The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hello quizbowl community! I'm excited to announce the advent of Qblitz!

Qblitz is an online platform for playing quizbowl. It is asynchronous, allowing players to compete without the usual the constraints of time and space.

To understand the system, it's probably easiest to play the sample. The system reads questions to individual players and tracks when they buzzed. In a tournament setting, that information is used to determine who won their matches. Outside of a tournament, it can also be used to simulate matches that "didn't happen". Indeed, the statistical tracking is one of the most compelling features of the platform. Players can see how they (would have) fared against any other competitor and also compare their buzz points against the field.

Qblitz is hosting its first tournament, Qblitz Winter 1, at the end of January, with 2 more events to follow this school year. These events are intended for individual high school (or lower) players, but Qblitz plans to expand its offerings to incorporate team-based and open-level events in the future.

The Qblitz platform will also allow members of the quizbowl community to run their own events. Those could be for any level (MS, HS, JV, UG, open, etc.) and could range from a single round vanity packet to a multi-round tournament involving hundreds of competitors.

If you have any suggestions for how that should happen, please post here, PM me, or email Qblitz.

Comparing one player's buzzes in a vacuum to anybody else's does not really reflect how quizbowl is actually played. This is also a huge problem with people who try to conduct virtual games via detailed stats.

I assume the idea is "if a player knows a clue, they will buzz. The players that know earlier clues will therefore get more points regardless." This fails to take into account the fact that in-game knowledge comes with a degree of certainty.

We all know this; this is why the term "aggression" is widely used and understood in quizbowl discourse. But just to emphasize: a player may buzz several clues later than the first clue that causes them to think of the correct answer, because they estimate that 1) the other team will not beat them to it on the next clue and 2) there is a decent chance that they're confused and would thus prefer to get another clue or two as confirmation. (This is just one example of a very routine kind of strategic thinking.)

I am strongly against the idea of running actual competitive events on a platform so divorced from normal gameplay.

This sounds like an interesting idea along the lines of the old Goldfish tournaments.

Having played the sample questions, I might encourage you to create a keyboard control for buzzing and submitting answers, if that's feasible.

jonpin wrote: ↑Sat Dec 15, 2018 12:58 pm Having played the sample questions, I might encourage you to create a keyboard control for buzzing and submitting answers, if that's feasible.

That's a good suggestion. I'll add it to my list.

FWIW, submitting answers via button is not strictly necessary. Once the time runs out, whatever's in the box gets submitted.

vinteuil wrote: ↑Sat Dec 15, 2018 12:44 pm I am strongly against the idea of running actual competitive events on a platform so divorced from normal gameplay.

"Pure quizbowl" has a strategic value to it that you don't get in online asynchronous games, but that doesn't mean we should never hold these kind of events. There are plenty of quiz bowlers who are into Learned League and likely would enjoy an online platform that doesn't require the stressors of spending money and time travelling. Also as of now, this seems to be targeted to individual high school players which seems like a good starting target audience.

General good advice here: don't bash ideas simply because they don't stand to tradition.

Thanks to the 100-ish people who went in and played the sample set! Anyone playing the sample will see that we've implemented jonpin's advice

jonpin wrote: ↑Sat Dec 15, 2018 12:58 pm Having played the sample questions, I might encourage you to create a keyboard control for buzzing and submitting answers, if that's feasible.

and made the Buzz and Submit buttons respond to the Enter key as well as mouse click.

If you haven't tried the sample set yet, please do. If you have, I'd like to welcome you to a stats page we made. THIS PAGE WILL SPOIL THE SAMPLE SET, so make sure to play it first.

Caveat: the sample questions are not really secure in any way, and people are able to play the sample set multiple times, which may explain some of the ridiculously early correct buzzes on some of the questions. There are a couple extra layers of question security for actual Qblitz tournaments, so the data we got from those will be more pure. Those issues aside, I think the shape of the graph still tells some interesting stories.

Please let us know what you think!

This sounds like a really cool idea! Will be interested to see how things progress.

One quick comment after playing the sample: it'd be nice to get real-time feedback on whether you were right/wrong per tossup, rather than waiting until the end of the sample to know your score.

Corry wrote: ↑Wed Dec 19, 2018 9:45 pmOne quick comment after playing the sample: it'd be nice to get real-time feedback on whether you were right/wrong per tossup, rather than waiting until the end of the sample to know your score.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm interested to see if other people agree, or whether they'd find it slowed down the game or found it distracting. I could see someone having a harder time focusing on the next question if they had just seen that their epic buzz was actually a neg.

I don't have a strong opinion on this issue, and we can definitely build out the experience either way, so if you do have an opinion, please share.

