So when designing a set of Kings rules, I think the worst decisions you could make are rules that prevent or discourage people from talking to each other. Unlike a lot of other games, the point of drinking games is pretty much entirely to socialize. Drinking games are a means for people to get comfortable talking and interacting with each other. This explains why playing drinking games too competitively is a social mistake in many circumstances - such individuals are forgetting that most drinking games are more of a ritualized set of fun actions rather than a competitive sport. Since the purpose of drinking games is to drink, this creates a tension where performing well at the smaller goals means performing poorly at the larger goal. In these games, the penalty of losing a round is to simply take a drink and continue. The 'goal' of most drinking games tends to be not-losing, rather than explicitly winning. For the sake of simplicity I'm going to look at Kings Cup specifically, which I consider the epitome of what a drinking game means. I think they're kind of their own category, and that's why purchasable games that specifically revolve around drinks tend to fall flat.įor starters, here's a few observations about drinking games. Drinking games are funny because I wouldn't really call most of them 'games' as much as 'rituals'.