Behind HQ Trivia

[mozfest-bot]

[ UUID ] 9d178ff9-d1c5-4216-bfc0-5ff6f9f59d20

[ Session Name ] Behind HQ Trivia [ Primary Space ] Youth Zone [ Secondary Space ] Openness

[ Submitter's Name ] Dominic Fitch-Jones [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] Student [ Submitter's GitHub ] @dmfj

What will happen in your session?

HQ Trivia, a live mobile game show, has quickly gained worldwide traction, enticing all kinds of people to compete in their daily shows. A game like this, is quite different than a traditional mobile game, in that it's a really unique concept, and that the underlying technology used to make it all happen, is rather interesting. This session would focus on teaching others how to apply practical reverse engineering techniques, to experiment and learn about what goes on behind the scenes to make something like HQ work.

What is the goal or outcome of your session?

Technology has become a large and crucial part in many of our lives, we regularly use mobile apps to accomplish all kinds of things. The advanced functionality and ease that many of these apps provide, is truly remarkable. This has led to many people taking this technology for granted, passing it off simply as if though it were magic, when in reality, these apps are a culmination of many years of innovation. Learning the skills and tools required to effectively discover what goes on behind the facades of your favourite apps, can yield a tremendous learning opportunity.

If your session requires additional materials or electronic equipment, please outline your needs.

• Projector or display
• Post-it notes / pens

Time needed

60 mins

[chadsansing]

The reverse-engineering angle is interesting, @dmfj - can you explain a bit more here about what makes HQ Trivia's technology different and what participants might learn from it? Is there an opportunity in this session to demonstrate how the app collects or doesn't collect players' data, as well, to surface the things we might take for granted about data collection and mobile games, as well?

[dmfj]

@chadsansing Sure. The systems they have in place for question distribution and answer collection use a mixture of HTTP and WebSockets. The data that goes back to them when players answer a question is handled within a matter of seconds, at often times at a rather large scale.

The app uses RTSP tech to deliver a low latency video feed to all of their players. Using their internal API, they can facilitate a lot of other functions as well: their friends system, extra lives, payouts, and such.

What I'd hope for participants to get out of this is to learn more about reverse engineering in general, I'm just using HQ as a front as I think it would make for an interesting session and hope that some of those who attend would be familiar with it and enjoy playing it.

When I spoke to mobile games, I was trying to get at the fact that HQ is quite different than a traditional (offline) games that would be played on your phone -- HQ is very much a community-based thing and also has far more complex tech than your average mobile game.

[chadsansing]

Thanks for the extra detail. @dmfj!

[Jcoopt]

Hey @dmfj few questions:

1. is this a session you've run before? 2.how might it run int the room i.e is it a talk or a demonstration
2. following on from 2. , how much audience interaction might you want to be fitting in (I notice that you've asked for post it notes.)?

[dmfj]

Hey @Jcoopt!

1. I have not run this as a session / talk in the past myself, no. I have however been actively playing HQ and been involved with the community myself for about eight months at this point. I have been studying how the internals of the game work, and creating software to help other avid players in my spare time, by hooking into their (internal / undocumented) API.

2. I would consider this session to take more of a workshop style as opposed to simply a lecture -- it will certainly be interactive as I said, I'd like to open up the room on several occasions throughout for open discussions. Furthermore, I have some ideas of activities that I hope to be engaging with participants. That said, this session does aim to be somewhat more advanced / in-depth than some of the other sessions in the Youth Zone, I'd say. The post-it notes would be for an activity in which participants would write a slightly obfuscated message similar to one that could be returned as part of an API response perhaps. They would then exchange post-it notes with another participant and try to figure out what was done to the message and decode it.

[chadsansing]

@dmfj, would you please let us know if you would be able to attend MozFest without a stipend?

[dmfj]

@chadsansing - likely not, unfortunately

[chadsansing]

Thank you for the information, @dmfj.

[chadsansing]

@dmfj - have sent a question to you via email :)

[dmfj]

@chadsansing and I've replied 🙂