Movie Review: Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia

I wasn’t amongst the very first people to play HQ Trivia when it debuted in 2017, but it wasn’t long after learning of the live gameshow in which players could win real money that I gave it a try and became instantly hooked. If you were also one of the millions who wound up playing, you’ll recall that it took place twice a day, once in the afternoon and once in the evening, and would last about 15 minutes. Everyone watching could answer the progressively harder multiple-choice questions, getting eliminated for wrong answers. Whoever remained and answered the final question correctly split the pot amongst each other. At first this would often only equate to a few dollars, but as the app grew in popularity the jackpots got larger and larger.

While it is a great concept, and could be a lot of fun, HQ Trivia was far from problem-free. For starters, you couldn’t cash out any of your winnings until you hit $20 in total, and those winnings were only good for 90 days, which meant many “winners” often wound up collecting nothing. More immediately obvious though, were the myriad technical issues participants would encounter, often even leading to ejection from the game in the middle of a winning streak. As such, at some point, most of us just sort of stopped opening the app and eventually HQ Trivia was all but forgotten.

So what exactly happened to it? In Glitch, director Salima Koroma looks to find out. Through interviews with former hosts Sharon Carpenter and Scott Rogowsky (affectionately referred to by fans as “Quiz Daddy”) along with tech journalists and one of the company’s backers we learn about the origins of the company and the vaguely Succession-esque dramas transpiring behind the scenes as it grew in popularity. Co-founder Rus Yusupov is not painted in a particularly flattering light, which is only compounded by his decision not to take part in the documentary, but it doesn’t sound like much beyond the core concept was handled correctly by anyone at HQ.

There isn’t really anything groundbreaking about Koroma’s film, which is comprised entirely of the usual talking heads interspersed with archival footage, but it does serve as a fascinating time capsule. The story of HQ Trivia may be unique in many ways, but in many others it also serves as a seemingly perfect representative of the fast-paced and reckless manner in which tech startups operate and could seemingly have been about countless other failed firms with only minor differences (maybe we’ll be hearing from the Pets.com puppet soon?). Beyond all the money that was burned through though, this story has a particularly tragic ending. If you remember the app or are at all interested in the tech world this is an imperfect but involving film that offers up a rare glimpse into what it was really like working for one of these companies in the last few decades and serves as a reminder of the toll the high-pressure startup world can take. ★★★★