Computer program Battle of Minds - “Battle of Minds - a game with benefits! Rules and subtleties. Statistics. How I got the premium version for free." “Battle of Minds”: How the Swedish brothers came up with a game for Russia How to find out the rating of the Battle of Brains

The game Battle of Wits is undoubtedly similar to many others, but what makes it different is that you don’t just have to answer questions or guess the correct option if you don’t know the answer. Here you can compete with your friends. However, it is not at all necessary that they are currently playing this game. You can invite them, they can be your friends on Facebook, and in general, if you are completely bored and don’t want to play with friends, you can choose a random opponent.

At the same time, unlike games of this kind that are familiar to you, you don’t have to be afraid that one of the players is more experienced and therefore already knows all the answers to the questions. There is nothing like this in the game Battle of Minds, new questions appear every day and there are at least 200 of them. So it’s simply unrealistic to learn everything. If you want to play Battle of Wits with a random opponent, then you just need to press the button and then wait.

Depending on your achievements. Yes, they will play an important role. An opponent will be chosen for you. So you don’t have to worry that you will come across someone who is too smart or, on the contrary, whom it will be easy for you to beat. You will then be presented with three categories. In each category you have to answer three questions. And so hold out for all three rounds. For each correct answer you get a point and the one who scores the most points will be the winner.

Well, if you want to show off your knowledge, then the game has the opportunity to write your own question. What if you get lucky and it gets published. The entire game is free, the only thing that can cost money is changing your avatar and choosing a specific background. Play for fun, learn something new every day, invite your friends and prove that you know more than them. And if not, then you will have a chance to fix it. This is exactly what the game was created for and will certainly provide such a chance.

The game Battle of Minds will help you calculate the limits of your own intelligence. You are invited to compete with other gamers and have a real brainstorming session. The questions cover a wide variety of topics, so get ready for a real challenge.

How to play Battle of Minds

Choose an opponent from your Facebook friends or a random person. Afterwards, you will begin to decide on the topics you want to think about and you will get three questions with different options. Choose the right one and continue the process. This is done by clicking the mouse. Your opponent will also answer these tasks, and it will be his turn to choose the topic of the next round. Based on correct guesses, points are calculated.

Many people want to download this wonderful intelligent application for Android, but they need to play on the computer in real time in order to fully speak with users. In total you will need to overcome six levels. Sometimes the wait for answers takes a long time, but there is a simple solution. You can simultaneously connect to several competitions and answer questions one by one.

In Battle of Minds there is a small cozy chat where you can get to know the person you are competing with. Some find new friends thanks to this wonderful game and begin to communicate in real life.

While most smartphone owners have been playing Battle of Wits for a long time, I only recently learned about this application. And I liked it so much that I decided to write a review about the game, thanks to which you can not only relax and have fun, but also learn something new.

"Battle of Minds" available in versions for Android, iOS and even Windows Phone. On official website There are download links. Although it can be easily found through a search in the Market. There is no browser version, i.e. You won’t be able to play “Battle of Wits” on a computer. I play on e-book on Android (this explains the eye-catching color of the screenshots - it looks good on a black and white E-ink screen =)).

The game is somewhat similar to “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” - from 4 possible answers to the question you need to choose the correct one.

Only the goal is not to get to the coveted million without room for error, but only to answer more questions than your opponent.

Yes it online game with real people (i.e. the game requires the Internet). This is what the main screen looks like:

To start a new game, you need to click on the inviting green button. You can find an opponent by nickname, play with friends from Facebook (to do this you need to link your account to this social network) or - the most often used option - let the system choose a random opponent for you.

