For this critical play, I chose to play Cards Against Humanity (CAH) with a group of 6 other players, composed of close friends, mutual friends, and people I was meeting for the first time. Cards Against Humanity is, to me, the canonical example of a ‘judging game’: Each round of the game involves a “Card Czar” reading a question from a black card, to which players respond with the funniest answer from their hand of white cards. The Czar judges which card pairing is the funniest, awarding the point to the winning card’s player. The game has acquired a reputation for its irreverent and often risqué humor, but I argue that the game’s true aesthetics come from the way it implicitly requires players to reflect on existing inter-player relationships.
Judging is a central mechanic of Cards Against Humanity, as rounds are won and lost based on the judgment of the Card Czar. The role of the Card Czar rotates each round, giving each player a chance to wield a kind of temporary authority. This authority isn’t about power in the traditional sense; it’s about humor, preference, and sometimes the shock value of the combinations. Understanding other players and their senses of humor is vital to being successful in the game, as this understanding determines how the cards one plays fare during the judging. Cards Against Humanity’s judging process led to rounds filled with laughter, as some cards hit the perfect note of comic timing or absurdity. Yet, at other times, the humor tread into areas that were uncomfortable for some, highlighting a delicate balance between comedy and sensitivity. That said, when we played, I noticed that there wasn’t always such a direct correlation between the face-value humor of the card/prompt pair (in my opinion) and the amount of laughs it elicited. This suggested that there was a deeper group dynamic at work: Social interaction between players built on existing and newly-forged relationships.
Unlike other games that focus on strategy or luck, CAH leans heavily into social interaction. This is both its greatest strength and its potential pitfall. I noticed that the game’s content, geared towards adults with its boundary-pushing humor, fits well within the notion of the “magic circle” we discussed in class —a space where the normal rules of social interaction are paused in favor of the game’s rules. Inside this circle, jokes that might be off-limits in another setting can be permissible, even expected. For example, one round we played saw one of my close friends being the Card Czar. In general, this friend of mine has a pretty tame sense of humor – rarely approaching jokes that could be considered ‘dark.’ However, within the game’s ‘magic circle,’ it quickly became apparent that my friend’s so-called ‘humor boundaries’ were shifted. I would hypothesize that this is a function of the game’s card mechanic: By supplying possible responses from a pre-written deck of cards, the available pool of responses becomes as ‘out of pocket’ as the game’s designers wrote the cards to be. As a result, the Card Czar’s preferences must shift accordingly as well. This reminded me of the concept of the Overton Window: a theory from political science that claims that an idea’s acceptability/viability has less to do with its intrinsic value, and more to do with whether or not it lies within an acceptable ‘window of discourse.’ In my group’s P1 game, we aimed to leverage this mechanic to similar effect. We supply players with cards that have phrases they need to include in their answers to questions posed each round, with the aim of bringing players out of their comfort zone within our game’s ‘magic circle.’
Cards Against Humanity’s impact on group dynamics and relationships is also apparent when analyzed in the comparative. The game is often compared to Apples to Apples, a family-friendly game where players also match cards to a judge’s prompt. CAH distinguishes itself as a variant of this game with content that is explicitly adult. This element shapes the game’s social experience profoundly. While both games involve humor and judgment, CAH’s adult theme invites a different kind of conversation, one that can forge or fracture bonds depending on the players’ comfort levels. As a result, in contrast to previous experiences playing Apples to Apples, I found that Cards Against Humanity resulted in much more variation in playstyles. On the one hand, as expected, players that knew each other well were successful – I found myself deliberately choosing some cards over others when I knew what the Czar would find funny. On the other hand, it was fascinating to observe that players that did not know each other well were also able to forge new relationships over the course of the game, built on shared senses of humor that were only discovered through Cards Against Humanity’s judging mechanic.
This player dynamic indicated that playing CAH makes players acutely aware of the different humor sensibilities within the group. What one person found hilarious, another might find just shy of offensive. The role of the Card Czar became crucial here; choices about which card won a round could sometimes feel like endorsements of certain jokes over others. This aspect of the game prompted us to navigate our interpersonal relationships with care, being mindful of where to draw the line between funny and disrespectful. This connects to my central argument: The way our games evolved seemed to indicate that judging games forces players to conduct an implicit reflection on their relationships with the other players within the game. As a result, the night’s gameplay highlighted the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework in action. The simple mechanic of selecting and judging cards led to complex dynamics of humor and social interaction, which in turn created an aesthetic of shared amusement and, occasionally, discomfort. The dynamics of the game changed noticeably depending on who was the Card Czar, demonstrating how much individual personalities and sensibilities influence the gameplay.
CAH acted as a catalyst for discussions about humor’s boundaries and the unspoken rules we often navigate in our relationships. It was fascinating to see how a game could become a playground for testing and understanding these limits. The game’s design, which encourages shocking or taboo responses, served as a unique tool for exploring group norms and individual boundaries. The game, with all its laughter and awkward moments, reminded us that at the heart of judging mechanics are the people being judged, each with their own line between what’s funny and what’s too far. The judging mechanic increases player investment in the game, and in turn raises the stakes of playing to one’s relationship with others.
