We spoke at length to Adrita Das, co-founder of the design studio ‘Smarter Than A Waffle’, who was part of the team which released an online prank in April 2018 on their Instagram handle @stawdio, with an objective to gain more followers. Thankfully for the rest of us, the elaborate prank ‘backfired’, the posts became viral and forced the co-conspirators to make Cards Vs Sanskaar become a reality. Read on for more about this “party game for horrible anti-nationals” that will have everyone in splits!
1. What is Cards Vs Sanskaar? How is it played?
One of the easiest card games (with no math involved), the point is to match the funniest answer card to complete a black card which contains a question usually relating to current affairs or pop-culture references.
For example, you might get a question card that says: “Pushpa, I hate ___.” Each person gets an answer card with a quirky punchline which they must use to respond to this prompt. The person who drops the funniest reply gets to be the winner of the round and marks that by collecting the question card. At the end of the game, the person with the most number of black cards is considered the ‘winner’.
2. What was your personal inspiration behind seeing this project come to light?
I feel that everyone in India is exposed to some current affair and other cultural phenomena that warrants some healthy discussion. Providing a humorous medium for enabling people to maybe start talking about this at any level is a worthwhile pursuit. So, we thought of Cards Against Humanity and decided to come up with an Indian-ized version of it that anyone can relate to.
3. How long did it take for you to make this happen?
We launched an online April Fool’s prank last year and a month that backfired on us went into planning the logistics for it. The first two months went into conceptualizing of the game. Bulk production meant that we had to prepare from crowdfunding from November but thankfully we got the funds sometime in January.
As we’re a design studio, we had to plan not only the financials but also the legal considerations pertaining to a game that may be perceived as controversial in India. We took our time to dot the I’s and cross the T’s but we’re really happy to be in production now!
4. What’s the audience for this game? How many can play it?
Marketed as a ‘party game for horrible anti-nationals’, this game is really for anyone with an open mind and a sense of humour. Even though only two people can play it, it is definitely more engaging with 4-6 people playing it at a time. This ensures multiple rounds amongst people who get to understand what really tickles each other’s funny bones. We believe that there is a specific target audience who will pick up these cards and realize that although some cards may seem offensive, they still deal with topics that need to be spoken out.
5. How did you come up with these specific questions?
The only way to ensure that questions are fun, non-repetitive, capable of eliciting multiple responses and/or not being the one most likely to be a winner is through trial and error. This translates to multiple play tests with actual audiences from different demographics around India. Interestingly enough, we found that there always was a lawyer present at every single game test, who thought to leave their visiting cards behind in case we needed their help in the future.
6. Did you face any challenges while developing this concept?
Oh, we’ve continuously had challenges throughout and that was the exciting part about the entire project. When we first came up with the prank, we had 2000 people who signed up for this concept and so we were left with no choice but to see this project to light.
We then discovered that humour is very subjective and depends a lot on each individual and with respect to the content, it had to be well thought out, to ensure that there were multiple and appropriate responses to each question card which comes through.
I mean, we really cannot afford to have too few zingy responses to a question card or have a perfect question card which wins all the time. We also had to ensure that the nature of the content wasn’t derogatory to the oppressed but rather did not spare the people who could be made fun of. Politicians for example, without any naming and shaming, were fair targets but we did not want to go after people who are impoverished. Even finding the right manufacturer was a challenge but these were collectively the proverbial mountain we had to climb before we were blessed with the view.
7. Do you see this controversial product as having an impact on the market?
We want to elicit some impact – at least light conversations about serious topics we experience around our daily lives in India, in the hopes that some of them may lead to serious discussions on worthwhile subjects.
We also do not want to fall down the slippery legal slope that’s ever-present in India and get sued for any reason whatsoever. As we are primarily a design studio with a three-member team working on this product, we had to invest personal time in understanding the content not only from our viewpoint but from the perspective of someone who was actually going to play the game. The only way to get a satisfactory result was through iterative play tests and we had to take the time to run through multiple test before we were satisfied with the final result.
8. What is stopping other designers from seeing other such projects come to light?
The current culture of content creation, I feel, forces people to continuously produce content at a very rapid rate. An illustrator, for example, must keep practising and putting out work there – which is good for incorporating quick feedback to improve upon but on the flipside, there is a rampant trend where people expect content delivery with short turnaround times, which often dampens the quality of the output. Someone in the design industry is already part of a very competitive ecosystem and taking time out from primary tasks to create a side-project of this sort to cater to an impatient audience while simultaneously providing a product of utmost quality is often impossible.
9. Once this comes out what’s next? Do you foresee a scalable future for this project?
We are very hopeful for the future since we discovered that there is a gaming culture which has been present in India for a while and is actually showing signs of growth. For example, when we went for play-testing at ‘Meeplecon’, India’s largest board gaming convention, we saw that there was a crowd which varied by age and other demographic markers but still interested in trying new things.
I also feel that board games and card games have always been a good way to help people connect with one another. Regarding the product itself, we are definitely thinking of expansion packs which would come out soon to ensure that the game is engaging as always.
10. So, if somebody wants this game, how do we go about buying it?
We’ve gone live with the pre-booking of the game at www.cardsvssanskaar.com so that we can ensure all deliveries by the beginning of April 2019. We are currently working on a dedicated site which will help regular retail orders and will go live with it soon.