You just purchased a new card game, and now you are being marketed the “adult extension pack.” The pack does not add strategy, complexity, or deeper gameplay. It simply adds crude sex jokes and innuendo. While it may seem harmless, the practice of marketing erotica, drugs, and profanity as “adult” may be more harmful than we realize.
“Apples to Apples” has been a family table staple for over two decades. In the game, one player selects an adjective card, and the remaining players choose a noun card they believe best fits the category. The game is simple, social, and accessible to players of all ages. Then came “Cards Against Humanity” (“Cards”).
Marketed as “a party game for horrible people,” Cards follows a structure similar to “Apples to Apples,” but features crude humor about sex, drugs, and violence and extensive vulgar language.
One of Card’s co-creators, Max Temkin, started his career in politics. He began volunteering for Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign in high school after hearing Obama speak at an anti-war rally. Temkin worked on a few Democratic campaigns and eventually circled back to his roots, working for the Obama for America presidential campaign. It was during this time that Temkin learned the design skills and campaign funding processes (Kickstarter) that would eventually build Cards Against Humanity. A Polygon article about Temkin’s life notes, “Temkin got into politics to try to bring about change. But in the end, that change didn’t come from politics. It came from games.”
This should be illuminating for some readers. Cards quickly became Amazon’s top-selling card game, and it caused an industry-wide shift toward crass “adult” games. The category includes popular games such as “What Do You Meme?,” “Incohearent,” “4-Bidden Words,” “For the Girls,” and others that often line the shelves at Walmart and Target. Some of these games have relatively inoffensive, family-friendly cards alongside extremely vulgar ones about bondage and oral sex, with explicit language, and about illegal drug use.
While party games like spin the bottle or beer pong have been around longer than most of us can remember, these new card games have taken the marketplace by storm. They have become so popular that most stores have implemented an entire “adult” section of the games department.
Unfortunately, their “adult” branding harm is twofold. First, moral generalization. It is obvious that these games, which center primarily on crude sex humor, are not appropriate for any child. But just because it is inappropriate for children does not make it appropriate for all adults. Labeling these games simply as “adult” denies consumers sufficient warning about the games’ contents that may reasonably violate their comfort levels.
Other media and entertainment content understand this. Sexual content in movies, for example, requires its own notice. The same goes for television and video games, but not board and card games, though they do come with age suggestions in a small box in the corner of the package. Though some games are marketed as “offensive” or “NSFW” (not safe for work), they are, by and large, all categorized simply as “adult” games.
When it comes to games, the term “adult” and the relative age ratings are ambiguous; consumers do not know whether the game is intended for older consumers because of the strategy, complex rules, or other intellectual challenges. We already acknowledge that sexual content is distinct in other areas of entertainment, and the same should apply to games, too. Consumers deserve to know the difference. But the deeper harm is not to consumers; it is to children.
Throughout their entire upbringing, children are raised with the understanding that adulthood is something for which they strive. That is good, proper, and natural. They watch the adults around them, imitate their behavior, and are trained to leave childish ways behind. Adulthood means responsibility, freedom, and achievement.
But this labeling teaches something very different. The child driving past an “adult” store, seeing an advertisement for “adult comedy,” or walking by the “adult games” section at Target receives the same message again and again: adulthood is defined by sexual content, obscenity, and indulgence.
It is no surprise that these games are so popular among young adults. I remember Cards from middle and high school; all the cool kids played. Unlike the adult comedy club, there is no enforcement of the supposed age restriction. The game can be brought to a sleepover or passed around a lunch table, providing opportunities to flaunt sexual “adultness” to peers and reinforcing a negative spiral.
Knowledge of sexual references becomes social currency. Shock value becomes sophistication. Vulgarity becomes maturity.
But it is not maturity. It is a caricature of adulthood drawn by board game executives such as Temkin. When we teach children that adulthood means crude jokes, vulgar language, and sexual content, we ought not be surprised when they seek adulthood through those very things.
The answer is simple: Call explicit content what it is. Reserve the word “adult” for what adulthood actually means.
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Macy Petty Charles is legislative strategist for Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization dedicated to promoting biblical values and constitutional principles in public policy. On X: @CWforA.
This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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