Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia

A pretty standard documentary in format — talking heads, archival footage — but a far more dramatic story than you’d think. HQ Trivia was an absolute monster for about a year, and then vanished without trace. I stopped playing it as the bugs mounted and I got screwed out of a $5 win, so I didn’t know what came of it. Oh boy, did a lot of come of it. That’s really the lure here, the surprisingly chaotic story behind its rapid rise and precipitous fall. The doc gets interviews from just about all the major players, save for the two founders — one because he refused to participate (virtually everybody who worked for him dislikes him, so it’s not a surprise he declined), and other because he died 5 years ago — but those who are there do more than enough to paint the picture of a company that grew too big too fast, and a pair of founders who didn’t really like each other, weren’t compatible in a business sense, and ended up snuffing out their own creation. It isn’t a revolutionary doc, but it moves quick (90 minutes) and has a lot more to it than you’d think.