Why Draw Something Is A Hit | Hacker News Reader

Why Draw Something Is A Hit

bonobolabs.com

55 pointshamey28 comments

I've enjoyed the game, but it seems to have a short shelf life. I started playing with about half a dozen co-workers last week, and now almost all of them have quit playing. This may in part be due to a.) not enough words (I'm seeing a lot of repeats), b.) time required to play -- drawing an elaborate picture (or watching it be drawn) takes considerable time (on an iPhone), and I often find myself shying away from the game for that reason.

Finally, I'd add that the game has a few annoyances. For example, the popup requesting you to rate the game in the app store can't be ignored. You must either rate the game, or postpone doing so. I also lost all of my purchased colors after an update. Clearly they're having growing pains, but my enthusiasm is waning.

"or watching it be drawn"

I believe there's a skip button? Never tried pushing it, though.

You send drawing 1 to player B. They watch it being drawn and guess. They send you drawing 2. When you open your app you see drawing 1 happen again and player B making their guess. You can skip that. Then you're shown drawing 2 and can make your guess.

You can "pass" during drawing 2, but that ends the game (streak) between you and player 2.

And though the streak doesn't really matter, it means that, no, you can't really 'skip' watching the other player's drawing stroke-by-stroke. You can only choose to stop playing.

I think they hit the right compromise here. As you said you can give up and pass on the word. If you get the word early then it shows you the final drawing then moves on to the next turn.

Not allowing someone to skip to the final drawing when they do want to play but can't guess the answer yet is a feature, not a bug. It allows new strategies, like drawing a series of states to show a change. It also gives you a sense of the other person, it's a big part of the fun sense of communication that you get with the game.

A skip button, if added, would be widely used and make the game worse.

There actually is a "skip watching" button, but it is white on white until the other player colors into that corner. I believe it is in the top left corner.

Sometimes you actually need to watch the entire thing to get it. As in, your word involves some change over time that you want to portray with multiple pages.

For those having a hard time getting to the article.

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1. Watching friends screw up is fun

This is genius. Draw Something combines the benefits of asynchronous gameplay (easier to play with friends instead of strangers because they don’t have to be online) with the benefits of synchronous gameplay: watching the action in quasi-realtime. Watching your friends painfully draw a crude Tom Hanks stroke-by-stroke is just good ol’ fashioned fun. Even better, this acts as an indirect communication channel for users to write messages and clear the screen before starting the actual drawing.

2. There isn’t a freaking back button

When you tap on a game to have a turn, there is literally no way back. You are forced to complete the turn before you can view your other games. Given most players have a lot of games on the go, they are keen to get back to the home screen and see who is ready to play. If you play Words With Friends, how many times have you tapped on a game, not thought of a move then tapped back to try another game? Draw Something forces you through the turn which keeps the whole machine ticking over faster.

3. Play for seconds or hours

The amount of time you want to dedicate to playing is completely variable. If you are waiting in a queue you can spend 10 seconds drawing a quick move on a single game. If you really want to knuckle down, you can slave over every pixel for 20 games and spend hours playing it. This is vital for a mobile casual game to fit into all sorts of time-killing / entertainment situations.

4. Natural encouragement to start new games

You just finish 5 moves and are waiting on everyone to have their turn…what do you do? Start another game of course! Why wouldn’t you when you can see all those other fun Facebook friends are ready to play?

5. Cooperative playing where scoring actually doesn’t matter

Most game developers spend a huge amount of time trying to tune scoring systems and get the balance right. In Draw Something it’s all kinda a bit vague…and that’s a good thing. If you are really into scores, you can dive into it. Most regular players just have fun guessing drawings from their friends (and maybe getting a decent streak). You are essentially working together, which can be a lot less intimidating for people who are worried about not being good at games.

6. Virtual ice breaker with Facebook crushes

Seriously, don’t tell me you didn’t start a sneaky game with that guy/gal you don’t really know but thought “why not”. Given the tight Facebook integration, it makes it socially acceptable to start a game with someone on the outer edge of your social circle. Because there isn’t a chat option, it forces you to communicate purely through drawing which can be far less awkward.

7. Words are taken from pop culture

Rather than just ripping a bunch of words straight from the dictionary…you end up drawing things like Lady Gaga or Dubstep. Far more stimulating!

