Drawception

Drawception

File:Drawception D Logo.png The mascot for drawception, D
File:Drawception home page.png Drawception's Homepage
Type of site	Web Game
Available in	English
Owner	Blue Flame Labs
URL	www.drawception.com
Registration	Required, Free
Users	around 10,000
Launched	March/26/2012
Current status	Active
Written in	Html/Javascript

Drawception is a web-based game based on the pen-and-paper game Chinese whispers. It was created March 26, 2012 by Jeremiah "Reed" Freyholtz with some coding done by Andrew Kenny. On Thursday, August 10, 2017, the 1,000,000th game was completed.

The game is currently owned by Freyholtz's company Blue Flame Labs, who also own MobyGames and VGBoxArt, a custom box art design company.

Gameplay

Drawception is a combination of drawing with the classic telephone game rules. When a player clicks on the Play button to join a game in progress, they are either presented an image or a phrase that they have to draw/describe. The game follows a set of basic rules:

• A game begins with a phrase or drawing, decided by the first player in the chain.
• The second player describes/draws that drawing/phrase.
• The third player describes/draws the second player's drawing/phrase.
• The fourth player draws/describes the third player's drawing/phrase.
• This repeats until a set number of players have participated, which can be: for friend games 6-15, and public games 12-15, unless a populous is used which sets the number of max players for that one game to 24.
• Each player is given either 10 minutes to draw, unless the game is set to Blitz mode where the game is only 1 minute.
• Even though the above rules are the standard for the website, players have made house rules like "PIO", (pass it on) games where the objective is to try to keep to the subject matter.* note: Drawception staff themselves have created something to possibly replace them in the forums.

Once a game has been completed, the players who participated are notified and can view the resulting chain of drawings and descriptions. Usually, the results may turn out very different from the phrase/drawing the game started from. An example of a typical game on Drawception

Players can purchase cosmetic items from the site's virtual store, ranging from themes that give extra colors to power-ups that give extra perks in games. The player can buy these items from ducks, which they get from other players or with microtransactions, which, once made, gives the player access to Drawception Gold, which gives a little golden D next to their profile, access to infinite free Draw First games, and gives the ability to give ducks to other players. Freyholtz has stated before that Drawception gold gives, "No ads ever" according to him, this is future-proofing in case the site needs to start running ads on the page at any time, meaning a possible perk of Drawception gold might be ads being removed, but only time will tell if even players who have not gotten gold status will be getting ads at all.

Items come in two types: consumables and features. Consumables when bought take immediate action and can not be bought in the store, Consumables include: Populous, Extra game, and Inksanity . Features cost more than consumables, but once bought will they stay attached to the player's account and profile, Features include: Palettes, a cover creator, and a background layer. Items are not transferable between accounts.

Games must have all safe for work content through their panels unless the game has been explicitly tagged as a not safe for work game. making a game not safe for work-compatible removes its ability to become a top game. If someone tries to get away with inserting not safe for work content into a safe for work game, the insertion must be reported.

Occasionally Drawception will release a contest for players to play to hopefully win ducks. Players join the contest by paying a certain entry fee with ducks, then, depending on the contest type, either caption an image given, or draw an image for a caption given to them. A player can make as many entries as they like, as long as they have enough ducks to get through the entry fee. After a certain period, entries are no longer allowed and players, including those who did not join, vote using the reaction system to show if it made them sad, happy, laugh, or love the image. Once voting ends, the player in each category who got the most of that reaction wins the duck prize.

For players to draw whatever they want without dealing with the game, if they want to make their own image for their profile, or just want to practice drawing, there is a Sandbox mode that gives an infinite amount of time just to draw whatever you want.

Even though a misinterpretation is fine, intentionally derailling a game is not. Players can flag panels that they think are against the rules, and if the panel gets 2 flags, it is removed.

Text drawings are not allowed, unless there is a specific reason for them like a PIO game, or if the prompt gives text to be written, such as speech.

Dustcatchers are prompts removed because users kept skipping them in-queue. There is no punishment for dustcatchers.

Removed panels

The panel removal system works as such:

1 Removed panel only gives your account a warning

2 removed panels makes your account only be able to play 1 game in the queue at a time

3 removed panels makes you unable to play any games at all, essentially banning you until you can clear the restrictions.

Once the panel is removed, the Caption/Drawing would be replaced with [Panel Removed]. To see the contents of the removed panel you would have to click on the panel in which a message should pop up saying

“Display this panel? Note that the content may be Not Safe For Work!

No Yes”

if you press ‘yes’ then you would see the original panel but would not show the username of the player who made the panel.

it takes 5 days for a user to be able to lift the restrictions they got from their removed panels. if they for whatever reason continue to Break the rules after they’ve gotten more than 3 panels removed, then an admin would likely ban the user.

For players who haven’t passed the Troll Throttle, if their panel gets flagged 2 times then their panel will be removed. If the player passed the Troll throttle then the panel would have to be Flagged 5 times before it gets removed.

if a Moderator or Reed Thinks that a Panel was wrongly Removed they can restore the Panel and lift any restrictions the user may have gotten from it.

