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

On the Akinator site, 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 three 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 that cost $1.99 from the iTunes store^[3] and $2.27 from the Android store,^[4] receiving 4/5 stars 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.

Highlights

Meme Characters

Since Akinator is able to learn from players that manage to stump the AI, it frequently has Internet memes added to its database.

Akinator Kin Game

On December 3rd, 2020, Twitter user @catmaidmika^[7] posted an idea for a game, writing, "new idea! go to akinator and answer everything according to yourself but if it asks if you're fictional, put yes. that's your New Kin" (shown below).

Over the following weeks, other Twitter users began trying out the game, often expressing surprise at their results^[8][9] (examples shown below).

The game went viral in November 2021, causing "Akinator" to trend on Twitter on November 16th. On November 15th, Twitter user @meowsilly^[10] posted their result, a demon, gaining over 100 retweets 1,400 likes (shown below, left). User @rowdiestrogue^[11] posted their result, getting This Man (shown below, right).

Search Interest

Search queries for "akinator" saw their first spike in January of 2010, and again in June of 2012.

External References