Cards Against Humanity is a game that needs no introduction - you likely not only know of it, but have a strong feeling about it, either positive or negative. The game was an early Kickstarter success and caused a seismic shift in the party game industry - for years after, it seemed every game got an "after dark" version inspired by CAH. The company is famous not only for their influential game but for their promotional shenanigans which raise enormous amounts of money for charity. Their brand of humor may not be appropriate for everyone, but I found the team to be enormously friendly, accomodating and generous with their time, as per the interview below. Enjoy!
1. Cards Against Humanity is a bona fide phenomenon and its influence is significant. What can you share about the origins of the game - about how the game evolved, and the excitement of the crowdfunding campaign? What surprised you about the reaction to this game? What would you do differently, given what you learned in the process? What do you say to those who say you destroyed party games for a generation?
Cards Against Humanity was written for a New Year’s Eve party that we went to while home on holiday break from college. People at the party seemed to like it, so we made it available online for free. People there seemed to like it, too, so we decided to turn it into a physical product, which required the crowdfunding support of Kickstarter. The campaign raised over 400% of our original goal, which came to us as a colossal surprise.
Frankly, there were a lot of surprises along the way, but one key lesson has been that if it makes us laugh, it’ll probably make other people laugh. Burying a pack of cards in clam-flavored mayonnaise made us laugh, so we did it.
2. I've heard that Mad Libs was a formative influence on the game's design, and that tracks. But it's been noted that the game has structural similarities with Apples to Apples as well. What do you say to the nay-sayers who claim CAH is merely a filthier version of A2A? (Personally, I think it's a big improvement). What were the formative influences and the inspiration for the game?
The question-and-answer gameplay of Cards Against Humanity wasn’t new or revolutionary, nor was the fill-in-the-blank format that Mad Libs inspired. What was pretty new was combining the format with our brand of absurd, dirty, political, and silly humor, drawing from our favorite comedy growing up, like George Carlin, Monty Python, Second City, and The Onion.
3. The game's tagline is "A party game for horrible people." How accurate is this? It seems tongue-in-cheek, because all the hilarious horribleness is already provided in the box - it seems it's more a party game for average people that gives them a chance to combine socially questionable content in socially-acceptable ways. The players speak through the cards and enjoy the delicious feeling of being horrible in a safe way. Is this accurate?
Probably!
4. In addition to your famous game, you are well-known for -- I guess I'd call it, anti-capitalist performance art? -- releasing products like the Bullshit Box and Diamond Potato. If you care to reveal it, what's the credo of your company - what are you aiming to accomplish with these efforts? Per the title, the cards are against humanity - but what is Cards Against Humanity's stance on humanity?
We’d love our stunts to be anti-capitalist performance art, though it’s difficult when capitalism is all too happy to subsume its own critique and sell it back for a profit. We try, at any rate.
Oftentimes we frame our projects as a public improv scene––we set the stage and let our fans run with it––and what we end up with is tens of thousands of people who are really, really excited about a giant, pointless hole in the ground or Awooga’ing on Yowza.Social. It’s incredibly joyful.
We don’t have a credo, a mission statement, or anything like that––we’re a small team that works together to choose projects that make us laugh (like Diamond Potato), hold some sort of personal significance (like the Science Ambassador Scholarship), or benefit important causes (like the Climate Catastrophe Pack). Oftentimes it’s as simple as someone going, ‘Hey, I love my library. What if we donated games to them?’ and then we create an initiative like CAH Loves Libraries. We’ve got a unique platform with resources that deserve to be shared with people around us, and we try to weave that into everything we do. To date, we’ve donated millions of dollars to organizations like the Wikimedia Foundation, National Network of Abortion Funds, EMILY’s List, Marijuana Policy Project, Coalition for Rainforest Nations, and more.
5. What's the process of creating and vetting cards? I know you accept card ideas via your website (with a legal disclaimer), and I've read that a couple cards (at least) from earlier editions have been discontinued in recent printings. How do you all decide which cards to add or remove? And how many card ideas get rejected for being too offensive, and what are they, if you care to share? IE what (if any) topics are firmly off limits?
The key thing is that each card goes through multiple rounds of editing and cutting. We don’t just come up with an idea that makes us laugh and then put it right in the game. We write it down and come back to it the next week and see if it’s still funny in the harsh light of day, so to speak. Then it’ll go on a shortlist.
Over the last several years, we’ve developed a pretty rigorous playtesting system for our shortlist. We send copies of cards being considered to a diverse group of people around the world, who record themselves playing with their friends. Our staff then transcribes these playtests and helps us figure out which cards really stand out, which ones fall flat, and which ones make people more upset than delighted. We also use the data from our Online Lab, though in-person playtesting is the gold standard.
Every year or two, we go through all our products and remove cards we just don’t find funny any more. Perhaps tastes have changed. Perhaps a joke has lost its cultural or political relevance. We try to write jokes that are evergreen, but we don’t always know what the future will hold. We’re constantly trying to keep the game fresh.
Often we’ll try to write foils packs that are a little more timely or niche. This works especially well for charitable or other collaborations, like the time we wrote a pack with an internet-famous cat.
6. Back in the day, words like "mentally retarded" and "midget" were just descriptors, but now they are verboten. Culture, including humor, changes over time; what's seen as edgy or funny in one era might be considered offensive or harmful later on. Many things may be funny to some, deeply hurtful to others. Is this something you consider as you create and curate content for the game? Is there a desire to be an "equal opportunity offender," so as not to single out particular groups?
Our intention with Cards Against Humanity is always, first and foremost, to delight people. Humor grows and changes, language evolves for the better, and we revise the game to adjust accordingly to the cultural barometer (and our own). That’s why playtesting is so important!
Beyond that, we find it’s helpful for players to review the cards on their own ahead of playing our game (and any, for that matter) to account for any personal sensitivities.
7. Finally, what’s next for Cards Against Humanity? Will you continue to amaze with non-game products? Do you think you'll ever produce a second game? And what other games are you enjoying playing currently?
We love Cards Against Humanity and will continue putting out expansion packs and revising content so it stays fresh and relevant. We’ll also certainly keep putting time and energy into weird one-off stunts and charitable collaborations––our favorite part of the business––though we plan to expand the portfolio of games that we make.
Back in 2023 we released Head Trip, our first party game since Cards Against Humanity. It took six years, dozens of iterations, and thousands of playtests to perfect. It’s a stand-alone cooperative game that requires more reflection and discussion than our headlining title does, but it maintains the same humor people have come to expect from us. We did a fun interview with Block Club Chicago about the game, which you can read here. We’ve also got more brand-new games in the works.
Last year, we released Tales and Out of Line––two “twists” on Cards Against Humanity. Each game is played with your existing Cards Against Humanity cards but with novel mechanics. We’re working on more such twists, too.
Tales is a fill-in-the-blank story game that plays like adult mad-libs with Cards Against Humanity white cards and ridiculous stories for you to read out loud as a group. Out of Line is a cooperative party game that asks players to rank their hands of white Cards Against Humanity cards on a spectrum of things like, “smells bad to smells good,” while one Card Czar tries to guess the order that their friends placed everything in. These game additions are a good way to keep things interesting, particularly for those who’ve been with Cards Against Humanity since the very beginning.
As for games that we’re currently playing? We actually just did a staff gift exchange with some of our favorites. That included titles like The Chameleon, Lacuna, and Quarto.
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