Now if you're not already aware of this card game for horrible people then I probably should tell you it's like Apples to Apples for adults or otherwise a card game filled with all sorts of potentially amusing but potentially also wrong or not PC card combinations. And really it's awesome… or at least it's awesome when it's played with the right groups of people (quite honestly I've only ever played it once with a group with which I felt entirely uncomfortable and I will do my best not to repeat that experience). It shows a lot about a person's humor what cards they think are funny/appropriate and/or what they choose as the best card combinations for any particular cards.
Now that would probably already be enough to create a best selling game (it was originally kickstarted and is currently the #1 selling game on Amazon.com in the United States for example), but the co-creators have done more awesome with their game than most companies do. Some of their marketing ploys are really quite amusing (like today's launched Ten Days or Whatever of Kwanzaa which follows the last couple of years of awesome holiday promotions — I am betting that it will sell out quickly as last year's promo sold out in 6 hours… so get on it fast if you want in on random gifts!), and other things like the Bigger Blacker Box are just practical items to have (particularly if you're a completionist with the game already overflowing the card boxes that you already had what with expansions and all). They're even quite capable of doing really cool promotions at PAX and PAX-East (neither of which I've ever been to but might someday enjoy, maybe. We'll see). The Oatmeal promotion they did last year was especially amusing to me (giving out small packages of oatmeal with crazy promotional videos/posters etc.). And then there's the big puzzle last year where a bunch of us Redditors worked together to solve a bunch of clues online (and while I like to think that my efforts helped, I actually was ignoring reddit and the internet in general when it was announced that we did indeed solve it and thus missed out on a prize. Oh well… there are worse things).
But what makes me the biggest fan of the Cards Against Humanity people is just how human they are. Not only did they send random awesome gifts out to people (no I wasn't one of them, but I was in awe of what they did send and how appropriate these gifts were for these people), but they participate on reddit, twitter etc. AND answer emails sent their direction with personal replies whenever they can.
When a friend of mine had her home burnt down recently (and asbestos prevented her from returning to said home, losing almost all of her and her family's belongings) she didn't ask for much when emailing the Cards Against Humanity team. She simply wondered if they would send her the original game if she bought some of the expansions seeing as her copy had been destroyed in the fire. Instead of fulfilling her request, they gifted her and her family the game and all of the expansions — something they really didn't NEED to do, but this type of action is the kind of action that makes me a loyal fan of the game company and their staff/co-creators etc. Quite honestly this type of kindness is not often found in industries that exist to make money, places where selling more games is the goal rather than altruistic endeavors.
And Cards Against Humanity is awesome in the sense that it's a great game when played with the right kinds of people. I kind of wonder whether it should be some sort of barometer of friendship or something sometimes, because you learn a lot about a person based on what they judge as funny/appropriate/best when playing the game. But it's also a game made and sold by people who I quite honestly admire and believe to be good people. They've taken some cards out of the game when they've learned how they could be misconstrued/poorly played/badly interpreted (my game box may still have some of them), they've done their best to give back to the community and to give back to the people who have made the game a success, but they've also donated the profits from their holiday promotions to charities and have tried to do good wherever they can.
When I got the email this morning about their latest holiday promotion, I didn't think that it would lead to anything but my buying whatever it was before it ran out. I didn't think it would lead to my attempting to dissect why exactly I love this game nor did I expect that it would lead to my writing such a long blog post. But you know what, I just wanted to tell the Cards Against Humanity folks just how grateful I am that they created this gem of a game that allows us all to be A bunch of idiots playing a card game instead of interacting like normal humans. Because they are one of the great things I love about the gaming community.