Cards Against Humanity is an analogous card game, created by eight Highland Park Highschool alumni- Josh Dillon, Daniel Dranove, Eli Halpern, Ben Hantoot, David Munk, David Pinsof, Max Temkin, Eliot Weinstein. Earliest version of the game, called “Cardenfreude” was released in 2011, to an audience of 17+ young adults and adults. Cards Against Humanity is a judging game where players pair their cards with the chosen prompt to create statements that often use absurdity, dark humor, and at times politically incorrect humor. The card pairings then anonymously get judged by the moderator/judge to determine the “funniest” pairing, and the owner of the chosen card wins the round. For Cards Against Humanity, the judging plays a central role in establishing challenge as the primary core aesthetic of the game, appealing to the players’ psychological needs of recognition and achievement. This serves a dual purpose on determining group dynamics and relationships where it both creates significant social conflict amongst individuals over the desire to establish dominance of humor, but also build stronger and deeper connections through shared humor and vulnerability.
The flow of a multi-round game of Card Against Humanity is primarily achieved by the act of judgement itself, pitting the players’ humor against one another to create a core aspect of competition where players endeavor to establish dominance over their opponents’ sense of humor. This creates conflict amongst the players, who each have an objective to come up with the best display of their humor and have inner judgements regarding the pairings that win and lose. Since sense of humor is a point of pride for many and the game is designed to play in social environments, by the most likely audience of friend groups, the judgement of the pairings raises the stakes for the outcome of the game and vulnerability on display. Players aspire to be recognized for their sense of humor and upon winning, achieve displaying their dominance regarding “humor” for all members of their social group to see. In this way, Cards Against Humanity appeals to emotions that are too human and manipulates the players’ ego to keep them engaged and entertained. Interestingly, due to its use of judgement to create competition over the key fun element (People Fun), this game has the ability to have outcomes that stretch beyond the magical circle of the game, into the real-life judgements on one’s sense of humor. Therefore, the multilateral competition established amongst players through the judgement can seemingly put pressure on relationships and strain group dynamics on the way to “winning” the race, which is one of the objectives of the game. However, the game also has a significant ability to ease social awkwardness and tension through the forced vulnerability of sharing humor with all and for judgement, enabling players to get to know each other better. The judgement factor plays a significant role on this side as well, fulfilling a sensual psychological need and uses expression as a core aesthetic due to its use of humor as the object of judgement. Shared laughter and the objective of undertaking a forbidden act, by making socially taboo jokes, while being judged by another player helps break boundaries between players through camaraderie, strengthening relationships and warming up group dynamics.
Overall, in the game Cards Against Humanity, judging plays a dual role of creating both competition and expression as aesthetics, engaging players by putting them in both a high-pressure, and camaraderie inducing environment. This enables groups to get to know each other better, while competing for social recognition and achievement, keeping players engaged, and simulating the social dynamics of a fun conversation with both new and old friends, at an exaggerated rate.
