Walking through the halls recently, you may have looked at a student’s phone and seen a familiar sight: a blank white screen with colorful doodles forming. A new cell phone application called “Draw Something” has hit AHS, and its popularity has skyrocketed in the past several weeks.
This free application for iPhone and Android utilizes information from Facebook to sign users up and help them begin games with friends who also have the application installed.
“I like Draw Something because you can interact with your friends on another level besides just texting them,” freshman Daniela Quiroga said.
The aim of the game is to draw a given word on a white background using your fingers. There is a provided set of colors, an eraser and several different options for the thickness of the lines that you can draw. The user draws this word freehand and his or her partner receives it on his or her device and then attempts to guess the word using a given set of letters. Depending on the difficulty of the word chosen, the user and his or her partner for that game will receive either one, two or three coins for guessing it correctly. These coins will allow users to purchase additional colors and words.
“It’s good that they offer more colors because sometimes it’s hard to describe something with only the four colors they give you at first,” sophomore Leidy Gonzalez said.
Branching out beyond the given black, red, blue and yellow allows users to get more creative and also serves as an incentive to play more for coins.
“I like to see how terrible my friends are at drawing,” junior Clark Girardin said. Along with generic word options such as “balloon” and “mountain,” the game also occasionally offers words relating to celebrities and current music artists.
“Once I drew Adele,” sophomore Noah Wolfenstein said. “I drew a stick figure with blonde hair singing at the Grammys.”
These more difficult words often garner users three coins because they are not as universally known or easily depicted.
While it may seem difficult at first to correctly draw a celebrity because of how varied the interpretations can be, the game’s basic set up and its limited style, color and size options force users to return to drawing fundamentals in order to help their partners guess and earn coins.
“I get addicted,” junior Jenny Ha said. “Once I finish one game, someone else has replied in another, so I just keep playing.”
The application allows users to have up to 30 active games at a time, so juggling can be difficult for those who enjoy having numerous games at a time.
“I think you should get a notification when someone has drawn so you know it is your turn to reply,” junior Carla Suarez said.
As users become more experienced, drawings become not only more complex, but also more expeditious.
“The coolest thing I’ve ever drawn is a comic,” junior Dylan Gore said. “It took me about 30 seconds.”
Regardless of drawing ability, the real question is how long Draw Something’s acclaim will last. Similar inter-device gaming applications have come and gone, such as Words With Friends and Bump It, because they have lost steam after a peak of prevalence or because they were not updated enough.
“[Draw Something] will not last because none of those kind of apps do,” Girardin said.
