Does anyone here actually still play Cards Against Humanity?

An absolutely scathing review of CAH from board game site, "Shut Up & Sit Down" is making the rounds around Twitter, and it seems to be making people realize what a depthless, hackneyed game CAH is. That's fine, but I haven't even touched CAH since the first expansion, you play it once or twice and everyone's seen all the middle school jokes about black dicks and genocide you can stomach.

It's a game designed to be boring after one play, so you feel the need to keep buying the expansions with more jokes about black dicks. And I lost all desire to buy the expansions after Max Temkin's meltdown over Jordan Jessie Go making fun of the game, he was so offended that people made fun of his game, that he sent his followers after those real comedians and berated them until they apologized. It's a game about being offensive, and it's creators couldn't handle being the butt of a joke.

The funniest stuff that's come out of CAH lately, is Paul F. Tompkins subtly cracking digs at it after their Earwolf advertisements.

Eh. My friends and I will play it if we're gaving a get together and need something to sit around and do while theres a movie on or something. It also makes a pretty decent drinking game (whoever's card don't get picked takes a drink). The only time we get really enthusiastic about it anymore is if we have someone new or relatively new to the game coming in to play it. At this point other people's reactions are the most amusement that I get out of it. Once you know all the cards and have played it enough times to see all of the combinations then it loses some magic. That's not to say its a bad game though. A lot of games have a finite number of possibilities and when you've seen them all then you've seen them all. I've put enough hours into the game to feel satisfied with having bought most of the expansions and the bigger blacker box.

That being said if they do a Christmas holiday special again this year I don't know if I'll go along with it. It's not expensive and the stuff they send is neat, but I wasn't as amused by the stuff I was getting this year compared to the year before. Maybe its because I was unemployed this time and secretly felt like my money should be going to other things, so we'll see how I feel later in the year.

I have a group of friends who enjoy it fairly regularly. It is more of an excuse to bullshit and every so often wonder about the depths of man's inhumanity to man. That and each expansion is getting progressively weirder in a way we really enjoy.

But Drawful is taking over game night something fierce as the light fair. For a more intense time Betrayal at House on a Hill has generated alot of silly times and laughs, plus is a bunch o fun

Occasionally, with friends, with custom rules and decks.

Black dicks can be pretty funny in the right hands. *gives self giant high five*

You seem weirdly upset by a card game that is several years old... "Don't like it, don't play it!" is my motto!

My group of friends definitely got WAY more than one play out of it. We still bust it out occasionally, but yeah, eventually you "get" the joke or something. To be fair, that's how a huge number of games are. Eventually you just move on to something else.

I know zero about Tempkin other than his appearances on GB and he seemed like a funny dude then!

Meh, the combinations stopped having an impact in my group.. There's variety to the combinations, but the humor always seems to be the same. We just lost it's magic.

I really like a lot of the folks who work at CAH, especially Jenn and Trin, but I never thought the game itself was particularly funny or clever. I'm surprised people are still into it and buying expansions, because it seems like the kind of thing you'd play once and then never want to touch again.

The rise and fall of CAH is akin to the rise and fall of Facebook. At first it was this cool, niche thing only you and your friends knew about, then every college kid in the us had it and that was cool too, then... Middle aged/older folks (mom, dad, grandma?) caught wind of it and now it kind of blows (but is still popular).

I play it still every once in awhile so when my friends do play it's fun since we haven't touched the game in awhile. They being said, it is never played without alcohol being involved which tends to always make it better.

I will say though that after playing it multiple times. The answers that have a small paragraph to read grow really old compared to the ones that are short and sweet

It's a game that you play during a party after everyone has passed the point of having loose boundaries. It's pretty hilarious in that context. But I wouldn't play it during a board game party, or as a way to relax, or as an introduction to board games. It's a game that you play when you are drunk. I feel like the authors of the ' Shut Up & Sit Down' articles forgot that.

I only play it very sporadically, with custom cards, and I totally get how it would be super boring after your fifth playthrough. But it's still loads of disgusting entertainment if the cards are fresh.

@imsh_pl: Because you've been drinking makes it ok to be demeaning? Of the alternative games they suggest that I've played, they are also made fun by drinking and loosening up. The main point is that they require more creativity without being insulting.

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.

That's basically what the review comes down to.

I think it's a silly little game where the quality of the experience depends on the people you play with and how familiar you are with the cards. It's definitely a game that can get stale quickly, and I think the makers know that. Expansions are it's lifeblood. And obviously if you're playing with a bunch of folks who can't laugh at the absurd and obviously offensive, you're gonna have a bad time; or if you hold those sensibilities yourself.

I don't know anything about this Jordan Jessie Go situation, but if there's nothing more to it than he couldn't handle a bad review, then yeah, that's pretty lame. Not really lame enough for me to instahate CAH though.

But as for the game being revealed to be "depthless" and "hackneyed", was there really anyone out there who thought it was the deepest or most intellectually stimulating shit out there? It's the card game equivalent of fart noises and stupid internet videos. That's either a damning indictment or a selling point.

Can I join you in that high five?

CAH was never something I was very interested in, but the kind of people it infuriates is amusing, in a way. Or I guess it would be, were it not so predictable.

