Name: Cards against humanity
Target Audience: Group of adults with edgy humor (“party game for horrible people”)
Creator: Cards Against Humanity LLC, Max Temkin
Platform: Set of cards from the box
Using the Molecule model from the reading I’ll analyze Cards Against Humanity.
Molecule:
- People: Friends and strangers
- Problem: …Want a game to play at parties and other social settings that is fun, will make them laugh, has simple yet effective game mechanics and deepens the social bonds between them. It should be memorable and repeatable so it can be enjoyed again and again
- Solution: A card game that comes in an easy to carry box with a multitude of questions and edgy answers that allows players to express their humor and be rewarded for understanding the humor of other players. It has simple rules, is quick to explain and quick to set up. The game play can last 20 mins or hours depending on players interest to continue playing and enjoying themselves.
2×2 comparative matrix:
“How does the game compare and contrast with your team’s concept?”
Cards Against Humanity (CAH) and WorryWrecker (WW) (our game) are social card games whose goal is to improve social interaction amongst players. Below is an analysis of how they compare and contrast and what we can take from Cards against humanity to improve WorryWrecker
Similarities:
- Card based: Both use a customized game of prompts (WW doesn’t have answer cards)
- Mechanic: One player draws a card containing a prompt and ready it to the rest of the group
- Mechanic: Questions are meant to be answers with dark humor (always in CAH and only occasionally in WW)
- Audience: Friends or strangers in a party or social setting.
- Game design objective: Deepen social connections
- Materials: Both games require a customized set of cards and the people you are with, can be played anywhere.
Differences:
- Game design: CAH has customized answer cards with edgy, humorous answers while WW does not
- Mechanics: After the person reads off the card with the question prompt there are different mechanics. In CAH the player reads it off and each player submits an answer face down for the reader to select their favorite answer. In WW the person who selected a card says their answer to the group and then every player makes a suggestion on how to solve that worry.
- Win condition: CAH has a win condition (winning funniest card in a round) while WW doesn’t. CAH’s win condition isn’t followed too strictly but helps the game move on and keeps people motivated at the beginning of each round.
- Theme: While CAH’s goal is to make players laugh and enjoy themselves together through dark humor, WW attempts to create greater vulnerability and depth between players. The objective for both is to deepen social connections however the way that they get to this depth is contrasting.
- Multiple modes of gameplay: As shown in the rules for CAH(below) players can decide on different styles of gameplay. We have considered this for WW but for now are trying to improve and perfect one gameplay.
Improvements to WW:
- The prompting and answering mechanic in CAH is simple and very effective. The answer cards with dark humor are very creative, edge and oftentimes better than an answer a person could come up with on the spot. Having 7 in your hand at a time lets you curate your answer perfectly to show off your humor. Repetition in the sense of a person giving the same answer to the same question across multiple games is really rare.
- Could adding answer cards to our game guarantee better answers than what people can come up with? Could this increase the “fun” element in our game.
- Solution mechanic very easy: In CAH players just submit an answer card, it is quick, effective and avoids awkwardness. Our solution mechanic currently suffers from having players awkwardly think of an answer they may not be ready to give or that doesn’t have much thought.
- We need to improve our solution mechanic to be as enjoyable and seamless as in CAH
- Incredible prompts and answers: It is clear that a lot of time and effort went into timeless funny questions and answer prompts.
- We need to improve our current set of questions. The magic of our game will likely come down to the quality of questions and how easily they prompt people to think and answer.
Conclusion:
- CAH is a game intended to improve social connections amongst strangers and friends, and achieves that masterfully with a set of dark, edgy prompts and answer cards. These cards allow for simple and effective rounds that also encourage players to show off their sense of humor and laugh together. In WW the prompts are laid out in a way where people will break the ice first and then enter into deeper topics. They promote vulnerability and openness while encouraging players to express themselves freely and help each other with things that they are going through or are worried about. We need to solve the solution mechanic and improve the quality of our questions in order to get to the same effectiveness as CAH.
CAH_Rules (Click to see different gameplays)
