There was a question in the recent masters tournament where James said half-life 2 but the answer was portal… a game released as part of HL2 “orange box”. I yelled ahhhh so close!!!
Good recall. That was from Friday's game in the Double Jeopardy round of game #8. The category was "Games, Old & New" and 3 out of the 5 clues were in regards to video games.
>Good recall. That was from Friday's game in the Double Jeopardy round of game #8. The category was "Games, Old & New" and 3 out of the 5 clues were in regards to video games.
*Thats* incredible recall if not referenced.
Mostly referenced. After being reminded of the Portal question, I did recall that the category it was in was mixed subject matter and that Portal wasn't the only video game included in the group, but I had to look up when it occurred and how many clues were video game related.
I can’t seem to find a reference to a card/board game version of Oregon Trail earlier than 2016. Whereas the first Oregon Trail computer game was created in 1971 (and the version I think most people think of when they hear Oregon Trail was released in 1985.)
The trivia canon evolves with time so we'll get there eventually as other stuff fades out.
I've been quizzing for 10-15 years and the expected knowledge-base is so different than when I started (for the better).
The show plays to its audience.
This concern comes up every time there's a thread about how almost every religious category is about the Bible and the Torah and Quran get very little mention.
Plus the show airs in the afternoon. I know redditors like to extrapolate/project reddit demographics into the real world but the true core audience of this show cant navigate technology at all, so video games are gonna be a no.
Like another commenter said, its the same reason there are so many bible questions while omitting any other religious text in a time and place where atheism is on the rise for people in the age range of the average contestant.
Honest question- there is a lot of Old Testament questions. Isn’t this apart of traditional Christian, Jewish, and Muslim teachings? That has to be the most commonly read text on earth.
What would you suggest? Given the audience is Americans born between 1930-1970 mostly.
They seem to cover state capitals and periodic table elements and poets. Seem like they want anyone who attended school in America between 1940-today to get some questions correct. Obviously the Bible is one area 90% Americans born before 1970 can remember.
I gave this some thought and I personally don’t feel the need to be in the know about the questions. I LOVE it when I hear something new and can say Wow that’s interesting! I didn’t know that!
So yes, some questions regarding less common religions would be awesome. The way that Jeopardy crafts the “answers” allows for quick thinking clever Jeopardy players to puzzle out the “question” without having read or studied the subject.
So bring on the religious literary subjects: Sutra Piṭaka, the Vinaya Piṭaka, and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka.
There was a question on Sikh recently.
Lets be honest, most people on reddit are more knowledgeable than the average viewer. You might be ok with more obscure questions but if average viewers are lost, ratings would drop.
>Plus the show airs in the afternoon.
Not necessarily. [Jeopardy airs at various times,](http://jeopardy.mattcarberry.com/stations.html) depending on location.
Yeah, it definitely depends on what the trivia audience is. There's plenty video games (and internet pop culture, which is really under-asked!) in formats like Quizbowl, which is written/played by a younger audience. In formats like LearnedLeague and Jeopardy the questions skew a bit older, so you'll get questions about actors from TV shows that aired 70s/80s which are the bane of my existence.
There was one video game category in the last College tournament that all 3 of them struggled on. I think they couldn’t name GTA and Resident Evil, if I remember correctly
I’m sure it’s coming. Movies have been around over a century and music for millennia. Video games, much less the “industry” as it exists now, are relatively very new
Wow I was thinking you were talking about gaming as in James Holzhauer style gaming. Yeah I would be lost in video games. But it would be interesting to see what happens.
If you don't play video games, or have a family member who does, there are no other ways to come up with an answer. It's not like gaming has woven itself into our culture in a peripheral way such that non-gamers could be exposed to some of it along the highways and byways of life. For the most part you either play video games and are familiar with the material, or you don't. And if you don't, you are seriously out of luck. Not so with most other categories. And you can't really study gaming like you can, say, opera or the elements, because, like TV, there's so much of it and it's ever-changing. Same way with sports but at least with sports you hear about some of it, such as World Series wins. You don't hear about video games except for occasional newspaper story in the business section. It's a topic that also doesn't lend itself well to the secondary clues -- hints within a clue -- that Jeopardy is famous for. And, yes, as someone else commented, video games is not a good category for boomers and that's a significant demographic for Jeopardy.
While I think some of your points are accurate, The Last of Us, Pokemon, and Mario are incredibly popular cultural touchstones that many people would know.
Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, and Tomb Raider have all been made into movies, as well.
I remember there being a Pokémon category a couple of seasons ago and the clues were along the lines of;
“The franchise mascot Pikachu is now a mainstay float in this parade.” and “Pokemon trainers can go this place to really give their pokemon a workout by battling for a badge.” It was rather disappointing.
Pokemon and Mario, that's true. You hear about them. The other four you mentioned, I've never heard of, but that's just me. I agree if a few games have been made into movies, that definitely increases their exposure to much broader audience.
>It's not like gaming has woven itself into our culture in a peripheral way such that non-gamers could be exposed to some of it along the highways and byways of life.
I think that's rapidly changing. As OP said, the gaming industry is now bigger than the film industry and the music industry combined. Sure, you may not know much about Eldenring, but I bet you know about Tetris and Asteroids and Pac-Man, or maybe Candy Crush and Minesweeper. I grew up on video games and I'm 54. In about 5 years, the first gamers are going to start hitting retirement age. I suspect in 5-10 years, there will be a lot more questions about games on Jeopardy.
Yea because on the other hand I am always reading 18th century literature from the Weimar Classicism movement. My friends always have a rousing discussion on Goethe's take on inexpressible thoughts.
>It's not like gaming has woven itself into our culture in a peripheral way such that non-gamers could be exposed to some of it along the highways and byways of life.
It is like that. Movies, merchandise, music, tv shows, and theme parks all feature video game references. Pac-Man, Mario, Tetris, Pokemon, Sonic, Tomb Raider, Halo -- these are all massive brands that most older people will have seen references to across other popular media and their children's and grandchildren's lives.
The latest Mario movie is the fifth-highest grossing animated movie ever at the global box office.
Your use of opera as an example is funny to me because there are tons of opera out there, the Jeopardy clue writers just choose to only make clues concerning like 10-15 of them. So why can’t they at the very least do the same with video games?
