Lollapalooza 2007: Producer Petro Piaseckyj on Buzz! The Mega Quiz
By Louis Bedigian

“We're going out past the hardcore gamer.”

“The casual market is huge. That’s what SingStar has captured,” opens Petro Piaseckyj, Producer on Buzz! The Mega Quiz. “And it’s something that Buzz! over in Europe and Australia has captured. We’re going out past the hardcore gamer. We want to get grandma to play PlayStation 2. We want the 11 – 99-age person to play the game.”

Buzz! The Mega Quiz is a unique offering in the once-crowded market of trivia games. It’s the first to capture the essence of a game show, a feature that has gotten me – a hardcore gamer – intrigued for more.

“What’s really great about Buzz is that you’ve never had to really play a video game before,” Petro continues. “It’s so straightforward. The buzzer is a very easy piece of technology to understand. It’s virtually a buzzer – big red button that lights up and four colored buttons on the side that you press to answer questions.

“The buzzers are customizable. There are 23 different buzzer sounds, so that when you buzz in, you can have a yodel, an evil laugh, a cat meow, a duck quack or whatever. The whole point is to have fun and be silly and be a contestant.”

Over 6,000 questions will be featured in the game, along with an auto-saving memory card feature that prevents Buzz! from delivering questions you’ve already received. “Without a memory card you run the risk of hearing the same questions,” Petro warns.

Regarding the game’s presence at Lollapalooza, he comments: “I was at the Mindfield station [at Lollapalooza] where we had Buzz! set up. We had four people come up. The stands were empty. As soon as four people started playing, probably about 40 people just walking along, [they] stopped, came in and sat down and didn’t leave until the game is over. So there’s something about the US audience and their love of English game shows.”

“As far as the localization of the voices, there are three characters: we have Buzz, which we didn’t change,” he says. “We changed a few of his lines… We kept the English lines that made sense. But when he says, ‘Hey, you’ve trousered a win,’ I’m like, ‘What the…?’ Rose, we switched from an English character to an American woman living in London. The guy who reads the questions is Rodger Bumpass, more famously known as the voice behind Squidward on SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Tell us about the process of eliminating questions that wouldn’t work for the US market.

Petro Piaseckyj: In Europe they have a question writing team. Some of the writers are from the US. What I did was, I went over 6,000 questions and say, “What’s valid for the US market?” Questions about BBC TV shows – out. Questions about cricket and rugby – out. But general geography questions, or bizarre questions or animal questions, all of those are pretty much valid.

Our goal was to go through, see which questions are valid, see which ones needed to be re-written… And it wasn’t just the questions it was also the answers. The beauty in writing the questions is not the question – it’s actually the incorrect answers. That is the real tough part of writing questions. We went through and just made sure that people in the US would understand the questions.

And you know, we had to change spellings from “colour” to “color.” Things like that.

Are the trivia games within Buzz! randomized?

PP: You played it in eight-player mode, and there are less rounds in an eight-player game than in a four-player game. You were playing a standard game, however, you can choose to play a short game, long game, a medium game, or even customize a game to choose which rounds [trivia types] you want within a particular game, and you can save it to your memory card.

There’s also a feature in there called Quiz Master, which allows you to write your own questions and actually read them. It doesn’t come on screen, but allows you to… You can have avatars, you can be Buzz, you can read the questions, and then say “Blue, 15. Green, cherry pie,” [or whatever the choices are]. They ring in with the colors and then you say if they’re right or wrong.

In our eight-player session we encountered games like Globetrotter and Pie Fight. What other types are being included?

PP: There’s Point Picker which you didn’t play, which allows players to choose the category, and then you have a couple of questions thrown out at you. Also, in the four-player game that you didn’t get to see, there’s a random buzz-type game. There’s this game Fact or Fiction, where he reads a fact and you have to guess if it’s a fact or fiction.

As I was going through them I was like, “Really, is that really true? Wait, that’s not true?” It’s definitely a brain-teaser. After you’ve guessed, Buzz will explain the reason behind [the answer].

There’s one called Duck Hunt where ducks come across the screen in a blue, green, red or yellow line. You have to shoot them using your colored buttons. Some of ‘em are positive points, some of ‘em are negative. So you can add to your point totals or actually detract from it if you shoot the wrong duck.

“What was really interesting about the process was the music questions. It seems like the UK has a totally different radio playlist versus the US, so we had to change out some song [trivia] and do out some other stuff with it.”—Petro Piaseckyj

That actually sounds like a mini-game from Buzz! Jr. Jungle Party.

PP: Yeah, it’s very similar. There’s also a horse race where you pick the one you want to win. It’s just to break up the whole question/answer thing and give you something fun to do in the middle.

What kinds of categories are available in Point Picker?

PP: There are Sports, Movie, Animal, TV… and I’m forgetting like three or four of them. It is essentially a wheel with pie [slices, like a pie chart], and it’s like a little arrow that goes on and highlights the one. When your category is highlighted, you pick that.

