Paul: I’d like to talk about
Cards Against Humanity, one our hobby’s biggest breakout successes.
The best way to describe Cards Against Humanity is “Lego for jokes”. It gives its players setups and punchlines, all ready to click together in one-step assembly. It’s easier than microwaving food or boil-in-the-bag rice. Almost no creativity is required, and because the powers of chance deal you your cards, it’s not as if you can even help the sort of combinations that present themselves, right? As well as creativity and effort, who even needs
responsibility?
It’s important that we provide a trigger warning for what follows. A warning for, well, just about anything: abuse; violence; racism; rape.
If you don’t know about how Cards Against Humanity works, it’s
pretty simple. It’s also a game that continues for as long as you like and, potentially, even in the
way
you would like. This is the good bit about it. Its rules are intentionally vague regarding how long you play for and perhaps even how you decide the winner. It’s more important, its creators suggest, to play
than to win.
Drawing your first few white cards, you already know the direction this game wants you to go. While the cards you look at might well answer the question “What is Batman’s guilty pleasure?” with “Puppies,” you could just as easily offer “Child abuse.”
But we
all
know the direction the game wants people to go in because it subtitles itself “A party game for horrible people.” It openly, plainly, even joyfully acknowledges its content, with things like “The profoundly handicapped,” “Black people,” “Auschwitz,” “Homeless people,” and “Surprise sex” which, if you’re not versed in the term, is a euphemism for rape.
These are just a small sample of the subjects which Cards Against Humanity suggests as punchlines. You don’t
need
to use them, it implies; whatever you come up with was your choice. You’re the one who put those pieces together. But Cards Against Humanity still gives you the tools with which you can construct these calls and responses. It still frames and controls what happens. There’s a word for this, and that word is “enabling.”
The latest edition, which I bought to try very recently, omits some of the cards that have caused the most upset, white cards that have made punchlines of “Passable Transvestites” and “Date Rape,” hopefully because the creators realised that, for some people, “Date Rape” is not the conclusion of a joke, but the conclusion of the worst night of their life. It still includes cards that say “African Children,” “Poor People,” “The Jews” “AIDS”, “Child abuse” and “Amputees.”
I find it pretty easy to understand how some people wouldn’t find some of these funny, particularly if they recognise themselves, their experiences or someone they know as the butt of one of these “jokes”. But this isn’t the only reason why Cards Against Humanity is a bad game.
Jokes aren’t Lego. Cards Against Humanity gives you two or sometimes three pieces to snap together, and it tells you you’re done. That’s it. And you know what? Often, many of these combinations aren’t very good. They aren’t very good whether you find their subjects funny or not, offensive or not. They aren’t very good because they’re sometimes nonsensical or just weird. They aren’t very good because, in an attempt to be as shocking, controversial and offensive as possible, the designers have forgotten to… make things work. There’s very little creativity in combining cards into a joke, because the work and the structuring is done for you. It’s almost like copying someone else’s homework. There’s no life in there.
I originally wanted to talk about Cards Against Humanity in a comparison with the now delayed
Funemployed, a game that uses its cards as suggestions, launch pads for ideas and improvisations, the starting point for things which, even with the same cards,
can be different every time. Cards Against Humanity opens and closes the joke for you. It’s limp, passive, inert.
A punchline is also a limitation, even if it has shock value. You see it once and it may be amusing, alarming or whatever. You see it a second time and it’s less so. By giving you all its calls and responses, Cards Against Humanity seriously limits its shelf life. Its cards will become familiar. The thrill, if any, will wear off and nobody can be shouting “...it’s amputees!” with the same enthusiasm the tenth time over.
But yeah, sure, beyond the limits of this system, I (obviously) think Cards Against Humanity is a bad game because its content isn’t funny. It encourages you to make jokes about minorities, people of colour, people with disabilities, and at times I was looking at cards that made me think this was comedy from the 1920s. Does this game really think it’s edgy with its jokes about Mexicans, Mormons or Jews? It’s not
just
that this will offend people, it’s that it’s so damn old.