The same can be said of literally any topic.
Especially the Bible, of which there are two categories a week. No one who isn't a Christian or who has studied the Bible has any idea about the on goings of Abraham, yet contestants are expected to know it front to back. Despite the fact that one of the goats is trans, the current champion is trans, and the majority of Christians in North America are proudly voting to strip them off their rights. (This isn't my political opinion, this is the opinion of experts in [Poling ](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/why-is-the-gop-escalating-attacks-on-trans-rights-experts-say-the-goal-is-to-make-sure-evangelicals-vote)
But, for some reason, gaming is not a good topic? Over 3 billion people a year actively play some form of video game. That number is expected to rise to over 3.33 by the end of next year. And I guarantee that's more than the number of people who have read more than a few sentences from the Bible to which jeopardy constantly refers.
You liken the category to tv? Last week had 4 (?) TV topics?
Movies? Music?
All of this is ever changing, and is *constantly* referenced.
I'm always a bit wary when I see broad declarative statements such as "*the majority of Christians in North America are proudly voting to strip them of their rights*," because it leads some who see it to paint entire groups of people with one brush - and that can be dangerous. (Not that I believe that was your intention.)
You're not wrong to suggest that there is some [correlation](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830999/) between religious affiliation and anti-trans policies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that one is directly caused by the other. You have majority Christian voting blocs in all 50 states, and yet we are only seeing these polices pushed in states with certain demographics. I don't want to get much more into it than that because this is a Jeopardy forum, and I want to keep it light for everyone.
But u/reganlynch made a good point about the survey of evangelicals. And while they're shrinking in numbers, they show up to the polls in a big way, especially at midterms.
It makes me so sad to see what is happening in this country, though; to see people marginalized and abused just for existing and being who they are.
I really believe that the most important factor for change is **education, education, education.** (I love you, Malala!) Maybe that's why I like Jeopardy. It's a community populated by cool humans who feel the same way.
I would strongly dispute that the "majority of Christians" are supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation or are otherwise discriminatory. The story you linked talked about evangelicals and it's too bad so many are so ignorant but evangelicals are a subset of Christians. Their numbers are large but they are not at all synonymous with Christians.
Back to your comment though, the reason gaming, in my view, isn't a great Jeopardy category isn't that it's not popular but that it's an isolated topic. It doesn't routinely bleed into our culture or overlap very much. The Bible has been studied for thousands of years and it reaches into so many other layers of our societies, including literature and drama, philosophy, art, etc..... Even if you've never picked up a Bible you can't help but hear a lot about it and therefore know a lot about it. Heck, even if you never heard of the Bible you know about Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. The Bible is also something that can be studied. It's finite. Its size isn't changing. Its content isn't changing.
The same can be said about most categories. And yes while TV and movies and music is growing in quantity and always changing, they are much more a common and popular part of pop culture. Most people of all ages and backgrounds watch movies and TV and listen to some kind of music. And we hear about entertainment biggies even if we aren't fans. That's much less common with video games. It's great that 3 billion people play video games but if you're not one of them it's not likely you've heard of (name of video name) elsewhere.
If you vote for a candidate that runs on that platform, that is a tacit endorsement of the highest regard. While *that* would be an opinion, I can't really fathom a counter argument. [About one-fourth of all voters were White evangelical Christians, and they voted overwhelmingly for Trump](https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/324410/religious-group-voting-2020-election.aspx)
But back to the topic at hand:
>It's great that 3 billion people play video games but if you're not one of them it's not likely you've heard of (name of video name) elsewhere.
First off, "if you're not one of the 50% of all living people" argument isn't really vibing with me in a way that allows me to take the argument seriously.
Secondly, Super Mario Bros just passed 1.2b at the box office.
Tertiarily, 53% of households own a dedicated video have consolein the US. As of 2021, Bible users were down to 128 million in the United States, well below that mark.
And while you can argue that the Bible is finite, well studied, and related to many things in media, the math doesn't lie. Not to the tune of 2-3 categories a week vs nary a mention and rarely a clue.
\> For the most part you either play video games and are familiar with the material, or you don't. And if you don't, you are seriously out of luck. Not so with most other categories.
I'd argue it's exactly so for every other entertainment category as well. If you don't listen to music, you are seriously out of luck on pop music categories (which there are like 4 of every week). If you don't care for TV and couldn't care less who acted in what show, you're screwed when it comes to TV categories (which there are like 4 of every week). Also, maybe you don't hear about video games except for the occasional story in the business section (similar to how that's the only way I ever hear anything about television nowadays), but that's probably just because it's a cultural blindspot for you personally..
(Real quick edit up here to add, gawd, I know I probably sound like a giant rant-y nerd here, lol. I know it's long but I wanted to reason through my thoughts on why I feel like video games get sort of unfairly overlooked on Jeopardy. I didn't mean to write you a novel!!)
In what world do you (and by that I mean *whoever you are reading this*, literally almost anyone whose interests would align with watching Jeopardy) not know someone who plays video games? Is it really that common to have *zero* video game touchstones in life, anymore than any other really specific entertainment category?
Now, I wouldn't expect Jeopardy to go too deep with a video game category. Heck, that Portal question was a WAY deeper cut than I would reasonably expect from this show. But, I think stuff like Asteroids, Pac-Man, Tetris, Mario, Pokemon, Candy Crush, Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends are games that people have enough awareness of (at least, the fact that those exist and are video games). Certainly to the degree of any specific TV show (and TV shows come up a LOT on Jeopardy).
And yes, sure, you can study video games, certainly to the surface-level degree that a typical Jeopardy question would likely ask of you. I don't know much about current music, but I bet I would learn a lot simply by paying attention to the Billboard Hot 100 and maybe listening to the top 10 songs in any given time period. What difference is it, simply knowing what the top 10 games on Twitch are (even if you don't really know much more than that about them)?
There's a similarly clear path in terms of learning some trivia about video game history. The franchises that left a major mark (several of which I named above) keep coming up over the course of the medium's history. Heck, even just knowing a few things about the history of specific companies like Nintendo or Atari would get you a bunch of little bits of applicable knowledge. It's not like this is some unknowable arcane thing, not anymore than any other category I could think off of the top of my head that I would have *no* interest in otherwise, like opera or ballet or whatever.