After that, you and your opponent take turns choosing a topic for each round from three proposed categories:

XXI Century- events that occurred in 2000-2015. From “Who became the president of Egypt in 2014” to “Which country switched from digital television to analogue in 2009.”
In a healthy body- anatomy, medicine, proper nutrition, etc. Often you need to indicate the name of the muscle/bone/organ marked in the picture, what this or that phobia means, etc.
In the world of cinema- films, actors, Oscars.
Series- both Russian and foreign.
Cartoons and comics- I often come across questions about all sorts of Spider-Man or anime, but there are also questions about Soviet cartoons. Or about " Simpsons ».
Flora and fauna- animals and plants. It's not as simple as it might seem.
Around the world- not only geography, flags, capitals, but also some cultural traditions and customs.
Celebrities and media- models, TV presenters, the same actors, newspapers/magazines.
Reading hut- mostly about writers and their works, but there may be questions about proverbs or the meaning of some words.
History through the centuries- just a story, like in school.
Music- singers, bands, musical instruments.
In the world of sports- athletes, Olympic Games, all kinds of championships, rules, etc.
Arts and culture- paintings, museums, artists, classical music. There are also questions about writers and poets here.
Power and money- about the currencies of different countries and the powers that be. Brands, money, organizations like the EU or NATO, economic issues.
I believe - I don't believe- questions related to world religions, mythology or rituals.
Technical progress- about satellites, cars, various inventions, smartphones and computer things.
Granite Science- physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics (sometimes even a simple equation needs to be solved).
Bread and salt- about the cuisine of the peoples of the world and dishes with strange names.
Games of all kinds- mostly about all sorts of PlayStation, Nintendo and computer games.

The game lasts six rounds, each with three questions.

A wide variety of questions:

and very simple ones (like “What is claustrophobia?”),
and those where the answer can be calculated logically or by elimination,
and complex, where you need to know a specific fact or date,
and even those where you have to answer completely at random (“How many nerve endings are there per square cm of a woman’s skin”),
There are also questions with pictures (for example, you need to guess the actor or author of the picture).

There is little time to respond, about 20 seconds, so the likelihood that someone will Google the answers is minimized.

If your opponent went first, then after you answer, you will be shown which option he chose:

This can be found out after the round is completed by clicking on the corresponding cell:

The six most recently completed games are displayed at the bottom of the main screen:

You can enter them in the same way as an active game: look at the questions or challenge your opponent to a rematch.

If you win, a certain number of points are added to your rating; if you lose, they are subtracted. It is more profitable to play with strong opponents with a high rating, then after a victory up to 25 points are added, and in case of defeat nothing may be taken away at all. If you lose to a weak opponent, your rating can suffer greatly. Although it is not visible what the opponent's rating is, this can only be guessed after the end of the game.

You can chat with your opponent. And where there is a chat, there are people who want to meet =)

At the beginning of 2011, the Wilstead brothers offered cooperation to the Landin brothers, the purpose of which was to found the IT company FEO Media. So a group of like-minded people from the small Swedish town of Gothenburg rallied around the idea of developing a phone application called “Quizkampen” in the format of an educational quiz. Having traveled to more than twenty countries around the world, the game reached Russia, where it was downloaded by over 6 million users. The Russian version of “Quizkampen” - “Battle of Minds” is rapidly gaining popularity and, according to experts, can even compete with such games as “My Guests” and “Nano-farm”. A quarter of the affiliates' enterprise income comes from the quiz.

Start.

According to Henrik Wilsted, 2010 was marked by increased interest in mobile applications. They were developed by many enthusiasts: from computer science college students to experienced employees of technology companies. He and his classmate Kalle, who holds the position of head of the development department at FEO Media, did not want to lag behind the trend and decided to found their own startup. In his final year at university, Calle created a simple toy for a smartphone as his thesis. He was very interested in such things and intended to build a career in gaming. Vilstead watched with interest the hysteria happening around him, which in Sweden was called the “mobile boom,” and hastened to take advantage of the situation.

The decision to develop their own game was made instantly, but it remained unclear what exactly should be invented. Friends wanted to create a strategy where the user could fight with his friends step by step, while gaining points and receiving artifacts. Many ideas were explored and surveys were conducted among friends and relatives to see if they would like to play such a game. In fact, the process of inventing the concept was long and painful, since none of the working ideas seemed original to Wilstead. The process of developing an application and its further promotion is a very complex, resource-intensive work that requires sacrifices in terms of money and time. You can develop a game for years, exhaust all your strength, and eventually run into a terribly unpleasant fact when users simply didn’t like it or found it incomprehensible.