Dominator wrote: ↑Sun Dec 23, 2018 12:35 pm

Corry wrote: ↑Wed Dec 19, 2018 9:45 pmOne quick comment after playing the sample: it'd be nice to get real-time feedback on whether you were right/wrong per tossup, rather than waiting until the end of the sample to know your score.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm interested to see if other people agree, or whether they'd find it slowed down the game or found it distracting. I could see someone having a harder time focusing on the next question if they had just seen that their epic buzz was actually a neg.

I don't have a strong opinion on this issue, and we can definitely build out the experience either way, so if you do have an opinion, please share.

I definitely initially found it odd that I wasn't immediately given an answer but shrugged it off and assumed it would come at the end. Personally, I would enjoy it more if the answer was given right away but I don't think it is a critical issue.

On another note, is it possible to have a message along the lines of "Your results are being tabulated" after finishing a set of questions? After I finished the sample I thought I broke something because my window just sat there and froze a bit.

Additionally, I see that the question number is at the top of every question as it is read, but maybe an "Question: XX/XX" somewhere on the screen might be useful as well?

I can't remember if I've told you this personally, but this is super cool and I had a fun time going through the sample questions.

TylerV wrote: ↑Mon Dec 24, 2018 5:16 am I definitely initially found it odd that I wasn't immediately given an answer but shrugged it off and assumed it would come at the end. Personally, I would enjoy it more if the answer was given right away but I don't think it is a critical issue.

On another note, is it possible to have a message along the lines of "Your results are being tabulated" after finishing a set of questions? After I finished the sample I thought I broke something because my window just sat there and froze a bit.

Additionally, I see that the question number is at the top of every question as it is read, but maybe an "Question: XX/XX" somewhere on the screen might be useful as well?

I can't remember if I've told you this personally, but this is super cool and I had a fun time going through the sample questions.

Thanks, Tyler! These are all great suggestions. I'll plan on implementing them soon.

I'm a little unsure of what you meant in your second point, though. When it looked frozen, was that before or after it gave you a summary of your answers and buzz times?

It would be really nice to be able to increase the speed at which the question appears, but the platform itself seems great

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iluvgsokolov wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 12:44 am It would be really nice to be able to increase the speed at which the question appears, but the platform itself seems great

Thanks for the kind words!

Do other people agree about speed? When I experimented with speeding the reading up, I felt that I could comfortable go a little faster, but not much. I left the speed where it is because I figured some players wouldn't be as comfortable with a higher one. I'm not opposed to changing the speed, but I'd want more of a consensus to form before doing so.

Dominator wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 4:50 pm

TylerV wrote: ↑Mon Dec 24, 2018 5:16 am I definitely initially found it odd that I wasn't immediately given an answer but shrugged it off and assumed it would come at the end. Personally, I would enjoy it more if the answer was given right away but I don't think it is a critical issue.

On another note, is it possible to have a message along the lines of "Your results are being tabulated" after finishing a set of questions? After I finished the sample I thought I broke something because my window just sat there and froze a bit.

Additionally, I see that the question number is at the top of every question as it is read, but maybe an "Question: XX/XX" somewhere on the screen might be useful as well?

I can't remember if I've told you this personally, but this is super cool and I had a fun time going through the sample questions.

Thanks, Tyler! These are all great suggestions. I'll plan on implementing them soon.

I'm a little unsure of what you meant in your second point, though. When it looked frozen, was that before or after it gave you a summary of your answers and buzz times?

After finishing the five questions, but before the results were displayed, my webpage acted as if it was locked up, that being said I only did the sample once so I don't know if it was a universal experience.

As for the speed, I considered mentioning having a slider, like protobowl, but if there is only ever going to be one speed I think where it currently is fine.

Why does the sample just keep repeating question one over and over? Am I missing something? Also, agreed, the speed needs to be increased.

troyharris wrote: ↑Wed Jan 02, 2019 6:03 pm Why does the sample just keep repeating question one over and over? Am I missing something? Also, agreed, the speed needs to be increased.

No, you're not missing something. Apparently that error was due to a bug in a recent update. It's working properly now.

Thanks for pointing that out!

Hey everyone! If you've already played the sample set, please go rate the questions. You'll be able to see rating and conversion statistics there. You will need to log in for this feature though, so if you haven't created an account yet, now would be a good time.

One of my favorite features of Qblitz is the ability to simulate matches between any two players. Here is a sample of what that looks like based on two players who completed the sample set. If anyone has any suggestions about how to display these "matches", please let me know.

