Testing Your Intelligence on Facebook with Dumbville

Okay, so the game is called Dumbville. However, while the suffix “ville” has been thrown around so much that it became satirized in a “Facebook Game Idea Generator,” this particular Facebook app has nothing to do with farming, pets, cities, or any other simulation-process title. Dumbville, from the folks over at the Game Show Network, is actually a quirky quiz game of sorts, pitting players against one another in a battle of wits… or lack thereof. Set up as a series of brain-teasing quizzes, Dumbville is as insulting as it is amusing. Where it draws laughs with comical pop references, it might cause frowns with trick questions. Nevertheless, the app’s connection to the GSN network -- an established game-plus-prize portal -- does help to smooth over a few sharp edges with some nice, earnable rewards. And those rewards are likely part of the reason behind the game’s 257,000 monthly active users, and its appearance on our top emerging apps list early last month. When players first start up Dumbville, they begin as the “Village Idiot,” with your avatar represented by a dopey looking individual wearing a barrel. You don’t have any personalization power over it, other than picking its sex. Regardless, as you play and complete new quizzes, you’ll gradually level up and be “rewarded,” by earning an avatar that is a little less stupid-looking. Of course, it’s hard to say it’s a reward when the next level up is a pantless, unkempt fool with spittle on his or her shirt. All the same, this is sort of the theme of the game, and it is moderately amusing. As for the quizzes themselves, these are actually pretty fun (mostly). Each quiz has a series of timed, brain-teasing questions that will test your reading comprehension, awareness, memory, and general knowledge of pop culture, history, and so on. As an example, the second quiz has a simple task that asks you to click on sheep from top to bottom. However, the image uses subtle changes in perspective and scale to try and fool the eye. Other questions are a bit more straightforward, like simple games of memory that involve the remembering the orders or locations of objects. And, of course, there are the common knowledge questions such as ordering objects from oldest to youngest with The Sphinx on one end and Sarah Palin on the other. Most of them are all very amusing and quite fun, and as they become harder, more time is allotted. There are also a handful of questions that are merely meant to intentionally fool the player (in keeping with the theme of the app, apparently). Ever have someone ask you the riddle where the answer is toast about 19 times in a row; then they ask you what you put in a toaster? Obviously, the answer is bread, but you’ve been saying toast so much, that that’s what your brain is set on. Well, in Dumbville, they do the same thing. An example that stands out is giving the player a series of slides, with about three to five seconds on each to “Click on Barack Obama.” Then, in the same hustled series, say “Click on anyone but Barack Obama.” Another one was a series in the first round asking “How many ninjas are there?” - Three; “How many naked ninjas are there?” - Three; “How many naked knitting ninjas are there?” - Three; “How many toes does a three-toed sloth have?” - Three… oh wait, no! Oh look, you’re wrong and the game calls you dumb. It is all in good fun, but it makes it no less frustrating when GSN does this on the last question (more often than not), forcing you to redo everything. What adds further to the sting, however, is that every time you have to repeat the quiz, you earn less and less of the GSN currency, Oodles. Oodles are sort of a quasi-virtual currency that users can earn by playing various GSN titles. As far as the Facebook app goes, players must have a registered account with GSN in order to get any Oodles added to it as they play Dumbville. If they don’t create one, the Oodles you earn in game appear to be useless. It’s easy enough to create, as all you need is an email address, though for whatever backwards reason or another, the registration doesn’t accept emails with non-alphanumeric characters, meaning that if you have to use, say, a period in your Gmail account in order to user you real name… you can’t register with that one. Nevertheless, for many, the prizes are more than worth the extra annoyance of creating a new, viable, email account. Players can redeem everything from electronics (i.e. headsets), to board games, to magazines, to even entries into daily, weekly, and monthly sweepstakes for $250, $1,000, and $5,000 respectively. Overall, Dumbville is an interesting and original take on the quiz concept. Players should wear a thick skin, though. The premise of the player trying to “not be dumb” versus trying to be smart (i.e. Playfish’s Who Has the Biggest Brain? or wooga’s Brain Buddies) gives the app a more negative feeling.

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Testing Your Intelligence on Facebook with Dumbville

Christopher Mack

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Christopher Mack