It’s what mainstream white culture has done for generations and the framework which Cards Against Humanity deliberately provides is one that encourages it further. In an age of greater awareness, where more and more people push for social change, this game is winking at you and telling you it’s okay to indulge those backward prejudices. It’s just fun, it says. It’s ironic, it says. And for the white male designers of Cards Against Humanity, who are primarily selling it to white male players, a lot of these belittling, dehumanising concepts
are
just a bit of fun rather than real issues that affect them.
(Oh, and jokes about sex and poop are generally fine. Sex is a valid subject and scatalogical humour, vile as some might claim it is, is nowhere near as disgusting as mocking or demeaning a group of people.)
So it’s probably not difficult to see how Cards Against Humanity was never, ever going to sit well with any of us, with a site that, while it is run by yet more white men, nonetheless deeply wants to open board gaming up to everyone. Board gaming has become dominated by people like us, and the arrival of Cards Against Humanity hardly made it friendlier to any other kind of person. The
explosion
of Cards Against Humanity has, I think, been downright hurtful to board gaming’s progress.
I know some people remove a lot of cards from the game before they play it. I know some people play it to try it just once (as I had to). I know some people play it in a safe space, with an awareness of boundaries. But I can’t stand it. I feel sad when I see other people playing it. I know they only want to enjoy my hobby, but seeing another copy sold, opened or played is a miserable reminder of how the damn thing is everywhere.
Our hobby isn’t new, yet it’s now growing in a way it never was before. It’s reaching more people in more places and, please God, I don’t want Cards Against Humanity to be its ambassador. I don’t want more people’s first experience of modern board, card and table gaming to be a game that says “Oops! Isn’t all this stuff just so rude? Goodness, who knows what we’ll come up with next.”
So, if you were thinking about buying Cards Against Humanity, perhaps you should think again, because your money is an encouragement, your purchase is a statement and your playing is a representation. Personally, I am not remotely okay with Cards Against Humanity representing us. I hope a lot of other people aren’t, either. I hope they say so, too.
Matt: I suspect that people don’t often question the nature of the game that they’ve actually bought. And that’s fair - asking people to analyze fun can kill parties quicker than your gay dad kills children.
The joke I just made wasn’t funny or appropriate, but crucially it remains my joke. Jokes aren’t a mechanic to get us out of trouble when we find out we’ve done something wrong, and creating a joke comes with responsibility. If the above was anything other than a nasty springboard to the point I’m currently making, I’d expect to be held to account for it. If you can’t own a joke, you shouldn’t tell it. My biggest problem with Cards Against Humanity is perhaps the same reason many find it so thrilling - it provides permission to tell jokes you don’t dare by removing all sense of responsibility.
I fundamentally don’t think that Cards Against Humanity is a funny game. The cards create jokes, but that isn’t what makes people laugh. The laughter comes from the giddy thrill of behaving in a way that we know is taboo. Your mate just said something massively racist, but it’s fine - they didn’t choose to put those cards together. And your other friend that did? Well, they didn’t really have many other cards. Besides, so many of the cards are nasty - it’s really just the nature of the game.
This removal of responsibility is frankly just weak. The appeal relies on raucous tittering about people saying things that they 'aren’t supposed to', but in reality you can say whatever the fuck you want.
I despise the implication that those who complain about the tone of Cards Against Humanity are approaching the topic with the mindset of a prude: I’m no stranger to making jokes about highly controversial subjects. I’ve been doing it
on a podcast
for almost five years. I don’t need a card game to grant me permission, but I also don’t need one to absolve me from guilt.
It’s a system designed to reliably dose players with an intoxicating sense of naughtiness. Breaking social rules gives people a buzz, but frankly there are better rules to be breaking. One of the great pleasures of games is allowing yourself to briefly play a role that’s different to your own, but I can’t help but cringe when faced with the glee of people using a deck of cards to pretend they’re the square root of Jeremy Clarkson.
Listen, I appreciate that reality is a systematically crushing gauntlet of rules designed to make your life awful. Modern life is a litany of things you aren’t allowed; a monolithic spreadsheet of sober responsibilities that’s barely cross-referenced to the things we want or need. Escapism and rebellion are natural desires that none of us should ever feel ashamed to embrace, but we’re responsible for the outlets we choose.
