When Trivia Got Bigger

I thought I was building a soccer trivia game.

That was the plan, at least.

My first prompt was not even “build this.” It was more like asking for a map: “How would you suggest we build the greatest global soccer trivia game ever?”

That was me being both excited and ridiculous. I had no code background, but apparently I had no problem using the word “greatest” before I had a single screen.

The AI came back with a big idea. A daily quiz, career mode, head-to-head play, all wrapped in a kind of Wordle-meets-Sporcle-meets-FIFA feel. I loved it immediately. I picked a navy and lime look called “Stadium Night,” told it to include World Cup, Olympics, and national teams, and within an hour there was a working trivia version live.

That alone felt like magic.

Then, a few hours later, I asked a dangerous little question:

“Should we build a fantasy league?”

That was the pivot.

One minute this was a trivia game. The next, it was turning into a much bigger soccer platform with season-long leagues, head-to-head matchups, salary caps, and live football data coming from a paid service called API-Football (basically a feed that supplies real match and player information).

I said yes to it.

I also said yes to the $25/month bill for the data feed, which was a first for me. I had never paid a monthly fee for an app that had not launched, had no users, and might still collapse under the weight of my own enthusiasm.

That part made it feel real. And slightly irresponsible.

The first wall came pretty quickly.

I clicked “Create your account” in the fantasy section and nothing happened. So I clicked again. Still nothing. Then I clicked again, because apparently my troubleshooting style is “annoy the button until it confesses.”

Then red text appeared telling me I had to wait 49 seconds before trying again.

I felt genuinely stupid.

What I learned, after asking the AI, was that the system actually had been working. It had sent me a confirmation email. But the screen gave me no clue. No spinner. No “please check your email.” Nothing. So I kept tapping and hit a rate limit (a built-in pause that stops people from hammering the same action over and over).

The fix was simple: show a loading message, then tell the person to check their email.

The lesson was less simple: if the app does something invisible, users may think it did nothing. And sometimes the user is me.

There was another pivot the same day around the name.

I had started with Top Corner Entertainment, but then I worried “Top Corner” might already be in use. I asked for alternatives and eventually settled on “Hat Trick.” What amazed me was not just the naming change. It was watching the AI update the whole project in seconds — the screens, browser text, app details, legal pages, even translations.

If I had been doing that by hand, I would probably still be searching for the last forgotten “Top Corner” somewhere.

But the bigger mental pivot was this: I had to stop pretending the words “greatest trivia game” made it true.

I kept asking the AI if we really had the best trivia game and fantasy league on the planet. Its answers were not cruel, but they were sobering. The trivia was only about 25 static questions in one file. No real image rounds. No audio. Not enough depth. Not yet.

That stung a little.

Because I wanted the big claim. I wanted the landing page confidence. But I also knew the AI was right. “Greatest” is something you earn. It is not a headline you paste onto a page and hope nobody checks.

The fantasy side, though, started to feel like a real product after a redesign. I asked for something bolder and more exciting, with a huge welcome message. When it came back with the big hero section and that bright magenta “football,” I had my first moment of thinking: I might actually pay to use this.

So the project changed direction. It became less of a simple trivia game and more of a soccer entertainment platform. Trivia is still there. Fantasy is now functional. Live and weekly head-to-head duels are built. I also backed away from anything involving paid-entry cash pools because that world is regulated in many places, and I did not want to wander into that mess. LeagueSafe links felt like the safer path.

I am proud of the pivot.

I am also nervous about it.

A trivia game is one thing. A real platform with weekly fixtures, fantasy scoring, and enough content to deserve the word “greatest” is another. That is a much bigger promise for one 50-year-old non-coder with a stubborn streak and a browser tab full of AI.

Small takeaway: sometimes the pivot is not a neat business decision — it is one curious question that makes the whole project grow up faster than you expected.