I gave CAH (and expansion packs) as stocking stuffers for xmas and they were extremely well received.
What they say on the tin is true -- you feel like a horrible person when you play the game, which is extremely cathartic.
Hell, they even did a pay what you want for a small package of Christmas themed cards and pretty sure they pulled a 70k profit from that maneuver, despite ~25% percent paying $0.
Their average credit card fee was $0.43 per transaction. Ouch!
Salaries and Wages 7,468,743
Outside Contract Services 1,791,275
Internet Hosting 1,309,591
Other Operating Expenses 1,010,273
Bank Fees 945,190
That is not the cost structure I expected. I thought the balance would be more on Internet Hosting. What are those ~10 million of salaries, contracts and other operating expenses? Besides, their expenses were 15 million and income 30 million, do they need more money?
Wikimedia employs a lot of people, I personally do not donate because I believe they employ way too many. Also pretty much all costs are already covered by corporate sponsors like Google.
I remember reading though a page where they listed their employees and I remember it was 100+, I wanted to include the link in my comment, buy couldn't find it this time.
So they're getting paid less than the going rate, at least the software engineers are. Interesting.
Have you considered many of them that are on the payroll might have other jobs and so the volume is to make up for the fact that they're not all 40+ hours full time? I think this is much more complicated than we could first expect
Without a breakdown of where the employees are located and their positions, you can't possibly say anyone at Wikimedia is getting paid more or less than the going rate.
'Sponsor' implies some sort of continuing relationship or cross-promotion or consideration received, so it's not very accurate to say Wikipedia has 'corporate sponsors'. The Wikimedia Foundation has received some corporate donations (including from Google), but those are a relatively small portion of their budget compared to tiny individual donations.
I'm an American Express cardholder and spend several hundred thousand dollars a year. If you're a small business, startup, someone I like, whatever, I go out of my way to pay you money with Dwolla or a debit card because of the fees. I'll even overnight a check if its a significant amount and I trust you.
AmEx also offers a lot of other benefits for the consumer like lengthier chargeback periods and free extended warranties. They'll provide warranty coverage for a year past the manufacturer's warranty on items purchased with the card for no cost; it's the reason I put all my big ticket electronics purchases on my AmEx.
A lot of Visa/Mastercards also offer warranty coverage for at least a year. Not sure why they don't promote this better, but if you look in that little packet of fine print materials they give you, it's usually in there.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred is generally competitive with the AmEx Gold Premier Rewards card, is a Visa, has lower fees, no foreign transaction fee, and has better transfer partners, on average (though they don't do their special transfer bonus, if you ever take advantage of those). I wrote a little webapp to help compare card rewards: http://www.creditcardcomparer.org
I still need to add the other side benefits like warranties and the like, though, where the AmEx is generally better.
Tf you live outside of the US or just travel a lot, and have a US account, the Chase Sapphire Preferred is THE card to have. it saves me a lot of money. i like it slightly better than the Starwood Amex just because i can use it more places.
The Starwood AmEx also has a foreign transaction fee of 2.7%, I believe, so there's no real reason to use it outside the US, unless you're at a Starwood hotel and getting a huge bonus that way. In the US it's pretty excellent, though.
I use my Amex personally for both the rewards as well as extra consumer protection. Example: I recently had to re-purchase a plane ticket three times due to extenuating circumstances that the normal travel insurance would not have covered. American Express refunded both tickets from a five minute phone call. Buying the tickets with Amex saved me $1k.
Based on my experience, American Express has outstanding customer service. I have also heard that they tend to be rather aggressive in their fraud protection program and they way they deal with chargebacks, often taking the side of the cardholder rather than the merchant's.
AmEx has special Costco card, which you can only use with valid Costco membership (it automatically renews it per year) and the cashback you are receiving will be in a form of coupon given yearly which you can only spend back at Costco.
