Summer Is For Innovating Drinking Games

Mike Hale8 years ago

I’ve been throwing ping pong balls into red cups since I was old enough to concoct plausible lies to tell my parents. Beer pong has long been the absolute standard in game based alcohol consumption. It’s the perfect blend of accessibility and competition. Anyone and everyone can play, the supplies needed are cheap and readily available, and there are clear winners and losers. Beer pong is such a staple of partying that it feels like it has been around forever; but it absolutely hasn’t. Though the origins are highly debated, it’s said that beer pong was invented in the ’50s at Dartmouth (or almost every other college or fraternity according to that college or fraternity) with paddles on an actual ping pong table. A beer was probably set down on the table and someone accidentally knocked the ball into it. Voila, the most popular American drinking game was born.

What I’m getting at here is that new drinking games don’t just appear out of thin air. Even our Greek ancestors had a variety of games to play while gulping inordinate amounts of terrible ancient wine. Granted they were all awful and mostly involved trying to knock over various cups and plates by flinging wine at them, but they were games nonetheless. Beer pong is great and will always be near and dear to our fraternal hearts, but a lazy summer is the perfect time to be working on new and innovative ways to gamify your alcoholism.

Quarters, flip cup, up and down the river, Edward 40 hands, all great. But isn’t it time we developed the next generation of drinking games? If we don’t push the bounds of possibility, who will? I’m not talking about bullshit games like “Slap the Bag.” If you find yourself in the middle of a circle playing this game, exit immediately and examine carefully the life choices that brought you to this place. I’m also not referring to movie or show based drinking games. “Drink every time Jim looks at the camera or Dwight talks about beets.” Grow up and be creative.

I’m talking about games that will spread from campus to campus like wildfire. Games that will stand the test of time. Let me get the wheels of creativity churning in your head with a few poorly thought out games I just made up right now as I am typing this.

America’s Most Wanted

One person is selected as the FBI agent and given a bottle of liquor and a shot glass. For incentive, I suggest using something hard to shoot. Everyone else is give 2 minutes to hide in an agreed upon perimeter. From here it is basically hide and seek, and the FBI agent administers shots to people as they are found. Set a time limit and if the agent can’t find everyone in time, he or she takes a shot for every person not found. Too childish? Spice it up by hiding in co-ed pairs. Things should get interesting in the third round or so.

Crypto-Shots

Want something you can play during brunch at the yacht club? There are various exchange markets just like the New York Stock Exchange that trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum instead of stocks. Open a market like Bittrex on your phone and each person picks a coin. You can watch the market in real time a minute at a time. At the end of every minute if your coin goes up, you’re safe. If your coin stays the same or drops you drink. Spicier? Everyone throw in $20 and after 10 minutes the coin with the most positive gains takes the pot. Enjoy you fucking nerds.

Dick-tionary

For this classy game all you need is paper, pens, and some tape (wine and wine glasses optional for extra class).  Everyone draws a self portrait of their wedding tackle. Mix the pictures up and hang them along the wall like a wang art gallery opening. Then the whole group peruses the hall of dong with pens and writes on each drawing who they think it belongs to (this is where holding wine and making comments like “I appreciate the line work in the shaft” really classes things up). Take a shot for every 2 or 3 people who correctly identify your hang down; shotgun a beer if no one does. Best played with co-eds to minimize confusing homo-eroticism. If you really want to get personal, change the drawing method to Dick Tracey.

There you go. 15 minutes and I came up with 3 new games. Are they good? No. Will you try at least one of them? Probably. Can you come up with something better? God I hope so. Now go forth and create a game that your grandchildren will play..