Popular daily quiz game HQ Trivia is adding a new feature on Friday that might make winning a little bit easier. If you decide to upload your contact list into HQ following Friday’s update, you’ll be able to see which of your friends are playing the same match as you and even what answers they pick mid-game. This new feature builds on a previous social-focused update HQ made back in early April, when the company first launched an in-app friends list and let players compare high scores with one another.
The new friends feature is pretty straightforward. If you choose to connect your address book and add your friends who also play HQ, you can see who is playing during an active game. From there, you’ll see the avatars of your active friends next to the answer of a question. Users can then place their own avatar next to their answer of choice, which will make it viewable by other friends in the game. HQ says it’s also launching a Nearby Friends feature to let players know of new players who aren’t in their address book who might be playing in close proximity.
These features, while not game-changing additions to HQ, certainly help build player communities and retain users over time. Some people who fall off the HQ bandwagon do so because they don’t have friends to play with every day, or they simply have trouble answering some of the harder questions the app throws at players around one-third to halfway through a game. These new features seek to address both of those issues, first by giving people a leg up by helping them effectively digitally crowdsource answers without having to be physically in the same location. And with Nearby Friends, the makers of HQ are hoping they can facilitate real-world connections and communal playing, like you might find at local bar trivia.