I still play it with friends on a regular basis. We all have a good time. The expansions are a good way to keep the game fresh and new and not grow stale.

I don't play it very often so I still enjoy it whenever I do. Over time the cards that are jokes in and of themselves obviously lose their appeal, but you can still be clever about things to come up with some great stuff.

"Before you die Mr. Bond, I want to show you a PowerPoint presentation."

Max Tempkin seems like a cool guy. Sorry to hear he apparently did some not cool things.

You either like it or not. I still have a great time with family. Yes, the cards get stale but that's why they have a ton of expansions.

It's hilarious it even got a review.

I play it with my friends every couple months when we have a big get together; we still enjoy it quite a bit.

I don't see anything unethical or wrong about dark humor when it is directed not maliciously towards a certain individual but rather at a hypothetical person/group/stereotype. In the CAH games I've played all of the participants understand that the punchlines of the cards are not representative of any of the views of the people present, and are not actual statements of beliefs.

Writing a review of a game that is most fun is when you are bullshitting with friends is a odd concept. Also, seems strange that a site would review a game after it is already so popular.

@marokai: I think for the most part, people might just be annoyed that something as corny and lame as CAH is put on a pedestal as this "edgy", hilarious thing. Which is exactly what Giant Bomb did, not only promoting it constantly, but being afraid to even say some of the dumb shit on the cards. That's why I bought the game in the first place.

That's why Jordan Jessie Go! made fun of the game and the creators(by imagining Max and co. as a bunch of white hipsters in bean bags cracking themselves up by just saying penis over and over)

The game is definitely one of diminishing returns, but I don't think that damns it in any way. Most games do lose their luster after a while. As for the style of comedy it goes for, yeah, it's dumb and offensive for the sake of dumb and offensive, but that's the point: Be so cartoonishly nasty that it wraps back around to harmless. That's also what separates a "good" CAH player from a "bad" one: The good player goes for creative and not necessarily offensive responses, the bad player falls into the (intentional? I wonder) trap of hitting the gross-out and dick jokes every time. Granted, that's a matter of opinion based on who's playing and how deep you're metagaming the Card Czar's own sense of humor, but we all know how CAH is played, and I'm not going to paraphrase the rulebook.

Suffice to say, the game is what you make of it. It can be painfully bad or insanely funny, just like Apples to Apples before it. There's a reason that "Hope" became an insta-win card in so many cases for so many people, and not "big black dick".

I do have issues with some of what Max Tempkin says and does (going after critics like that is a bad look. I haven't heard JJGO's criticisms, but being familiar with Jordan and Jesse's work, I can't imagine it could have been that bad). But he seems like a decent guy, and I don't think anything he did was bad enough to boycott the game.

I mean, there's that one Cosby-esque thing, but I don't know nearly enough about it to even include it in my thoughts on Max and CAH.

Yeah, pretty bizarre.

It's an absurd take of apples to apples, a fluff game, not a mechanics heavy euro styled board game.

I never understood CAH. Well, I guess it makes total sense in a college context where kids are getting their footing with what's "appropriate" vs. "inappropriate", and delighting in actually vocalizing all of the naughty things that they couldn't at home. But just saying sentences isn't funny. The surprise of an unexpectedly filthy sentence may be good for a chuckle, but when you know all the cards, those chuckles can't last very long.

I enjoy Apples to Apples as playing with my friends usually gets pretty raunchy, because with the right people you can use innocent words to imply gross or extreme shit through the magic of innuendo. CAH lacks all that.

But it's the best selling thing ever so I'm clearly wrong. Oh well!

We have a comic book shop in our town where they crack open their CAH deck regularly for a game or two after close. Can see how it can belp ease tensions after a busy day i suppose.

Not since I move away from all of my friends :'(

@joshwent: I'm with you there. I never understood the appeal. Maybe with alcohol, maybe? I still rather play drunken Jenga or something than sit in a circle trying to come up with 'naughty phrases' like we're in middle school or something.

@chu52:

Yeah it's fun as fuck

CAH is fun, but you gotta keep rotating new people or drink a lot.

Otherwise it has less replay value than Mario Party 3. Maybe even 4.

That's the crux of the strongest critique against the game: you, as the player, passively let the game speak for you and, when at its worst (offensively or in terms of entertainment), the fault falls on or can be attributed to the game itself. You may have decided to play a racist or sexist or humorless card, but you didn't write the card, or maybe you had no other cards and were 'forced' to be racist or sexist or humorless. The game gives you such limited creative control, and such an overwhelming amount of imprudent (at best) things to say, that you have no choice to play along with its mean-spiritedness and, oftentimes, to embrace it.

I personally just don't like games that rely so heavily on chance, but the it is a compelling argument that the game lets you slyly play the "ironic jerk" because the only tools it gives you are the offensive ones.

My friends and I play it every once in a while. It's still a fun time while drinking (which is the only time I care to play card games). I do hate it when someone makes a dirty/satirical/taboo thing and then get's butt hurt when some people don't enjoy it. I think you can definitely get more than 1 or 2 games out of it though. It's fun to mix it with apple 2 apples cards and play that way too.

