good at trivia, which is why he scored highly on his first go. But few people are this good at just knowing lots of random stuff. They tend to know about the things that interest them, whether that is sports, or celebrities or the lyrics to Disney songs. This is why trivia is best played in teams.

But strong teams of trivia players will always easily best weak teams, which is no fun for either.

"All PvP players want a good game."

"Anybody who's played a first-person shooter with a bunch of 14-year-olds understands this," says Koster. "14-year-olds have much faster reflexes than I have. But there are other things in the game, such as tactics, that I might be able to do better than them.

"That's what we needed to do to change the trivia game. We needed to give the players who weren't necessarily great at trivia several ways to be good at the game, without necessarily being great at trivia."

Weaker players, Koster decided, needed to have a balancing mechanism to help them out. They also needed more control over the kinds of questions they were being asked. If you know a lot about football, it's not much fun to never get to use your expertise, right when it might have some passing value.

Based on more usable touchscreen controls, Koster introduced a new version of the game called Jackpot Trivia which offered various systems in which players can control some of the incoming topics.

Immediately, this showed a vast difference between the questions previously being asked, and those being demanded. Disney movies and superheroes went straight to the top of the list.

Children (generally, not very strong trivia players) were starting to play, as well as a higher number of young adults. This was entirely in line with Buzztime's stated goals.