Starting & Pausing the Trivia Game

You're now ready to start your first Trivia Game. When you first create a Trivia Game, it is in the Ready to Start state. While in the Ready to Start state, your crowd will be allowed to sign into your Trivia Game, but they will not be able to start answering until you start your Trivia Game. Once they have signed in, your participants will be shown a message that the Trivia Game will begin shortly.

Starting a Trivia Game with Countdown Timer Enabled

By default, the Countdown Timer is enabled and set to 10 seconds in duration, which can always be edited. If your Trivia Game has the Countdown Timer enabled, then your Trivia Game will count down for the duration you've set before going live. The Trivia Game will automatically begin once the timer finishes counting down. 

To initiate the Countdown Timer for your Trivia Game, click on the blue Countdown Timer with a clock icon under the Control Center heading. Once you click this button, a prompt will pop up confirming the initiation to Start the Trivia Game's Countdown Timer. 

There are a couple of options you can choose from on the Start Countdown module.

Start Countdown Options

• Auto-Start When Countdown Ends
• Start Countdown
• Skip Countdown

By default, this setting is enabled and will automatically start the Trivia Game once the Countdown Timer ends. Disabling this setting is useful if you have a long Countdown Timer for an upcoming event (e.g. several hours or more) but you would like to display or present content before actually starting the Experience once the Countdown Timer ends.

Choosing this option will begin the Countdown Timer as normal. If you have the previous Auto-Start When Countdown Ends feature enabled, this will begin the first question of the Trivia Game. Alternatively, if the previous setting is disabled, the Trivia Game will not begin at the end of the timer until the host manually activates the game.

Selecting this option will skip the Countdown Timer completely and will begin your Experience immediately instead. If you previously disabled the Auto-Start When Countdown Ends feature, you can select Skip Countdown once you're ready to begin the Experience after the Countdown Timer has ended. 

How do I Enable or Disable the Countdown Timer?

To learn how to enable, disable, or edit the duration of the Countdown Timer, please visit the following Help Center Article: Trivia Game Settings - Playback and Timing.

Starting a Trivia Game with Countdown Timer Disabled

If you've disabled the Countdown Timer, then your Trivia Game will be live as soon as you press the green Start button.

To make your Trivia Game Live and allow players to answer the first question, you'll first need to start the game first. To start the game, simply click on the green circular Play button under the Control Center heading in the upper-left corner of the Experience Dashboard. After clicking the Play button, your Trivia Game is now in the Live state.

Your Trivia Game will now display the current Active Question on the Mobile View that you opened earlier in this tutorial and also on the mobile device of any player who is signed in to your Trivia Game. Once live, the Play button now turns into a Pause button if you need to pause your Trivia Game at any point.

Answering Is Open and the Timer is Running

As soon as you start your Trivia Game, the current Active Question is open for players to answer on their mobile devices. This means the Question Timer automatically starts counting down on the Projector View and the Mobile View. You can also see a view of the current Question Timer on the Experience Dashboard in the upper-right status window. If you have the Projector View and/or Mobile View open, the first question will automatically be displayed and its Question Timer will begin counting down.

Answering the First Question

If you're playing along in the Mobile View, then you should be signed in already. Once you start your Trivia Game you should see the first question ready to be answered. Go ahead and answer our first question with the correct answer. You will receive points based on how quickly you answered correctly! If time runs out, don't worry. You can try answering the second or third question.

How Answering Works

When you update the Active Question to a new question and the Question Timer begins counting down, everyone in your Trivia Game will have an opportunity to answer within the time remaining on the Question Timer. If time runs out, the question and its answers will be disabled and not allow additional answers to be cast by your crowd. Once the Question Timer has expired, the Trivia Game will wait for you to either enable various Views about the question or update the Active Question to proceed with the next question.

Trivia Questions May Only Be Answered Once

Once a player has answered a question once or failed to answer within a question's timer, they will not be able to answer the same question again, even if you revisit the question during the game.

Pausing a Trivia Game

During your live event and Trivia Game, there may be times when you may want to pause the game. Pausing your Trivia Game will temporarily stop your crowd from answering questions and will show the crowd a Game Paused message on their mobile devices as displayed below.

To pause a Trivia Game, simply click on the yellow circular Pause button under the Control Center. To resume a Trivia Game and continue playing, simply click the same button again, which has now turned into the Play button to indicate that this will resume your Trivia Game.

Alternatively, you can also press "P" on your keyboard to quickly pause and resume the game.

Next Steps

Now that we've learned how to start our Trivia Game and have answered the first question, we'll learn how to enable various Views like Show Live Answer Results (A), Show the Correct Answer (C), and Show Rankings (R). Go to the next step Showing Live Answers, Correct Answer, and Live Rankings.