How do you write or find Millionaire questions?

[clutchbrady]

I'm currently working on doing my own game for Twitch and was wondering if anyone had some resources on questions or question writing, and some of the nuances anyone has picked up on while watching the show over the years.

Specifically, I'm looking to figure out:

• Ways to find questions/question databases
  
• Finding ideas and writing from scratch
  
• How to rank those questions on the money tree (determining difficulty)
  
  
  Thanks for your time and I would appreciate any input!
  

[millionairenut]

As somebody who loves writing questions for Millionaire RPGs, I'd like to share some tips.

I myself love general knowledge, drawing from different areas. I watch many YouTube videos and play trivia on different sites. I honestly might be inspired by something I see there or something related to that. If you play trivia, study trivia, you can draw a lot of good stuff from there. You can also watch movies and read books to stimulate your mind as well. There's always, always an opportunity for knowledge and it soak it all in.

Difficulty of questions is where you have to be judicious. I honestly have a harder time coming up with questions that are lower on the money tree than the ones that are higher on them. When I write for RPGs, I tend to write the high amount questions first and work my way down. When you come across something new, and when you watch the show a lot, ask yourself what is likely to be a question for a higher amount, what would be in the middle tier and what might be one of the earlier questions.

It's important to ask questions people would, should or could get, but then again, you never know. Stuff might not always be common knowledge, but people could get that or they could get a seemingly easier question that they struggle on. I know for RPG 98 I tried to make the earlier questions relatively easy, but I was disappointed neither contestant went very far and went through their lifelines. I want to see as many of my questions asked as possible, and I hope that will happen more in the future.

So, I wish you good luck. I hope this helps. If not, it was still fun sharing my thoughts.

[clutchbrady]

May 30, 2020 21:21:19 GMT -5 millionairenut said:

As somebody who loves writing questions for Millionaire RPGs, I'd like to share some tips.

I myself love general knowledge, drawing from different areas. I watch many YouTube videos and play trivia on different sites. I honestly might be inspired by something I see there or something related to that. If you play trivia, study trivia, you can draw a lot of good stuff from there. You can also watch movies and read books to stimulate your mind as well. There's always, always an opportunity for knowledge and it soak it all in.

Difficulty of questions is where you have to be judicious. I honestly have a harder time coming up with questions that are lower on the money tree that are higher on them. When I write for RPGs, I tend to write the high amount questions first and work my way down. When you come across something new, and when you watch the show a lot, ask yourself what is likely to be a question for a higher amount, what would be in the middle tier and what might be one of the earlier questions.

It's important to ask questions people would, should or could get, but then again, you never know. Stuff might not always be common knowledge, but people could get that or they could get a seemingly easier question that they struggle on. I know for RPG 98 I try to make the earlier questions relatively easy, but I was disappointed neither contestant went very far and went through their lifelines. I want to see as many of my questions asked as possible, and I hope that will happen more in the future.

So, I wish you good luck. I hope this helps. If not, it was still fun sharing my thoughts.

Thanks for the long and thought out post, millionairenut! This definitely helps... I've noticed I have started with some of the higher ranking questions first also. I've been watching previous Millionaires just to understand what previous questions' difficulty has been, and a lot more anecdotal knowledge and history seems to go in the later questions, especially in years past.

I did a test run and found I was able to gauge difficulty pretty well but I had a question about "A cut of beef is marbled if it contains what?" for $200 and the person nearly got it wrong, which makes me consider what is common knowledge, lol.

Appreciate your time!

[mysteryman123]

I've been trying to come up with fan games, too. A lot of times I'll just watch archived episodes on YouTube and jot down questions from there that I like. Other great places to look are websites like FunTrivia or Sporcle and books like Ken Jennings' Trivia Almanac or Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. As for coming up with the difficulty of the questions, I actually find it easier to start with the mid-tier questions because a lot of the stuff I find ends up being not too hard, but not too easy either.

[Cohen L.]

I apologise in advance if I've replied to a months-old post, but, as the host of an RPG series on the Discord server, I have been writing all the questions myself since the very first game, and as the months have progressed, I've been trying to use a lot more reference material than just the Internet.

I've been trying to get more of the Quiz Books, as they may be of some help towards me when writing questions, and I considered looking at some of the questions from the board game I own, just to see how to make the questions my own. I may also look at footage of other versions around the world through YouTube, or even online sources, such as the WWTBAM Wiki, Wikipedia (though I tend to check the citations rather than the actual article, just in case I need to back up something).

With the first two questions (I use the 12-question format), I try to settle the contestant in with a joke answer, just like the US, because I don't want anyone to lose on said level, but I try to make the questions more about things that are almost common knowledge. That then decreases with the difficulty of each question raised by the minute.

I try and incorporate a variety of topics in the questions, and with each game, I don't want to try and repeat myself a lot, so I make sure each question is a different topic. For the top prize question, I love to research all kinds of interesting and almost-obscure facts, because you never know what may be of interest to you, but not to others - or even the opposite, in some cases!

With the length of the questions, I try to keep them short and sweet, and include details only if necessary, such as for a lower-level question.

Sometimes, it's hard to write mid-tier questions, because I have to make sure that the questions aren't too hard, compared to tier 3, or even 1 (think of New Zealand's brief version - people complained the first questions were tougher than the last few ones), but I manage to find some on topics that are again, varied and non-repetitive.

That's just my own experience with the questions, but I hope it's of some interest to you!

[kplewisvox]

For a high level question, if you ask ten people, nine should get it wrong. But if two of them say "Who cares?", it's a bad question.