Trivia Bot is a chat robot focused on challenging the general knowledge and understanding of chat users on a variety of topics. It is the latest addition to the company’s growing library of Video Chat 3 plugins. Like the Chat Bot before it, Trivia Bot was a challenging project to implement in parallel to other ongoing development work on the company’s key product, but is a pleasure to use nonetheless, and will only get better with time.
What sets Trivia Bot apart from its more general counterpart is the capability to cycle through a database of questions automatically and point score each correct reply from chat members and guests. This bot doesn’t need to addressed directly – it’s always on when enabled. It can also supply helpful hints and reveal correct answers, if no correct guess is entered within reasonable time, and move on from questions that are proving difficult.
If quiz participants are registered members, their scores in any ongoing quiz will be stored until the whole question set is completed, while guests will keep their scores only while they remain in chat. Questions can be added, edited or removed in real-time. The same applies to scoring. Points are separate from chat credits, and GChat left it up to the chat owners to manually reward any quiz winners, if desired.
Want to run both types of bot in the same chat? No problem! The development team was really keen for the plugins with related functionality to mesh well together and it shows. Two robots live and cooperate happily side by side in the same room or between different rooms. There is nothing stopping the webmasters from having an interactive help system via the Chat Robot, and an ongoing quiz administered by its trivia sibling. The level of automation that can be reached with the two is truly impressive, even at this early stage in development.
As illustrated in the screenshot, Trivia Bot configuration screen is rather flexible and covers features discussed above.
For customers who had had a chance to peruse the admin panel features of the Chat Robot plugin, the setup should be quite familiar. Trivia Bot can be toggled on and off, moved between rooms and issue a custom greeting message to newcomers. Its alias is also completely down to the chat admin. Moderators will also be pleased to know that this bot can, like its predecessor, be handled like a normal chat user in a room. It can be silenced, kicked or even banned.
Trivia Bot can easily cross from casual entertainment into assessment and virtual learning environments. It’s an ideal tool for a flash quiz for a class of pupils working on a new topic or doing revision of already familiar material. It has full Unicode support and can issue questions and answers in several languages simultaneously, which is ideal for teaching basics of different languages, their spelling, vocabulary and standard grammar, or supporting a vibrant, multilingual community.
Basically, if it can be put into a quiz format – it can be done via Trivia Bot! The team is very excited about this potential application of the plugin and would be more than happy to hear recommendations from online educators who could bring their academic experience to bear towards improving this wonderful tool for their needs.
Trivia Bot is already available in the official Video Chat Demo. Pricing and availability information will follow nearer the date of the plugin’s commercial release. Keep an eye on GChat newsletter and News section, and don’t forget to forward any feedback about the plugin to the guys in development!
