Online Game Shows that Generate Interest

Most of our customers are using game shows for a training application of some sort; whether it's in a K-12 classroom, internal corporate/government training, consulting, etc.

A smaller subset of our users take game shows and use them in a different way. We have a loyal and satisfied base of DJs that have used Gameshow Pro for custom games at weddings, parties, etc.; pastors that use game shows as an addition to sermons; even entertainers who take the game show act on the road to competition nights at bars or clubs.

We even had an employee who used a Classroom Feud game at his wedding--pitting the bride's side against the groom's side in a how-well-do-you-know-the-newlyweds showdown!

(It just goes to show one that in addition to being a highly effective content retention tool, game shows are also an incredibly entertaining vehicle for learning or just for fun.)

Recently I had a different scenario proposed: Could someone use a game show to drum up public interest in a topic? The question was asked by a personal trainer, looking to stand out from the (numerous) competitors and draw potential clients to his website. He proposed doing a monthly online game show (QuizPoint would be used in this instance) to generate traffic, discussion, and to increase peoples' general knowledge of fitness topics.

It's a great idea--and one that has application both for the public AND for internal corporate/government/k-12 use. The thing is--game shows capitalize on competition. Most people love to play a fun quiz or game online, even if it's merely to test their knowledge. Having a weekly or monthly game show where online visitors can come back and prove their smarts, see where they rank amongst their quiz-taking peers, and perhaps even be entered to win a prize is an excellent way spread the word about a topic.

Used internally, weekly or monthly game shows about relevant training modules that trainees could visit and play at their own pace gets them coming back to web resources and sustains the training far beyond the bounds of a virtual or in-person classroom.

K-12 users can generate online game shows for parents (or parents and kids to play together at home)--keeping them apprised on the latest school information, hot topics and classroom subjects.

Internally, externally or for the general public, online game shows are a great way to generate, sustain and drive interest in topics.

The Game Show Effect

The Game Show Effect

The remarkable way that game shows transform an event.

I, personally, am a little surprised every time a client is blown away by the effect of a game show on their event. Not that game shows aren’t amazing—it’s just that I’ve seen maybe hundreds of game shows at live events, and they’re consistently, predictably amazing. I suppose I’m a bit used to it.

Our client came up to me at the last show and said with awe and wonder,

“I cannot believe what a difference the game show made—it was like every time we introduced a round the energy in the room just shifted. All of a sudden they were all up and awake and looking at the screen and their keypads and whispering….”

I smiled and nodded knowingly and in agreement—because that kind of experience is what happens every single time we bring a game show into a live event.

The Barnyard Bowl: An AllPlay Case Study.


The aforementioned comment was made by an executive at Kemps—a nation-wide producer of all kinds of dairy products. Live Spark—our sister company—had designed the one-day event to have a game show running throughout the day.

They took our AllPlay software, and customized the screens, logos, timers, etc., to give it a totally unique and custom look for Kemps—but the base premise of the software remained the same: everyone in the audience had their own keypad to answer the questions in the game show.



They were broken into teams—It’s Local, It’s Fresh and It’s the Cows (put together, all three teams form the Kemps slogan)—by the colors on their randomly-distributed keypads.


When a question and answer options were displayed on the screen, everyone input their answer on their keypads, and the percentage of correct answers was then added to the team score. This was displayed as an empty glass filling with one of Kemps’ major products: milk.


Each team had from the time the custom cow-timer at the bottom of screen started until she reached the barn to lock in their answers.


We played 4 complete rounds of three questions each. The first two rounds, the percentage of people that answered a question correctly on the team was added to the team score.
In round 3, points doubled.
In round 4, they tripled—so that even a team who was behind had a chance to catch up till the very end.

The game show ran throughout the day, and incorporated questions from the previous presentations.

The effect of the Barnyard Bowl was immediately and consistently visible. Each time a round was announced, the audience would sit up in their chairs; bodies leaning forward, reaching for their keypads and murmuring amongst themselves. It was like pressing a “refresh” button for the room, recharging everyone’s batteries after occasionally-dry presentations. After a question, the right answer would be revealed—inspiring cheers and discussion. Then, when the scoreboard came up and the glasses started to “fill” with the percentage of right answers, teams would cheer. Then one glass would stop and the others would go on, causing the cheers to get louder. Then the other glass would stop, revealing the top-scoring team for that question, and the room would erupt in cheering and clapping.

Rounds were played sometimes before and sometimes after lunch and/or breaks, reinforcing information and preparing the audience for content to come. But the greatest thing was walking out to a break after playing a round and hearing the halls a-buzz with game show talk. Audience members were talking about their teams, the questions they had just answered, and the content within the game show (and related presentation content). This means that the presentation material wasn’t just left in the room and consequently forgotten—in addition to energizing the audience and being a heck of a lot of fun, the game show was also reinforcing information and improving content retention.

