The Story Behind Our Work For WatchMojo's Multiplayer Trivia!
Over the past 4 years, Bain Public has been working closely with WatchMojo, one of the largest, Canadian-based producer, publisher and syndicator of video content. Their flagship channel is one of the biggest channels in YouTube history — 24+ million subscribers —and they have recently become the 50th largest global YouTube channel on strength of 30% monthly growth.
The Bain Public team has been working closely with WatchMojo on a new initiative, which was led by our Product Designer, Sirena Chan: Multiplayer Trivia! On Tuesday April 12th, WatchMojo released their brand new multiplayer Trivia game, which can be played on their website here.
Interactive Trivia
At the beginning of November, 2021, WatchMojo released their first version of trivia called interactive trivia! Every time WatchMojo releases a new video, 2-4 trivia questions are written down and stored in our database pertaining to that video. With the help of the Bain Public team, WatchMojo capitalized on these 20,000+ accumulated trivia questions by creating 12 interactive trivia games. Trivia questions would be prompted to the watcher throughout the videos; this was the first iteration of a trivia game.
While the initial idea of trivia was great, there were some problems that arose. Interactive trivia could only support single user gameplay and did not have a multiplayer option. It wasn’t flexible and thus WatchMojo couldn’t hold trivia contests where many users could play together and win prizes; therefore, interactive trivia was not keeping up with alternative business models while engaging with users online. Finally, it wasn’t a monetizable platform for retailers as it wasn’t equipped with the ability to promote merchant discounts or products in front of WatchMojo’s massive audience. While interactive trivia was a great idea, it had some issues that needed to be addressed.
The Solution: Multiplayer Trivia!
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the WatchMojo and Bain Public teams noticed an increase in more users turning to online gaming. While interactive trivia was a great start, it needed an upgrade to be able to expand. The teams wanted to turn trivia into an actual online game, which led to their new initiative: Multiplayer Trivia!
This new and upgraded version of trivia enables users to play against other users, which provides the opportunity for WatchMojo to host contests or trivia events with many users. This allows prizes to be won, such as digital cash or digital gift cards, connecting trivia to everyday shopping.
The idea around a massive multiplayer online trivia experience will keep fans immersed in the game, while both increasing overall traffic to the website and encouraging the creation of new communities within fanbases. This new multiplayer trivia transformed the interactive trivia (which can still be played by engaging in the Trivia room without friends).
What is Multiplayer Trivia?
The intentions behind multiplayer trivia is to test the user’s knowledge with whatever topic they want in the realm of the entertainment industry. There are 9 categories: Film, TV, Celeb, Video Games, Anime, Pop Culture, Music, Comic, and Exclusive.
The user can play in 3 game modes: Sprint (10 questions in 6 minutes), Training (20 questions in 12 minutes), and Marathon (50 questions in 30 minutes). If a user chooses the Sprint mode, they can choose to play questions related to a specific video. If a user chooses Training mode or Marathon, they can choose to either play from one of the 8 categories or all of them.
The user also has two options to play: they can either host a game themselves and send the link to their friends to join their trivia game, or they can be just a player that gets invited to a game via a web link. The difference between hosts and players is that a host can alter between the different modes and categories while non-host players cannot; non-host users only can participate in the changes being made.
How We Work With WatchMojo: Product Team in Residence (PTIR)
Now how did the Bain Public team help WatchMojo in evolving interactive trivia to multiplayer trivia? Well, many companies don't have a lot of experience defining Chief Product Officer (or VP Product) roles and sometimes struggle with hiring product managers. We recognized this, which is why we offered to WatchMojo a Product Team in Residence (PTIR) service that helps companies co-locate our own product managers in-house to help plan, coordinate and maximize strategic innovation in their product space.
This is exactly what we have been doing for WatchMojo: we’ve embedded ourselves into their company as if we are a part of their team and have helped them grow valuation and product value (and still growing). Bain Public took on the role of the product team for WatchMojo and assisted them over the last 4 years in building their roadmap.
What is Product Team in Residence (PTIR)?
Throughout each quarter, leveraging our SOAP™ workflow, we guide our client’s product team in the right direction. However, with Product Team in Residence, we aren’t just guiding the product managers, but co-working with them! Our new service helps our clients plan, coordinate and maximize strategic innovation in their product space, with the assistance of our in-house product managers! We conduct user interviews, communicate directly with the client and even pitch to stakeholders. Clients get product strategy, tactics and product management solutions from us, directly in-house!
How PTIR helped create Multiplayer Trivia for WatchMojo
Our new Product Team in Residence (PTIR) service, which was created out of our extended work with WatchMojo, blended both teams to effectively co-work together, which resulted in the creation of Unity – a back office workflow management system, Interactive Trivia and its evolution into Multiplayer Trivia!
Our team helped their product team brainstorm and unlock their golden ideas, which is how the Multiplayer Trivia idea was discovered. We also identified the market opportunities, developed a unique point of view, gathered customer feedback, and uncovered profitable market opportunities; this was the beginning stages of creating the pillar for Multiplayer Trivia. Our team guided, defined and refined WatchMojo’s strategic opportunities, where we brought together exec-level stakeholders with the WatchMojo team so that everyone understood the product objectives and the role each member played in connecting the roadmap and its enablement together.
Using our SOAP methodologies with our in-house product team, we worked with WatchMojo’s entire executive team to help collaborate and consolidate ideas into a solid roadmap, which efficiently and successfully led to the launch of Multiplayer Trivia. Our pillar format enabled us to prove and pitch the business case to the executives on why Multiplayer Trivia is an important initiative to move forward with. We were able to figure out what would be feasible and realistic to deliver to the public, which helped WatchMojo reach their next financial milestone. We co-worked with WatchMojo for 2 quarters on Interactive Trivia and 1 quarter on Multiplayer Trivia, and we are so thrilled with how it turned out!
Case study written by Jessica Scandaliato. Thanks to Paul Ortchanian for reading drafts and overseeing aspects of its publication. Also, if you have any feedback or criticism about this article, feel free to shoot us an email at info@bainpublic.com.
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