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Thanks for posting, back up now ;-)

all of my facebook crushes stopped being crushes when I saw them in real life =(

Being able to see your friend's brush strokes as they draw is very cool. It is fun to watch people draw because it is interesting insight into how people think. Also, clues can be given through "actions" this way, e.g. the word "wind" can be clued through the action of the artist, and this information would be lost if users could only see the finished product.

Additionally, the reverse is interesting and fun as well: it is kind of fun to see your friends guess the word in realtime. This way, you get to see what clue in the drawing finally made it click for your partner.

Not having a back button is a big deal. You sit there and think "well, I better just whip out a drawing so I can get back to my list of games" -- the only alternative is to exit back to the homescreen and wait some undetermined time (perhaps for the app to be moved out of memory?)

But the point is that forcing you to play the next turn in the round instead of picking another game acts to perpetuate engagement very effectively.

You can force quit the app, and it will relaunch to your list of games.

Heh, which I find myself doing frequently. Every time I get to the point where there are no "easy" choices for words to draw, I find myself force-quitting the app, relaunching, and playing a round with someone different, and then coming back to the round I skipped (incidentally, you get offered new word choices in this case). Hard to say whether having a "back" button would end up discouraging people from continuing the game or not without some A/B testing, and I have a hunch that not having a back button probably keeps people in the game a little longer, but I still wish there was a back button. I'd like to be able to return to the same point in the round instead of having to completely restart the round again.

EDIT: something else occurs to me too. When you are presented with a list of words to draw, you have the option to "bomb" the list and get new words. As I mentioned, if you force quit the app at this point, and come back to that round, you will be offered different words, for free (definitely an exploit if you are patient enough to go through the process of force-quitting and restarting). I guess putting a back button on this screen would pretty much obviate the need for the "bomb" button, and would directly impact their bottom line since people wouldn't have as many opportunities to use their bombs. I have a suspicion that that's the reason there is no back button...the fact that it doesn't give players a chance to back out and keeps them a little more engaged it probably just a happy side effect.

I was frustrated by the new word choices popping up after quitting, actually. I had a pretty awesome drawing, the app crashed, and the new choices were pretty lame.

Minor quibble, I know, but it does seem odd that you get new choices just by quitting when they really want you to pay for them.

Yeah, I was wondering how they would have let something like this slip through. I figure either a) they weren't aware of the exploit (unlikely, but possible...Draw Something, while fun, is not a very polished game), or b) they know of the exploit, but fixing it is a non-trivial. I suspect b) because the game does not appear to store any state between the time you start guessing the other player's drawing, and the time you complete you drawing (so it just starts over if the round is interrupted, as if nothing ever happened). So, in order to remember the list of words that was previously presented to you, the game would have to 1) maintain state that indicates which "phase" of each round you are in for a given game, and 2) maintain the original list of words presented to you after you get to the "choose a word to draw" phase. I suspect they just decided that fixing the exploit isn't worth it, because a lot of iOS users don't even know that they can force quit the app, and a lot of the ones who do probably still wouldn't be bothered to actually do it. Also, having to go through the process of watching/skipping the other player draw his picture again can be tedious.

Yeah, but is it a deal breaker? The comparison is between Draw Something and Words with Friends, which does have a back button, but also a gazillion of users http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2012/01/23/hidden-chronicle... It seems to be a minor detail.

I would love to see a comparison to Depict, which was really popular a year or two ago, and now seems much less well known than this "Draw Something" that people started talking about.

(edit: Ugh, and Draw Something apparently has a "choose a username" feature, rather than using your name from Game Center or allowing multiple people to have the same username, so of course someone chose my username, because they knew it would cause a lot of people to try to play games with them.)

This Quora answer by Nabeel Hyatt goes into more depth on the actual game mechanics involved:

http://www.quora.com/Draw-Something/What-did-Draw-Something-...

WordPress issues sorry folks, working on a fix now will be back up shortly!

Site back up after a hefty Linode upgrade, thanks for your patience y'all.

I'm curious, but it kills the Android Browser on my Droid X. Words appear on the right frame, but before I can see them, or anything, the screen goes black and I'm back at the home page.

Its unplayable on my iphone 4 (up to date) I really dont see why its so popular? its SO slow. Personally I prefer depict!

How odd, it runs really well on my old 3Gs. And yes, I'm completely addicted to it :)

its annoying because when I finally managed to draw something (see what i did there!) it was really fun!

That's very strange. My girlfriend's iPhone 4 handles it just fine.

Getting a database error, Hamey.

Daryl - bonobo +1

Fixed! Thanks Daryl - hope you're well!

Still can't connect...

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