As I'm using this for the QANTA League, I find it as a useful resource and a fun game. A couple observations/questions, though:
* Is it intentional that the answer is not provided after each question?
* Is there a possibility to insert a "pause" feature between questions? If something came up while I was on question 5, I would have no ability to pause the game, and thus if I, say, had to answer the phone or a doorbell, questions 6-7-8-etc. would stream by without me having a chance to hit the brakes.
* Along the same lines, if someone suffers a connection or computer issue while in the middle of a round, is there an ability for them to resume the round later, or are they just toast for the rest of the packet?

jonpin wrote: ↑Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:02 pm As I'm using this for the QANTA League, I find it as a useful resource and a fun game. A couple observations/questions, though:
* Is it intentional that the answer is not provided after each question?
* Is there a possibility to insert a "pause" feature between questions? If something came up while I was on question 5, I would have no ability to pause the game, and thus if I, say, had to answer the phone or a doorbell, questions 6-7-8-etc. would stream by without me having a chance to hit the brakes.
* Along the same lines, if someone suffers a connection or computer issue while in the middle of a round, is there an ability for them to resume the round later, or are they just toast for the rest of the packet?

Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad you’re enjoying your tournament so far.

As to your questions:
* Intentional? Yes. Permanent? Not necessarily. There are security and user experience issues tied into this decision, so any change will come in the off-season once we’ve considered all options. But since this is a common request, it’ll be at the top of our list.
* That is an interesting idea. I think we should be able to make that happen.
* Yes. The round will resume with the first question not yet seen, so long as they return during the competition window.

After playing my first game on Qblitz (the seeding round of MARCATo), I was impressed with how smoothly the user interface works. I have two suggestions that I feel would further improve the experience.
1. Prompts. The writers should be able to specify certain possible answers that trigger a prompt instruction. This is how in-person quizbowl works, and I think an online system should seek to be close to the in-person experience if possible.
2. Discussion forum. It would be cool if there was a Discord server for a tournament, with one room per tournament round. The Discord would be linked with the tournament progress, so that when each individual player finished a round, they would be automatically given access to the corresponding Discord room. This would help replicate the experience of chatting in the hallway outside a game room or at lunch. I have no idea how challenging this would be to implement, though.

I wish at the end of the question, you had slightly more time to type a response. There have been a few times where I didn't realize for a second that the question had ended (admittedly this is harder to determine in a music listening format) and had to hastily type a response.

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll follow up a bit with each one:

warum wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:12 pm 1. Prompts. The writers should be able to specify certain possible answers that trigger a prompt instruction. This is how in-person quizbowl works, and I think an online system should seek to be close to the in-person experience if possible.

I see where you're coming from, and it may be something we try in the future. But I think there are some reasons a prompt system is going to be particularly challenging. The first is somewhat technical. What happens if the user is typing something that is worthy of a prompt, but misspells it to the point the computer doesn't recognize it? We could allow the system to be generous in prompting to avoid that possibility, but as a result we might find when grading that a user should not have been prompted. That's not the worst thing in the world, but it may confuse some users who thought they were closer on a question than they ended up being. Perhaps the bigger challenge is that the system would only work if the writer/editor provided enough prompt instructions. Given how most question sets generally end up with too few pronunciation guides and too many sparse answerlines, I wouldn't want to have to rely on this assumption.

warum wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:12 pm 2. Discussion forum. It would be cool if there was a Discord server for a tournament, with one room per tournament round. The Discord would be linked with the tournament progress, so that when each individual player finished a round, they would be automatically given access to the corresponding Discord room. This would help replicate the experience of chatting in the hallway outside a game room or at lunch. I have no idea how challenging this would be to implement, though.

I actually love this idea. We have some features in the works that will make Qblitz events feel more like a community, and some sort of discussion functionality is in the mix. In the meantime, please make sure to rate the questions when each round is over. That's at least one way of talking about the questions, and I know John would love the feedback.

Cheynem wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2020 12:15 pm I wish at the end of the question, you had slightly more time to type a response. There have been a few times where I didn't realize for a second that the question had ended (admittedly this is harder to determine in a music listening format) and had to hastily type a response.

How much extra time would you propose? Or would you instead want some kind of message to appear on the screen saying it's the end of a question?

(Does anyone play these questions with their eyes closed? I sometimes do that in quizbowl, and I could see myself doing that in MARCATo.)

I think I'd like a ding noise or a on screen indicator to say something like "Question is over. You now have 5 seconds." I would imagine for regular questions this is less of a deal because you have the "For 10 points" indicator, but there were a few times in which I didn't realize the question ended until a few seconds had already elapsed (because, like you, I was closing my eyes or looking away to try to think).

I encountered a situation today when my internet briefly went out while I was typing an answer. When the internet came back, the page seemed to be stuck on "Submitting answer" and nothing was happening. So I refreshed the page, and it advanced to the next question, skipping the step where it usually displays the correct answer. I don't know whether or not my answer went through or not, and it would be nice for the website to tell me for sure.