Then Henrik desperately declared that he would nail the door of his room and not leave there until he found a suitable game concept. Three hours later, he came out to the others and enthusiastically announced that a solution had been found, and its name was “Quizkampen”. The essence of the game was a confrontation between two users who needed to answer questions from different categories. The game was divided into six rounds, each round containing three questions. The friends immediately realized that the idea could work: the meaning of the game seemed to be common, but in this case an element of competition between the players was introduced. In such games, the user mainly competes only with himself, which quickly becomes boring, to the point of deleting the application from the smartphone.

About development.

Putting the idea into practice turned out to be much more difficult than simply designing the concept. Only after starting to develop the application, the founders of FEO Media understood why most companies developing games for smartphones stick to the classic version, where only one player takes the quiz. In the case of the Wilsteads, it was necessary to split all the players into pairs and then connect them with each other so that the “battle” could begin. Currently, the application has more than 50 million users, so a huge number of competitions take place in the system every hour, and its “fall” can lead to catastrophic consequences. However, the developers coped with the tasks. Thanks to their teaching profession, the Wilstead brothers independently managed to enter more than eight thousand questions into the application.

"Quizkampen" was launched in 2012, a year after painstaking work on the project. And a year later, the application managed to squeeze into first place in the Swedish download rankings in the Appstore.

Sweden is a country with exorbitant taxes and fees. According to tax legislation, an employee pays 30% of his salary to the state treasury, and another 30% is withheld from the employer from the amount of all payments to employees. Therefore, friends had to work without salary for more than a year so that their savings would be enough to develop the project.

About European markets.

The Wilsteads admit that they did not expect such wild success for their quiz. At some point, they decided that since they managed to gain popularity in Sweden, then why not expand their geographic presence to the markets of neighboring countries. Then they began to translate the questions into various languages, and also removed those that were known only to the native Swedish population.

According to the founders, the development of mobile applications and their further promotion is not a very expensive business. Two thousand dollars is usually enough for promotion. On the European continent, the development of the project is due to the widespread use of the capabilities of the social network Facebook. For promotion in Russia, VKontakte tools were used. As it turned out, focusing on the American audience results in serious expenses: every second application has an English version and the competition there is simply enormous. It turns out that a lot of money is spent on marketing, but the increase in users is relatively small. Along with the USA, for example, in the Republic of Poland, “Quizkampen” is the only quiz of its kind; there are no analogues yet. By the way, in this country it is called “Quizwanie”.

Generally speaking, the game is most widespread in countries such as Russia, France, and the Scandinavian countries, where being educated and well-read is a matter of prestige. An enlightened person stands much higher in status than one who has little interest in self-education.

"Quizkampen" in Russia.

The course towards the Russian market, where the popularity of smartphones is great, was predicted from the first day the company was founded. Entrepreneurs traveled around European countries, took part in exhibitions and hackathons, and assessed the potential of each country. “Battle of Minds” is played by users from all over the CIS. Surprisingly, in Kazakhstan the game took first place in the ranking of popular applications. However, there is a problem - the game is not available to residents of Crimea, despite the fact that you can play it freely on the territory of Ukraine.

The FEO Media company began preparing localization for Russian users in 2013. It took more than a year to compile the questions and translate them. Since the appearance of the quiz in Russia, downloads have been weak, which made the brothers seriously nervous. There were not enough available funds to replenish the advertising budget, and the outcome of such expenses would remain unknown. But, fortunately, a breakthrough began in mid-2014, when the number of downloads by Russian users began to increase exponentially.

Since none of the Landins and Wilsteads had ever been to Russia and did not know the Russian language, not counting the words “glasnost”, “perestroika”, “yes/no”, it was entrusted to the manager Evgeniy, who was responsible for the presence in the CIS, to come up with the name of the game for the Russian market . We looked at various options, including Ternirum. As a result, Evgeniy insisted on the name “Battle of Minds,” which, in his opinion, should have become a successful brand.

Currently, FEO Media is a small company with 35 employees. Half of these guys, for reasons of austerity, work half-time. Of these, 20 people are representatives of various countries where the quiz is localized. 3 employees are responsible for promotion and support in Russia. They monitor the filling of the application with new questions, changes in rules and legislation, and also establish communications with players who send suggestions or complaints.