If you manage to get a copy of Apples to Apples, Disney Edition (not sure if that's the real title) then you can play the mashup I was exposed to several weeks ago: Cards Against Disney. Everyone has a hand with cards from both games; a prompt is drawn from one game and answered with cards from the other game, alternating each turn. Much silliness ensues.
Disney's copyright lobbying suggests that your bitterness is completely appropriate. Ever wonder why the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was nicknamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act"?
When I was young, I liked to mix the questions and answers from different Trivial Pursuit cards. A kind of surreal "Trivial Pursuit: Exquisite Corpse Edition." :)
I was first introduced to this as Thousand White Cards Against Humanity, wherein instead of drawing from the deck or playing a card, you could take a blank and write in a new card. Compared to that, the boxed version just seems crass and unimaginative.
On the other hand, I'm normally the one to introduce groups to Apples To Apples. Those who claim this more tame version of the concept isn't fun are missing the real joy - how a limited set of choices forces surreality, playing for the person, and twisted readings of the cards.
Of course, if you're playing any of these as straight-up "this one wins", you are missing the incredible joy of "hamburgers smell, but only the bad ones are fragrant. Hilter probably was fragrant, but I doubt anyone lived to tell the tale. My birthday, however, boy was that fragrant...". The verdict slow-descriptive-reveal as the judge is the real art, and where you learn the most about people
I had this mostly written up, so I'm going to say pretty much what my sibling said in a different way :)
It's not about the ruleset so much as the players' attitudes.
There's a way to play Apples to Apples that's as a card game. You deal the cards, flip a topic, everyone puts up, the judge reveals the cards and picks a winner. It's pretty boring unless the cards themselves are hilariously lewd, hence CAH. (And I've played rounds of CAH this way that were just as boring.)
There's another way to play it, more like a role-playing game with the cards as a prop. The judging is a discursive experience played with the whole group. When the cards are revealed, due attention must be given to each one. "Fuzzy like teenagers. Fuzzy like... The Clinton administration? Fuzzy like herding cats, okay. Fuzzy like... Dinosaurs." Once all the cards are on the table, the judging begins. Unlike in the card game version, the cards which aren't relevant must be dealt with explicitly, and audience participation is encouraged.
"Dinosaurs just aren't fuzzy."
"What about pterodactyls?"
"Yeah, birds are technically dinosaurs."
"Okay, but birds aren't fuzzy, they're fluffy."
"Maybe it's fuzzy on the inside. Like dinosaurs have nice personalities."
If I'm hawking my own card, that's minus points. Or is that not my card, and I'm trying to sandbag it with praise? Complex interpersonal dynamics meet linguistics as every judge's turn becomes a little game to itself. And just wait until cards start to turn up that tie into previous rounds...
It requires the players be engaged and committed to playing with each other, rather than with the cards, but it's hopefully obvious how that's fun in a way that has little or nothing to do with the content of the cards themselves. So nothing against CAH or other forks, but people who think CAH is fun where A2A isn't probably don't understand what makes the concept fun in the first place.
The thousand blank white cards version is pretty obvious from my description, although I should add that you can do this for question cards, and you can specify that players have to play more than one card.
As for the advanced judging concept, it is exactly the same as the original, right up until the judge makes a decision:
1. Judge plays the question card. They can do this however they like
2. players pick and play a card in secret from their hand, placing it face-down
3. Judge shuffles the pile a little, to make sure they don't know who played what
4. Judge views the cards
Original Apples to apples rules strict reading:
5. Judge reveals all the cards played
6. Judge announces that one is the winner
7. player who played it gets the question card as a point
Theatrical version:
The judge, in any order they like, describes why some cards are discarded, and others stay in the running:
A: ' "My first car" and "football" are weak compared to "cheese" and "the French revolution" '
B: 'I hated "My First car", so it's not that one!'
C: 'Hah, you canny bastard who played this, I can never resist "cheese" ' [1]
C: ' ewwwwww, not that kind of "cheese" pulls disgusted face ' other players laugh. One groans. Another doesn't get it
The game is about words, descriptions, and events. To just say the word on the card seems... so out of character?
