Trivial Pursuit
Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which winning is determined by a player's ability to answer trivia and popular culture questions. Players move their pieces around a board, the squares they land on determining the subject of a question they are asked from a card (from six categories including "history" and "science and nature"). Each correct answer allows the player's turn to continue; a correct answer on one of the six "category headquarters" spaces earns a plastic wedge which is slotted into the answerer's playing piece. The object of the game is to collect all six wedges from each "category headquarters" space, and then return to the center "hub" space to answer a question in a category selected by the other players.
For other uses, see Trivial Pursuit (disambiguation).Designers
1981
1981–present
English
2–6 (teams allowed)
5 minutes
45'–90'
Medium (dice, order of question cards)
General knowledge, knowledge of popular culture
Since the game's first release in 1981, numerous themed editions have been released. Some question sets have been designed for younger players, and others for a specific time period or as promotional tie-ins (such as Star Wars, Saturday Night Live, and The Lord of the Rings movies).
History[edit]
The game was created on December 15, 1979, in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, by Chris Haney, a photo editor for Montreal's The Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports editor for The Canadian Press.[1] After finding pieces of their Scrabble game missing, they decided to create their own game.[2] With the help of John Haney and Ed Werner, they completed development of the game, which was released in 1981.[1] During the development of the game, some of the early work and question writing was completed by Chris and John Haney in Weymouth Library, Dorset where they were staying with family.
The rights to the game were initially licensed to Selchow and Righter in 1982, then to Parker Brothers (later part of Hasbro) in 1988, after initially being turned down by the Virgin Group; in 2008, Hasbro bought the full rights, for US$80 million.[3]
By 1986, the board game had sold 20 million units, grossing $600 million in sales.[4] As of 2014, more than 100 million[5] games had been sold in 26 countries and 17 languages. Northern Plastics of Elroy, Wisconsin produced 30,000,000 games between 1983 and 1985. In December 1993, Trivial Pursuit was named to the "Games Hall of Fame" by Games magazine. An online version of Trivial Pursuit was launched in September 2003.[6]
Legal action[edit]
Worth lawsuit[edit]
In October 1984, Fred L. Worth, author of The Trivia Encyclopedia, Super Trivia, and Super Trivia II, filed a $300 million lawsuit against the distributors of Trivial Pursuit. He claimed that more than a quarter of the questions in the game's Genus Edition had been taken from his books, even to the point of reproducing typographical errors and deliberately placed misinformation. One of the questions in Trivial Pursuit was "What was Columbo's first name?" with the answer "Philip". That information had been fabricated to catch anyone who might try to violate his copyright.[20]
The inventors of Trivial Pursuit acknowledged that Worth's books were among their sources, but argued that this was not improper and that facts are not protected by copyright. The district court judge agreed, ruling in favor of the Trivial Pursuit inventors. The decision was appealed, and in September 1987 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the ruling.[21] Worth asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the case, but the Court declined, denying certiorari in March 1988.[22]
Wall lawsuit[edit]
In 1994, David Wall of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, launched a lawsuit against the game's creators. He claimed that in the fall of 1979, he and a friend were hitchhiking near Sydney, Nova Scotia, when they were picked up by Chris Haney. Wall claimed that he told Haney about his idea for the game in detail, including the shape of the markers.
Wall's mother testified she found drawings of his that looked like plans for a Trivial Pursuit-like game, but the drawings had since been destroyed. Wall's friend, who was allegedly hitchhiking with him that day, never testified. Haney said he never met Wall.
Over the years, there was much legal wrangling, notably around whether the suit should be decided by a judge or jury. On June 25, 2007, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled against Wall.[23]