Trivia Games

You Never Know What You Just Don’t Know

You know the feeling that trivia games give you. It’s like nothing else! That tantalizing, moment-to-moment suspense of never knowing which answers will seem obvious to you and which will seem like they are destined to be something you will just never know.

Trivia games tickle our natural curiosity about the world. Facts are the currency of any trivia game and we just love facts. They are the perfect, bite-size snippet about this fascinating planet that we live on. We’re amazed by trivia, we absorb it and then it’s gone and we’re onto another piece. There’s a simple, enchanting rhythm to trivia games that you can’t help but love, even if you don’t always know as much as you’d like — or as much as you thought you did!

The Right Tool For The Job

Trivia games are a natural fit for mobile and browser gaming. Their main idea works perfectly on smaller screens and their data files are usually small enough to be installed on devices that are don’t have very much free memory. These days that’s much less of an issue with most phones, of course, but it certainly helped trivia games to become a mainstay of the mobile gaming market in its early days.

Trivia games also tend to work really well when played in shorter sessions. The turn-based nature of most trivia games perfectly suits the sort of stop-start gaming that many people do on their phones or mobile devices. Whether on your commute or spaced out over your working day, a game that you can pick up and enjoy for a few minutes at a time is great game for a mobile device.

The Surprising Age of Trivia Games

Given how big a role trivia plays in TV shows and board games, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s been around forever. But as recently as a century ago, trivia as we know it today didn’t even exist. There wasn’t a demand for it either! Most people thought of the world of facts as belonging to work or school rather than entertainment. They might well have looked at you strangely if you suggested that a test of knowledge could be fun!

In the 1950s however, all that changed with the arrival of mass market television. Within a few years, TV sets had appeared in most homes in the developed world. The new technology was in some ways a victim of its own success — people loved it so much that they wanted there to be a lot of shows on it, and all the studios wanted to be the one to meet that demand. The content creators of the time couldn’t keep pace with the demand for new programming, especially if that was to be original fiction like dramas and comedies.

Quiz shows were an easy solution: they were cheap to make, compelling, and gave everyone something to talk about. They also gave TV an educational angle, which was a good PR move for the technology at a time when people were still making their minds up about it.

Jeopardy! hit television screens in the USA in 1964, and has remained consistently popular ever since. It’s a great example of how trivia games capture your attention not just with interesting facts, but also with a format that you can really connect with.

Trivia Games Gather Momentum

The most popular board-based trivia game, Trivial Pursuit, arrived some 15 years after Jeopardy first aired. Legend has it that it was invented by two Canadian journalists, who found that their Scrabble set was missing some pieces and decided to create their own game instead of just giving up on the idea. It’s a good thing they did! Trivial Pursuit has been consistently popular since it was first released. New versions of the game have been produced consistently since its first incarnation and it always sells well. Of course, given the consistent demand for the title, it has also been made into video games a number of times and has proven just as popular in that format.

Modern digital technology provides trivia players with new means of testing their knowledge. As well as adaptations of popular gameshows like The Weakest Link and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, new forms of quiz began to be launched on app stores and websites. The number of trivia apps and games out there is staggering, with developers all looking for the next hit format in much the same way as gameshow design teams have been doing with TV game shows for decades.

With a limitless supply of questions, trivia games are a reliable genre that we all know and love. They are relatively simple to make, understand and play and the subject matter is simply life itself. They certainly seem destined to a long life as a genre in an industry renowned for its rapid changes.

Trivia Games Here on GamePix

Gamepix provides a hassle-free way of enjoying an honestly staggering range of trivia-based games. The variety of options on offer means that we have something for you, no matter what type of trivia game fan you are. Whether you want it silly or serious, general knowledge or specific, we have a trivia game for you.

Better yet, our trivia browser games, like every game here on the GamePix site, are completely free-to-play and work straight from your web browser on any device, without any need for any downloads or installs or updates.

You don’t need the general knowledge of a quiz master to see how good that is, so what are you waiting for? Grab a game and see how good your knowledge of trivia really is!

FAQs

Is there a free online trivia game?

No… there are lots of them! When it comes to trivia games online we believe they need to be free, so all of the browser trivia games here on GamePix are completely free-to-play forever. Better still, our browser games work from any browser and on any device with no need for anything to be downloaded, updated or installed ever. Endless hours of trivia fun that doesn’t cost you anything. It’s a real no-brainer!

What are trivia games?

A trivia game is any game that tests your general knowledge — your knowledge of trivia — to determine how successful you will be in the game. Trivia games are a big part of mobile gaming for a reason: they’re fun, they’re educational and they are popular with all age groups. Why not try one of our free, browser-based trivia games for yourself today and see what everybody enjoys so much?

What are the most popular trivia games?

What are the best online games?

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