(Plus, the original box art featured a greek/roman character, so pretend you're a philosopher if you like, or a mad emperor :P)
[1] The actual classic amongst my friends is any that are physics related, due to being post-grads
It's not often discussed, but 20% of Kickstarter's top 20 projects are board games. The Pebble and Ouya skew the average, but D&D style games with little plastic figurines clean up with multiple games clearing $2MM or more.
Kickstarter is a huge topic on BoardgameGeek.com. It's everywhere, and tends to dominate the discussions of new titles. It's all over the site, but the concentrated discussion is here:
The success of Cards Against Humanity is evidence of massive demand, and yet all they have protecting them is their brand—unlike, say, craigslist, whose unwillingness to innovate is legendary but whose business benefits from massive network effects. As a result, the (apparent) apathy of the Cards Against Humanity founders offers an opportunity: copy their basic idea, for which they have no protection, and structure your new venture as a real business with full-time efforts devoted to growing sales. You could even one-up them by dropping the non-commercial clause in the Creative Commons license, allowing potential partners to profit and thereby grow your brand further.
The Cards Against Humanity guys are leaving money on the table. Who's going to pick it up?
I wonder, would this get rejected at the iOS App Store on grounds of taste or something? (That's aside from the fact it'd probably be DMCAed away if someone did it.)
There are some pretty raunchy apps on the app store - did you see I'd Cap That last summer? The whole app just takes your image and adds some heavily-innuendo-laden text on top. Lots of apps have similar or worse content.
We're doing the same thing. Our team is located in NYC, London, and Aurora, IL.
We launched our little meta-board gaming company at http://susd.pretend-money.com a little over 1.5 months ago. And we're already profitable!
We made a conscious decision to forego taking money from advertisers/investors, and even dodged a pre-launch acquihire offer, in an attempt to create something that's 100% our vision (unless YC wanted to fund us.) Our plan is to grow slowly, keep up the quality, and use the money that we're making from the show/blog/podcast to fund even more ambitious community/tech projects.
AND!
Board Games are Big Business!
Board/card/traditional gaming (whatever you want to call it) has been exploding in America over the last 10 years or so. It taps into that primal need for people to sit around together and ACTUALLY interact with each other.
We don't make board games, we're just wildly passionate about them. Paul & Quinns started Shut Up & Sit Down so they could have fun reviewing and writing about board games. They just had a hard time figuring out how to make it sustainable.
I've been playing with technology surrounding gaming for the last three years or so(and gaming since I was little) so it was natural for us all to team up and build something together.
I absolutely love Shut Up and Sit Down, I followed Quinns over from Rock Paper Shotgun and have enjoyed the videos very much since. I'm very happy to hear you're profitable already.
We're "profitable". We're really happy with how the new site turned out. Having enough to keep the lights on an pay some friends to help out with the writing after only a month is a huge accomplishment.
I'm pretty curious about MoD too! We'll see what happens.
This is awesome, but not creating a corporate structure at all and just letting who does and gets what go organically is a really bad idea. It's nice that it's worked for them so far, but if they continue to succeed -- and I hope they do, I love what they've done -- they're very likely to find out that money does matter and does change things.
I swing back and forth on which one I like better. Cards Against Humanity is fun because it lets you come out and say truly horrible things. Apples to Apples is fun because it lets you imply truly horrible things in really creative ways.
At its best (read: I am indeed a horrible person), either one is like drawing a smiley face on Hitler.
> Cards Against Humanity is fun because it lets you come out and say truly horrible things. Apples to Apples is fun because it lets you imply truly horrible things in really creative ways.
To each their own, but this is precisely why I hate Cards Against Humanity. It ruins the joke by being too blunt and predictable.
I went through my collection of Cards Against Humanity and removed all the "not subtle" cards that are basically trying to be puerile. The game is a lot better, and I can now fit the good parts of the game + expansions into the original box.
