Some of you guys might have met Acrobot before - (I know he has fans from previous encounters) - Well now Acrobot is a permament feature in iSketch in his very own room - the Acromania room.

For those who are not acquainted with it ... I will tell you briefly how it works so that anyone popping into the room and finds it confusing can come here and hopefully find a simplified version of the rules.

Acrobot is a ten round word game.

He gives you a string of letters ie: IPYRGS (or acronyms) and it is YOUR challenge to make a witty, clever or just desperate sentence from these letters or others like them before the time runs out.

To lodge your sentence you type /msg Acrobot then your desired sentence.

(You can change your sentence once it is logged - as long as it is before the time runs out).

Then you lodge a vote for your favourite sentence (You cannot vote for your own). - and the one with the most votes and/or fastest entry wins the round.

You lodge your vote by typing /msg Acrobot then number of sentence you want to vote.

Previous to this - Acrobot had to be started manually by an admin in a chat-like room - now it runs automatically and you can join any time.

BEWARE THOUGH - it IS addictive!!

Please join everyone in Acromania and enjoy!

NB: This is a public room and monitored by admin so same rules of conduct apply as to the other public rooms.

*hugs to all*

Oh dear... you may have just given me a reason to play a game of iSketch after this long! :P Sounds great!

Although, I have to admit, maybe reading the rules at midnight wasn't such a great idea.. heh. I'm sure I'll understand it much better in the morning with a fresh cup of ze coffee. :)


Thanks for the information :)

hmm well i was in there for precisely 30 seconds before i got a pm asking how old I am:/
*sigh*

Lol.. I was just playing this, it's quite fun!

The acronyms are usually rude though, so maybee not for the easily offended :O

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Haha I was playing this as well. Was good fun but Acrobot really doesn't like having conversations :(.
Oh and as an unwritten rule, the ruder your sentence (but with a hint of humour), the more points you'll get xD.

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I really quite like it, although I would agree with gt, the sentences can be, and usually are quite rude. It does get quite fun though, you just need to be funny :)

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When i played with friends it was fun, back when it was in beta, but now it's more known and public there are too many people, spammers and really stupid sentences that get the vote simply because it used 'queer' in it's sentence.

Some were funny, but the majority weren't. Alot of the time it's just lazy, makes no sense and a very poor attempt at humour.

I guess when the room has an overall mental age of 10 though it's too much to ask for any decency.

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I wish that Acromania could be chosen as a UCR as well :) That would be handy :)

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Small steps does a journey make.

Aww so much fun!! Certainly brings out the worst in my vocabulary xD

Yeah I really like this game. It does depend on the people in the room though. It does get silly as previously said. With the right people or if it does become an option for a UCR it will be ace.

Also another point, it needs to have a seperate chat box added it gets too confusing otherwise.

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lol, the acronyms do tend to be a bit hm....well, uncensored, it brings out ...the worst/best in people XD (depending on ur likings :D)

XD :P but it is quite popular :D i think....they'll need more than one room soon though, theres always 20 something people in the room

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hmm :( is so addictive though :) but yeah rudeness....:)

I think it's really funny (and hypocritical) that everyone freaks out when someone draws a boob or a penis in the regular rooms and then tolerates/comes up with the crudest phrases in the acromania room.
Just a thought.

Very good point spectre. Rob seems to allow it as he joined the room some time yesterday, and no actions were taken.
Otherwise a lot of people would be blocked for sure :P

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Swearing and rude language, as long as it's not targeted to other players, is largely ignored by players and admins alike. Players and admins do start paying attention to it when it turns into a row of players at each other's throats.

I don't see how it can be thought of as hypocritical since it's not drawing on a canvass and people swear and use very rude (untargeted) language in rooms a lot.

However, when it becomes targeted at players (it will), i'm sure sanctions will be handed out, sanctions I suppose Rob has already thought of.

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But when "swearing and rude language" are incorporated into the game-like room that is Acromania (which I understand is a chatroom, but definitely has game(-like) qualities and interactions), then I think a comparison to regular game rooms is warranted.