The founders were faced with the fact that the Russian audience is very sensitive to topics related to sex. The fact is that among the quiz questions there are some that are related to biological and anatomical terms. Statistics show that Russian players actively respond to the emergence of such issues and promptly express their concerns or complain. Company representatives are forced to remove such content, although they themselves do not see anything reprehensible in it. It happens that a game has to be given a “+4” rating in order to limit access to it by teenagers.

About competitors.

The game “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is very popular in Russia. In this regard, a parallel is sometimes drawn between it and the Wilstead’s “Battle of Wits”. However, it is fundamentally wrong to compare these games, since “Battle of Wits” has a number of significant differences. To popularize the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” quiz, they set up a whole TV show where a lot of resources were poured into it. FEO Media spent relatively little money on promotion and promoted the application independently. “Battle of Minds” allows players to conduct discussions during the game, that is, correspond.

Sometimes this gives rise to funny cases. One day, a couple from Germany became so passionate about the game that, based on common interests, they decided to get married. Unfortunately, there are also unpleasant stories when players can get angry and be rude to each other. In such situations, the accounts of both are safely and irrevocably deleted. FEO Media employees do not have direct access to user correspondence, as they strictly adhere to confidentiality rules. Arbitration between the parties is carried out on the basis of consideration of complaints received from users.

About profit.

The project makes money by issuing premium accounts and advertising. Advertising banners pop up when the player completes another round. You can get rid of banners by purchasing a premium account, the cost of which varies depending on the operating system: 169 rubles in the Play Market and 96 rubles in the AppStore. In addition to eliminating advertising, such an account provides the player with additional functions, such as viewing fight statistics and changing an avatar.

To monetize the game, FEO Media uses the mobile service Mopub, where advertisers are concentrated. It operates according to a special principle: “whoever pays the most orders advertising.” Companies evaluate Quizkampen in terms of target audience coverage and can select specific user groups among whom they want to position their products or services. Among the advertisers there are even competing services that are immediately blocked. Regarding advertising, there are restrictions in Sweden. For example, it is prohibited to broadcast advertising information to children and teenagers.

In 2014, an agreement was concluded between the German concern Ravensburger and FEO Media, which provided for the production of board games that would include the Quizkampen quiz. According to the terms of the deal, Ravensburger will pay a commission for using the game, but will begin promoting tabletop equipment independently. Currently, two versions of such games are ready, localized for the markets of Italy and Germany. It is possible that a model with a Russian-language interface will soon appear. Looking at the popularity of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, in particular their marketing promotion strategy, the guys from FEO Media decided to launch their own television project. Later, an offer will be considered from the Swedish television company ITV Studios, which intends to acquire broadcast rights.

The founders of “Battle of Minds” do not cooperate with Russian advertisers. At the stage of entering the Russian market, we had experience of interacting only with the administration of the social network Vkontakte. It is possible that the FEO Media marketing department is negotiating cooperation with some Russian brands. Basically, all application users in the regions of presence see the same advertising.

According to the Landins, a year ago an extremely unpleasant situation happened. The advertising in the application was ordered by an American social network whose audience is gay and transgender. Since the company's top management adheres to European values, which center on tolerance, it was decided to begin cooperation. A few hours after submitting their content, the founders’ corporate inbox began to receive angry letters, which even contained threats of legal action. Management had no choice but to hastily terminate the advertising contract with the social network.

Companies from the Russian segment turn to FEO Media mainly to include questions in the quiz that would indicate their brands. In return they offer significant sums. For example, the questions should include: “The best clinic in Moscow”, “The place where you can buy the most delicious pizza in St. Petersburg.” But the service’s policy does not allow accepting such offers, despite the fact that good profits may be lost. Questions for the quiz, which may include clinics and eateries, according to the Wilsteads, are sent by the users themselves. The reputation of the game, as well as the company as a whole, will be dealt a blow, since users are not interested in their wasted time being used for someone else’s selfish gain purposes. The flow of proposals from users is carefully moderated for spam and advertising by FEO Media employees.