After playing skribbl.io online with strangers, it was a very… interesting experience. Some people were very much drawing to win, while others were drawing and guessing random stuff. I played in a lobby without anyone I knew to test out how dynamic is when a group of online people play, which is a unique taste compared to previously when we played games with people that we knew. So this judging game had a very different take on the effects of the group dynamic and relationships among people.
To begin, skribbl.io is an online drawing game made by Ticedev. This is a game where users draw a given prompt they are given, and the other players in the game have to guess what it is. I played it on the skribbl.io website.
The argument I have for this paper is that sckribbl.io’s judging mechanics do not increase your creativity based on group dynamics and relationships. In most other drawing games such as Drawful from Jackbox games, you get to know the dynamics of people in the lobby and get to cater to their tastes. For instance, if you know someone who loves adult humor, you can draw things related to that specific taste and judge, allowing them to pick your drawing. However, in this game, everyone is just trying to guess the drawing. This leads to less creativity in the drawings so to win, you should draw as seriously as possible and be as accurate as possible. Same thing with guessing, where you have to guess accurately. There are different types of players that play and guess, such as those that spam a bunch of guesses, even those that don’t match the word limit because they want to just nail something (such as myself in Figure 1). Then there are also those that only guess when they are very certain so as to not embarrass themselves. In a way, this is a social dynamic depending on how they view themselves in that group; however, I mostly argue for the fact that this game is very limiting in creativity. When you are asked to draw a fork, you must draw a fork for others to guess so that you can gain points yourself. If you don’t play this and try to have creativity or cater to one specific person’s playstyle by having fun and drawing something funny, it leads to other players not understanding what you drew, leading to overall fewer points earned (Figure 2). Therefore, there is a flaw in that there are just fewer decisions a player can make.
(Figure 1: Guessing random words + writing down words to maximize score)
(Figure 2: Fork literal drawing)
Expanding on what we learned in class about player types, I realized that most of the players who would play this game are socializers as then they can play with their friends. However, when doing it online with strangers, there isn’t much socialization going on, instead, it feels almost as if I am playing with bots instead of players because no one is socializing. Therefore, it is more like an achievement game where you are just trying to achieve victory and obtain the most points possible on the leaderboards. So this caters more towards the achievers when playing online with strangers.
Overall, it is a very different group dynamic playing with strangers than if you were all playing together with friends. And when playing with strangers (or even playing with friends for that fact) there is a huge lack of creativity allowed in skribbl.io compared to other games like Drawful. Overall, skribbl.io’s judging mechanics fail to increase creativity within the group dynamics, forcing users to just draw what is given to maximize points and win.
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