I don't understand how you cannot see any hypocrisy in this situation. People incessantly complain about rude drawings, vote for it, get kicked and banned because of it, and then go into this room, and allow their gameplay to incorporate rude language (which I would say is around the same "rude level" as disallowed drawings). I'm not saying the situations are exactly the same, but there are similarities and "practice what you preach" does come to my mind.

I don't mind swearing or crude language (which I definitely was not addressing in my post) because I use it, but when the game is revolving around it and about 9/10 responses in the room make use of it, then I start to get annoyed. And when I can't ignore it (as much as I love reading the word "penis" 12 times over), then I'm also annoyed.

Im going to have to agree with spectre here.

I was in there and it gets pretty bad at times... one came up with F F F L or something like that and all but one had f*** as at least one of the words... but i dont think thats nearly as bad as the sexual things that people write down... i mean some of them make you feel like youre in the cyber room...

i can see the language/swearing being tolerated but the sexual stuff could at least be masked a little bit, i mean in a normal room if someone were to go in and say the same things that are said there they would be booted in an instant, would be kinda tough to mod, but some restrictions should be in place. (maybe an admin warning people the first time, booting the second time for 20 minutes?) i dunno, just a thought.

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+1

I would dispute that point straight-up. I've frequently seen (as recently as 2 hours ago mind you) players ejected from rooms for bad language, directed at nothing more than frustration from not guessing a word and without being a rampant tirade either; the ejection being perpetrated both by 3 votes from regular players, and admins responding to the same.

I can't see how that sort of language and behaviour is necessary in any part of the game, "targeted" or not.

It is possible to play an Acromania game in a the user creator department. If you want to open a room, an admin can start a game there. You can kick the rude people out yourself, if you are an operator.

I was playing Acromania yesterday and I see lots of young kids playing it and it gets boring as every single sentences has rude words in it.
I would like to see several Acromania room with different themes (personally I would go for a Harry Potter theme/music theme/maybe even a Dutch theme! :D).
If you think it's a good idea, let me know when I'm online and we can start some rooms and still enjoy Acromania in our own way :) until we figure out how to tackle the Acromania room itself.
Idea's are always welcome!

Mmm themed acro... That sounds like a really fun idea :)))

I was in there a little bit yesterday and it is quite... hmm... I wouldn't want to read that on a regular basis :P I don't want it in other rooms so why would I want it there? I think I'm going to wait until uc rooms are opened with it before I start playing it properly :)

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I'm not prudent and swearing and vulgar langauge is part of my life. What i disapprove of in the room is that people forego clever, mature and funny sentences that make the game fun and interesting, with immature, racist, sexist, and homophobic (and other words that end in ist) words stuck together.

User created rooms are the way to go until there is a way to manage the normal rooms. I agree with spectre that we are made to play a certain in Isketch and with Acromania it gets thrown out of the window.

I had a game where every answer bar mine was pretty much the same. There were 14 people in the room and the first letter was F and there was a Q in it and every answer except mine had F**k and Queer in it. None of them were good, most made no sense, but i have to vote for one to get points?

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My thoughts exactly :).

I think having Acromania in a UCR is a great idea as it will allow the phrases to carry a certain theme (as long as players keep to it) and avoid phrases full of words intended simply to shock (unless, of course, that is the theme :p). I also with spectre that there is some hypocrisy between having such a controlled sketching environment, where explicit drawings are not allowed, even if they depict the word, and Acromania, where, from what I've encountered, anything goes.

Just like a General Election xD.

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I could only stand 10 mins in this room last night. And yeah it all stems from the same reasons that everyone else has already raised as to why I hated it so much. Horrible room. Yet to play with decent players, so maybe that would improve it but meh, not enthused to really go back there at all.

But overall it's good to see iSk constantly thinking up new ideas and improving the game in all sorts of ways, so I guess that counts for something. If only there were some kind of rules, without being too prudent, for this room that would make it enjoyable for all.

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Watch, with a bit of friction I'll be under your clothes.
With a bit of focus I'll be under your skin.