courtesy Local No. 12
What best represents the soul of America: The Bible, or Facebook? Which is more style over substance, a Jackson Pollack painting or Powerpoint? Sound like the kind of thing you’d enjoy fighting about with your friends? Welcome to The Metagame, a new card deck that lets you debate the most important issues of our time with just one or two people—or 2,000.
Indeed, the first time someone started playing The Metagame , more than 3,000 other people joined in. It all started at the Game Developer’s Conference in 2011, when game designers Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and Eric Zimmerman simply started handing out stacks of cards to people. The idea behind the game was simple: One person plays an opinion card with a question, everyone else puts down a card with the cultural item they think is the best match, and then debates—or arguments—ensue. It was a game about games, created for game designers, and soon it was a very big hit.
“People at GDC already spend a lot of time debating and talking about games,” says Macklin. “We just made a game layer on top of that.” By the end of that week in 2011, it wasn’t uncommon to see people congregating in the halls of the conference between sessions with the cards, debating the relative aesthetic beauty of Pac-Man versus Asteroids.
It was so successful the Brooklyn-based trio decided to incorporate under the moniker Local No. 12 and launch a Kickstarter for the game in the midst of the conference. They quickly raised more than twice the $10,000 they had asked for. Although the original version focused solely on videogames, the new version being released today expands the game’s scope to include more broad culture topics—everything from film to comic books to architecture.
We're inspired by the idea that players could take our operating system and modify it and make their own games too. Eric Zimmerman
“It wraps the idea of play around what we all want to do anyways, which is share our opinions and our ideas about the culture that we love,” says Sharp.
It’s also a very flexible game, one that accommodate almost limitless players, and comes with instructions for six different versions you can play using the same deck. “We like to think about it as an operating system, where you can run different games on it,” says Zimmerman. Although there’s a massively multiplayer version—like the one played at GDC—that’s perfect for big parties, there’s another one that works fine with just two people. They also hope players won’t be limited by the options they offer; one of the first rules listed in the instructions is “You Can Change the Rules.”
“We’re inspired by the idea that players could take our operating system and modify it and make their own games too,” says Zimmerman.
If the card-matching principle behind The Metagame sounds a little bit like Cards Against Humanity , that’s no accident. The creators behind Cards Against Humanity were among the thousands who played the first version of The Metagame at GDC in 2011, and have cited it as one of their primary inspirations.
“And they’ve inspired us too,” adds Macklin. “It’s like being a musician. You get influenced by other bands that are your contemporaries, and vice versa.”
But there are key differences between the games, too. The Metagame’s operating system approach means there are far more ways to play it, for example, and the content is far more PG-13 than the R-rated and proudly vulgar Cards Against Humanity. It’s also much more oriented towards intellectual debates than crass jokes—the sort of game that’s perfect for people who love to argue with their friends, or just argue, period.
“The Metagame is more about opinion,” says Sharp. “It’s about talking about culture and media, about our tastes, and where we place our values.”
Zimmerman offers an example: Imagine someone plays the opinion card that asks, “Which is more beautiful?” In response, his friends put down culture cards for the Pyramids of Giza, the New York subway system, and legwarmers. “It becomes a conversation about what the nature of beauty really is. What does it mean? When you’re making these decisions and discussing them, you become a philosopher of culture.”
But that doesn’t mean introverts have to sit this one out. “Not all the games involve arguing and debating,” says Macklin. History 101, for example, is a version that challenges players to place the culture cards in chronological order. (Quick: Which came first, the Theory of Relativity, or sporks?) “Some of the games are about coming up with something creative to say, putting the cards in the right order, or just being clever in the cards that you’re choosing. You can be quiet too.”
The Metagame has been infectiously popular outside of GDC as well, not only on Kickstarter—where they raised an additional $54,467 for the newest edition—but also in their daily lives. “The three of us always have a deck, so we’re constantly playing it with people and getting feedback,” says Sharp. “The other night I went across the street to a bar with a copy of the game with me, and within five minutes of sitting there with the box on the bar, a game with people I did not know had broken out. I had to leave the box there when I went home because I couldn’t get them to stop.”
They also sought feedback through a Google forum where players could comment or even offer suggestions for cards they’d like to see. And the team listened: Some percentage of the new culture and opinion cards in the edition released today came directly from crowdsourced ideas. After the game launches, they also plan to release a downloadable version of all the cards for people to preview before they buy, or event print out themselves if they want to.
Although they’re hesitant to call it an educational game “because that makes it sound like it’s not fun,” says Zimmerman, at its heart The Metagame is an interactive experience that’s fundamentally centered around intellect and passion—and of course, a desire to share your opinions with the people around you.
“But,” says Macklin, “you can still play it when you’re drunk.”
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