If you haven't played cards against humanity, many of the cards run roughshod over subjects that would give network execs heart attacks. From my experience the average CaH session is an order of magnitude more crass than anything on network television.
But the funniest jokes from these cards aren't from potty language, but from the following:
We had about 10 players, I read the card. _____. High five bro. Players played what they thought was funny. One person put down the card, "Battlefield amputation"
I read it, deadpan. "Battlefield amputation. High five bro.".... And in the course of 5 seconds, we all just realized how wrong that was. One lady laughed for a good 5 minutes for that card response.
Agreed. My favorite example is the question card "Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's ____." To which my dad played "Leprosy". I still chuckle when I think about it.
My favorite play was the card "It's a pity that kids these days are all getting involved with _____" and I played "taking a mans eyes and balls out and putting his eyes where his balls go and his balls in his eye holes".
I know the Simpsons has been on forever and there is about a decade of it I haven't seen but it was not always a low brow show (assuming it is one now). The Simpsons was brilliant comedic social commentary for 5-8 years starting around season 3/4. I wouldn't call the golden years of the Simpsons low brow at all. And I don't have any issues with low brow, I just don't think it's an accurate description of the comedic work I think of when I think of the Simpsons.
Yeah, basically toilet humor. Granted, a lot of it is funny, but it's the non-family-friendly version (not that Apples to Apples is all that family-friendly once my family starts playing, and I'm sure that's the same with many others, but at least it has the potential to avoid offending most people's delicate sensibilities).
This is the juvenile dorm room version (which makes sense, as that's what they created it for in the first place).
Essentially yes. The game is massively unplayable for a lot of different kinds of people due to the really triggering nature of the card content (rape jokes, pedophilia, racism, sexism, etc.). A lot of people find that content to be one of its virtues, but I've generally found that only certain kinds of people really enjoy CAH (read: white men).
I've played with white women (and one Hispanic woman) who also enjoyed it. I've never seen anyone not enjoy the game.
Most of the people I've played with are Jews, and the presence of cards like "Auschwitz" and "Nazis" isn't a problem. The game is only really unplayable for people who take themselves too seriously.
Ditto. Even if it was just mostly a jab at the stereotypical 'American white male' stereotype, I'm really not fond of people depicting 'minorities' like me (and women) like poor overly sensitive PC types. If anything, it's probably less likely to offend minorities, cause a lot of other countries really aren't so paranoid about being PC like the US is. I mean, there is a fine line between dark humor and offensiveness, but we'll let you know when you cross it; please don't speak for everyone.
It implied people that don't fall under the white male demographic can't laugh at things like this, which is still not true. I mean yeah, people have different senses of humor and all that, but it came out in a way that made it sound like it would be interpreted as offensive instead of just "meh".
Though I admit, I don't actually think the OP's comment was even that bad (like I said, it sounded more like just a jab at the 'white male' creators); but I do see this general trend that I'm talking about a lot, so I figured it might be helpful to bring it up.
I love the game in small doses, but it's very obvious there wasn't much diversification in the team that made it. Not because it would have curbed the offensiveness, but because after two or three hours of playing [as happens in larger groups], and even with hundreds of cards and endless combinations, the formula of offensive card (either based on history, internet humor or shaming) + offensive card just isn't funny anymore and people become bored. They'd have benefited from including different folks so that the jokes were different and meant different things to different people. Part of the fun/unexpected educational aspect is learning what the cards are referring to if you don't know (forcing people to learn about things outside of their worldview in an effort to make them funnier is a great incentive).
As it stands, if you're not a gamer, aware of internet culture or you don't find tragedies hilarious, you may have a hard time finding enjoyment from it.
yeah, it's a pretty hilarious game. Especially when combined with copious amounts of beer and the right kind of friends. I think this actually shows that there may be a big market for non-politically correct games and "stuff" that big burdened corporations won't touch, but the market would be more than willing to gobble up.