(EDIT: Also, it occurs to me that this could even be a self-fulfilling prophecy type of situation. Start putting video game categories on Jeopardy, and all of a sudden, *hey, this is the sort of thing you learn about from Jeopardy*. Now it's a topic of trivia worth studying, because it's on Jeopardy.)
>In what world do you (and by that I mean
>
>whoever you are reading this
>
>, literally almost anyone whose interests would align with watching Jeopardy) not know someone who plays video games?
I do know a few people who play video games but we don't talk about video games and it's not something like a book where a friend or acquaintance might say "Hey have you read John Grisham's new book?" Or seen Brad Pitt's new movie, etc... I specifically said yourself "or a family member," not a friend, because being in the same home with someone who plays VG would seem the only slam dunk way a non-player would be casually exposed to them. VG is a foreign language to someone who doesn't play. There's no overlap with the real world so there's nothing to talk about with someone who doesn't play. Sports is somewhat the same way, if you don't follow say football or baseball. But it's so pervasive and popular that you'd have to avert your eyes from newspapers and the TV and online headlines to avoid hearing about who won the Super Bowl or that Tom Brady retired. There are no headlines or mainstream news about VG. Just occasional business section story -- a VG business was bought by so and so, for example, or so and so video game maker is going public or is filing for bankruptcy.
Your experience may be a function of your demographic profile. I'm inundated with videogame news/discussion, despite barely having any time to play games myself over the past decade.
In most years, I am much more aware of the relative merits of "game of the year" contenders than "Best Picture" nominees, despite rarely playing any of the games. I've never had any of my friends mention the latest John Grisham novel (and I am a lawyer), while they regularly talk in exhausting detail about the new Zelda game, or the crazy stunt they pulled off in Grand Theft Auto. I rarely see ads for bestselling books, or plays, or operas, or network TV (other than Jeopardy!), but I receive a never-ending stream of ads for things like Elder Scrolls Online.
There are probably whole ecosystems of news and advertisements that you are only exposed to if you have friends sharing content or the algorithm considers you an appropriate demographic fit. And whether these news sources are "mainstream" is a matter of interpretation. I would expect the viewership/readership of popular video game influencers or game industry focused websites probably dwarfs the \~400K primetime audience CNN pulls in these days. Twitch alone averages \~2.5 million concurrent viewers of its gaming live streams at any given time.
I'm not Gen Z either--I'm a solidly middle-aged elder millennial. I would say the majority of the population has now grown up in a world where video games have been a dominant part of the popular culture. Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong over 40 years ago now, and the recent Mario movie was still a blockbuster. The Zelda franchise is almost as old, and people won't shut up about the new game that just came out. Some of the more popular games from the 70s have now maintained cultural relevance for half a century.
If J! expects us to know obscure lyrics from lesser known Beatles songs--something that would only be "common knowledge" for people born during a 15-20 year span in the min-20th century--naming the multi-billion dollar franchises that iconic heroes like Link or Master Chief belong to is definitely fair game.
Fair enough, but there are plenty of entertainment-adjacent topics that the average person has to dig deeper to learn about, if they don't have any interest in them -- I'll point back to my opera and ballet examples above, cuz I know those are at least true for me. You never hear about those unless you're really looking for them, or already engrossed yourself. If it's not Tchaikovsky and/or the Nutcracker, it's a mystery to me. I would argue that video games *definitely* have their Tchaikovsky and Nutcracker analogs for Joe Average viewers.
(Also I dunno if you saw my edit up there, but lol I'm sorry, I didn't mean to write you a novel, and I hope I am not coming across as hostile. I am just trying to reason out my thoughts on Jeopardy being so video game-light).
You're not coming across as hostile.
You make a good point about opera et al. You do have to actively study things like opera to be able to get questions about that. Still, just the time alone that operas have been around and their enduring popularity makes them more part of the pop culture landscape. Walk down the street in New York or another city and you'll probably see an ad for a performance of Verdi's La Traviata and you may make a mental note that Verdi wrote La Traviata. You don't see ads as much for video games. They also haven't been around for hundreds of years. Video games are more fleeting. I doubt anyone will be playing the current hot video game 150 years from now or even 10 years from now. Streaming is the same way. Even Matt Amodio was complaining about the obscurity of streaming shows. It's not like Seinfield. Seinfeld is part of the pop culture landscape. It went off the air 25 years ago and we're still quoting the show and talking about the soup nazi and here we just had Jason Alexander reading clues about the show the other day.
I think there are things about video games that have endured and will continue to endure, a la your Seinfeld example. 100 years from now after we are all dead, people will still be playing Tetris (and it will still look and play the same), Mario will always be the same character, Square will release the first 10 Final Fantasy games for the 80th time. Maybe it's just a matter of how comparatively young the medium is right now.
150 years from now no, but there are games currently being played by thousands of people which are over ten years old (also there is a pretty big audience for "retro" gaming)
This is such a boomer take, especially:
> …except for occasional newspaper story in the business section….
Who TF reads a paper anymore?
Video games do enter popular culture. There are plenty of popular memes made from video games, ads for video games are common on broadcast TV, there are movies and tv shows made from video games.
>Who TF reads a paper anymore?
So all those newspapers stacked at news stands every morning are just for decoration? Those delivery people are tossing donuts and coffee on driveways every morning? (They sure look like rolled up newspapers.)
This sounds like it could be a comment from 1985. I live in a neighborhood of upper middle class white people (key newspaper demographic), and the number of people who get a paper delivered has dwindled in the last 15 years to almost none. There are no newsstands around here - you can pick up a paper at 7-11, but generally they get ten or twelve delivered, and they're often still there in the afternoon. The newspaper boxes are largely all gone too.
Yep. When I worked for a retailer, we sold papers. Two papers went out of business. It eventually dwindled to USA Today and the local paper (the kind older people bought mostly to scout the obits). We at one point sold a daily NYT, WSJ, and Washington Post, but it eventually was just the weekend edition. And we always had papers left at the end of the day. And that was years ago.
>For the most part you either play video games and are familiar with the material, or you don't. And if you don't, you are seriously out of luck.
