Get Creative On Game Night With These 8 Fun Trivia Themes
It's easy to plan a virtual game night with a video conferencing platform like Zoom. If you're looking for a fun way to test your knowledge and compete against your friends, host a themed trivia night on your next video call. Here are eight Zoom trivia theme night ideas to help you get creative.
Setting up a trivia night on Zoom requires a little prep time beforehand. To get started, first make sure you and your friends all have an updated version of Zoom on their computer or smartphone. The free version of Zoom has a 40 minute time limit for group chats of three or more people. You can add up to 100 participants on your free call, but once the 40 minutes is up, you'll need to end the meeting. With that in mind, you'll need to plan to switch hosts and start new meeting sessions if you want your trivia night to go above 40 minutes. You can also purchase a paid Zoom plan, which starts at $14.99 per month for Zoom Pro.
Next, you'll need to decide on a date and time to schedule your trivia night. After you've worked out those details, you can start planning the fun stuff. There are plenty of ways to challenge each other with a themed trivia night, and how you go about it is up to you. You can create the rules or decide on them together. To write the questions, you can either find them from a source or write them all yourself. If you do choose to write or compile the questions by yourself, you may decide it's better to act as the host, rather than try answering the questions, too, since you'll likely remember many of the answers.
Here are some options to choose from to plan it out, including some ideas from websites and trivia apps, and some I'd love to see my friends battle it out over.
1. Movies of the 1990s and early 2000s
If you and your friends love to talk about movies you grew up with, this themed trivia idea is a fun way to go. You can create the questions yourself or look through some of the trivia sections on the Internet Movie Database to come up with ideas. Questions could be as specific as, "What color was Kevin's sweater in Home Alone?" The main thing is to get creative.
2. Which meme is it?
You can create a meme-based trivia easily if you go to KnowYourMeme.com. From there, you can search through the meme database by selecting "Memes" from the menu. After you pick out questions for each meme, you can take screenshots of the memes or share your screen so your friends can see them at the same time in the chat.
3. A music-themed trivia night
Music-themed trivia isn't the most original idea, but there are so many ways you can get creative with the questions by getting some inspiration from apps like the trivia app SongPop.
An interactive way to do this is to pick out a music playlist and go through sound clips. You can ask your friends specific questions about the song, band, or singer, or if you prefer, ask them to name the song name and the artist. Use a portable bluetooth speaker near your computer or share your computer sound on Zoom through the screen share option. If you do share your screen, make sure you've got the sound share box checked and aren't showing anything that would give away the answers.
If you want to keep it super simple, you can stick to a "fill in the lyrics" type trivia, where your friends have to correctly guess the missing words from lyrics up on the screen.
4. True, false, or bogus trivia night
This category can include question types of any kind, but they need to be questions with true or false answers. Since this will be easier odds, you can make it more difficult by adding a “bogus” or “b.s.” category. To do this, though, you’ll need to come up with real questions that have an element of truth to them, as well as questions you’ve made up that have no truth whatsoever.
For example, a false question might be “Clarence is the real-life name of Bruno Mars, true or false?” The answer is false — his real name is Peter — but the question has an element of fact since Bruno Mars is a real person, and he does have a different birth name.
A bogus question could use a made-up film name with a fake actor, with no element of truth. See if you can fool your friends by getting really creative.
5. Disney movie trivia
This idea comes from QuizUp, a trivia game app available on Google Play and the App Store. In theory, you could probably do a Zoom trivia night using QuizUp itself, but it's more fun to write your own questions if you're hosting a themed night.
QuizUp lists Disney movie trivia as America's third favorite trivia topic according to its user data. To do your own Disney movie trivia, you can make it as interactive as you'd like. You can come up with a variety of questions about Disney characters, themes in the movies, movie soundtracks, dates, and more. For extra fun, try using movie clips you can find on YouTube and share your screen with your friends.
6. Celebrity pseudonyms vs. real names
Speaking of real celeb names, you could host a whole trivia night on that. QuizRunners posted this idea in a blog post, and you can do your research on celebrities with pseudonyms easily. Write your questions however you'd like, and throw off your best friends with real-life names of celebs they may never have heard.
7. A book-themed trivia night
If you and your friends are book worms, dive in and create a book trivia night. This can be more specific, i.e. novels from the 2010s, or focus on a specific book series if you'd like and see who knows the most about the Harry Potter books or the latest beach reads.
8. Best friend trivia
If you want to see who knows the most about you, you can write trivia questions about yourself for a good laugh with your friends. These can be whatever you'd like about yourself. This idea comes from several apps I've seen on the App Store and Google Play, such as Burn — Multiplayer Quiz Game, Trivico, and How Well Do You Know Me?. You can create your own questions using the apps and then play together while you're on Zoom.
If you'd prefer not to use an app, you can write your own questions and host the meeting over Zoom.
Once you've got your theme and questions, get ready to challenge your friends to see who scores the most points. It's easy to set up a themed trivia night with Zoom, so have fun getting creative.
