Draw Something CEO, grace and high school mathematics

Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPop, has had a good week. His game, Draw Something (it is an asynchronous Pictionary for cellphones, like Words With Friends is an asynchronous Scrabble) has taken off like mad, and Zynga bought his company for over $200 million. However, one employee didn't go along to Zynga, and Dan's been whining on twitter:

What's so interesting about success is the number of failures who try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is just one of many...

— Dan Porter (@tfadp) March 31, 2012

The one omgpop employee who turned down joining Zynga was the weakest one on the whole team. Selfish people make bad games. Good riddance!

— Dan Porter (@tfadp) March 31, 2012

This has drawn some reactions from others, eg Notch, CEO of Minecaraft:

@tfadp You're an insane idiot.

— Markus Persson (@notch) April 1, 2012

and Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter:

@tfadp I'm sure you realize by now what a nitwit comment that was, but wow, what a nitwit comment that was.

— dick costolo (@dickc) April 1, 2012

and the lovely Tom Coates:

I hope I never say anything this awful: @tfadp "What's so interesting about success is the number of failures who try to ride on your back."

— Tom Coates (@tomcoates) April 1, 2012

Now just before this crass public display of arrogance, he said something just as telling:

4 years of HS math I got every prob right. Teachers said was wrong way to the answer. Math, business, games, I'll stick with my wrong way.

— Dan Porter (@tfadp) March 30, 2012

The thing is, Draw Something has a maths problem. The so-called Birthday Paradox is kicking in. This is named for the unexpected result that if you have 23 people in a room, there's a 50:50 chance two of them have the same birthday.

There's a similar effect with games. If you keep randomly picking a word from a list, you'll see repeats quickly. Classic board games understand this - this is why Balderdash, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit etc insist you use a discard pile after shuffling and picking a question, so you only pick a new card from those you haven't seen. Draw Something isn't doing this, so we're all seeing words repeat, which is discouraging play. This is all over twitter too:

Too many repeat words in DrawSomething. :|

— Shreya Ghoshal (@shreyaghoshal) March 30, 2012

I've played Draw Something too much so every word now is a repeat. #firstworldpain

— ∆li (@AleeZaidee) April 1, 2012

Just now coming off a week-long "Draw Something" binge. The fact that I keep getting the same words over & over is helping.

— Aimee Mann (@aimeemann) March 31, 2012

One way or another, I think Draw Something has peaked.