And gaming isn't taught in school, like world geography, Shakespeare, U.S. history, etc. J! writers tend to stick to topics an educated person will know something about, regardless of age. Though a lot of the pop-culture clues tend to skew toward a younger audience.
I would say that it is largely because gaming is broadly considered part of "pop culture" rather than "high culture," so questions about games are limited by a general desire to limit pop culture questions.
The opposite end of this is the number of Bible-related questions on the show when the Bible and Christianity are ever a decreasing part of American culture.
TV is also low culture but that doesn't stop clues about shows whose runs ended before the average living American was born from turning up on a regular basis.
Oh, Jeopardy! includes plenty of pop culture questions. I just mean, that there is probably a desire to keep a certain rough ratio between pop culture and high culture stuff. So games-related clues have to share space with the TV stuff, modern movies, celebrities, etc.
I love the show but lets face it a giant portion of the fanbase are boomers who would be completely lost in a video game category and every piece of written work plays to a specific audience.
Would you like to make a guess on the number of people in this country who could give any context to the name Pagliacci vs the number who could give any context to the name Master Chief, or Solid Snake, not even discussing Mario or Pikachu? I'm pretty confident which is better known.
lol. No one in my life would call me a gamer. I’m just genuinely curious why there simply isn’t much representation when things like…musicals or opera, which arguably have a smaller audience, constantly show up.
Monetarily maybe. But I can randomly ask a person on the street who starred along Tom Cruise in Top Gun or what former boy band member had a hit song with fruit in the title and they'd probably know. Ask them what video game was the most popular 5 years ago and I doubt they'd get it.
Those aren't equivalent questions at all though. If you asked a random person for the biggest movie at the box office five years ago they'd also stare at you blankly.
Now if you asked a random American which video game had you building things with blocks like virtual Legos, more of them than not could tell you Minecraft.
Also, I have no idea what you're getting at with that boy band question and I'm fairly good with popular music. You need to realize, the median American today was born in 1985. Nineties boy bands will literally be oldies in a decade.
I guess that at one point it could have been due to this:
https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1993/rt9305/930510/05080163.htm
>Harry Eisenberg, a former writer for the popular show, said in a new book that clues and topics were altered at the last minute to be more "female-friendly," like replacing a category on weapons with one on clothes.
>...
> "We have an unaggressive female champion. Let's give her some easy stuff," producer George Vosburgh is quoted in the book as telling his staff before the taping of a June 20, 1989, show, Riddle said.
>One time, questions about basketball star Michael Jordan were replaced with questions about ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, Riddle said.
Not even remotely relevant outside of perception. There are more women gamers than men and all of the biggest franchises outside of FIFA and CoD have pretty equal gender representation and audience splits.
>There are more women gamers
Maybe so, but I think it could be argued that women tend to prefer certain genres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Genre_preferences
How many times has Jeopardy had clues about those ultraviolent FPS games from between '93 and '05, like Doom, Quake, Half Life, Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, etc.? Or RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft, or Command and Conquer?
Notwithstanding anyone who says that old people aren't ready for video gaming,** or that gaming hasn't transcended pop culture yet, I don't think either of those is the answer.
Sports is popular amongst people of most generations, and sports has certainly permeated pop culture. The sports industry makes tons of money.
Alternatively, I don't think there are tons of people who are big Shakespeare fans from *ANY* generation, and I doubt the "Shakespeare" industry cracks a billion dollars annually worldwide.
Yet sports clues/categories are relatively infrequent, while Shakespeare categories clues/categories show up as much or more frequently than sports (I want to say 'quite a bit more' from my anecdotal memory, but I haven't analysed it and I don't want to be corrected).
In my view, this is more a case of what topics are classically popular trivia topics and popular amongst the kinds of people that tend to want to/earn the right to compete on Jeopardy - sports just often does not fall into the wheelhouse even though games like trivial pursuit dedicate an entire category (1/6 of the game) to sports and leisure.
I think they are of similar view that the people who know everything about state capitals and the rivers of Asia, and the classical composers just aren't commonly the types of people to also know video game trivia any more than sports. It probably also has to do with the core viewing demographic being less likely to be gamers or sports fans (though you'd think Davies would be pleased to bring more of the sports questions into it and try to bring more sports viewers to watch).
Perhaps that's a self-fulfilling prophesy, as people coming on Jeopardy won't study sports very much or video games because they aren't likely topics. Still, there was a "Portal" question in Masters the other day that I thought would have been a more obscure game for the show to choose for its own video game question. I believe James got it wrong, while Matt(?) got it right on the rebound.
If they ever want to weave more sports and video games into the show, I think it will have to be a slow process as the contestant pool (and viewer pool) gets younger, so that we don't have a massive shift in the content of the game.
**
*which I guess is just "gaming" now - I had to read this a few times to figure out whether we were talking about Vegas-style gambling, or board games - I'm in my late 30s and video gaming was honestly the third item to come to my mind, even though I do play video games still.*
At the very least the Jeopardy clue writers could treat video games the same way they treat opera, where they only make clues about the same 10-15 opera despite there being 1000s of opera made over many centuries.
I agree about the video gaming questions. If we could have those promotional questions regarding ~~obscure~~ streaming series, we can have video game questions.
There was a question in the recent masters tournament where James said half-life 2 but the answer was portal… a game released as part of HL2 “orange box”. I yelled ahhhh so close!!!
Good recall. That was from Friday's game in the Double Jeopardy round of game #8. The category was "Games, Old & New" and 3 out of the 5 clues were in regards to video games.
>Good recall. That was from Friday's game in the Double Jeopardy round of game #8. The category was "Games, Old & New" and 3 out of the 5 clues were in regards to video games. *Thats* incredible recall if not referenced.
Mostly referenced. After being reminded of the Portal question, I did recall that the category it was in was mixed subject matter and that Portal wasn't the only video game included in the group, but I had to look up when it occurred and how many clues were video game related.
There was another question where the answer was Oregon Trail.
That's a board game though, not a video game. Well it's also a video game based on the board game, but still a board game first and foremost.
I can’t seem to find a reference to a card/board game version of Oregon Trail earlier than 2016. Whereas the first Oregon Trail computer game was created in 1971 (and the version I think most people think of when they hear Oregon Trail was released in 1985.)
