When my niece was in 3rd grade or so she was introduced to this game during an activity at the Maude Kerns art center. It was a big hit with her at the time, and it's a game that we still frequently play when I go over to their house. We call it “the folding / sentence / drawing game”, she might have learned it under the name “paper telephone”, but the most common pop-culture name for it is “Eat Poop You Cat”. The rules are pretty straightforward, I explained them with some illustrations in a previous post. Here I want to show you some examples of rounds we've played, talk about some things we've learned about what works well, and some issues that can come up in play.

Some Examples

The most straightforward way to play the game is to just describe a situation, and hope that the ambiguities of art and interpretation to provide an avenue for some zaniness to creep in.

However, if what you describe is too straightforward what tends to happen is that you'll get very “accurate” interpretations:

Some people even mistakenly believe that this is the goal or object of the game, and it's common for people to “ooh” and “ah” when pictures have a lot of similarity. It's fun to draw in general so it's not bad when you get into a pattern like this, and I certainly find those pictures of Batman somewhat amusing, but the game goes to a much funnier and more satisfying level when different interpretations or different areas of focus take things in a zany direction. It's also possible to “go wrong” by thinking that you're supposed to do drawings that are deliberately bad or outrageous; I think you lose the humor of the situation if you lose the link to what you were given and the next person is just reacting to your input. My brother figured out that a good way to start a round is with an aphorism, quote, movie line, or song lyric that has some abstraction to it so you have to think about how to represent it artistically.

It would be tempting to say that trying to be intentionally funny is the wrong way to play, but I don't think that's exactly right. What I think works really well is a type of humor based on “deadpan” literalness, where you draw or describe things in a very literal way, but not necessarily the most obvious way based on the intent of your input.

Since I often spend time with my brother's family on patriotic holidays like the 4th of July I tend to find it amusing to see famous quotations or political ideas from the Revolutionary Era in the US used as starting points. They tend to have a lot of abstractions so they make for good starting points for the game, and then the contrast between the lofty intent of the original expressions and the silliness that this game produces enhances the humor for me.

Some problems with the game

One problem we have to deal with is that you need a lot of players in order to play. It doesn't really work with less than four, and it can be a struggle to get four or more people in the mood to play simultaneously.

Another issue is that it tends to be very creatively draining to come up with the initial sentence. You're basically dealing with what authors call “blank page syndrome”, where it takes a lot of work to get an initial idea onto paper. Once you have the initial prompts you can react to them, so the later rounds tend to be easier (although a lot of drawing can also wear you out), but starting a new round is always rough.

Keeping the players in synch in terms of ability levels can sometimes be an issue, too. My brother is pretty artistically talented and has also had some formal training as an artist so he's much faster than the rest of us. He's also really impatient, so it tends to stress the rest of us out when we're still drawing but we can sense that he wants us to be done. Another mismatch-based problem we've run into was that my nephew is a few years younger than my niece, so it was sometimes a challenge when he wanted to participate in the activity the rest of us were doing but he hadn't yet learned the necessary reading and writing skills. Because of some of the information is supposed to stay hidden from the other players it was sometimes challenging for him to ask for help, and the other players would tend to feel obligated to try to only use words that he would know (which can always be a bit of a guessing game).

Self-consciousness can be an issue as well. When my mom comes to visit my niece will try to rope her into a game and she always protests that she “can't draw” and seems to be convinced that she's “doing it wrong” if people don't interpret her drawings to be exactly what she intended. Even though we assure her we're not, she seems to subconsciously think we're making fun of her when we look at the end results and comment on the unexpected directions things went. That's not criticism of the artist, appreciating the crazy twists and turns this game can take is a big part of the fun.

Conclusion

Despite the problems I still think this is a fun game. (Some people dispute that it even is a game since there's no winning, competitiveness, or obvious end-goal. I dispute that, but the topic of what makes something a game is a philosophical question for a different post. Regardless of whether or not it's a game or just “an activity” I can report that it's fun, as long as everybody's on board with the spirit of it.)

But that's not the end of the story

Even though I think this is a fine game, it's not perfect for all situations. I've tried my hand at designing my own drawing games that don't have the problems this one does. One was a bit of a dud and one worked really well. I'm going to post about both of them in the future (I think there's things to learn from both failed and successful design attempts).