There are plenty of naughty things you can do that don’t rely on grinning vacantly while dicking on minorities, but perhaps these aren’t socially acceptable at dinner parties. The vast popularity of Cards Against Humanity allows for any residual guilt to be spread so much further, diluting any sense of responsibility to the point where it’s almost negligible.
I can’t help but feel that the success of the game has been virally powered by this desire to reduce those pangs of guilt: the more people who you know who’ve also bought this game, the better. You’re never expected to take responsibility for any of the things that the game makes you say, but that doesn’t solve the problem of why you own it in the first place.
It’s a question that I don’t think has any pleasant answers - only a truth that we can dilute by sharing it with others. That’s the dirty reality of Cards Against Humanity. I could tell you about better and funnier card games, but it isn’t about cards or humour or games. Cards Against Humanity is just a shoddy magic trick: smash the system, but not before you’ve covered it up with a silk handkerchief.
Ta-da! The taboos remain intact, it was all just a ruse. “Horrible” grants Cards Against Humanity more bravado than it deserves - beneath the brash and explicit surface is a system that enables behaviour that I personally find to be tepid and weak.
Quinns: I’m afraid I can’t come at this with any of Paul’s level-headedness or Matt’s social elegance. But maybe I don’t have to. What a world it would be if the creators of Cards Against Humanity could have fun laughing at AIDS, date rape and anorexia, but would deny me my own mean remarks!
I hate Cards Against Humanity because it’s shit.
If it’s part of the “face” of modern board gaming, it’s also the pervert’s moustache and smug grin. Fittingly for a game so in love with stereotypes, Cards Against Humanity is every horrible stereotype of a nerd snickering in the corner. It is every person ready to lecture you on how humour must sometimes offend, boldly dragging their Auschwitz joke up to the moral high ground. It is the manifestation of an internet asshole.
But that’s not why I hate it. I hate it because it’s shit.
Cards games have a storied history of wasting time in a very relaxed manner, offering the precious opportunity to just sit with people. These are the happy lowlands where we find Cards Against Humanity. This is where you have to judge it: against such flexible, high-capacity games as Skull or Wits & Wagers.
What we’ve got here is a relaxed card game with the very real possibility of offending people from all sorts of walks of life. This game had one job, and it failed.
One of two things happens when you buy Cards Against Humanity. One: you’ve got a game where, if new people want to join in, one of the cards might upset them. That’s miserable. To fix this you could try and prune all the offensive cards out beforehand, but it’s no less depressing to imagine someone hunched over a coffee table trying to make their purchase function as a normal game. Or two: you could only play the game with close friends who you know well. Secretly, though, that’s just as terrible. You bought a game you can only ever play with your coolest of cool buddies who don’t get worked up about this kind of thing.
And when you finally get it to the table? It can't offer the giggle-laced panic of Pictomania, the actual wit of Funemployed, the absurdity of Telestrations. It can offer a limitless stream of pseudo-jokes, lacking either player creativity or the guiding hand of a designer.
Don’t get me wrong. The idea of someone arriving at their very first game night and assuming that the table gaming scene is this insensitive upsets me. But even worse is the thought that someone might sit down to play Cards Against Humanity, and assume the entire hobby is this boring.
Skull
offers the most game in the simplest rules. The Metagame
is Cards Against Humanity for the clever kids. Monikers
is just very, very funny.
And some party games, too:
Two Rooms and a Boom
has a print'n'play that's free, just like CaH. Pictomania
is a ton of fun. Telestrations
is a drawing game you can make as rude as you want. Spyfall
is amazing and lands this June.
We were unable to load Disqus. If you are a moderator please see our
troubleshooting guide.
This is really fantastic work. I loved all of it--well written and thought out, even the illustrations were a great addition.
Most importantly however is that it helped me frame my own feelings about CAH, a game I've always despised but could not explain why. That to me is the sign of a great piece: you helped me understand my own thoughts better.
I want to share this with every person I know who plays CAH. I'm terrified to share this with everyone I know who plays CAH.
