Draft:Agreement rate game

Agreement Rate Game

Agreement Rate Game is an interactive quiz or talk show format where participants vote on multiple-choice questions based on their personal opinion and then predict the proportion (the "agreement rate") of other participants who voted for the same option they selected.

The core mechanism of the format, the Agreement Rate Quiz, requires each participant to accurately predict the percentage of the public consensus that aligns with their choice. The closer the participant's prediction is to the actual proportion, the higher the score they receive. This system is designed to incentivize participants to engage in metacognition and estimate social consensus, rather than simply answering a factual question.

Mechanism and Gameplay

The Agreement Rate Game combines the predictive element of the quiz with discussion and deliberation mechanics, typically utilized in online platforms, mobile applications, or television shows.

Core Agreement Rate Quiz

A round of the quiz involves the following steps:

Question and Options: Participants are presented with a question covering various topics, such as social issues, personal preferences, or general knowledge.

Opinion Vote: Participants select one option that aligns with their own belief. At this stage, participants are unaware of the voting results or the choices of others.

Agreement Rate Prediction: After voting, participants input a percentage (0 to 100) predicting the final "agreement rate"—the proportion of the total participants who voted for the exact option they selected.

Scoring: The actual agreement rate is revealed. The score is calculated based on the margin of error between the participant's predicted percentage and the actual percentage. Scores decrease proportionally as the error margin widens. Participants who guess within a specified "correct range" (e.g., 10% or 20% margin) receive points, with maximum points awarded for a perfect match.

Game Composition

The full Agreement Rate Game format typically structures the event around a central discussion topic (e.g., pet ownership, social policy). It often integrates:

Fact Quizzes: Traditional quizzes (True/False, Multiple Choice, Short answer quiz) are used to assess the participants' knowledge level on the topic, correct misinformation, and warm up the discussion. These quizzes are usually assigned lower scores.

Agreement Rate Quizzes: These quizzes, assigned higher scores, are used to gauge the public's perception and opinion on the core topic, encouraging participants to analyze the collective consciousness.

The format is often led by a host and panelists who guide the discussion, providing expert commentary based on the real-time voting results and helping participants interpret the social meaning of the revealed agreement rates.

Technology and Development

The format's technological foundation stems from research and development initiated in the early 2010s, primarily aimed at creating a highly discriminative and engaging quiz mechanism for large-scale live participation.

Origin and Background

The concept of the Agreement Rate Game, especially its focus on real-time interactive audience participation, was significantly influenced by the development process for the EBS flagship children's program, Tok!Tok! Boni Hani ($생방송 톡!톡! 보니하니$). In the 2010s, the producers of Boni Hani and a collaborative technology team sought a high-variance quiz format that could determine a single winner among hundreds of thousands of concurrent online participants with only a few questions, minimizing the issue of frequent ties common in standard quiz apps. This objective led to the development of a quiz type that shifts the focus from knowing the correct answer to accurately predicting the collective opinion of the crowd—the core mechanism of the Agreement Rate Quiz.

Technological Foundation

The system was developed to operate on a platform capable of handling massive concurrent participation (supporting up to a million users) while processing real-time voting results and calculating scores based on the micro-difference (often down to 0.1%) between the predicted and actual agreement rates. 'The core scoring and user interaction mechanism, which involves voting on multiple choices and immediately predicting the consensus rate for the chosen option, is covered by a Business Model (BM) patent in both South Korea and the United States. This patent is titled "Interactive Talk Game System and Method." This technological evolution ensured the game's viability for large-scale media events and effectively addressed the limitations of previous live quiz applications regarding winner determination and score integrity.

Background and Impact

The format emerged from research into high-discrimination quiz technologies required for mass-participation live quiz applications, aiming to crown a single winner among hundreds of thousands of participants with minimal questions. It was also developed as a methodology to mitigate the effects of filter bubble and confirmation bias prevalent in digital environments.

Metacognitive and Social Effect

The Agreement Rate Game is noted for its potential to train and enhance participants' metacognition—the ability to be aware of and regulate one's own thought processes.

