Charts: An Overlooked Source of Humor
By: Alyssa Bell
Tags: Data, Data Visualization, Board Games, Charts, Games

AB: The humor of the cards all seem to share a certain DNA. Does that spring from one of you in particular, or did you have to strategize making them feel cohesive?

EK: That’s funny you notice that! We usually write the cards independently, and Josh’s humor tends to be a bit darker while mine leads more toward the absurd. But, we always revise together, and we’ve taken a lot of care to have the tone of the game be more clever than just plain offensive. With our new edition, Charty Party: All Ages, we’ve had to work especially hard to write cards that are both school appropriate but still legitimately funny, which was challenging. But, we’re really happy with how that new version’s come out.

AB: I own a copy of the game, and have described it to friends as “a riff on Apples to Apples for data nerds.” Did you have a target audience in mind when you created the game?

EK: You about nailed it! We didn’t think, “How can we make a game for data nerds?” right off the bat, but we quickly realized that audience, plus teachers and just general quirky folks, were a great match for the game.

AB: How do you view familiarity with data viz and data literacy in the population at large, and how did that fit into your design of the game?

EK: Playing the game with new groups is always interesting — some people get it immediately, and others take a bit to warm up to reading the charts. But, we encourage never faulting anyone for not having a background in understanding charts, no matter their age — it’s not a skill you’re born with! But, we can almost guarantee that if you spend a night playing Charty Party, you’ll come away with a super solid, intuitive understanding of graphs. We didn’t intend for Charty Party to be a learning tool, but something about the lack of scary numbers and goofy concepts helps people say, “Oh — this stuff isn’t really that complicated.”

AB: Do you feel like data literacy has changed at all since COVID times began?

EK: Viewing and understanding charts has gained a whole new level of relevancy in 2020, so there’s certainly more reasons than ever to be able to intuitively understand a chart. Also, it’s equally important to be able understand how charts can be made to show data in a misleading way. We’ve actually included some “teacher lesson notes” in the new All Ages Version, and intentionally creating misleading charts in order to understand how data manipulation works is one of the activities!

AB: Speaking of the All Ages version (which released last month), for each Kickstarter donation you’ve been distributing cases of the game to schools in need — which is awesome! Tell us a bit more about both the new version and the donation initiative.

EK: We’re super excited about the All Ages version, which has successfully completed its Kickstarter thanks to 1,900+ supporters, many of them teachers. The new game is a standalone game that’s totally school appropriate (but still hilarious, even for adults!) and also works as an expansion pack to the original version. We donated 160 games to math departments around the country during the Kickstarter campaign, many of them being in lower income areas, and we plan to continue making school donations an on-going part of Charty Party: All Ages Edition even after the game is available at retail.

Donated departmental sets of ChartyParty: All Ages (Source)

AB: Any plans for other versions of Charty Party or other data-related games that you can share with us??

EK: We’ve got lots of ideas (none ready to share yet!) and we’ll definitely continue releasing games. It’s not data related, but it’s equally quirky and funny — our other game, Puns of Anarchy, just became available for online retail. If you love wordplay, give it a look!