It really is telling, isn't it. Don't play CAH for its own sake; play CAH because you don't want to be labeled as an "other." It's a litmus test for straight white culture.
Edit: Sorry - don't mean to be mean. Just think your post was bringing in issues that weren't even necessary. What does "straight white culture" have to do with anything and why is it inherently bad (assuming as a game that is despised, it's a litmus test for being a straight white man).
Because I as I understand it the game doesn't have "heterosexuals" or "white people". And part of the bullshit minorities need to deal with is people telling less than nice jokes about them, then having to act like it's no big deal or risk social exclusion.
It definitely has a "White People" card. I mean, a card that exactly says "White People." Also, a card that says "Pac-Man uncontrollably guzzling cum," which probably also applies to caucasians.
It's not inherently bad. It's just inherently privileged. And what "straight white culture" has to do with everything is... you know, like two-thirds of the article?
Yes, thank you for recapping the last 7 years of Internet discourse for us. I'm absolutely certain this is the first time any of us have had that explained to us.
So isn't the problem those willing to physically harm someone for being different (to them)? I'm still not sure how it's relevant to this review though - what colour or culture someone has.
I enjoy Cards Against Humanity for when I don't want to think or when I am drinking. That is about it. I have lots of other more entertaining games that we can make our own innuendos with. I am very impressed with this article.
Once again, SU&SD has perfectly encapsulated everything I think about a game but couldn't ever write out. This game is a bad game, designed to make people with no sense of humour feel witty by PICKING A CARD.
I have one more criticism that they didn't mention though, Even if you can get past the general air of privilege and unpleasantness that hangs around this game, even if you can get past the frankly shonky design and stop-start play and even if you can get past the fact that it utterly, utterly kills creativity in being funny, there is one more sin that means this game deserves to die.
It eats gaming nights. Everyone I know who dislikes this game but has been forced to play it knows and has told me that they could have the most exciting, colourful, box of delights BEGGING to be played, but as soon as the black box appears, that's game over - the night is done.
As someone with limited time for playing games, fuck you CAH for eating into that time with your bland layer of monochrome crap.
I'm not going to claim that I haven't had a spot of fun playing the game. Maybe it's because my group of friends tended to pick the more ridiculous and less problematic white cards (they never win, at any rate). Maybe it's just beer.
But for whatever reason once it's brought out there's no amount of cajoling I can do to get it put back in the box for the night. I don't know why, maybe another party game with similarly non-existent setup time would have the same effect? I imagine that's as much a key to the runaway success as the the subject matter. A game you can explain in a single sentence and whose setup time requires, at most, a shuffle is appealing.
Still, I think I'll make and effort to finally pick up Skull before my next big game night.
So back when CAH where only just a pnp, me and my friends played it allot and one time we were at my place and we got the idea to let one of my Guinea pigs play. What we did was that we drew 3 cards and the one he first sniffed where the one he played, the guinea pig actually won that game and now we don't play CAH no more, it really showed how little creativity was needed to actually win.
Oh God! This post hit all the right notes for me! I remember exactly the first time we tried Cards Against Humanity. We were at Snakes and Lattes in Toronto, and the staff (usually wonderful with help and suggestions) were aggressively pushing Cards Against Humanity to every table. We looked at it, said "Eh, party game, good for 30 minutes, let's try" and... I don't think we ever had as awkward time as that. Some jokes elicited a scandalized giggle at most, a few had us guffaw, but most just had us play them in a kind of stony silence. From the get-go it was obvious that there was no scoring or win conditions per-se, we were supposed to play it for as long as we enjoyed it, but it was clear to everyone at the table that NO ONE WAS ACTUALLY ENJOYING IT. It was South Park humour without the clever commentary or a satisfying punchline, it was the Adam Sandler or Family Guy or Jackass of party games - "hey, did this gag work? No? How about this one? Yes? Great, here's another but actually nothing like it! Didn't like it? How about...?