Self-Reflection: By requiring participants to predict the consensus of others, the game forces them to objectively assess how their personal opinion aligns with or deviates from the group's opinion.

Social Insight: It encourages participants to analyze and predict crowd psychology, improving their social metacognition and overall insight into social trends and group dynamics.

Bias Mitigation: Since participants must consider the potential distribution of opinions (including those different from their own) to make an accurate prediction, the game effectively encourages users to break out of their confirmation bias and filter bubbles.

Participant Experience

Participation in the Agreement Rate Quiz involves a two-step cognitive process: voting on an opinion and then predicting the collective consensus. Participants first vote on one of the multiple options and subsequently input their prediction for the Agreement Rate (the percentage of participants who voted for the same option).

To accurately predict this rate and achieve a high score, participants must actively listen to the reasoning behind alternative viewpoints, which are often shared through chat or by commentators. They are encouraged to assess the logical validity and intensity of opinions held by others, including those who share their vote, to better infer the likely distribution of votes. This process requires participants to actively contemplate why others might choose different options.

The dynamic of prediction often highlights cognitive biases:

Overestimation: Participants who hold strong, definite opinions might overestimate the Agreement Rate, assuming that many others share their conviction.

Underestimation: Conversely, those who lack confidence in their own opinion may underestimate the rate.

When the actual results are revealed, participants receive immediate feedback. Those who overestimated may realize, "Ah, people don't think like I do," while those who underestimated may discover, "There are more people who agree with me than I thought." This feedback serves as an experience-based mechanism to adjust their perception of collective opinion.

Furthermore, the game's results are typically publicized not only by the total vote distribution but also by detailed segmentation (e.g., gender, age group, regional differences). Sharing results that show vastly different opinions across various demographics leads participants to realize the explicit reasons why they should not hold animosity toward those with differing views. Ultimately, participants are led to compare their own thinking with that of others, prompting them to reevaluate their position within the broader social consensus.

Interactive journalism

The format’s dual function as a real-time opinion poll and a discussion platform gives it significant potential in the field of interactive and civic journalism. Unlike traditional surveys, the Agreement Rate Quiz utilizes gamification to encourage active and detailed participation from a massive audience. By immediately sharing segmented results (e.g., by age, gender, or region), the game functions as a powerful tool for civic inquiry and public discourse. It allows news organizations and discussion forums to move beyond simple 'yes/no' polls to reveal the intricate distribution of public consciousness, helping to elevate the quality of public debate and collective understanding.

Evolution from Live Quiz Applications

The Agreement Rate Game format emerged as a technological advancement beyond the limitations observed in the wave of live quiz applications (such as Kahoot!, launched in 2013, and HQ Trivia in the late 2010s). While these apps successfully demonstrated the mass potential of real-time mobile participation, they often suffered from problems that led to the eventual stagnation or cessation of many services, including HQ Trivia. These core limitations were: high server costs, vulnerability to cheating, and difficulty in identifying a single, unambiguous winner among thousands of participants due to simple True/False or multiple-choice questions (the "tie" problem).

The ARG was deliberately engineered to overcome these flaws. Unlike standard trivia apps that focus on a binary 'right/wrong' answer, the Agreement Rate Quiz introduces a high-variance scoring mechanism based on the micro-difference in predicted percentages. This not only makes cheating nearly impossible but, more importantly, effectively eliminates the issue of frequent ties, ensuring the system can reliably determine a single winner among even a million concurrent participants with just a few questions. This patented technical solution positioned the ARG as a sustainable format for large-scale interactive media, moving beyond the transient popularity and inherent technical limitations of its predecessors.

Gyeongcheong and Digital Dialogue

The development of the Agreement Rate Game format was significantly preceded by the success of Gyeongcheong (경청, lit. "Listen"), an interactive talk show co-produced by Daejeon MBC and KSEEK in 2017.

International Acclaim: Gyeongcheong received the prestigious Platinum Remi Award at the 2018 Houston International Film Festival, recognized as an effective, citizen-participatory program well-suited for the smart media era. It also received the Excellence in Broadcasting Program Award from the Korea Communications Agency (KCA) in 2017.

