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Trivia app QuizUp is becoming a primetime TV gameshow on NBC

Trivia app QuizUp is becoming a primetime TV gameshow on NBC

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QuizUp, the trivia app that scored its creator more than $22 million in venture capital funding after a stratospherically successful launch in 2013, is getting its own primetime TV show. NBC is partnering with QuizUp developer Plain Vanilla games to make QuizUp America, an interactive gameshow that will pit TV contestants against viewers at home who have qualified using the app, making both sides answer head-to-head questions to win "life-changing" amounts of money.

The trivia app became a rapid success after it hit the App Store in late 2013, recording more than 5 million downloads in only five weeks and scoring developer Plain Vanilla Games a significant amount of venture capital funding from investors keen to find the next Angry Birds. The game made its way to Android a few months later and added social features earlier this year, which the developer says its community was asking for.

QuizUp got more than $22 million in venture capital investment

Those social features also serve to keep QuizUp's fanbase playing the game when otherwise they may have moved onto fresher apps. Similar cycles have happened in the past, with an app rising to prominence, receiving huge investment, and then dropping off the face of the planet. In 2012, Pictionary-a-like Draw Something was picked up by mobile gaming powerhouse Zynga for $180 million. When the app slid out of the App Store charts a few weeks later, Zynga's share price was sliced in half.

QuizUp, too, could be seen as a similar fad in the fast-moving mobile gaming world. But although the app appears in fewer headlines than it did at launch, its creators say it's still in good health, with more than 75 million users. And while it may not kick it back to the giddy heights it achieved in late 2013, QuizUp America could help propel the trivia app back into the App Store limelight.