So then I'm with another group of people a couple of months later, these guys are a bit more laid back, also more into edgier humour, everyone's drinking and having a good time, someone takes out Cards Against Humanity. What the hell, I think, maybe it works better as an actual party game, rather than a sit-around-the-table-and-play-board-games game. We institute a house rule that the "winner" of each combination must take a shot, and... First 20 minutes pass fine, everyone's having a laugh, the jokes are mostly about sex, poop, dead celebrities, I don't remember what else. But then a particularly horrible card combination comes up, involving hitting children and... well something else as well. It gets a laugh from a few people, but one person breaks down and starts crying. It made us feel sick to realize that it wasn't just that the card combination was a reminder to that person of what they and their sibling went through, but that the fact we LAUGHED at the card felt to the person that we were condoning child abuse as a joke. The rest of the evening was short and extremely awkward and the box was quietly sold off in a garage sale. I will never, ever, ever, ever play Cards Against Humanity again, no matter how clever its creators' marketing is, no matter how many funny "watch grandmothers who are high as a kite play Cards Against Humanity" Youtube videos there are. It is a vile, crass, and unimaginative game that quickly outstays any welcome it might have.
Honestly, I have played this game and I have really liked it and I think the reason why is absolutely knocked out of the park by Matt Lees: "My biggest problem with Cards Against Humanity is perhaps the same reason many find it so thrilling - it provides permission to tell jokes you don't dare by removing all sense of responsibility." YES. In the past, I allowed myself to distance myself from it while playing, idly, perhaps a little drunk. Now, I'm a little embarrassed.
There is a definite (and I realize now, kind of disheartening) disconnect between the cards you play on the table and their meaning. You're laughing at how "naughty" the configuration of white and black cards is because of your choice. You hover above the cards, not at all sullied by the same sort of grossness that would coat you if you yourself, in polite company, or even impolite company, made a similar joke, without these cards acting as some kind of absolving cardboard intermediary.
I think I might sometimes be the weaker sort who would worry that having this sort of perspective would make one seem like the type who poops up parties. I found this review, then, to be refreshing, and important:
I visited a board game cafe in Halifax, Canada a few months ago with my partner while visiting there, and as I went to pay for a copy of Snake Oil on the way out, the owner lamented to me how many times he had tried a sales pitch (of course) to get people to play that game instead of Cards Against Humanity, but it just didn't seem to be working. "People come in and ask to play it and I really try to convince them to try other things", he said (paraphrased). "They don't listen to me, though."
So, thank you for this, Paul, Matt and Quinns. Maybe some of them will listen to you.
It's Apples To Apples for fourteen-year-old boys. It's the card game equivalent of a late-period Mark Millar comic. It's a nihilistic Seth McFuckingFarlane smirk in a box.
I was just groping for something that might approach the magnificence of
"the glee of people using a deck of cards to pretend they’re the square root of Jeremy Clarkson".
Every couple of weeks one of my students will say something like "Oh, you play board games? DO YOU HAVE CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY?" and I have to give them a little talk on how it irritates me from every direction.
As a teacher who uses boardgames a LOT in the classroom, I too had to field this question a couple of times until my students learned that it is wise not to ask me what I think about Cards Against Humanity (or Monopoly, but for different reasons ;)).
I've started using games as to teach from the middle school to the university level, and it's awesome. I use Snake Oil to teach theatre improv and character analysis, Ladies and Gentlemen to explore gender roles, and recently I used Monickers as a format for a revision/pop quiz/surpize test (okease sekect your correct local terminology) for my college technical theatre class.
Cards Against humanity, on the other hand, I would only use when teaching about ethics, normalization and power dynamics.
To be fair, Monopoly actually does do what it was originally designed to do, which is to illustrate graphically why rentier capitalism is a bad thing. It's just that we've been brainwashed into thinking that it's a good thing...
Monopoly wasn't designed with any such intentions. The Landlord's Game was, and while the original Monopoly was in large parts copied from it (though not entirely), it doesn't seem to carry the message as its primary intent.
But the interesting thing is that the version attributed to Darrow is still beholden largely to the original intent, and whilst I agree that the version we know today has tried to smother it, the message is still there - even if you are unlikely to realise it, given the overwhelming "American Dream" notion it attempts to push. And even that is somewhat subverted by the elimination nature of the game.
