Back in the day (and it’s always “back in the day” with these types of stories, isn’t it?), Web Watch would be known to partake in a drinking game or two amongst friends.
Why? Mainly because the games themselves were kinda fun. A bit stupid, perhaps, but always a fun challenge. Drinking was merely secondary to the activity, as one never needs a “game” of any sort to take a drink whenever one would like.
The key, of course, is to know when to say when and back out of the activity. Drinking too much because of some stupid game rule is never a good idea for anyone.
But the group at INSIDE HIGHER EDUCATION decided to take a look at the prevelence of drinking games on college campuses to see which DRINKING GAMES ARE MOST POPULAR.
Researchers identified the top 100 most popular drinking games, and were able to sort them into these FIVE TYPES OF DRINKING GAMES:
- Targeting and Skill: Truth or Dare, Apples to Apples, Mexican. Usually involves some sort of skill or strategy of a winner to select the one loser who has to drink on a turn
- Communal: Everyone drinks at the same time, based on some pre-defined rule. Whenever people on the TV show Mad Men drink, for example. Or the ever popular STATE OF THE UNION DRINKING GAME.
- Chance: No skill or strategy involved
- Extreme Consumption: Beer pong falls into this category. Other games in this grouping are Edward 40Hands or anything that involves going shot-for-shot with a fraternity member nicknamed “Truck”.
- Even Competition: One-on-One or Team-on-Team games where the losing side drinks. Any game like Taboo or Pictionary qualifies. And yes, Beer Pong got classified here as well. Apparently, the study could define multiple categories per game
While it’s not part of the official study, there is a list of the TOP 100 MOST POPULAR DRINKING GAMES compiled from BARMEISTER’s GUIDE TO DRINKING. The Top 10 games are:
- Ultimate Beer Pong
- Pass the Pithcer
- Snatch
- Boxing
- Flip Cup
- Beer Pong
- California Kings
- Power Hour
- Edward 40-hands
- Asshole
Surprisingly, Quarters is #11, not even in the top 10. Fuzzy Duck appears to be dropping in popularity, at number 39. Thumper is #82 on the list.
Web Watch doesn’t even know how “Boobs” qualifies as a drinking game on this list, when one of the rules states, “Make sure to roll over on your side as you are passing out after playing for 10 minutes… so you don’t suffocate on your own puke.” Yeah, that’s a game we want to play.
Hey, it could be worse. You could be playing THE GREAT AMERICAN CHALLENGE drinking game. In this event, four-person teams have to be the first to complete the following, in any order:
- 30 beers (7+ beers per person)
- 2 large pizzas
- 1/8 oz of pot
- the final challenge – complete a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Did we mention there was a time limit on the Challenge? It’s never about the win, it’s always about the competition, isn’t it?