Give us some more details on Buzz! Jr. Jungle Party.

PP: With the success of Buzz! in the UK they decided, ‘Hey, we’ve got all these Buzz! peripherals out there, let’s do something for the kids.’ So they came out with Jungle Party, which is basically 25 mini-games that all use the buzzer to play. It’s really simple game mechanics. The games are like one and a half minutes to about four minutes of playing time. Even if you’re a really little kid, you can still press the blinking button, the funny monkey will do something on screen and make you laugh.

It’s funny, ‘cause even though we made it for a younger audience, it’s still totally relevant to us as a adults. They’re very simple game mechanics because the games are not played using a PS2 controller, they’re played using the buzzers. One of my favorite games is a hot potato game. Basically you have four monkeys, and one of ‘em holds a bomb that’s about to blow up. You know, it’s one of these funny, silly, comic book, Mad Magazine bombs with a lit fuse. So as you’re holding the bomb, your points start to roll up. When you pass the bomb, then the other points start going up. However, if the bomb blows up, then you lose all the points you’ve made.

There are rhythm games, memorization games, games where you need to count… There’s one game called Card Counting. Four monkeys hanging on a vine. They have cards and they flip ‘em over, and it’s different fruit and you have to pick which card has the most fruit. So there’s kind of an educational part of it which is nice. Even Buzz! Mega Quiz – you played it today and was like, “Really? That’s a fish!?” [Laughs] So it’s educational.

So the idea is to judge how long you’re holding it and quickly pass it to the next person.

PP: Exactly. What’s really cool is that, once the bomb blows up and the monkey is this big, giant, black, crazy smoking monkey, the other monkeys are actually laughing at him. It’s this good, fun humor throughout the game that really holds it all together and makes it funny. As you’re playing and you finally get the guy that’s in the lead, and your monkey is laughing at him and you’re laughing at him, it kind of conveys the fun of the game itself.

Jungle Party is intended for younger children – do you have to use the Dual-Shock 2 at all?

PP: No, not at all.

Is that true for Buzz! The Mega Quiz as well?

PP: You have to use the PS2 [controller] for the Quiz Master mode. That’s it. For the rest of the game it’s just the buzzers.

Why do you need the PS2 controller for that mode?

PP: Because you need more options to direct whether or not players were right or wrong.

Buzz! The Mega Quiz features an award system. I got the Loser Award…

PP: No, medal! You actually get a medal. [Laughs]

What other medals are in the game?

PP: It’s essentially four prizes. We have the Genius Cup, which is basically who got the most answers right. We have the Itchy Trigger Finger Award, which basically times how long it takes you to answer something. Then there’s the Losers Medal, which is the most answers wrong. Then there’s the Slowpoke Award, which is basically who took the longest to answer the questions. So there’s a little bit of something for everybody.

Right now the release date is simply “fall.” Can you be more specific?

PP: It’ll be around the October/November timeframe.

From a marketing perspective, how do you plan to promote Buzz! The Mega Quiz? In general, targeting hardcore gamers is tough. I’m not sold on advertisements as far as print ads go. I’m sold on a game if I see a screenshot, or if I hear of an interesting concept, but that’s me – I’m the hardcore gamer. But for the casual market, how are you going to get the attention of someone who does not go searching for game information?

PP: You bring up a really great question because it isn’t your typical hardcore gamer game. For Buzz!, I can talk to you about it, I can show you screenshots, I can show you videos. But it’s not until you put the buzzer in your hand and actually play the game that you really kind of get it. Like I was saying earlier on the Mindfield stage when they were doing Buzz! – people never heard of the game, they had never seen it, but they were… People like quiz games, and especially ones from the UK. Our goal is to put as many units out there as possible so that people can go and play them in stores.

Right now we are finalizing a demo for Jungle Party / The Mega Quiz. You’ll be able to play them on one unit and we’re going to be putting them out all over the US. Our goal is to get as many people to try the game as possible. And like in Europe, this will be one of those viral games where you’ll go over to a friend’s house, he’ll have it, you’ll play it, and you’ll go, “Holy moly, I’ve got to have this!”

My brother-in-law, who’s Irish, and his brother – he’s got this complete giant, Irish family – he brought a lot of people over to the house and his brother brought Buzz just to have something to do when they’re not at the pub. [Laughs] My brother-in-law comes back and says, “Do you know about this game? This game is awesome! Are we gonna get it here?” And I’m like, “Believe it or not I’m actually working on that title.”

“I gotta say in our office, when we have a little bit of downtime, we’ll play a little bit of Jungle Party because monkeys are funny. Throw a monkey in there and you’re all set.”—Petro Piaseckyj

The demo availability – you hope to have that in stores before the game comes out?

PP: Yeah.

EBgames, Target, Best Buy, GameStop – those types of stores?

PP: To be honest I don’t know which stores, but I do know that we’re talking about 6,000 kiosks going all over the US.

Thank you for your time, it’s been great.

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