At the end of the day, after the last round and as people were leaving, comments were flowing:

“That was a lot of fun!”
“I loved the game show!”
“I hope we do that next year, too.”
“We should do that in our normal meetings.”
“I’m glad we had a game!”

The thing is--we hear this each and *every* time we use a game show in a large event like this--whether it's a simple Jeopardy!-style Gameshow Pro game, or a customized AllPlay game.

The client came up to me after the event,

“The game show was a huge hit!”

And that speaks for itself.

Custom Game Shows: The Seagate Case Study

LearningWare is pleased to be not just the provider of game show software, but also of solutions. LearningWare can create interactive solutions (with game shows or not) for your training session, curriculum or event through our LearningWare Services division (in partnership with its sister company, Live Spark). What follows is one example of LearningWare creating a custom game show to suit the needs of the trainer.
Summary: Seagate needed a way to engage their audience in traditionally dry breakout sessions. Live Spark created three different custom audience-response game shows that were played in each of the three breakout sessions throughout the session. The games were not only well received, but the audiences’ attention and retention of the material soared; as did the energy of both the presenters AND the attendees.

Overview: Seagate was getting all their local and international sales reps together for a large annual event. Part of this event included 90-minute workshops training on everything from product roadmaps, to new product introductions and sales strategies. Audience members cycled through the four major workshops in regional groups; from the Americas, to Europe, to Asia to Canada.

Issues: The extended workshop sessions were trying on the attention span of the attendees. A large amount of very important information needed to be presented, so presenters were scheduled back-to-back, giving attendees very little time to process and absorb the information. This was not conducive to learning.

Pile on top of that the fact that a lot of the material was very technical and could be dry. It was a recipe for attendees to check out of the breakout and check their Blackberries instead.

Solution: Live Spark designed three unique audience-response game shows that took place throughout three of the breakout sessions. They were a baseball-themed game, a quick-quiz game, and a “Get Smart” game.

Each audience member had a keypad waiting for them when they walked in the door. Depending on the game type, audience members were either playing individually (with the score of the highest keypads winning the game) or on teams. The games were introduced first thing, and a sample question was played.

After every presenter, a game show session took place. The content for the game show was based on the presentation the attendees had just heard—with the exception of the final round at the end of the workshop; which was a compendium of questions.

Why it worked: When the first question of the first round was played, and the audience found out how they scored in a dramatic, building fashion, the room erupted into cheers—led by the team with the highest score on that question. The energy, instead of draining with each progressive speaker, was refreshed and renewed in between every presentation. Not only that, but speakers highlighted the content that was going to be in the game show later—bringing out key points that were reinforced through the highly emotional game show experience.

Everyone in the audience was engaged. They were engaged during the game show--each playing along with their own keypad—but, perhaps more importantly, they were engaged DURING the speaker presentations. No one, after all, wanted to miss a question in the game show because they failed to hear a fact or key point during the presentation.

Because game shows are a somewhat-universal medium, there was no difficulty getting even international groups to play along.

Reactions: Seagate--the speakers, audience members, and organizers—were extremely happy with the game show.

”I didn’t believe you when you said they’d start cheering with the first score,” an event organizer remarked, “But this is simply amazing. Everyone is engaged.”

Audience members, knowing the next workshop was going to contain a game of some sort, were a-buzz in the hallways, talking with their peers about which session they had just come from; what game they played, who won, and which questions stumped them.

It was the most widely successful breakout session event that Seagate had ever had, and we’re happy to report that there was a distinct lack of Blackberry-checking.

5 Ways to Use Game Shows Outside Your Training Classroom

Game shows are effective training tools inside your classroom, but they’re also extremely versatile. We’re always amazed at the new ways trainers find to use Gameshow Pro (and other game show products) in their businesses—and even their daily lives. Game shows aren’t just for entertainment anymore—but they’re also not JUST for training in the classroom!

1. Large Events
Game shows are a wonderful, “show stopping” element in a large event (like a large annual sales or training meeting). Use a game show after keynote speakers/presenters to both perk-up the audience and cement the presentation content in their heads, preparing them for what they’ll hear next. We’ve done large events where we’ve had a game show running throughout the day (or multiple days). The element of competition keeps audience members engaged, and being divided into teams to play the game show prevents them from getting lost in a sea of attendees. Game shows are also fantastic as a stand-alone element within a presentation or as part of a breakout session.

2. On the Web
If you frequent our site, you’ll notice our webinars. We use game shows in webinars to keep attendees engaged and to review webinar content. (In fact, if you’d like to see an example of game shows being used in this way, sign up for a webinar!) If your company does online training, using a game show over the web can have the same positive effect as using a game show in your training classroom—engaging all participants, increasing content retention, and motivating trainees to pay attention to the rest of the training. Game shows can also be used in a sales webinar for your company’s product to review benefits and features or to recap the sales presentation in a unique and inventive way that your customers are sure to remember.

