Draw Something
Draw Something is an iOS game I've been playing a lot on the iPad recently. I'm really enjoying it, and I think some of the reasons why it's so good are interesting. I've also seen a bunch of people on Twitter saying 'I don't get it', so this post is partly in answer to them.
First off, I should say that drawing one of very few things I enjoy doing that I'm not any good at. In the past I've been a fairly prolific doodler, but I've never got beyond 'complete amateur'.
Draw Something is basically 'just Pictionary'. But there are a number of things about its design which make it successful for me. But first up, for those who haven't played it, a quick summary of how it works:
- You choose the person to play with (currently by username entry, Facebook or email)
- You get given a choice of 3 words of increasingly difficulty to draw, and pick one.
- You draw something from which the other player will be able to guess that word
- The other player watches your drawing being drawn - exactly as you drew it - and has a set of 12 letters from which to guess the word. They can see how many letters it has.
- Once they guess (correctly or incorrectly), they get to pick a word to draw.
- Once they've done their drawing, you get to watch them guessing your word - exactly as it happened - you see them putting letters into the slots, taking them out again etc.
- If a word is guessed successfully, both players get the 'coins' (Draw Something's points + in-game currency) depending on the difficulty of the word guessed - from 1 coin to 3 coins.
You can have as many games running simultaneously as you like. I currently have 16 games running, with varying degrees of activity.
Here are some really good things about Draw Something:
- There's no time limit. You can take as long as you want to draw something.
- It's a co-op game. No-one wins - you're both in it together, and you both benefit equally (in terms of coins awarded) for a word guessed correctly.
- The game reproduces exactly what the other person did - you see every mistake, every change they make - even if they decide to scrap their drawing and start over. This gives you a very close connection to the other player's thought process, and the sensation can be eerily powerful, in a way that a real game of Pictionary (where you're in the same room) could never be.
I think Julian Rignall nails it here:
- Although it's not quite an exact reproduction - because Draw Something removes any long pauses in the drawing, allowing you time to think (or google image search) without pressure.
- Once you've started the 'watch someone guess your word, guess their word, draw something new for them' loop, you can't easily escape it. Draw Something doesn't let you do just one of those steps - you must complete the entire cycle before you are allowed to go back to the menu and deal with your other games. This maintains the momentum.
- Despite a number of UI flaws, the drawing tools are pitched about right - you get enough power to be expressive, but not so much that you get bogged down.
- The Freemium stuff is very much in the background. I paid £1.99 for the full version, which removed ads. You can spend your coins on more colours to draw with or bombs to remove some of the letters or pick new words, but neither of these things are especially important to the enjoyment of the game. You can buy more coins with real money, or earn them by playing, but within a couple of days of (admittedly heavy) play, I have more colours than I can possibly use. The developers of Draw Something - New York-based OMGPOP were just bought by Zynga - I really hope they don't break this (or anything else)!
But the best thing about Draw Something starts happening when you've been playing with someone for a bit, and started to build a rapport with them. This is when the 'meta-game' kicks in, and Draw Something becomes more like a theatrical performance. The game stops being about trying to get the other person to just guess the word, and more about entertaining them. You start drawing extra stuff, unnecessary to the word, just for the hell of it. Then you start messing with the order you draw things in - perhaps leaving out crucial details for a little while, playfully teasing the word out. I've even seen people do rudimentary animation - rubbing things out and redrawing several frames.
I am not very good at this yet! But I feel like I'm gradually getting a bit better at it - and at drawing too - and it's a good new feeling to get from a videogame.
And now without further ado (and for posterity), here are a load of my stupid drawings. Feel free to try to guess what they are - but bear in mind that the order I drew stuff in may have been important:





































