Why SongPop Is Not The New Draw Something

From time to time, I like to talk about iPhone apps.  It should be no secret if you know me well enough that I love my iPhone.  I really do.  I can't imagine life without it.  It's sad to say, but it's totally true.  Well anyway, one of the things I like to do the most is play games against my friends.  Starting with Words with Friends, all the way up to the newest phenomenon, SongPop.  In between those, most games have hung around, with a only a handful of people still playing them on a not-so-regular basis.  But there was one game in there that really interests me in particular, and that game is Draw Something.

Wow, did people quit playing that en mass, eh?  Like, everyone quit playing that at the same time, and no matter what sort of in-game incentives they offered, no one really went back to it.  I've checked.  I played a drawing yesterday, the first in 14 days, and the second in months, and it really got me thinking how crazy that ride was.

I mentioned SongPop in that first paragraph, and it's interesting, because that's the comparison that many are making.  This SongPop is the new Draw Something.  That's exactly what I said when I started playing SongPop a couple weeks ago.  This will last for a minute and then fizzle out just like Draw Something.  But after I thought about it for a while, I've seemed to come to a conclusion on what was fundamentally wrong with the game Draw Something that made it flame out like it did, and why that might not happen to SongPop.

First off, the game Draw Something requires you to be creative, and have some sort of drawing skill.  SongPop requires you to recognize a song as quickly as possible.  That's the basics of each game.  Draw Something got really old when we were asked to choose between trying to draw Justin Bieber or "brick."  Well, I'm going to draw brick, because I can't really draw Bieber without it looking like a stick figure on a stage, all the while hoping that my "opponent" can unscramble the words well enough to guess Justin Bieber. So I/we ended up just drawing the same shit over and over.  When I had 17 games going against everyone and their (and my) mother, you have to be creative for a good stretch of time.  I'm not going to say that the game wasn't fun, but the task was suddenly daunting.  I don't want to open this game, it makes me mad, yet I enjoyed playing it at the same time.  It was a weird conflict.

Oh and speaking of "opponents," therein lies another problem.  You weren't competing against your friends, you were basically working with them.  No one could establish dominance over ones opponent. There was no incentive to keep going back to try and conquer anyone.  For example, I am a very dominant player at the game Scramble with Friends.  I keep going back to the game to reestablish that I am the best, and no one can beat me.  People do occasionally beat me, and I imagine it is a great thrill to those who manage it, but I want to be the best there is at Scramble with Friends, so I continue playing it.  You couldn't be the best at Draw Something. I keep coming back and playing SongPop because I want to beat my brother.  I want to beat...er I mean... defeat my wife.  I want to crush everyone. You can actually win at SongPop. You cannot win at Draw Something. It just goes on and on forever.

So that is why SongPop is not the new Draw Something.  The two games are just fundamentally different.  The problems with Draw Something is that it forces the player to be more creative than they are actually capable of, and you can't win.  SongPop is fun, it's competitive, and you can win, whether it's by the slightest margin or by a landslide. Who knows? Maybe by this time next month (next week?) it'll be a wasteland of a game as well.  But for now, I'm enjoying it very much, thank you.