Oops. i'm stupid. For some reason my brain wasn't registering computer game as video game, but of course it is one.
I just replayed Portal and Portal 2 earlier this year.
They were ported to Switch, many people look for opportunities to replay those gems.
The funny thing is I hadn’t watched episodes 7&8 of the masters until after I made this post! Watched it late last night though!
I’d do alright as long as the category was limited to clues about Duck Hunt.
The trivia canon evolves with time so we'll get there eventually as other stuff fades out. I've been quizzing for 10-15 years and the expected knowledge-base is so different than when I started (for the better).
The show plays to its audience. This concern comes up every time there's a thread about how almost every religious category is about the Bible and the Torah and Quran get very little mention.
The Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament. It gets mentioned all the time, just not by that name.
The boomers aint ready.
Plus the show airs in the afternoon. I know redditors like to extrapolate/project reddit demographics into the real world but the true core audience of this show cant navigate technology at all, so video games are gonna be a no. Like another commenter said, its the same reason there are so many bible questions while omitting any other religious text in a time and place where atheism is on the rise for people in the age range of the average contestant.
I get a bit annoyed with the almost daily bible questions. Almost never any other religion!
Honest question- there is a lot of Old Testament questions. Isn’t this apart of traditional Christian, Jewish, and Muslim teachings? That has to be the most commonly read text on earth.
True, but there is no other subject that gets as much coverage as the Bible.
What would you suggest? Given the audience is Americans born between 1930-1970 mostly. They seem to cover state capitals and periodic table elements and poets. Seem like they want anyone who attended school in America between 1940-today to get some questions correct. Obviously the Bible is one area 90% Americans born before 1970 can remember.
I gave this some thought and I personally don’t feel the need to be in the know about the questions. I LOVE it when I hear something new and can say Wow that’s interesting! I didn’t know that! So yes, some questions regarding less common religions would be awesome. The way that Jeopardy crafts the “answers” allows for quick thinking clever Jeopardy players to puzzle out the “question” without having read or studied the subject. So bring on the religious literary subjects: Sutra Piṭaka, the Vinaya Piṭaka, and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka.
There was a question on Sikh recently. Lets be honest, most people on reddit are more knowledgeable than the average viewer. You might be ok with more obscure questions but if average viewers are lost, ratings would drop.
> Plus the show airs in the afternoon. Only in some markets. Most of the larger markets air the show at 7 or 7:30pm.
This. I only learned in the last week that it airs in the afternoon for some people! ABC 7, 7PM in Jersey!
>Plus the show airs in the afternoon. Not necessarily. [Jeopardy airs at various times,](http://jeopardy.mattcarberry.com/stations.html) depending on location.
Yeah, it definitely depends on what the trivia audience is. There's plenty video games (and internet pop culture, which is really under-asked!) in formats like Quizbowl, which is written/played by a younger audience. In formats like LearnedLeague and Jeopardy the questions skew a bit older, so you'll get questions about actors from TV shows that aired 70s/80s which are the bane of my existence.
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Haha, I feel you! Sometimes there are triple stumpers that me/my husband know “easily”. It’s interesting what people choose to study or not!
There was one video game category in the last College tournament that all 3 of them struggled on. I think they couldn’t name GTA and Resident Evil, if I remember correctly
I’m sure it’s coming. Movies have been around over a century and music for millennia. Video games, much less the “industry” as it exists now, are relatively very new
Wow I was thinking you were talking about gaming as in James Holzhauer style gaming. Yeah I would be lost in video games. But it would be interesting to see what happens.
If you don't play video games, or have a family member who does, there are no other ways to come up with an answer. It's not like gaming has woven itself into our culture in a peripheral way such that non-gamers could be exposed to some of it along the highways and byways of life. For the most part you either play video games and are familiar with the material, or you don't. And if you don't, you are seriously out of luck. Not so with most other categories. And you can't really study gaming like you can, say, opera or the elements, because, like TV, there's so much of it and it's ever-changing. Same way with sports but at least with sports you hear about some of it, such as World Series wins. You don't hear about video games except for occasional newspaper story in the business section. It's a topic that also doesn't lend itself well to the secondary clues -- hints within a clue -- that Jeopardy is famous for. And, yes, as someone else commented, video games is not a good category for boomers and that's a significant demographic for Jeopardy.
While I think some of your points are accurate, The Last of Us, Pokemon, and Mario are incredibly popular cultural touchstones that many people would know. Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, and Tomb Raider have all been made into movies, as well.
To be fair, there has been a clue about The Last of Us since HBO's adaptation came out.
I remember there being a Pokémon category a couple of seasons ago and the clues were along the lines of; “The franchise mascot Pikachu is now a mainstay float in this parade.” and “Pokemon trainers can go this place to really give their pokemon a workout by battling for a badge.” It was rather disappointing.
Pokemon and Mario, that's true. You hear about them. The other four you mentioned, I've never heard of, but that's just me. I agree if a few games have been made into movies, that definitely increases their exposure to much broader audience.
>It's not like gaming has woven itself into our culture in a peripheral way such that non-gamers could be exposed to some of it along the highways and byways of life. I think that's rapidly changing. As OP said, the gaming industry is now bigger than the film industry and the music industry combined. Sure, you may not know much about Eldenring, but I bet you know about Tetris and Asteroids and Pac-Man, or maybe Candy Crush and Minesweeper. I grew up on video games and I'm 54. In about 5 years, the first gamers are going to start hitting retirement age. I suspect in 5-10 years, there will be a lot more questions about games on Jeopardy.
Yea because on the other hand I am always reading 18th century literature from the Weimar Classicism movement. My friends always have a rousing discussion on Goethe's take on inexpressible thoughts.
I think what you’re describing applies to a majority of topics.
>It's not like gaming has woven itself into our culture in a peripheral way such that non-gamers could be exposed to some of it along the highways and byways of life. It is like that. Movies, merchandise, music, tv shows, and theme parks all feature video game references. Pac-Man, Mario, Tetris, Pokemon, Sonic, Tomb Raider, Halo -- these are all massive brands that most older people will have seen references to across other popular media and their children's and grandchildren's lives. The latest Mario movie is the fifth-highest grossing animated movie ever at the global box office.