3. Co-worker Gatherings
We’ve had customers send us their stories about using game shows for everything from annual corporate retreats and company holiday parties, to employee orientations and fundraisers. Game shows can be an opportunity to let your company shine by incorporating company information into a just-for-fun game show. Your employees learn more about the company and get to network and interact with their peers all in a low-pressure game show environment. A game show is the hit of a party, and it’s a fast and easy way to create an entertaining event.

4. Sales Presentations
Put a game show in your sales personnel’s toolkit and they’re ready to sell in a way that is unlike anything else your customers will have seen. You can do a little bit of research on a client and create a game show around their company to break the ice. You can also use a Classroom Feud-type game to create curiosity and a sense of need around your product. For example, if you were selling printers, you could have customers answer the question: “What are the top 5 complaints that most companies have with their printing service?” This can lead into a benefits-selling strategy for your salesperson based on how the clients have answered the question.

5. Family Events
As long as you’re already familiar with game shows, you can take them outside the corporate world and into your family events (including reunions, weddings, baby showers, etc.). For instance, a colleague of ours was getting married. He wanted a unique way to engage guests at his wedding reception so they would have fun and learn more about the happy couple. In each invitation to the wedding, he and his bride-to-be included a survey with questions like: Where do most couples meet, how long are couples together before they get married, etc. They compiled all the responses they received and put them into a Classroom Feud game show. Guests had to guess the top answers from all the questions. At the reception the bride’s family was pitted against the groom’s family, and the game show was played without a hitch and with only minimal cheating on the groom’s side.

Bonus Use: Almost anything.
You’ll find that when you start using game shows, you’ll love them so much that you’ll be able to find uses for them anywhere. We had one trainer who had his class build game shows to sharpen their computer skills (importing and exporting graphics, files, pictures, sounds, etc.). At the end of the course, they had a game show that they could use in their OWN training class with their own content. You can also have your trainees build games to use with the other trainees in the same class—further emphasizing the training content.

Game Shows in a Large Group: The Prudential Relocation Services Case Study

Prudential Relocation Services recently hired a production company—Live Spark—to produce a game show for their national event. They used LearningWare’s Gameshow Pro software with great results. Here is what they did to make their game show a success in a large group.

Company: Prudential Relocation Services
Audience Size: 250
Game Show: Gameshow Pro’s Classroom Feud

Game Setup

The audience of 250 people was divided down the middle. One half of the room would be on a team, and the other half on the opposing team. Five game show contestants for each team were pre-selected to come and play up front. An engaging game show host led the teams through the rules and game play; teams had a face-off question to determine which team would get to answer the question, and then the “playing” team tried to uncover all the answers on the Classroom Feud board. Pre-determined judges stepped in to give rulings on potentially controversial answers. The winning team went home with “prizes”—the shampoo, conditioner and body lotion in their hotel hospitality kit.

What worked

Pre-selecting contestants: Because contestants were pre-selected, it was assured that they would be willing participants. This also eliminated the potentially messy process of trying to gain spontaneous volunteers. Contestants, however, were not “plants”, and did not have prior knowledge of the game show.

Having a host: Having a separate host aside from a “tech” running the game show made sure everything was smooth and seamless. The host could concentrate on engaging and working with the audience and contestants, and the game show tech could focus on running the software without a hitch.

Pre-selecting Judges: We’ve always been huge advocates for having judges during a game show. This way, when there was a controversial decision, or a team gave an answer that was close (but not quite accurate) the host and game show tech didn’t have to enter into the fray.

Inexpensive Prizes: We love the idea of using the hotel hospitality kit as a “prize”. It’s a fun way to give contestants something (and everyone in the audience something) without spending a lot of money on prizes that only increase competition and game show scrutiny. Everyone in the audience on the winning team got this prize—so everyone was cheering along.
Good Questions: The questions were neither too difficult, nor too easy. They were compelling, clear and easy to read—and still provided entertaining, relevant review information.

What We Could Have Done Differently

Consistent rule enforcement: While rules were explained beforehand, and contestants were generally good at following the rules, at one point the host became lax on a few points. Instead of individuals having to guess an answer, teams started to collaborate—which increased the game time and added to a level of chaotic play on stage.

Timers: Answer timers were used only infrequently. This made the game show lag a bit. Teams got used to the idea that they could take as long as they wanted/needed to answer a question instead of answering right away. This led to more discussion and collaboration amongst team members, but lessened the entertainment experience for the audience.

Reviews

Both the audience and the Prudential Relocation Services team were very happy. The game show was used as an after-dinner entertainment piece, but it also helped cement the content from the presentations earlier that day. Overall, Classroom Feud and the game show set up was an amazing success.