Another Day, Another Quiz App - 4Pics1Movie Rant

The last 18 months has seen an invasion of sorts and the mighty rising of quiz apps. It all started with the humble Logo Quiz, then came all sorts of variations of that, followed by an onslaught of Word Quiz games, where you not only had to guess words but there was even a song variety and celebrity head variety, so naturally at some point one had to appear where you guess the movie, and as reliably as the 263 bus, it has appeared!

4 Pics 1 Movie (you can download it from the app store here) by developers Game Circus LLP does pretty much what it says on the tin. It gives you 4 pictures, and you must guess the movie title. Simples. Sounds nice, I like movies, could be a good game to play while whiling away some time waiting for that darned 263 bus or when i'm bored and in a quiz app mood.... No.

Stop. Right. There. This game is not what it seems. Not the easy-on-the-brain, good for a bit of time wasting, something to do when you can't sleep type of quiz app. I am going to outline here some reasons why this game, as fun as it should be, especially for a movie geek, is downright annoying! I am even using numbered bullet points and two exclamation marks in two sentences in a row!

1.  What is the deal with having to wait 13 HOURS or more for the next level to open up! That is extreme and ridiculous and makes me want to throw my phone at the wall.
Yep, just when you're getting into the swing of things and ready for the challenge of a new level, BAM! you must wait a random number of hours whilst it's 'unlocking', seriously, see the picture →.
You can of course unlock the next level with coins, which you must buy, but with 40 levels so far and more to come you could end up spending your life savings on this silly game.  (nb. before you start moaning that you can get coins for free, yes you can, but not many, and only once, and certainly not enough to open up all the levels).

2.  For movie buffs, which is the kind of person you'd assume would download this game,  this is going to be the most frustrating thing... The images don't actually represent the movie you are trying to guess in anyway.  It all starts to get a bit to logical, simplified and literal.
Lets take an example: the well known classic film, Space Jam. One would think, maybe an image of a basketball, Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny would do the trick and be very relevant to the movie, well you would be wrong. Very wrong, instead you will get two images of stars/milky-way galaxy/space and 2 images of jam/marmalade jars. VERY LITERAL, and also hugely annoying and insulting to our movie intelligence. Its like a smartphone version of rubbish charades.

Very literally Space+Jam = SpaceJam 'sigh'

3.  This one is minor, but nevertheless irritating, for those who are into films even more so. I have to do a bit of background explaining here for those who haven't played yet;
' after having correctly guessed an answer, a success screen will appear which includes a quote from the movie you just guessed'.
The fact that when guessing the movie title 'Rocky' the quote wasn't then 'Adriaaaaaaan' and instead a part of the film I had never heard of made me do a meh face and roll my eyes. This happens a lot, be prepared, if you like movies to have all the quotes you love not appear.

So why oh why has this game been sitting in the top 10 chart on the Apple app store for this week? Well, someone must like it. Why don't you take a long and judge it for yourselves, see what all the fuss is about. and when you get stuck and frustrated and have a phone to face moment cos the question is just to literal for your developed brain, stop, you can always find the 4 Pics 1 Movie answers here, yep, all the levels you need, once you finally get on to the levels that is!

Ok rant over.

 Being reminded of the movie SpaceJam has caused much distraction while writing this post, but it was SUCH A GOOD MOVIE! In capitals letters to reinforce just how awesome it was. For those of you who remember when the movie came out and can still remember the words to the theme song here is a special treat for you, the original Warner Bros SpaceJam website, 'Jam Central'. It's virtually like stepping in a time machine and going back to 1996, enjoy! :)

The spawn of Logos Quiz - Football Logo Quiz, Font Quiz et al

There seems to have been a shift in popular trends, suddenly the quiz, the simple old idea of guessing the name of a logo, has been given a new lease of life and is taking the app world by storm!
It's not only corporate logos like Mcdonalds and Amazon either, we're not fussy, and the original Logos Quiz that came out back in April 2012 has spawned both lookalike and similarly popular apps.

