GameSpy's Y.A.R.N. - Does anyone remember?

[NayusDante]

Back in the early days of GameSpy Arcade, there was a set of pre-installed games called the "Parlor Games." These included the typical Hearts, Poker, card-type games from what I remember. I never liked card games, but I thought it odd that among them was a little gem called Y.A.R.N..

YARN was probably the most bizarre game I ever played, and you could make the argument that it was way ahead of its time. The game consisted entirely of user-generated content, something that no other game has accomplished. It was so simple, yet so fun. It was also VERY immature most of the time, but nonetheless, it was one of the most memorable online gaming experiences I've ever had.

The premise of the game is that you are collectively and competitively writing a story. The room host picks the starting sentence, the default being "It was a dark and story night...." When the game starts, everyone in the room is given a prompt to write the next sentence. After everyone has sent their sentence, they are all returned to the players in random order, minus the originating user. The players then vote for their favorite sentence, not knowing who wrote what. The voting results determine which sentence is added to the story, and how many points are handed out.

Apparently, all of the parlor games were removed due to a "security flaw" that was discovered. It's been years since then, and I've never seen YARN since, or anything remotely like it. It surprises me that they just took them down instead of patching. Does anyone else even remember it?

[Gapporin]

This reminds me of a game I recently found out called Psuedobabble (http://www.mutantdog.com/membersarea/login.php). The only part is, you aren't collectively writing a story, but sometimes you are given themes and the best/funniest sentence written out of a randomized set of words wins.

[BetaWolf47]

Yes, I played it too! There were never more than 8 or 9 people on at a time, but it was a great timekiller! I never knew they took the Parlor Games off... just thought they removed them from the Default list.

Everyone was a dick on there. The stories that were written would make The Onion envious.

[o2william]

Wow, I haven't thought about Y.A.R.N. in years. I actually worked for GameSpy at the time Arcade launched. I was in the publishing division (i.e.: not part of the Arcade team) at the time, but everybody got drafted as sort of unofficial beta-testers for Arcade. I remember playing Hearts a few times, and recall watching Y.A.R.N. games in progress, although I don't think I ever participated in one. I remember thinking it could be a lot of fun, and I always meant to try it, but never got around to it. I was in the middle of a big publishing project so I didn't have much time to spend testing Arcade. If I recall correctly, lots of GameSpy employees (including management) were really excited about Y.A.R.N. I remember employees exchanging links to Y.A.R.N. stories. I seem to recall that we even conducted a Y.A.R.N. over the company's internal mailing list. I think I did write something for that one.

GameSpy was a pretty fun place to work in those days (late 2000). Too bad it was right before the dot-com bubble burst.

[NayusDante]

Whoa, links to stories??? Is there any chance that there's a backup of the stories? I seem to recall a few really good ones, in particular one about the YARN players playing D&D, and another titled "Bill Clinton In Space."

[o2william]

Whoa, links to stories??? Is there any chance that there's a backup of the stories? I seem to recall a few really good ones, in particular one about the YARN players playing D&D, and another titled "Bill Clinton In Space."

Sorry, but I'm not much help here. I left GameSpy in 2001 (due to the aforementioned bursting of the dotcom bubble). Being in Publishing, I wasn't privy to information about backups and so forth, but I kind of doubt that Y.A.R.N. content was saved (or that anybody could find it now if so). GameSpy is part of IGN now... most of the old guard are gone... they're not even in the same building anymore. I suspect that if there are any backups, they would have to have been fan-made. A quick Google search didn't turn up anything though.

Sheesh that was a long time ago now. I'm getting old...

[Ed Oscuro]

2001 was when my time at GameSpy started...I remember hearing about YARN being played by some of the [GSF] people (GameSpy Forums clan). Beyond that, I can't say. Want to say I knew of Ben Turner (well-respected writer on GameSpy for a long while) using it, but I'm not sure.

Ultimately it was abandoned by most people in favor of a game like Pictochat (somebody draws a thing and everybody attempts to guess the word).

[BetaWolf47]

Ultimately it was abandoned by most people in favor of a game like Pictochat (somebody draws a thing and everybody attempts to guess the word).

Pictochat is just an integrated chat client. Surely you're talking about Pictionary? Like iSketch or InkLink or something?

[Ed Oscuro]

Pictochat is just an integrated chat client. Surely you're talking about Pictionary? Like iSketch or InkLink or something?
Yeah, I'm thinking about iSketch (been a while since I've seen it).

[rboltz]

"YARN was probably the most bizarre game I ever played, and you could make the argument that it was way ahead of its time."

Today on the apple App store you can get the follow up to Yarn. It is called Threadz, and you can find it at itunes.com/threadz or facebook.com/threadzthegame