Something strange has happened to game show culture. It hasn’t disappeared, as it’s still perfectly possible to stumble across a game show, live or re-run, while flipping channels. But some time in the mid-2000s, the popularity of quiz-style game shows seemed to seep away and flow into the competitive talent show genre. If you spent a chunk of your childhood watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire with your siblings, or talking through Jeopardy with your parents, you may now set aside the same hours of the evening to watch contestants on American Idol or The Voice.
Part of the reason for this transition is that, particularly in the last few years, viewers have gained the ability to interact with and impact talent shows, whereas we could only play along with game shows. There’s not really a way to incorporate fan tweets into a quiz show, but viewers all around the world vote and sway decisions in the talent show model.
But the good news is that if game shows have lost some of their popularity on TV, they have endured in a form that fans can interact with. Thanks in large part to the boom in mobile gaming, pretty much every major quiz or game show ever to air is now available in video game form.
Beginning with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, there are two popular apps available that bring the show to life in different ways. Millionaire Game Free is a straightforward adaptation of the game show, featuring 1,500 different trivia questions for a nice cycle of variety. The only real difference between the game and the show is that options like “Phone A Friend” and “Ask The Audience” are replaced with three “Skip” options, which make sense given that it’s a single-player game. The other app, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire & Friends, is also a faithful adaptation, though it incorporates an element of social competition. With this app, you can challenge friends or other app users to trivia contests within the game show format, with the winner getting a shot at the million-dollar question.
The only other show that experienced a similar boom to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in the 2000s was Deal Or No Deal, which has enjoyed popularity on numerous continents among a huge range of audiences. And the Deal Or No Deal app makes for a very traditional version of the show for that audience to enjoy: you simply pick cases and try to beat the banker to secure the best payout possible—or land on the lucky $1 million case. Incidentally, Deal Or No Deal is also one show that led to gaming content outside of the app or PC market as well. The online Deal Or No Deal games bring the game show to life in somewhat-similar fashion to the app. The difference is that it involves a real money component, so while you won’t be taking home payouts like contestants on the show, there is a reward for making a wise decision of when to accept the bank
er’s offer.
Jeopardy, too, now exists in multiple games that you can easily access and enjoy if you’re not watching the actual show as much. JEOPARDY! – America’s Favorite Quiz Game pretty much brings the show to your phone or tablet in its truest form. There are thousands of clues to play through, and you can do it either on your own, through WiFi, or as part of pass-and-play competition. For a fun little touch, you can also design your own character icon to watch as you play through the trivia. Meanwhile, Sports Jeopardy! has similar trivia content exclusively in the sports category, though its design is far simpler than the main app.
Those are just a few examples. But the idea is that if you’ve found yourself lamenting the slow but sure decline of game show TV, you may find a happy home in the mobile app environment. Most every possible game show from the last 40 or 50 years is available in one form or another.