2012 Football Logos Quiz for example is currently number 1 in the UK app store, it doesn't even have any English premier league teams! Font quiz, where the aim is to guess where a letter of a certain font belongs to which logo, is a close second in the apple app store. Neither of these are a crazy new idea, but yet people are lapping it up.

With the popularity of these quizzes has also come a new breed of webpage. The 'answer' sites, the sites dedicated to bringing you the answer to every level of your Logo Quiz app or Font Quiz app.

2012 Football Logo Quiz Answers site

Of course cheat websites aren't a new concept, but 'app' cheat websites are. Never before has there been such a saturation of these type of websites that give you the app answers, or such competition between the websites that somehow get the answers to you before the app even comes out?!


I have covered my opinion on why these app answers websites are so popular and why we may cheat here, I want to look now at the crazy world of website competition. These webmasters have no remorse, they will scan the web looking for their competition and try to destroy them. Deleting forum posts that may give others an advantage, disliking their competitions perfectly acceptable Yahoo answer incase they get a good link from it, copying content from their competitor and using it as their own.
This virtual battle field is tough to crack, but if you can win, the rewards can be great. Masses of traffic to your site, advertisers knocking on your door, just because you were able to guess a few corporate or football logos before them and get them on the internet.

It's big business, a lot is being put into it, but where will it go next? How long can the logo quiz wave keep going, is there an infitate amount of logos in the world to guess? Or is this just the beginning, the shift to old skool gaming has arrived, generation Z is now playing the same games their grandparents likely played but now its digitally and they can get the answers on the click of a button.

Only time will tell, but for now, Summer 2012 will be dominated by these type of apps, and for those of you who are also addicted, here are my tips on the best answer sites around right now. If you have any more to add please post in comment box.

You may be interested in having the Logo Quiz Answers.

For 2012 Football Logo Quiz answers: http://www.football-logo-quiz-answers.com http://www.footballlogoquizanswers.com

Phone Apps, Why some are more popular than others?

Two potential winners. In one corner, Logos Quiz Game. Completely addictive, very simple idea and now almost has cult status across the globe. Everyone who has a smartphone has heard of it, number 1 in app chart of to many countries to even name, and over 100 'cheat' websites, twitters and Facebook pages dedicated to it. A complete success.
Then, in  the other corner, there is Jumbled. Again completely addictive, and a very simple idea, but this time, almost unheard of (well compared to Logos Quiz standards, it still at this time has 400,000 downloads!), and only one measly cheat website dedicated to giving those 400,000 the answer.
So the question is why?
I blame it on stupidity. Logos Quiz in fact doesn't really require that much skill or even intelligence at all, just have a look around your house, go to a supermarket, watch TV, you'll pretty much find all the answers there. But its the feeling of getting an answer right and getting points for it or even a star, it makes you feel so clever, proud of yourself. Its addictive because you want that feeling over and over again. That same feeling goes for Jumbled too, but Jumbled is a harder game altogether, for this game you need a brain. After a few goes, those who were just great at Logos Quiz because they eat to much fast food and spent to much time watching TV have given up on trying to put the blocks in place, its just to much effort, to much of a brainache, and its making them feel stupid, no one likes that. They prefer to feel clever so return to the safety of their Logos Quiz Game, of their 100 answer/cheat sites that they can rely upon - they're still the one writing in the answer to their phone and getting a tick, even if it is the cheat website that has told them what to write. They still write it so they must be clever, they got a 'tick' didnt they!?
This 'stupid' theory can be equally backed up by taking two examples of cheat sites www.logoquizanswers.com and www.jumbledanswers.com. Both have comments boxes for people to leave their opinion, a question, to say what ever they want. The difference in people who play the games is obvious here. The logoquizanswers.com commments are spelt badly, sound vicious and negative, those asking for the answers have clearly not read the comment just one below them that answers their specific question. In contrast, the jumbledanswers.com comments are polite, grateful, you can just tell someone with at least a few brain cells to rub together has written them.
So theres my answer for now, why are some phone apps popular while others aren't, well look at the app, does it make the person feel clever even if their stupid, this will be popular. Make it to much effort to play the game, make people feel stupid, and it won't be successful