Reception

Drawception has often been compared to games like Draw Something or Draw My Thing, which is noted to "combine the weird Pictionary-style guessing of Draw Something with the weird-to-weirder design of a game of Telephone.

It has been compared to Broken Picture Telephone, an earlier online game that used the same mechanism. Drawception's initial popularity is said to have something to do with the time when Broken Picture Telephone was shut down, and people wanted to play something similar to what they played before.

The Jazza Incident

The famous Youtuber Draw With Jazza played the game on 2 livestreams with fans, one thing that happened, however, was that he and his fans decided to just insert his face on every game they played. But, even though it was only for the streams, a brand of derailling, a form of trolling on Drawception where you would intentionally do something off-topic from the image or caption you were given to disrupt the game flow, emerged where people insert Jazza in somewhere he should not be. The trend has continued even after Jazza has essentially left Drawception, and has angered many Drawception players since.

The Troll Throttle

The Original Version

The original version of what Drawception dubs as their "Troll Throttling system" involved players leveling up through playing multiple games, and getting likes for their panels in said games. As they leveled up, users were able to gain amounts of the original currency of the game, coins. As a result of leveling up, players were able to slowly increase the amount of games played at once, play in "Vet Games", and be able to create their own games to add to the queue. There were several issues with this system, including alternate accounts being used to give likes to ones main account, and the fact that if you did not get at least 1 top game, you may never be able to get full access. Because of these, Freyholtz decided to replace it with a different system.

The Current Version

The new troll throttle put in place is much more simple. The rules are as follows: If you play enough games or buy ducks for Drawception Gold, you will pass the throttle and achieve "Unlocked" status, which gives access to every single benefit from the previous one, but ducks are only given one time for completing your first 32 games. Vet Games were removed and Player Created games were made playable only after passing the throttle. An account that has not passed the throttle will only be able to play games made by a bot on the official Drawception account. All players are able to play in bot-games, even ones already past the Troll-Throttle.

The Forums

Drawception has its own forums page for the community to use for general Drawception related topics, suggesting ideas for the game, creating and tweaking palletes, reporting bugs and glitches players come across while playing in which they should include their browser and any steps to reproduce the glitch in their report, discussing,critiquing and giving tips about art, help complete user created friend games, and play games created by members of the community. The newest forum, Art Adventures, was added at the same time as a new feature to actually be able to use drawings within your forum posts, the idea to make it came from the rise in PIO games, but, since they destroyed the original intent of miscommunication, they needed some way to not have them in the Queue, but still be played, and to clear up games that were being played in the art room, instead of actual discussion on art. The forum has its own set of rules that involve the fact that it is forum and not a normal game of Drawception. The exclusive rules for Art Adventures are as follows:

1. No repeat threads
2. Only SFW content allowed
3. No begging for art
4. Unsolicited critiquing is not welcome
5. games that are designed for anybody to participate in at any time are the best.
6. Jereimiah will move all games in art room to Art Adventures so you don't have to
7. You only 1 active,"Draw This" thread at a time
8. Drawings must be made in sandbox by default unless the creator says otherwise
9. No need for Placeholders
10. Encourage creators of PIO games to use this forum instead of making PIO games, but PIO games are not a flaggable offense.

The leaderboards

The Drawception leaderboards contain info on top games and the most followed players all time/That last week. There is no reward for ending up on the leaderboards, aside from exposure.

Deleted/banned accounts

An account is renamed to OooOOOoOo, because they are technically "dead" and the name is their ghost speaking. According to the offical FAQ,"[It] is a reference to a game called Ultima Online, where dead players could only speak like ghosts!" the way to delete your account is as follows: 1 go into settings 2 scroll all the way down to the bottom until you see something called "danger zone" 3 click on the button 4 when you see the prompt to kill your account click "yes, I want to delete my account" not "Na'h, I just want to flirt with danger"

Username changing

Anytime you want a new username, you can pay 50 ducks to change it permanatly, or at least until you pay to change it again.

The Mascot

Drawception has its own mascot simply known as D, or by the fans of the game, The Drawception D. What he looks like is the letter D, in blue, with hands and arms, jumping as if they were excited, and holding a pencil. He has many appearances, some by fans who put him into their Drawception games, another in the store where he tells the person using the store,"Welcome to my store, where you can trade ducks for extra features!" And also in the top-left corner of the website where he is the link back to the Drawception homepage. If you highlight over the character on any page without clicking on him, you can get multiple quotes that are central to the game. The first time you highlight over him on a page will always result in him telling you that,"I majored in miscommunication!" Anytime after that, his quotes are randomized. Some of the quotes he can say are;

"Let's misscommunicate!"

"What will you draw today?"

"Hi! You seem nice!"

"What the duck!?"

"That tickles!"

"Knock, Knock?"

"My dad hooked up with the Telephone Game."

Hey "I have a pet duck!"

"Ow!"

"I...drink...your...drawings!"

Some of the quotes he may say are non-existent game routes that demonstrate the whole miscommunication aspect of Drawception.

References

• Smith, Adam. "Artistic Communication Breakdown: Drawception". rockpapershotgun.com. RockPaperShotgun. Retrieved 19 January 2016.

External links

• Official site