A little while ago, I was thinking of making some sort of experimental website that would highlight the role of personal interpretation in our memories.

Little did I know that that idea was not novel in any way, since that was the idea behind the very popular Telephone Game, whereby a sentence is passed on, whispered, from one participant to the next until it is ultimately said aloud, inevitably yielding incredulous laughs at how the initial phrase got misconstrued over time.

Yesterday, I chanced upon Drawception, a website that purports to be the online equivalent of the Telephone Game. The example showcased on the front page is quite self-explanatory, so I suggest you have a look now if you don’t want to scratch your brains trying to make sense of my explanation.

On Drawception, the game starts with a player being given a sentence by another player. He must then make a drawing based on that sentence. The drawing is passed on to the next player, who looks at it and describes it in one sentence to the next player, who then makes a drawing of the sentence, and so forth.

The team behind the game also plays it regularly and posts the most hilarious results on their blog: http://drawceptiondev.tumblr.com/

Some players also get creative with the basic premises of the game, for instance writing or drawing instructions to the next player, effectively making a variant of the game, often with extremely entertaining results: https://drawception.com/game/nSNPRySt6s/pass-this-text-on-but-remove-one-letter/

Other players use the game to encourage collaborative storytelling by carefully thinking up the first prompt: https://drawception.com/game/wF2xFmg44e/15-panels-to-solve-this-case-go/

The game also brings to mind Dan Deacon’s video for his song True Thrush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnXiXlF7olo

I find it interesting how the same basic concept can be brought to many different formats, with the idea of deliberately using error as an aid to creativity!

For another interesting and creative web-based game drawing heavily on drawing, you might also want to check out my article on iSketch!