Poll of the Day > Video game questions on Jeopardy are way too easy

(+) Yeah! (+)

I dont expect them to ask really niche questions but I wish their video game questions were above the level of Link fights monsters and defenses Hyrule in this series

Pro sports questions too, but I think they do better with sports than video games

all jeopardy questions are easy if you are familiar with the field

You made this topic back in February. You're unlikely to get any new opinions on it a second time around, given that the board's demographics haven't meaningfully changed in that time.

adjl posted...

You made this topic back in February. You're unlikely to get any new opinions on it a second time around, given that the board's demographics haven't meaningfully changed in that time.

lol why you checking? Sorry, I just had this idea again and I forgot I had it already

Who is Dankey Kang?

Lokarin posted...

all jeopardy questions are easy if you are familiar with the field

I never thought about that

Damn_Underscore posted...

lol why you checking? Sorry, I just had this idea again and I forgot I had it already

I remembered it without checking and would have estimated 6 months, but confirmed so I'd have the right date.

SinisterSlay posted...

I never thought about that

Any trivia-based game tends to focus on breadth of knowledge over depth. The people who do well at them know a little bit about everything. People who know a lot about a few things will ace those categories, but struggle with the others.

Isn't the entire concept of Jeopardy just to illustrate how many different disciplines and fields and hobbies exist and how very few people have more than a superficial knowledge of the vast majority of them?

90% of jeopardy questions are going to be frustratingly obtuse to the average person but they'll 100% know the other 10%. that's part of the appeal, viewers like having one up on the contestant. it's like the appeal of a good mystery novel, except you chance into knowing the answer occasionally rather than having 2 b gud at smart

They need to do another season of pop culture jeopary it gives them a lot more room for questions that go beyond the most basic trivia possible

agesboy posted...

90% of jeopardy questions are going to be frustratingly obtuse to the average person but they'll 100% know the other 10%. that's part of the appeal, viewers like having one up on the contestant. it's like the appeal of a good mystery novel, except you chance into knowing the answer occasionally rather than having 2 b gud at smart

And, very often, it's those moments of feeling smug that you know things the contestants don't that stand out in any given episode, with all of the other instances fading into the background. The show offers everyone a chance to feel like they know stuff, and knowing stuff feels good.

Damn_Underscore posted...

lol why you checking? Sorry, I just had this idea again and I forgot I had it already

I wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the exact date, but I literally came into this topic to point out that you made this topic already as well.

And the main consensus then was that you were wrong, because they're only easy if you're a gamer. The average person couldn't answer most of the video game questions on Jeopardy, just like you probably can't answer most of the history, literature, or science questions.



adjl posted...

And, very often, it's those moments of feeling smug that you know things the contestants don't that stand out in any given episode, with all of the other instances fading into the background. The show offers everyone a chance to feel like they know stuff, and knowing stuff feels good.

Or you can watch the Celebrity Jeopardy episodes, where nearly every question is pathetically easy and the celebs still get most of them wrong, because most celebrities are incredibly stupid.

They had a fairly difficult sports-related question as a Final Jeopardy question recently. I forget what it was, but the question/answer was about Super Bowl winners and the answer/question was the NY Jets. Even if you were a serious sports fan you really had to think about it.

Damn_Underscore posted...

They had a fairly difficult sports-related question as a Final Jeopardy question recently. I forget what it was, but the question/answer was about Super Bowl winners and the answer/question was the NY Jets. Even if you were a serious sports fan you really had to think about it.

Unless the question was something about Joe Namath, I probably wouldn't have gotten it. And even then, I can never remember if the Jets won Super Bowl II or III.

And I basically live in their ambit. If I'd grown up outside of the NY/NJ/CT area I probably wouldn't even know that much.

I think I could probably tell you who won about two Super Bowls for sure, max, off the top of my head. And that only because my team was in them.

The "Sports & Leisure" category was always my bane when playing Trivial Pursuit. The only hope I ever had to win a game was if I got lucky and got a "Leisure" question.

Damn_Underscore posted...

They had a fairly difficult sports-related question as a Final Jeopardy question recently. I forget what it was, but the question/answer was about Super Bowl winners and the answer/question was the NY Jets. Even if you were a serious sports fan you really had to think about it.

Final Jeopardy questions are usually more difficult. More saliently, because there's only one question about one specific subject, it's less likely that any given person watching will be familiar with that subject and you don't have the same ability do distract yourself from that failure by getting other questions right that you have during the other rounds. That makes it feel even harder.

I remember when like a $500k question on who wants to be a millionaire was some pokemon question. Like which of these is not a pokemon or something. And they were all EXTREMELY well known pokemon and the one that wasn't was an EXTREMELY well known character from LoTR.

fettster777 posted...

I remember when like a $500k question on who wants to be a millionaire was some pokemon question. Like which of these is not a pokemon or something. And they were all EXTREMELY well known pokemon and the one that wasn't was an EXTREMELY well known character from LoTR.

Define "well-known".

Because if it's not one of the original 151, I'd probably have a fairly good chance of not knowing them.

Though I'd get the answer the way you described it, but only because I know LotR pretty well.

I definitely know a fair number of people (especially older people) who'd have no chance in hell of answering that question.

Everyone knows Ash's starter choices.

Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Charmander, and Glorfindel.

I mean, we laugh, but for somebody unfamiliar with both Pokemon and LotR, Glorfindel could easily be a Pokemon name.

adjl posted...

I mean, we laugh, but for somebody unfamiliar with both Pokemon and LotR, Glorfindel could easily be a Pokemon name.

Now all I can think of is a Fairy-type Pokemon elf just walking around going "Glorfindel! Glorfindel!"

When my girlfriend was playing through Violet, she was asking for advice on what to name her Tinkatink, and I suggested "Celebimbo." Now she has a Tinkaton named Celebimbo.

As an example of how some questions are easy for some people and harder for others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKuM7wrvLbA

YouTube just recommended this video for me, and I scored 60/60 on it. Correctly identified every song and every musician/band who sang them, along with also identifying which 80s movies some of those songs appeared in, and which ones Weird Al has done cover versions of.

But I suspect at least some people in this topic would have trouble with some of those songs, if not a lot of those songs (even though they were all pretty popular/famous in their time, and most of them still get semi-regular airplay even today if you seek out channels that play 80s music).

Meanwhile, if you gave me a similar list of 60 songs of popular Top 40 songs from the 2010s I might be able to identify like 4 of them. Even after you told me what they were I'd probably still be like "Ummm... nah, no clue mate."

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Define "well-known".

Because if it's not one of the original 151, I'd probably have a fairly good chance of not knowing them.

Though I'd get the answer the way you described it, but only because I know LotR pretty well.

I definitely know a fair number of people (especially older people) who'd have no chance in hell of answering that question.

It was like pikachu, jigglypuff, and squirtle or something. I remember the guy used his lifelines, still couldn't get it, and walked away with the $250k

OP is right in the sense that their video game questions are insanely easy.

I've devoted decades to film knowledge, and they still have some really obscure and tough film history questions. And despite that, the most basic surface video game knowledge will get you every single game question. They don't really devolve into different sub-types of game knowledge like they do for anything else, which is the huge difference. It's just "video games" as a whole, and they stay very surface level.