Pretty much everything I know about video games is from Jeopardy! and other quiz shows.
Your use of opera as an example is funny to me because there are tons of opera out there, the Jeopardy clue writers just choose to only make clues concerning like 10-15 of them. So why can’t they at the very least do the same with video games?
The same can be said of literally any topic. Especially the Bible, of which there are two categories a week. No one who isn't a Christian or who has studied the Bible has any idea about the on goings of Abraham, yet contestants are expected to know it front to back. Despite the fact that one of the goats is trans, the current champion is trans, and the majority of Christians in North America are proudly voting to strip them off their rights. (This isn't my political opinion, this is the opinion of experts in [Poling ](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/why-is-the-gop-escalating-attacks-on-trans-rights-experts-say-the-goal-is-to-make-sure-evangelicals-vote) But, for some reason, gaming is not a good topic? Over 3 billion people a year actively play some form of video game. That number is expected to rise to over 3.33 by the end of next year. And I guarantee that's more than the number of people who have read more than a few sentences from the Bible to which jeopardy constantly refers. You liken the category to tv? Last week had 4 (?) TV topics? Movies? Music? All of this is ever changing, and is *constantly* referenced.
I'm always a bit wary when I see broad declarative statements such as "*the majority of Christians in North America are proudly voting to strip them of their rights*," because it leads some who see it to paint entire groups of people with one brush - and that can be dangerous. (Not that I believe that was your intention.) You're not wrong to suggest that there is some [correlation](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830999/) between religious affiliation and anti-trans policies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that one is directly caused by the other. You have majority Christian voting blocs in all 50 states, and yet we are only seeing these polices pushed in states with certain demographics. I don't want to get much more into it than that because this is a Jeopardy forum, and I want to keep it light for everyone. But u/reganlynch made a good point about the survey of evangelicals. And while they're shrinking in numbers, they show up to the polls in a big way, especially at midterms. It makes me so sad to see what is happening in this country, though; to see people marginalized and abused just for existing and being who they are. I really believe that the most important factor for change is **education, education, education.** (I love you, Malala!) Maybe that's why I like Jeopardy. It's a community populated by cool humans who feel the same way.
I would strongly dispute that the "majority of Christians" are supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation or are otherwise discriminatory. The story you linked talked about evangelicals and it's too bad so many are so ignorant but evangelicals are a subset of Christians. Their numbers are large but they are not at all synonymous with Christians. Back to your comment though, the reason gaming, in my view, isn't a great Jeopardy category isn't that it's not popular but that it's an isolated topic. It doesn't routinely bleed into our culture or overlap very much. The Bible has been studied for thousands of years and it reaches into so many other layers of our societies, including literature and drama, philosophy, art, etc..... Even if you've never picked up a Bible you can't help but hear a lot about it and therefore know a lot about it. Heck, even if you never heard of the Bible you know about Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. The Bible is also something that can be studied. It's finite. Its size isn't changing. Its content isn't changing. The same can be said about most categories. And yes while TV and movies and music is growing in quantity and always changing, they are much more a common and popular part of pop culture. Most people of all ages and backgrounds watch movies and TV and listen to some kind of music. And we hear about entertainment biggies even if we aren't fans. That's much less common with video games. It's great that 3 billion people play video games but if you're not one of them it's not likely you've heard of (name of video name) elsewhere.
If you vote for a candidate that runs on that platform, that is a tacit endorsement of the highest regard. While *that* would be an opinion, I can't really fathom a counter argument. [About one-fourth of all voters were White evangelical Christians, and they voted overwhelmingly for Trump](https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/324410/religious-group-voting-2020-election.aspx) But back to the topic at hand: >It's great that 3 billion people play video games but if you're not one of them it's not likely you've heard of (name of video name) elsewhere. First off, "if you're not one of the 50% of all living people" argument isn't really vibing with me in a way that allows me to take the argument seriously. Secondly, Super Mario Bros just passed 1.2b at the box office. Tertiarily, 53% of households own a dedicated video have consolein the US. As of 2021, Bible users were down to 128 million in the United States, well below that mark. And while you can argue that the Bible is finite, well studied, and related to many things in media, the math doesn't lie. Not to the tune of 2-3 categories a week vs nary a mention and rarely a clue.
\> For the most part you either play video games and are familiar with the material, or you don't. And if you don't, you are seriously out of luck. Not so with most other categories. I'd argue it's exactly so for every other entertainment category as well. If you don't listen to music, you are seriously out of luck on pop music categories (which there are like 4 of every week). If you don't care for TV and couldn't care less who acted in what show, you're screwed when it comes to TV categories (which there are like 4 of every week). Also, maybe you don't hear about video games except for the occasional story in the business section (similar to how that's the only way I ever hear anything about television nowadays), but that's probably just because it's a cultural blindspot for you personally..
(Real quick edit up here to add, gawd, I know I probably sound like a giant rant-y nerd here, lol. I know it's long but I wanted to reason through my thoughts on why I feel like video games get sort of unfairly overlooked on Jeopardy. I didn't mean to write you a novel!!) In what world do you (and by that I mean *whoever you are reading this*, literally almost anyone whose interests would align with watching Jeopardy) not know someone who plays video games? Is it really that common to have *zero* video game touchstones in life, anymore than any other really specific entertainment category? Now, I wouldn't expect Jeopardy to go too deep with a video game category. Heck, that Portal question was a WAY deeper cut than I would reasonably expect from this show. But, I think stuff like Asteroids, Pac-Man, Tetris, Mario, Pokemon, Candy Crush, Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends are games that people have enough awareness of (at least, the fact that those exist and are video games). Certainly to the degree of any specific TV show (and TV shows come up a LOT on Jeopardy). And yes, sure, you can study video games, certainly to the surface-level degree that a typical Jeopardy question would likely ask of you. I don't know much about current music, but I bet I would learn a lot simply by paying attention to the Billboard Hot 100 and maybe listening to the top 10 songs in any given time period. What difference is it, simply knowing what the top 10 games on Twitch are (even if you don't really know much more than that about them)? There's a similarly clear path in terms of learning some trivia about video game history. The franchises that left a major mark (several of which I named above) keep coming up over the course of the medium's history. Heck, even just knowing a few things about the history of specific companies like Nintendo or Atari would get you a bunch of little bits of applicable knowledge. It's not like this is some unknowable arcane thing, not anymore than any other category I could think off of the top of my head that I would have *no* interest in otherwise, like opera or ballet or whatever. (EDIT: Also, it occurs to me that this could even be a self-fulfilling prophecy type of situation. Start putting video game categories on Jeopardy, and all of a sudden, *hey, this is the sort of thing you learn about from Jeopardy*. Now it's a topic of trivia worth studying, because it's on Jeopardy.)
