As college students, most of us are probably familiar with a variety of drinking games, whether we’ve played them ourselves or seen them at parties. Raph Koster presented some academic definitions of games that described them as ‘make-believe,’ ‘outside ordinary life,’ and in class we mentioned that games aren’t supposed to have a tangible outcome. Drinking games fall outside of these definitions, since a few games of beer pong or flip cup with some buddies can effectively determine the course of an entire evening, impair judgment, and lead to some unfortunate real-world outcomes.
Because of this, beer pong typically has a bad reputation, at least among professionals and parents. It’s looked down upon as a silly game played mostly by college students trying to get drunk off of cheap beer they bought with their parents’ money. However, adults have created their own variations of drinking games, which don’t have mature goals, exist solely to get the players intoxicated, and don’t even have a clear winner. Although adults condone their own twist on drinking games, they still condemn the way college students choose to play.
What I think separates drinking games from other, more “innocent” games is the True Goal of the Game. Not everyone actually plays beer pong to Win the game–many see it as an excuse to get hammered. And winning at beer pong, coincidentally, doesn’t achieve this outcome; in fact, the best beer pong player will most likely be the least intoxicated individual in the room. So while some may strive for trophies in beer pongdom, others lose on purpose so they can get plastered. Some try to excel at beer pong not to win the game, but to get OTHER people plastered, and perhaps “get lucky” with said plastered individuals.
Beer pong provides an intriguing paradigm shift in why people play games.
Drinking games are an interesting case study. If you’ve read the Caillois now, you’ll know that drinking by itself could actually constitute one of the four categories of play: vertigo. Adding some rules around drinking transforms the play into a “game.”
I might (naively) suggest that the only goal of drinking games isn’t to get hammered. It’s also an act of camaraderie and bonding. In this way, drinking games are so much games as they are rituals, which cement (or transform) personal relationships.