It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and Cards Against Humanity exists exactly for that guilty pleasure.
The popular card-game series had gotten a new boost when somebody finally created a set that hits closer to home and called it Cards Against Filipinos (CAF).
The first expansion set, made of 200 cards, is a modified fill-in-the-blanks game with hilarious, offensive and irreverent possible combinations that make it both so good and bad. The best part of CAF is its local references, which resonate with Filipinos so well.
The game is not for everyone, though. CAF creator Martin Callanta admits that it is a game that generates attention because it tackles taboos head-on—and laughs about them.
“I will know I’ve done my job right when people actually say that the cards offended them,” Callanta said.
After all, the CAF game is a punchline waiting to happen—that is, if you have the right cards. It is best played among friends, and the real reward is to find out if no friendships are ruined after a very revealing and awkward round.
The popular game franchise is simple. Each round, one player asks a question from a black card and everyone else answers with their funniest white card. Then the best combination wins.
Callanta’s first set went past 5,000 hits and viral in a matter of five days. For the meme-crazy Filipinos, the references in the game are mostly in the news, trending on social-media sites and pikon-talo quips.
“I wanted to make it a completely Pinoy experience, complete with coño and masa references, along with various cultural realities and/or jokes that would hit straight home when seen by fellow Pinoys,” he said.
Inside jokes, pick-up lines
“Inside jokes, pick-up lines, #Siquiwhores, popular ads, Mang Kanor, Kris Aquino. Name it. If it’s funny and/or popular, I’d most probably put it here,” he added.
Callanta’s first taste of the game was in November 2011, just six months after it was launched in the United States. Back then, board-game cafés in Metro Manila weren’t as popular. His friend ordered a deck in the United States and brought it back here, and he has been an avid player since then.
It was only amatter of time before someone finally created the set for Filipinos. Callanta, a graphic designer and tarot-card reader,made that happen.
“The main deciding factor, I guess, is that so many people wanted it, but I saw no products out of those ‘wants,’ so I decided to first make templates, then fill them all up from there, which ended up withmyfirst release, the first set with 200 cards,” he said.
Callanta churned out 200 cards overnight, including around 30-40 suggestions from a friend’s Facebook fanpage (Butthurt Philippines).
“I just had this very offensive breakthrough and this urge to make something out of it since, after all, I am a horrible person,” Callanta said.
As the CAF set caught the attention of netizens, Callanta is currently making the second set, with an additional thousand cards, to make a full stand-alone game.
“The second set will be bigger, blacker and more offensive than the previous set. Of course, there will be some light humor added up and made up,” he said.
As a teaser, Callanta said many of the new cards include famous personalities. “A lot of the good combinations poke fun at politically powerful people. If it isn’t offensive, why bother?” he said.
The Cards Against Humanity series is so popular worldwide that it stands as one of the Top 5 best-selling products in the toys-and-games category at Amazon.com, where customers have given them more than 14,000 five-star reviews.
Filipinos had to order them online or print their own set from online templates. The game was created by Max Temkin and seven other friends in the United States.
It is held under the creative commons license that invokes the attribution, noncommercial, and share-alike clauses, so people like Callanta could make new sets like the CAF.
“That means we can use, remix, distribute and redistribute however we want, but we can never sell,” he said.
Another free tip for playing CAF: “Ang pikon, talo.”
Cards Against Humanity is free at bit.do/cardsagainstfilipinos, and Callanta updates new combinations at the Cards Against Filipinos fanpage: www.facebook.com/CardsAgainstFilipinos.