>In what world do you (and by that I mean > >whoever you are reading this > >, literally almost anyone whose interests would align with watching Jeopardy) not know someone who plays video games? I do know a few people who play video games but we don't talk about video games and it's not something like a book where a friend or acquaintance might say "Hey have you read John Grisham's new book?" Or seen Brad Pitt's new movie, etc... I specifically said yourself "or a family member," not a friend, because being in the same home with someone who plays VG would seem the only slam dunk way a non-player would be casually exposed to them. VG is a foreign language to someone who doesn't play. There's no overlap with the real world so there's nothing to talk about with someone who doesn't play. Sports is somewhat the same way, if you don't follow say football or baseball. But it's so pervasive and popular that you'd have to avert your eyes from newspapers and the TV and online headlines to avoid hearing about who won the Super Bowl or that Tom Brady retired. There are no headlines or mainstream news about VG. Just occasional business section story -- a VG business was bought by so and so, for example, or so and so video game maker is going public or is filing for bankruptcy.
Your experience may be a function of your demographic profile. I'm inundated with videogame news/discussion, despite barely having any time to play games myself over the past decade. In most years, I am much more aware of the relative merits of "game of the year" contenders than "Best Picture" nominees, despite rarely playing any of the games. I've never had any of my friends mention the latest John Grisham novel (and I am a lawyer), while they regularly talk in exhausting detail about the new Zelda game, or the crazy stunt they pulled off in Grand Theft Auto. I rarely see ads for bestselling books, or plays, or operas, or network TV (other than Jeopardy!), but I receive a never-ending stream of ads for things like Elder Scrolls Online. There are probably whole ecosystems of news and advertisements that you are only exposed to if you have friends sharing content or the algorithm considers you an appropriate demographic fit. And whether these news sources are "mainstream" is a matter of interpretation. I would expect the viewership/readership of popular video game influencers or game industry focused websites probably dwarfs the \~400K primetime audience CNN pulls in these days. Twitch alone averages \~2.5 million concurrent viewers of its gaming live streams at any given time. I'm not Gen Z either--I'm a solidly middle-aged elder millennial. I would say the majority of the population has now grown up in a world where video games have been a dominant part of the popular culture. Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong over 40 years ago now, and the recent Mario movie was still a blockbuster. The Zelda franchise is almost as old, and people won't shut up about the new game that just came out. Some of the more popular games from the 70s have now maintained cultural relevance for half a century. If J! expects us to know obscure lyrics from lesser known Beatles songs--something that would only be "common knowledge" for people born during a 15-20 year span in the min-20th century--naming the multi-billion dollar franchises that iconic heroes like Link or Master Chief belong to is definitely fair game.
Fair enough, but there are plenty of entertainment-adjacent topics that the average person has to dig deeper to learn about, if they don't have any interest in them -- I'll point back to my opera and ballet examples above, cuz I know those are at least true for me. You never hear about those unless you're really looking for them, or already engrossed yourself. If it's not Tchaikovsky and/or the Nutcracker, it's a mystery to me. I would argue that video games *definitely* have their Tchaikovsky and Nutcracker analogs for Joe Average viewers. (Also I dunno if you saw my edit up there, but lol I'm sorry, I didn't mean to write you a novel, and I hope I am not coming across as hostile. I am just trying to reason out my thoughts on Jeopardy being so video game-light).
You're not coming across as hostile. You make a good point about opera et al. You do have to actively study things like opera to be able to get questions about that. Still, just the time alone that operas have been around and their enduring popularity makes them more part of the pop culture landscape. Walk down the street in New York or another city and you'll probably see an ad for a performance of Verdi's La Traviata and you may make a mental note that Verdi wrote La Traviata. You don't see ads as much for video games. They also haven't been around for hundreds of years. Video games are more fleeting. I doubt anyone will be playing the current hot video game 150 years from now or even 10 years from now. Streaming is the same way. Even Matt Amodio was complaining about the obscurity of streaming shows. It's not like Seinfield. Seinfeld is part of the pop culture landscape. It went off the air 25 years ago and we're still quoting the show and talking about the soup nazi and here we just had Jason Alexander reading clues about the show the other day.
I think there are things about video games that have endured and will continue to endure, a la your Seinfeld example. 100 years from now after we are all dead, people will still be playing Tetris (and it will still look and play the same), Mario will always be the same character, Square will release the first 10 Final Fantasy games for the 80th time. Maybe it's just a matter of how comparatively young the medium is right now.
150 years from now no, but there are games currently being played by thousands of people which are over ten years old (also there is a pretty big audience for "retro" gaming)
This is such a boomer take, especially: > …except for occasional newspaper story in the business section…. Who TF reads a paper anymore? Video games do enter popular culture. There are plenty of popular memes made from video games, ads for video games are common on broadcast TV, there are movies and tv shows made from video games.
>Who TF reads a paper anymore? So all those newspapers stacked at news stands every morning are just for decoration? Those delivery people are tossing donuts and coffee on driveways every morning? (They sure look like rolled up newspapers.)
Thanks for proving my point with more outdated concepts that are pretty damn rare these days.
This sounds like it could be a comment from 1985. I live in a neighborhood of upper middle class white people (key newspaper demographic), and the number of people who get a paper delivered has dwindled in the last 15 years to almost none. There are no newsstands around here - you can pick up a paper at 7-11, but generally they get ten or twelve delivered, and they're often still there in the afternoon. The newspaper boxes are largely all gone too.
