The Voting Game
Over the weekend, I played The Voting Game with four of my friends. The Voting Game is a getting to know you physical card game created by Tom Rohlf, aimed at groups of friends/families (17+). The mechanics of the game are pretty simple. There are prompt cards with questions like “Who would survive the longest in a zombie apocalypse?” or “Who has the most memorable personality?” and everyone anonymously votes for the person they think best fits. The player with the most votes gets the card (a point), and in our version, we added a twist where the “winner” had to guess who voted for them.
Some questions themselves were pretty funny, like “Who is most likely to drunk text their ex?”, and created a lighthearted atmosphere. One thing I noticed is that I found myself voting consistently for some of the same people, just because I knew them better, and therefore had more to go off of. For the person in the group that I didn’t know as well, I felt like I just didn’t know enough about them to know whether or not they would drunk text their ex, for example. In addition, for the questions that were not clearly positive (not necessarily negative either, just not positive, like “Who would die first on a deserted island?”), I was hesitant to vote for someone I was not as close to, since I wasn’t sure how it would be received. Whenever the cards were flipped over and I saw my number on any of them, I was immediately very curious about who voted for me and their reasoning behind it. I really enjoyed getting more insight into other peoples’ perceptions about me. Even though the initial anonymity of the vote creates a safe space for honesty, the follow-up guessing part added some paranoia.
Ethical Reflection
I think the Voting Game is definitely meant to deepen existing friendships rather than form new ones. In order to choose someone as an answer to a question, you have to have a certain amount of knowledge about that person, their personality, and their past actions. If a certain person is not as close to most people in the group, and therefore is not being voted very often, they may feel excluded. In general, I found that the Voting Game creates a dynamic where people vote much more often for people in the group that they are closest to. One notable aspect was that although we technically kept track of points in terms of how many cards each of us accumulated, no one actually seemed interested in knowing the points at the end. I think this signals that everyone enjoyed the actual gameplay of getting to know each other better, and did not care much for the points outcome and who “won”. The social norms that the Voting Game relies on are mostly how comfortable people are joking about themselves or revealing certain information that not everyone in the group might know. Since I was playing with friends, we felt comfortable joking/laughing around and being honest with each other about why we voted for someone.
I classified the Voting Game as a getting to know you game, but I think it also borders on a judging game, but instead of judging people’s responses, people themselves are being judged. Certain questions could even reinforce stereotypes or insecurities that people have about themselves. Generally, we all took turns picking a question, and there were times when I skipped certain questions that I felt might make people feel bad. Once the question is picked, there is no clear way for anyone to opt out of the round if they do not want to participate in that specific question. The Voting Game was definitely a fun experience, and it was interesting to see how I am perceived by my friends, and how other people perceive each other in the group. However, I think it works best for close-knit friend groups where everyone is at a similar level of closeness with each other, but there is still some level of unpredictability to the answers, which keeps it exciting.
