About
Akinator is a website[1] and mobile app that features a cartoon genie who asks several questions before attempting to guess the fictional or real character the player is thinking of. The was inspired by the game “20 questions”[2], and was created by French programmers Jeff Deleau and Arnaud Olivi in 2007.
Gameplay
The genie will ask up to 20 yes or no questions before guessing what character the playing is thinking of. If Akinator guesses incorrectly, it will proceed to ask several more questions before guessing again. If it is unable to guess correctly 3 times, it will prompt the player to enter the actual character’s name.
The database covers a wide variety of characters and will even show you pictures of the ones he guesses.
Traffic
In April 2011 it was published as a mobile game and cost $1.99 from the iTunes store[3], and $2.27 from the Android market[4], and have received 4/5 starts on each platform.
As of June 2011, akinator.com has an Alexa[5] rank of 8,856, and a Compete[6] rank of 28,414.
Search
Search queries for “akinator” saw their first spike in January of 2010, and again in June of 2012.
Highlights
Meme Characters
Since Akinator is able to learn from players that manage to stump the AI, it frequently has Internet memes added to it’s database.
External References
[2]Wikipedia – 20 Questions / added 6-17-11
[3]iTunes – Akinator app / added 6-17-11
[5]Alexa – akinator.com
[6]Compete – akinator.com