The fastest growing game in smartphone history is an old school rapid-fire quiz, QuizUp, which invites users to pit their knowledge of Harry Potter, the Twilight Saga against others around the globe.
Created by Thor Fridksson, a former TV presenter and entrepreneur, QuizUp was launched with a Trivial Pursuit adaptation for the iPhone in 2009 and has since gone on to average about a million downloads a week, racking up more than five million downloads since launch.
It also spent several weeks near or at the top of the Apple App Store charts, with the rate of repeat play increasing and devotees spending on average 40 minutes a day putting their mental prowess to the test.
"We noticed that no one really dominated the trivia niche market, which was strange since trivia in essence are a global phenomenon," says Fridksson.
Described as a cross between Trivial Pursuit and Wikipedia, QuizUp is an iPhone app that pits users against one another in either real-time or asynchronous trivia matchups. Users choose from up to 300 different topics and can challenge friends or strangers to answer a fast, six-question round of trivia questions.
"When you're watching a game shown with somebody and a question pops up on the screen, your first instinct is to shout the answer to show off to that other person," he says.
With users generating and fact-checking their own quizzes, the game has spawned a vast range of topics, from natural history and sports to obscure early 20th century horror writers, becoming a sensation and leaving rival iPhone competitors Angry Birds, Temple Run and Candy Crush Saga behind.
Fridksson states that he went to San Francisco in the hope of partnering up with major technology companies but nobody wanted to back a straightforward quiz game.
"Salvation came in the form of a moody teen franchise. Having convinced Sillicon Valley to pony up a little over $1 million, we returned to Iceland and set up a small team under the Plain Vanilla Games banner, to work on Twilight quiz. It was an instant hit and signalled the ways in which QuizUp was going to differ from its predecessors," explains Fridksson, adding that the success of the Twilight version convinced him that the moment for a stand-alone version of QuizUp had arrived.
With the game now a phenomenon, Fridksson says he has found financiers with Plain Vanilla Games raising $22 million Series B Round of financing. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from all existing investors, including Tencent, Greycroft Partners, IDG Ventures, BOLDstart Ventures, CrunchFund (owned by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington), and MESA+.
The game is free to download and does not feature ads, with the hope of making money from sponsored quizzes along the lines of the Twilight tie-in.
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