Back to Basics

A new game has taken the world by storm. Forget Modern Warfare. Forget Mass Effect. Forget your fancy graphics and your multiple choice endings. This game doesn’t need any of those things. This game has no story, no elaborate character development, and its only control system is a finger. Yet millions of people can’t put it down. In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m talking about the top selling iPhone app, Draw Something.

Four days ago, I was at work; working very hard I might add (ahem…), when a colleague asked me if I’d heard of Draw Something. At first I thought he asked me to draw something, and I looked at him funny. When he explained to me what it was (sort of like Pictionary but on the phone, is what I believe he said), I was intrigued. I downloaded it, expecting it to be something I’d play twice, maybe three times before going ‘hmm… yes, that’s pretty cool’ and never touching it again. This, however, has not happened and I’m not sure if it will any time soon. I’m pretty hooked.

I think that it’s great that something so simple has had such an effect. The fact that my artistic talent leaves a lot to be desired makes playing all the funnier. You don’t need to be a ‘gamer’ to play. Some of my ever expanding list of competitors have never touched a console. I’ve heard arguments about whether it can even be counted as a game at all. My answer to that is that it’s fun and it’s social, so yes; to me it’s a game. We’re just so used to leaderboards and levels that we’ve forgotten that the core reason why we play games is that we get enjoyment out of them.