FoxMarie aka CarrieLynn Wins Second Life Quiz Show

This past weekend I participated in a Second Life based quiz show run by Pooky Amsterdam called The 1st Question. As FoxMarie Tennen, I competed with two other notables of the virtual world: Slim Warrior, a musician, and Bash Quandry, an entrepreneur. The show is filmed by Treet TV, and you can see it and older shows at Pooky’s website.

The space was created to represent a traditional quiz show: there were “physical” separations between the audience, the hosts, and the participants, as can be seen in this picture (I’m the one on the far right):

The quiz show is a half-hour long, broken into three segments by commercials, similar to the traditional format of quiz shows. We were asked topical questions relating to virtual worlds and current news. In the first round, each participant was asked a True/False statement. In the second round, we each had to define a new word of our own making, and the audience voted on which they liked the best. In the third round, a series of questions were asked, and we had to be the first to “buzz in” with the correct answer.

What was interesting was the role the audience played. As stated, it was their determination in the second round that decided who was awarded the points. In the third round, through the text chat of Second Life, they could provide the participants with answers if we could not think of it. Both the audience and the participants were encouraged to go online and search for answers. I can say, I preferred finding the answers on my own than relying on the audience: the one time I relied on the audience, I came off as something of a fool.

Overall, it was a very interesting experience to see how the quiz show genre had been adapted for production, distribution and exhibition within this virtual world.