(Sorry for hijacking the thread a bit. For the record, I agree almost entirely with the original article. CAH maybe does have a place in studies of group dynamics and exclusion, but as an actual game? It is indeed horrible, in almost every sense of the word.)
I have an admission to make. Once upon time I thought Cards Against Humanity was a decent game. With the right group, and the right amount of alcohol, it was a pretty fun time. A group of people trying to out-disgust each other.
But then, more quickly than I had anticipated, the fun faded. You can only hear "A Big Black Dick" as a punchline to a joke that many times before it stops being funny and starts being racist and offensive.
These days I don't play the game if I can help it. I've even off-loaded my copy to some people at work so I don't have to have it in my home any more.
Thank you, Shut Up & Sit Down, for explaining why it is a poor game in a much better way than I ever could.
That said, I do think it has some value in being a way to bring people into the hobby. The same group of people that played CaH with me at work I've since managed to get to play things like Cosmic Encounter. So yeah, while it is not the best way to promote board gaming to non-board gamers, I do think it has the possibility to introduce the hobby to people who would otherwise not be receptive to it.
This pretty much sums up my feelings of the game. I have a group of pals I play board games with from time to time, and we played CAH a couple of times to raucous effect. But, it occurred to me that the fun we had was borne of very, VERY, specific parameters.
Outside of that group of people, close and loving and trusting of one another as we were, the 'game' suffers MASSIVELY. And even *within* that group, the enjoyment quotient drops off tremendously with each subsequent play, and sometimes within /the same session./
I have played it a few times since then, and my secret distress is when people who have never hung out together, let alone play games together, declare a desire or intent to play CAH.
...WHAT? No, that's a terrible idea. That honestly terrifies me.
These days I keep things like Superfight and Monikers on hand to scratch that 'social card game' itch, since I really don't have an interest in playing CAH again.
I understand the criticism of the game's mechanics. Yeah, you will have rounds with absolutely terrible cards/jokes and not taking longer breaks between play sessions (I normally only play it every 3-4 months with friends) makes a lot of the cards predictable and stale.
BUT, saying the only humor comes from being naughty and wrong is a superficial look at why people enjoy the game or why they choose their combinations. The most laughs we've had while playing are the really clever combinations or combinations of mostly boring cards that just fit perfectly together, because it gives you a great visual image.
Like "What is Batman's guilty pleasure?" - Putting down something offensive won't get you any points after you've already played the game with the same group. But something like "agriculture" creates a weird and funny image that nicely contrasts with Batman's normal persona. And if you wanna go a little naughty, place "snorting coke off a Clown's boner". You don't have to find it funny but the joke in that case is not just because it's "wrong".
Also, we typically end each session with the haiku card and that sure needs some creativity to win. Cards Against Humanity can only give you back what you put in.
And saying that it doesn't bring people closer to the hobby? It was the sole reason I got interested into card based games again and why I backed Funemployment on Kickstarter. Yeah, you can thank CAH for that.
The whole article in general has a really offputting, condescending tone. Like people who enjoy CAH are actually horrible people and you are on a higher level. Or that the cards can only have negative effects.
Look at how many people thank them for the game, because they found a way to cope with loosing a friend to colon cancer (playing the 'kids with ass cancer' card) or finally being able to feel better about a miscarriage. You completely disregard these people's experiences. Hey, if you are offended by that stuff, it's okay. Just don't play the game. It's not like it doesn't advertise itself as something it's not. But let people who enjoy this type of humor have their fun between close friends.
I agree with your interpretation of the off-putting, condescending tone. It's pretty hostile toward those who enjoy the game, painting them as caricatures and stating why it is "they" enjoy it.
I am hilariously* deploying a line of argument that's often used to silence people who're bothered by Cards Against Humanity in response to you, a person who's bothered by a review of Cards Against Humanity.
Man, I can see why this game's made so much money. Irony is HARD TO GET RIGHT.
But I would never deploy that line of argument. You're painting me as someone that I'm not. Which is what I think is so bothersome about the review. I'm a whole person, full of thoughts and feelings that are uniquely my own. To have other people try to reduce me to just part of who I am, or assume that I'm just like some social group that they've assigned me to... it's crushing.
