For this weeks critical play I chose Cards Against Humanities. I played it with a group of friends I have been a part of for a long time, and consequently have deep connections with each person. At the beginning of the game I was mostly not getting any points, but after playing for a bit I started getting almost every point. This highlights a few things in how I communicate or interact with groups. This was the first time we all got together to do something, along with the fact that I havent seen any of them in person since I started this summer session. After interacting with a group for a bit, I get more comfortable and change my behavior to fit that group, with how well that goes usually being determined by how well I know the people within the group. I am mostly passive in a group until I have a distinct reason to be active in which I can be quite vocal and active. Cards Against Humanities brought out these traits by making a platform where you have to work with limited resources to gain points by pandering ones cards to the current judge. Having a card that fits the judge isnt enough though, it must also fit the prompt or it will fall flat. This mostly prevents a card from giving the same reaction and forcing switches in gameplay every round. As the game goes on tendencies will begin to show. That coupled with the fact that as a game like this goes on, the further into the magic circle or social agreement set around the game a person gets. That means that as the game goes on the cards are more tuned to the judges, and the acceptability of making the decisions which otherwise would raise question or hesitancy are done without a thought. This increases the stakes as a game goes on, especially one with a big part of the appeal being the breaking of normal game tone from family friendly to raunchy and unpleasent. Though this only goes to a certain point, as once the players are fully immersed and the tone is zoned in on for each player, the game becomes less and less of a challenge and more of a formula which feels samey.
Now onto the topic of the responisbility to reduce hurt feelings, which I dont have a straight answer for. A problem that can arise with judging games is the fact that some people will usually be ahead others behind. That can hurt some peoples feelings due to the feeling of rejection. However action to remedy that fact inherently makes the game less fair or makes it stray further from a game where the option that best fits the prompt and the taste of the judge wins. This is because to make that happen less the solution is to have a system that ends up with the points being distributed evenly as possible, which then makes the judging less important due to its lessened deciding power over point distrobution. In most judging games there are rules in place to prevent the knowledge of who submitted which card, which is a measure to prevent favoritism and always picking the same person. But it also prevent a fair distrobution of cards in a way that no one feels left out. So the creators of the game do not seem to bear the responsibility to prevent eelings from being hurt, which leaves 2 other parties. The first of the 2 is the judge, in which due to the aformentioned rules to anonimity of the card submitions they dont have the direct power to even out the distrobution. That is not to say that they can’t play in a way that makes each person feel more included. The reason that this is, is due to the fact that the way your card is reacted to outside of which is picked can also be important in how people feel in the game. So an effort can be made by the judge make each card submitted feel seen and understood. However I do feel that the responsibility lies with the last party, the player themselves. When playing any game, some people will be ahead while some fall behind. Some people are better at some types of games than others, and something people do all the time is be critical of what they play and don’t play in order to do the things they are interested and/or good at. If a person isnt good at a specific sport, or doesnt like a specific sport they will most likley not play it. The same can be said for video games. This is a more difficult decision with party games such as this, due to the social pressure to engage with the group one is in. A hard choice can be made about playing the game and potentially not doing well, leading to hurt feelings, or not playing the game and feeling left out. That is the choice each person needs to make for themselves in my opinion.
