For my Critical Play, I chose the game What Do You Meme. The game’s creators are Elliot Tebele, Ben Kaplan, and Elie Ballas. The platform of the game is physical cards. I will be comparing and contrasting my team’s game, Conspiracy, to What Do You Meme.
Ultimately: Conspiracy and What Do You Meme are somewhat similar in terms of players, objective, and ethical considerations; however, both games differ from each other in the finer details of each trait.
How What Do You Meme works is that players choose a caption from different caption alternatives to go with a photo, and the judge will choose the one they deem the funniest. How Conspiracy works is that each round, the conspirator creates a conspiracy theory from the cards they’ve selected, one person from the rest of the group speaks out to debunk the theory, and the rest of the players judge the most compelling argument.
The first formal element I will look at is the number of players. What Do You Meme requires 3-20+ players, while Conspiracy requires 3-10 players. This shows that both games occupy a malleable yet social niche, as there is a wide range of player numbers that will work. Both games also require judging; however, What Do You Meme calls for only one judge while Conspiracy calls for two players to face off during each round, which means the rest of the players will act as judges and vote as a collective. This shows that both games take advantage of the concept of Hard Fun as described by Nicole Lazzaro (winning against a difficult situation) but in slightly different ways. Conspiracy adds a layer of collaboration to the judging, which may intensify the feeling of Hard Fun by each player who wins a round. In Conspiracy, there is Player vs Player interaction, while in What Do You Meme there is Multilateral Competition.
The objective of What Do You Meme is to be the funniest, and the objective of Conspiracy is to be the most convincing. However, that may not be all there is to the story. For example, if the debunker to the conspirator was especially funny in delivering the debunking, they might garner votes from the judges even if their debunking wasn’t objectively convincing. This shows that there is a social engineering aspect that could appear in Conspiracy that is important to be aware of.
As for boundaries, both What Do You Meme and Conspiracy have clearly defined, time-based boundaries. Both games are divided into rounds, and each round is separate from the next in terms of content. However, an important note is that even though the rounds are separate content-wise, they might not be separate emotion-wise for the players. If a player’s feelings are hurt during one round due to the competitive aspect of the games, that might translate to the next round even though it seems as though the game is starting anew on a blank slate. This shows how important it is for the players of the game to be aware of each other’s emotional state so they can best show up for one another in the kindest way possible, and also how important it is for the architects of the game to keep the game as fair as possible. One way to do this is to ensure the different cards (in the case of What Do You Meme, this is caption cards, and in the case of Conspiracy, this is evidence cards, object cards, subject cards, action cards, and world cards) do not differ too widely in humor or effectiveness. If one card is much funnier than another, that would give an unfair advantage to the player who happens to draw that card.