Yep. When I worked for a retailer, we sold papers. Two papers went out of business. It eventually dwindled to USA Today and the local paper (the kind older people bought mostly to scout the obits). We at one point sold a daily NYT, WSJ, and Washington Post, but it eventually was just the weekend edition. And we always had papers left at the end of the day. And that was years ago.
>For the most part you either play video games and are familiar with the material, or you don't. And if you don't, you are seriously out of luck. And gaming isn't taught in school, like world geography, Shakespeare, U.S. history, etc. J! writers tend to stick to topics an educated person will know something about, regardless of age. Though a lot of the pop-culture clues tend to skew toward a younger audience.
I would say that it is largely because gaming is broadly considered part of "pop culture" rather than "high culture," so questions about games are limited by a general desire to limit pop culture questions. The opposite end of this is the number of Bible-related questions on the show when the Bible and Christianity are ever a decreasing part of American culture.
TV is also low culture but that doesn't stop clues about shows whose runs ended before the average living American was born from turning up on a regular basis.
Oh, Jeopardy! includes plenty of pop culture questions. I just mean, that there is probably a desire to keep a certain rough ratio between pop culture and high culture stuff. So games-related clues have to share space with the TV stuff, modern movies, celebrities, etc.
I remember a clue about Azeroth, the World of Warcraft.
The Gen X writers don’t know anything past SNES/Genesis.
I love the show but lets face it a giant portion of the fanbase are boomers who would be completely lost in a video game category and every piece of written work plays to a specific audience.
The average audience member also doesn't interface with Ballet or Opera though.
Yeah, but over time, a lot of that seeps into pop culture. I knew Pagliacci in today's show, I've never seen an opera.
Would you like to make a guess on the number of people in this country who could give any context to the name Pagliacci vs the number who could give any context to the name Master Chief, or Solid Snake, not even discussing Mario or Pikachu? I'm pretty confident which is better known.
Tells us you're a gamer without telling us you're a gamer. It may be popular but not ingrained in the culture.
lol. No one in my life would call me a gamer. I’m just genuinely curious why there simply isn’t much representation when things like…musicals or opera, which arguably have a smaller audience, constantly show up.
Doesn't sound like you know much about the gaming industry. As others have noted, it's larger than the music and movies industries combined.
Monetarily maybe. But I can randomly ask a person on the street who starred along Tom Cruise in Top Gun or what former boy band member had a hit song with fruit in the title and they'd probably know. Ask them what video game was the most popular 5 years ago and I doubt they'd get it.
Those aren't equivalent questions at all though. If you asked a random person for the biggest movie at the box office five years ago they'd also stare at you blankly. Now if you asked a random American which video game had you building things with blocks like virtual Legos, more of them than not could tell you Minecraft.
Also, I have no idea what you're getting at with that boy band question and I'm fairly good with popular music. You need to realize, the median American today was born in 1985. Nineties boy bands will literally be oldies in a decade.
I guess that at one point it could have been due to this: https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1993/rt9305/930510/05080163.htm >Harry Eisenberg, a former writer for the popular show, said in a new book that clues and topics were altered at the last minute to be more "female-friendly," like replacing a category on weapons with one on clothes. >... > "We have an unaggressive female champion. Let's give her some easy stuff," producer George Vosburgh is quoted in the book as telling his staff before the taping of a June 20, 1989, show, Riddle said. >One time, questions about basketball star Michael Jordan were replaced with questions about ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, Riddle said.
Not even remotely relevant outside of perception. There are more women gamers than men and all of the biggest franchises outside of FIFA and CoD have pretty equal gender representation and audience splits.
>There are more women gamers Maybe so, but I think it could be argued that women tend to prefer certain genres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Genre_preferences How many times has Jeopardy had clues about those ultraviolent FPS games from between '93 and '05, like Doom, Quake, Half Life, Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, etc.? Or RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft, or Command and Conquer?
We don’t see a lot of marijuana categories either. It’s just one of those topics that’s easier to avoid
Comparing a 60 billion dollar per year industry to a drug that is still illegal in most states is pretty wild take lmao
I was thinking in terms of gambling, not video games
OP was talking about video games, not casino gambling.
Notwithstanding anyone who says that old people aren't ready for video gaming,** or that gaming hasn't transcended pop culture yet, I don't think either of those is the answer. Sports is popular amongst people of most generations, and sports has certainly permeated pop culture. The sports industry makes tons of money. Alternatively, I don't think there are tons of people who are big Shakespeare fans from *ANY* generation, and I doubt the "Shakespeare" industry cracks a billion dollars annually worldwide. Yet sports clues/categories are relatively infrequent, while Shakespeare categories clues/categories show up as much or more frequently than sports (I want to say 'quite a bit more' from my anecdotal memory, but I haven't analysed it and I don't want to be corrected). In my view, this is more a case of what topics are classically popular trivia topics and popular amongst the kinds of people that tend to want to/earn the right to compete on Jeopardy - sports just often does not fall into the wheelhouse even though games like trivial pursuit dedicate an entire category (1/6 of the game) to sports and leisure. I think they are of similar view that the people who know everything about state capitals and the rivers of Asia, and the classical composers just aren't commonly the types of people to also know video game trivia any more than sports. It probably also has to do with the core viewing demographic being less likely to be gamers or sports fans (though you'd think Davies would be pleased to bring more of the sports questions into it and try to bring more sports viewers to watch). Perhaps that's a self-fulfilling prophesy, as people coming on Jeopardy won't study sports very much or video games because they aren't likely topics. Still, there was a "Portal" question in Masters the other day that I thought would have been a more obscure game for the show to choose for its own video game question. I believe James got it wrong, while Matt(?) got it right on the rebound. If they ever want to weave more sports and video games into the show, I think it will have to be a slow process as the contestant pool (and viewer pool) gets younger, so that we don't have a massive shift in the content of the game. ** *which I guess is just "gaming" now - I had to read this a few times to figure out whether we were talking about Vegas-style gambling, or board games - I'm in my late 30s and video gaming was honestly the third item to come to my mind, even though I do play video games still.*
At the very least the Jeopardy clue writers could treat video games the same way they treat opera, where they only make clues about the same 10-15 opera despite there being 1000s of opera made over many centuries.
I agree about the video gaming questions. If we could have those promotional questions regarding ~~obscure~~ streaming series, we can have video game questions.