Pretty much. My friends found that the game wore very quickly compared to Apples to Apples. Pick the most offensive one, it'll win. Down to luck really.
Perhaps this is out of the norm, but winning isn't relevant in the groups with which I have played the game. Laughing and having a good time until we are humored out is usually the point (we don't even keep score).
I love CaH but I do have to say that the founders are full of themselves. I and several other friends/entrepreneurs have reached out to them regarding ideas to build associated products that would help build their brand. Even companion apps and such since their content is under Creative Commons. Every single one of us was sent back extremely rude and vile replies. This article just reeks of more narcissism.
It's a real shame too. It will go out of style in a year or two and, gasp, maybe these people will have to get real jobs or start a real company! Assholes.
As this is a rather one-sided story, I'm inclined to disagree based on my experience with them.
Me and a buddy of mine are really big CAH fans, and we had been playing on a set of cards that he printed and cut at that point. We had also been meaning to start a project together, so to test the waters, we started working on a digital version of CAH that would be open sourced and could be freely enjoyed by everyone.
I made the wise decision to reach out and get their blessing before we really began working on it, and one of the founders replied in short order, essentially telling us that we couldn't go ahead with our project because they wanted to control what was released. It's been a while since the correspondence happened, so please excuse my memory, but it was something to that effect.
However, they were very courteous and concise the entire time, and were not even close to being rude. So I find your account a bit hard to believe.
It was rude in the sense that it included legal threats regarding copyright and they refused to entertain any sort of correspondence in the future. It was by far the most rude partnership request reply I have ever received.
Come up with your own idea instead of trying to ride the coattails of something that is already a huge hit. I'm sure they have plenty of ideas and projects to work on without having to give you a cut of it.
A lot of successful business partnerships can be described by "riding the coattails of a hit". If they're being straightforward and proposing a partnership, as opposed to (say) simply copying it, I don't see the problem.
As far as I know, the guys don't have a top-down structure, so they're unable to make calls like that individually - and besides, they're hustlers. They made CaH in-house, bootstrapped, and entirely by-hand. It's not narcissistic to want to do things yourself, but it is possible to erroneously think that "anyone can do it". I've sensed a bit of that from the founders, but honestly - it's motivational for me to hear that, and while I would hope not to be dismissive or inflated if I had similar success, I also certainly think we need more people saying, "Why the hell not just do it yourself? Why raise money? Build it tomorrow!"
Also, you were expecting something other than vulgarity from the founders of a game like that? They have a brand to uphold, after all. I don't think it's necessary to be rude, but that's precisely in line with their entire "brand voice".
Yes, my expectations were perhaps out of line. It didn't stop me from ceasing using their game and, after showing the reply to friends, their voluntary stop of play as well. We simply couldn't enjoy it anymore :(
FWIW, this is from their FAQ on their website, showing a little of their respect for anyone who wants to partner with them:
Do I have your permission to make some crappy Cards Against Humanity thing like an app?
Cards Against Humanity is available under a BY-NC-SA 2.0 Creative Commons license. That means you can use our content to make whatever, but you have to give us credit, you can’t profit from the use of our content (this means ad revenue is not allowed), and you have to share whatever you make in the same way we share it (this means you can’t submit our content to any app store). We own the name “Cards Against Humanity,” so you have to call your crappy thing something else.
This does not sound rude at all to me. I don't understand the position that someone should be accepting of you wanting to "partner" with them by default.
I don't know if your problem is with the content or the tone. If it's the content, they've pretty much just restated "BY-NC-SA". If it's the tone... these are the people who made Cards Against Humanity. Honestly, what did you expect?
PS: If anyone offered to help me "build my brand" on a CC project, I'd tell them to sod off too. No offense.
Our proposal was to replicate the CaH experience online without any commercial nature (no ads, fully free and open sourced) with the possibility of making it commercial at a later date together.
