什么是HQ？怎么玩？能嬴多钱？

没有负面影响这么一说，对吧？

鲁斯•尤苏波夫可能会这样对自己说，作为新的小知识互动app HQ首席执行官，尤苏波夫本周接受流行文化网站Daily Beast记者采访时有些“失控”，让自己受到了一些不必要的关注。当然，他的热门app本周之前就已经得到了相当规模的报道，某些时段的直播吸引了超过10万人同时在线观看。这款移动小知识app的火爆在一定程度上要归功于受欢迎的喜剧演员主持人，而且目前来看就连一些公关失误也不会延缓HQ的增长速度。

鉴于其受关注程度——这款游戏已经有了“让人上瘾”的名号，甚至有报道认为它可能就是电视的未来——《财富》觉得攒一份方便的HQ指南对所有想了解这款热门app的人来说应该有所帮助。

HQ是什么？

尤苏波夫及其合伙人科林•克罗尔联手打造了短视频分享app Vine。推特四年前收购了Vine，去年则表示要停止运营这款app。尤苏波夫和克罗尔随后推出了一系列app，其中包括一直未能真正起步的直播app Hype。但尤苏波夫最近告诉娱乐新闻网站Variety，他的团队注意到了Hype用户制作的游戏直播类内容很受欢迎，这促成了HQ的开发。今年8月上线后，关注这款小知识测试直播app的移动用户群体稳步增长。HQ每个工作日直播两次，每次15分钟，参与者要回答一系列多选小知识问题，从而有机会赢取现金奖励。

怎么玩？

所有iOS用户都可下载这款免费app并创建用户名，然后就可以进入HQ的所有日常直播小知识游戏了。直播通常由喜剧演员斯科特•罗戈夫斯基主持，工作日直播两次，分别在美国东部时间下午3点和晚上9点开始，周末只在晚上9点直播一次。直播中，主持人会迅速提出十几个小知识问题，内容几乎无所不包（科技、体育、流行文化等等）。答题时间为10秒钟，如果全部答对，就可参与当次直播的奖金池分成。用邀请码成功邀请朋友使用这款app的参与者还可以获得“额外生命”，也就是可以在答错一题后继续游戏，从而提高了获得奖金的几率。

能赢多少钱？

HQ的奖金池规模不固定。夏天刚上线时，奖金池约为100美元，近几周则攀升到了数千美元。Variety本周二发现，迄今为止个人参赛者的最高奖金只超过500美元一点点，但这家初创公司希望它的奖金池有朝一日可以达到100万美元，这样参赛者的奖金就会大幅上升。这些奖金通过贝宝账户支付。

有安卓版吗？

目前HQ仅供苹果iOS设备下载，但该公司表示将很快推出安卓版。

为什么大家都在谈论HQ？

除了越发受到用户青睐以外，HQ本周受到媒体关注的另一个原因是尤苏波夫周二试图阻止Daily Beast刊登主持人罗戈夫斯基的特写，但未能成功。尤苏波夫对Daily Beast记者泰勒•洛伦茨说，如果不通过HQ的公关部门就报道罗戈夫斯基的情况，她就会“让斯科特的工作面临危险”，比如有可能遭解雇。洛伦茨则把尤苏波夫的短时“胡言乱语”写进了罗戈夫斯基的报道中，在其中的一段对话里，尤苏波夫竭力反对她在文章中透露罗戈夫斯基喜欢到某家餐馆买沙拉的趣闻（提示：就是Sweetgreen）。

在网上遭到众人嘲笑后，尤苏波夫似乎意识到自己想扼杀这篇报道的行为实属过分，他在推特上发文向洛伦茨道歉，并附上了一张他和罗戈夫斯基吃Sweetgreen沙拉的图片。他还在后续采访中告诉洛伦茨：“我不想炒掉斯科特，他可是自己人。”

作者：Tom Huddleston Jr.

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

That could be what Rus Yusupov, CEO of the new HQ trivia app, is telling himself after his “off the rails” interview with a Daily Beast reporter this week thrust him into an unwanted spotlight. Of course, Yusupov’s popular app was already earning a fair amount of buzz before this week, with some time slots for the app’s live trivia game show pulling in more than 100,000 simultaneous viewers each. The mobile trivia app has gone viral, thanks in part to the game’s popular comedian host, and it’s now looking like even some bad PR won’t slow down HQ.

Considering how much buzz the app is getting—the game has been called “addictive” and one publication even mused that the game-show app could be the “Future of TV”—Fortune thought it would be helpful to put together a handy guide to HQ for anyone wondering what all the fuss is about.

What is HQ?

Yusupov and partner Colin Kroll, both co-founders of the short-video sharing app Vine, launched a series of apps after Twitter announced it would shut down Vine last year after having acquired it four years earlier. The new apps included the live video broadcasting app Hype, which never really took off. But Yusupov told Variety recently that his team took note of the popularity of game show-type content that Hype’s users were creating, which led to the development of HQ. The quiz-show app launched in August and has steadily built a strong following of mobile users who tune in to one of the app’s twice daily (on weekdays), 15-minute game shows for the chance to win real cash prizes by answering a series of multiple-choice general trivia questions.

How do you play?

Any iOS user can download the free app and create a username, which then grants them access to any of HQ’s daily live trivia games. The shows, usually hosted by comedian Scott Rogowsky, go live at 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST on weekdays, with only one show (at 9 p.m. EST) on weekends. Each show involves the host presenting about a dozen rapid-fire trivia questions on topics that cover pretty much anything under the sun (ranging from tech to sports to pop culture, etc.). If you answer every question correctly within 10 seconds each, you’ll split the cash prize pool for that given show. Users who invite friends to join the app with a referral code can also earn “extra lives” that allow them to get back into a game even if they answer a question incorrectly, thus giving them additional opportunities to win money.

How much can you win?

The size of HQ’s prize pools tend to vary. When the app launched over the summer, the pools were about $100, but they’ve climbed into the thousands of dollars in recent weeks. Variety noted on Tuesday that the most money any individual player had won to that point was just over $500 over the course of multiple games, but the startup hopes to one day offer prize pools as big as $1 million, which would mean significantly richer payouts to players. The winnings are delivered to players by linking a PayPal account.

Is it available for Android?

At the moment, HQ is only available for download on Apple’s iOS devices, but the company says that an Android version is coming soon.

Why is everyone talking about HQ?

Aside from the app’s growing popularity with users, HQ made headlines this week after Yusupov made a failed attempt to stop the Daily Beast from publishing a profile of HQ host Rogowsky on Tuesday. Yusupov told Daily Beast reporter Taylor Lorenz that she was “putting Scott’s job in jeopardy” —i.e. he could be fired—if she published a profile on the game show host without going through HQ’s public relations operation. Lorenz went on to publish quotes from Yusupov’s mini-freakout as part of the Rogowsky story, including an exchange in which the CEO strongly objected to her inclusion in the article of a personal tidbit about the restaurant where Rogowsky prefers to buy salads (hint: it’s Sweetgreen).

After being roundly mocked online, Yusupov seemed to recognize that he’d gone too far in trying to kill the story and he apologized to Lorenz in a Twitter post featuring a picture of himself with Rogowsky, eating a Sweetgreen salad. He also told Lorenz in a follow-up interview: “I don’t want to fire Scott. Scott is our guy.”