Sure if you want to build a business. If you just want to write some code and have a bit of fun with friends and learn a few things then it doesn’t really matter.
I built something similar during Covid, another parlour game we call “Colander of Death” (it probably has many other names). It’s never gonna go viral but we had fun with it.
As the person who built the version that got popular enough for the Gartic company to build a competitor, I can say some developers are also the worst at having any design sense whatsoever, or adapting to competition ;).
I am morbidly curious if the simple website ads are sufficient--unlike myself and this author, they clearly have a lot more than just one person working part-time on their version, so presumably it brings the company money somehow.
So yeah, not everybody, but it's definitely not an unknown game.
747 viewers watching Twitch streamers play or playing along with the streamers right this moment. I've also seen it a lot higher than that. Pretty sure it's the most popular form of this game at the moment, besides the Telestrations board game.
https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Gartic%20Phone
The comments here along the lines of "there's already a game like that" are a bit annoying.
I'm pretty sure that you can say the same about just about any game created today, and somehow people still make new ones and sometimes they get lucky and have their game become popular. What's the point of dumping on someone's work like this?
There's something about the article that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it sounds too much like an ad, maybe it's the hyperbole, like the author is suggesting he single-handedly "saved" this game from "certain death".
It's not hard to imagine the criticism if the situation were different. Imagine the headline "How my startup will save millions of companies on the brink of death by providing a way to have meetings remotely". The expected response would be "What about Zoom?".
I feel like the "I saved a silly game my friends play from certain death during the lockdown period" is just a priori such a fun and light hearted claim that it's ridiculous to respond to it the same way you'd respond to "I saved the global economy"
It's about being a critical and alert reader, not cynical. That's how we protect ourselves from directly injecting nonsense into our brains. People don't do it enough.
The difference between good and bad writing is that good writing can anticipate and withstand a critical reading. Bad writing just falls apart and the point is lost.
Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your original post - I agree with everything you've just written in your reply to me - but to pick up an example from the original:
>> I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet. (a)
>Meant: "I like building games and making a clone of this would be fun!" (b)
>Sounds like: "I did not bother to check google, so I had to build one myself." (c)
I don't know how you got from (a) to (c) if not through cynicism. How is that critical thinking? You appear to be painting a worst-case interpretation and adding your own detail to make it sounds worse. Let's try an alternative version of the same construction:
"I think building a table might be a good creative outlet"
Does that sound more like
"I like building things and making my own table would be fun"
or
"I did not bother to check <local_furniture_store>, so I had to build one myself"
To me it's very clearly the former; how can you know whether I did or did not investigate alternatives from that sentence? I could do the same with
"None of my 'friends' told me I copied a well known game" - air quotes implies they're not really friends
"I am unaware this game already existed in many forms" - that sentence is a contradiction in terms, but if you mean 'I was...' then the original specifically mentions the game by name - therefore obviously his/her version of it which clearly did not previously exist
"this game has no name; nobody else in the whole world plays it" - how can anyone with any certainty ever assert that no-one else in the whole world does something?
I'm confused, have I totally misread you? What am I missing?
You're absolutely right, I was being cheeky, you are right to call me out. You have a good point: it's a risk of being overly critical that you fall into cynical ridicule.
Ah... understood, thanks; I just came from reading several posts by, let's call them 'vaccine cynics' so I guess I was primed by that mode of discussion.
A list of names for this game, or games closely inspired by it that rely on similar mechanics - some of which have been named elsewhere in this thread:
29 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 63.4 ms ] threadThings developers are the worst at:
1. Market research
I built something similar during Covid, another parlour game we call “Colander of Death” (it probably has many other names). It’s never gonna go viral but we had fun with it.
I am morbidly curious if the simple website ads are sufficient--unlike myself and this author, they clearly have a lot more than just one person working part-time on their version, so presumably it brings the company money somehow.
747 viewers watching Twitch streamers play or playing along with the streamers right this moment. I've also seen it a lot higher than that. Pretty sure it's the most popular form of this game at the moment, besides the Telestrations board game. https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Gartic%20Phone
(No connection other than happy user.)
I'm pretty sure that you can say the same about just about any game created today, and somehow people still make new ones and sometimes they get lucky and have their game become popular. What's the point of dumping on someone's work like this?
It's not hard to imagine the criticism if the situation were different. Imagine the headline "How my startup will save millions of companies on the brink of death by providing a way to have meetings remotely". The expected response would be "What about Zoom?".
> The game that almost died
The author meant: "The game my friends and I had to stop playing because of social distancing"
To the reader sounds like: "The game that everybody in the world stopped playing"
> my friends and I used to love playing a nameless pen-and-paper game
Meant: "my friend and I did not use/know/have a name for this game, we just call it 'the game'"
Sounds like: "this game has no name; nobody else in the whole world plays it"
> I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet.
Meant: "I like building games and making a clone of this would be fun!"
Sounds like: "I did not bother to check google, so I had to build one myself."
> proved good enough to spread organically through friends for the next few months
Meant: "My friends liked it"
Sounds like: "None of my 'friends' told me I copied a well known game"
> Writey Drawey might not have existed without the digital shift we’ve made over the last year
Meant: "If not for pandemic, I would not have made this thing"
Sounds like: "I am unaware this game already existed in many forms"
Being cynical is much easier than being insightful.
The difference between good and bad writing is that good writing can anticipate and withstand a critical reading. Bad writing just falls apart and the point is lost.
>> I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet. (a)
>Meant: "I like building games and making a clone of this would be fun!" (b)
>Sounds like: "I did not bother to check google, so I had to build one myself." (c)
I don't know how you got from (a) to (c) if not through cynicism. How is that critical thinking? You appear to be painting a worst-case interpretation and adding your own detail to make it sounds worse. Let's try an alternative version of the same construction:
"I think building a table might be a good creative outlet"
Does that sound more like
"I like building things and making my own table would be fun"
or
"I did not bother to check <local_furniture_store>, so I had to build one myself"
To me it's very clearly the former; how can you know whether I did or did not investigate alternatives from that sentence? I could do the same with
"None of my 'friends' told me I copied a well known game" - air quotes implies they're not really friends
"I am unaware this game already existed in many forms" - that sentence is a contradiction in terms, but if you mean 'I was...' then the original specifically mentions the game by name - therefore obviously his/her version of it which clearly did not previously exist
"this game has no name; nobody else in the whole world plays it" - how can anyone with any certainty ever assert that no-one else in the whole world does something?
I'm confused, have I totally misread you? What am I missing?
- Eat Poop You Cat [1]
- Telephone Pictionary
- Telestrations [2]
- GarticPhone (.com for link)
- Drawful
- Drawception
- Mutabo
- Cranium (according to wikipedia [3], at least)
I'm sure the list can be way longer
[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30618/eat-poop-you-cat
[2] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/46213/telestrations
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers#Variants
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse
Visit the site: https://writeydrawey.site
The href is missing the 'e' in drawey.