Their response basically dismissed us out of hand and included warnings regarding violating their copyright or using their name. I've never received such a reply to a very friendly partnership proposal.
Most likely they have zero interest in any kind of "partnership", and you're far from the first one to ask. Think of how many similar requests they've had to field..
I might take your post at face value, but I know the Cards guys are currently working on releasing a CBS-property branded expansion pack. If CBS' guys can can do it, I have to question your pitch. It sounds like you're on the other end of trope where the "idea guy" goes to programmer with lame idea; maybe the idea was even good but something else in the message that proved it would never work.
It's a real shame too. It will go out of style in a year or two and, gasp, maybe these people will have to get real jobs or start a real company! Assholes.
With a grudge like that, who's the one full of themselves now? They didn't follow the standard business song and dance. So what? Who cares? I'd might even say "good on them" if I knew the full situation.
start a real company
Yeah! Their product isn't ruthless data harvesting. What are they, babies?
The less travelled path - figuring out how to do it with fewer people so you can stay in control. Kudos to them for thinking for themselves.
Quote: 'And it’s dawning on them that they’re doing something impressive. “We’re doing a lot of stuff that no one has done before,” Hantoot reflects. “I do think we’re sort of proof that if you streamlined your business enough, you could do a big thing with a few people.”'
It's interesting that they blank out the MICR routing number at the bottom or the check but leave enough information elsewhere in the check to trivially figure it out.
The $12 million figure isn't confirmed. Just the author speculating based on reported sales figures and "made" doesn't account for the cost of producing the game.
I've given away 10-12 complete CAH sets to friends. Not a single person has said "oh that game is boring", and more than one of them has come back later and told me it was their favorite birthday/Christmas present, etc.
It's also a great way to judge if you'll get along with someone.
Why won't it happen everywhere? At least from what I've seen, it's more of a decentralization than a migration from SV.
No sense pre-emptively pigeonholing!
I agree that there are other forms of business organizations, and perhaps other forms of companies. For example B-corps that have non-financial goals, or simply like these guys who essentially have a successful on-the-side business, and explicitly do not want to grow it or market it in the traditional way (and hopefully have the legal protection to do so without somebody from the regular business world eating their lunch). A lot of them seem to revolve around the concept of "having enough" as opposed to "trying to expand."
However, I don't agree that any of these new models are generalizable and will take over the traditional model. VCs did not replace small business loans or Wall Street capitalization. They are an alternative path or sometimes a different step on the same path. The traditional model will contine to exist where it already does, and the new models will have to carve out new niches.
Ya know, I can't explain it, but I've been getting some good vibes from the Midwest lately. (me being a North easterner) Plus the people are pretty awesome. I'd keep Minneapolis on that list too.
+1 for Minneapolis. I pay pretty close attention to the start up scene here and things are starting to move. The Minne* Organization (http://minnestar.org/) does some nice events.
VC-funded != VC-istan. There's a lot of overlap, obviously, but (a) plenty of VCs aren't assholes, and (b) there are good reasons to take VC.
VC-istan is a certain social hierarchy and its surrounding ecosystem. It's a certain game that is played where engineering, design, culture, and even human decency take a backseat to marketing and rent-seeking and ridiculous careerism (like technical pivots that make no engineering sense but support some flavor-of-the-month CTO protege's career goals).
I don't hate every VC-funded company, obviously. Who knows, in ten years I could be running one. I hate the VC darlings with unethical management and, for that, I only find the VCs to be indirectly responsible by being bad judges of character. (Then again, considering some of the companies I worked for, I don't think I'm a great judge of character either.)
What they say on the tin is true -- you feel like a horrible person when you play the game, which is extremely cathartic.
Hell, they even did a pay what you want for a small package of Christmas themed cards and pretty sure they pulled a 70k profit from that maneuver, despite ~25% percent paying $0.
Their average credit card fee was $0.43 per transaction. Ouch!
http://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/holidaystats/