Yeah I've played it a couple times, it's good clean fun. But it's getting to the point where I've seen most of the cards now. Fortunately I've got an unopened expansion pack at the ready.

It's a game based on subjective evaluation and construction of offensive humor, so of course people's opinion greatly vary on the game. I do not have regular board game parties so I only play the game every 4 months or so. But to me the "offensive" part of Cards Against Humanity has never been the focus for me. I'm sure it is the main draw, the approach you take when you explain it, but really the main thing about CAH is guessing the type of humor your friends are into, what is more likely to make them laugh, and discovering how terrible they can be (No could ever imagine how Brad could be so good at this game). It is really easy to offend people, but it is a lot harder to construct actual jokes out of it, ones that are interesting and well though out. I understand it is an easy game to play the wrong way, and to that effect I have no desire to watch internet streams of players doing the same black dick joke over and over again - as the offensive cards lose their appeal really fast.

To me, the greatest joke the Bombcrew ever did while playing the game was "What don't you want to find at the bottom of a bowl of Chinese soup? Hope." Simple, no scatologic joke or offensive material, just a string of words that make way too much sense it hurts. There was also the thing about the Vatican having a secret room specially made for jerking off in a pool of children's tears, but in the light of all the scandals in the realm of the catholic church, it only made way too much goddamn sense.

Is CAH any different that the classic Apples to Oranges?

I'm over it. I have a bunch of internet friends that meet up in person fairly often and there's always someone that wants to play it. I really feel like it's just a bad game. Like the judging process is slow and tedious and should really end once a card gets a decent laugh from the group. It doesn't though and reading like 9 answers fucking sucks.

It might be better with one judge for the entire game or ending once something is funny idk. Its bleh.

Time for dat Tall Poppy Syndrome to set in, I guess?

I feel like 5-6 people is the soft spot for that game. I once had a game with 15 people, and yeah, I don't recommend it.

@vincentvendetta: the amount of times I have heard Patrick klepek reference that joke has to be in at least the dozens

I definitely think when I first played Cards Against Humanity a lot of the humor was because of the nature of the cards. I agree that it gets stale once you see all of the cards and know the best match ups. But it doesn't matter because Card's Against Humanity is really just a launchpad for my group's humor. We've had some terribly unfunny combinations that eventually made us crack up just from everybody interpreting it in their own ways. Sure it's not going to win any awards for its depth, but it's just a party game designed to make some friends laugh. Obviously if you find the content offensive you shouldn't play it, but for everyone else, I think it gets the job done pretty damn well. I don't really know what people are expecting from it.

Not really any more, but I certainly got my money's worth during the first year or two. It's a game that depends entirely on who you're playing with and you're obviously going to have seen everything at some point. That's obvious from the beginning, though, so it's not really something you can hold against the game. My roommates and I had played it so much that first year, though, that I was pretty over it by the time the general public got a hold of it, so it was super weird to have my aunts and uncles bring up playing it at Thanksgiving last year ("What's that one game we played? Cards against something?").

I bust it out every 6 months or so with my friends and it's always a good time. It's a fun game and I don't really care about any internet think pieces who are about 5 years late to the party. Everyone knows what it is at this point, you're either into it or you're not. I never found the game inherently offensive on its own, though with the wrong kind of people it certainly could be. I also think CAH has been judicious in removing cards that they thought "punched down" or were otherwise mean spirited in ways they didn't want to be. People are entitled to their opinion and I guess for people who critically analyze board games, it's not very good but you can't convince me that anything about the game is all that harmful.

Also, small aside, the greatest play I've ever seen in Cards Against Humanity wasn't offensive or dirty at all. The white card was the three play "blank + blank = blank" card and a friend of mine played "Barack Obama" + "white guilt" = "crippling debt." It was pretty much the most perfect collection of cards I've ever seen in my life. I still think about it from time to time.

And before anyone tries to start a political debate over that, I voted for Obama, it's still funny, I don't care.

The only times I feel the "fun fading" is when I continually play with newcomers. They still find the surprise of what the cards make you say a laugh riot while I'm searching for the best joke. And many play by more Apples to Apples gameplay, ie whatever card fits or answers the question best wins. I prefer the funniest or most outrageous wins. I also like to talk out each card answer, sometimes just riffing with people will cause me to look at a card differently.

I bought the first 4 expansions. I enjoyed the game but you REALLY need new blood after a couple plays with the same group of people. Without new people and reactions you kind of just end up seeing the same jokes over and over or theorizing the best couplings to the point where the game is boring. So, yeah, I think I'm done with it. I had my time and I enjoyed it but it's probably over. Even new expansions get old before you get through them.

It was a pretty good version of Apple to Apples though.

@finaldasa said:

I definitely recommend doing this.

Regardless of whether or not people here still play it, the game is more popular than ever. When fucking Ellen is playing the thing on her tv show, there are plenty of people still playing it.

I bought it about 3 years ago, and I think I've played it twice since then. Not because I didn't want to, I'm just not in a position to play a game like that with a good amount of people (ie at least 5). But I'm kind of shocked how popular it has gotten with the mainstream.