Which Game I Chose & Why
The game I played this week was the physical card version of the game, Cards Against Humanity (CAH), which was created by 8 friends Josh Dillon, Daniel Dranove, Eli Halpern, Ben Hantoot, David Munk, David Pinsof, Max Temkin, and Eliot Weinstein. This is a very popular game, so it is a great game to look at in comparison to my team’s concept, Masquerade. The premise of CAH is that players have to answer prompts (the black cards) with the funniest combinations of the white cards they have. Since many people love the fill in the blank concept, Masquerade may appeal to people who also like CAH. In Masquerade, players must respond in a way fitting the given category for a given prompt. CAH is different from other similar games like Wing It because it is meant to be “A party game for horrible people” as per the tag line. The game’s prompt and response cards definitely match the description of the game oftentimes having raunchy, not-safe-for-work content. Since the game is marketed like this, it makes sense why it is such a popular party game compared to Wing It where Wing It helps people bond but may not be as enticing as CAH to play at a party. I’ve played CAH so many times, because I own the game myself, and the game’s design lets players be engaged throughout. Masquerade incorporates CAH’s most appealing features into its gameplay (specifically the discussion of which combo is the funniest and prompt response design in both games).
My Thoughts On CAH
During my game play of CAH, everyone brought their own creativity and humor to the responses because of the personalized choice for which card to put down. Since everyone contributed a response, me and my friends’ relationships deepened because we knew each other well enough to understand what made them put down that certain card, which is similar to the premise of Masquerade (meant to be played among friends).
CAH definitely fulfilled the psychogenic need of power because we wanted to be the ones to pick the funniest combo of words with the given prompts. However, we also fulfilled information when playing CAH because I was playing with my friend group, so some of the jokes made were inside jokes that we only understood because we had shared norms (Similarity — one of the four Friendship Formation Laws). One example of these inside jokes related to my gameplay for CAH was “woke but in bed” which Max related to the prompt “In a world ravaged by ____, our only solace is ____”. Since people make friends with others like them, this makes playing experiences more meaningful because they deepen bonds. This game was purposefully designed to reveal people’s minds and what they think matches a prompt based on their humor. The fellowship (as we learned in the 8 kinds of fun exercise) where the cards my friends put down matched their personality and it made sense for who they were is what made CAH fun for me and my friends.
How CAH compares with Masquerade
The target audience of CAH is usually more on the mature side (on my box it says 17+), targeting young adults/older teenagers and their friend groups. The responses you give can be limited, because you can only respond with the cards you have. Comparatively, Masquerade is a game played with 13+ people and because the prompts are open-ended to-be-filled in by players, it can be played with families as well as friend groups appealing to a broader application than CAH (which personally, is not a game I would play with my family). Masquerade addresses a problem with CAH where sometimes it feels like the game can get repetitive after a few rounds as I observed during my critical play. Me and my friends enjoyed the game and laughed a lot, but after playing for 20 minutes, we ran into the same patterns of being tired of waiting for everyone to find cards to put down. As aforementioned, if someone doesn’t have funny cards, the game can be unenjoyable because they aren’t as excited to respond to prompts, which I experienced during gameplay. One way CAH can be improved as a game designer is adding a timer so players don’t grow bored after a few rounds and find it as repetitive and slow. Masquerade attempts to solve some of the issues presented by CAH by letting everyone play a detective and having an added element that the cards put down are a mystery and there’s a deduction aspect to the game.
Therefore, Masquerade mods upon CAH by maintaining the prompt-response mechanics that make CAH enjoyable while addressing CAH’s limitations, like repetitiveness and pace, through social deduction.