Technological Evolution: Although the program used a simpler form of interactive voting rather than the full Agreement Rate Quiz, the continuous effort to develop systems for real-time, mutual communication of public opinions led directly to the creation of the high-variance Agreement Rate Game mechanism.

Format Development: The Gyeongcheong format was subsequently formalized and branded as Digital Dialogue (디지털대화). This system is utilized by government agencies, local municipalities, and corporations for large-scale, remote Town Hall Meetings and internal communication, serving as a powerful tool for consensus building and real-time public inquiry.

Notable Applications

The format has been adopted for various media, corporate, and educational purposes:

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The format was adapted for two pilot episodes on the South Korean broadcast channel JTBC. Taped in October 2025 and broadcast in November 2025, the program was structured as a 70-minute interactive talk show led by MCs Im Woo-il and Hong Ye-seul. The show utilized the Agreement Rate Quiz to facilitate discussion on sensitive relational topics such as first dates, 'Sseom' (the pre-relationship stage), acceptable physical intimacy, financial disclosure in a relationship, and post-breakup etiquette. The show aimed to resolve generational and gender-based misunderstandings by revealing real-time voting data segmented by gender, age, and dating experience. The format was designed for massive concurrent participation, targeting 50,000 to 100,000 viewers participating via smartphone.

Corporate and Educational Use

The game system is also utilized by financial institutions, educational bodies, and corporations for internal communications, team-building, and large-scale public engagement campaigns due to its high scalability and ability to foster communication. For instance, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) utilized the ARG format for an AI Forum, demonstrating its application in addressing digital literacy and mitigating confirmation bias within educational contexts.

Critical Reception

While lauded for its innovative approach to social discussion, the format has faced some criticism:

Simplification: Critics suggest that boiling down complex personal and social opinions into a single 'agreement rate' percentage risks oversimplification, potentially hindering deeper, more nuanced discussion.

Conformity: Concerns have been raised that the focus on accurately predicting the majority might inadvertently encourage the bandwagon effect, pressuring participants to conform to what they believe is the consensus.

References

The Agreement Rate Game (ARG) has evolved as a unique format for promoting civic engagement and educational discussion through technology. The format has been notably implemented in large-scale public forums, demonstrating its capability for encouraging interactive dialogue.

The Agreement Rate Game was notably implemented in Daejeon Metropolitan City as a voting-game-based online town hall meeting where the mayor and citizens participated simultaneously using smartphones. This event was produced and broadcast live with Daejeon MBC, facilitating extensive participation from the city's residents. The ARG format progressed by successfully enabling interactive discussions based on this structure.

The Daejeon MBC program, 'Smart Talk Show Gyeongcheong (Listening)', which utilized the ARG format mentioned above, received recognition by winning an award at the 2018 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival.

The underlying technology of the Agreement Rate Game—designed to enable in-depth interactive discussion through simple smartphone participation—was invented by the Korean company KSEEK, which has secured a key patent for the system in both South Korea and the United States.

In the educational sector, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) hosted an AI Forum for staff and parents, with the entire event conducted using the ARG format. Participants utilized the ARG to engage in serious discussion regarding the necessity of digital literacy education for students in the age of AI. SMOE planned the event anticipating that introducing the Agreement Rate Game could help students prevent cognitive biases like confirmation bias and the filter bubble effect.

1. the 17th! Discussing the Mayor and City Administration: A Smart Talk Listening Session.

2. MBC's 'Smart Talk Show Gyeongcheong' Wins Award at Houston Film Festival

3. Prediction 'Agreement Rate Game'|KSEEK Acquires Key Technology Patent in the U.S.

4. Metropolitan Office of Education & Megatalk Korea Jointly Host 'AI and Future Education Forum': Seeking the Path for Citizenship Education in the Age of AI 5. talk game system and method]

See Also

• Collective intelligence
• Interactive media
• Game show
• Web Documentary
• Collaborative journalism
• Cooperative game theory