Publish or Perish

Life is not only work, you ned also fun to perform high.

The game is the brainchild of PhD social scientist and entrepreneur Max Hui Bai. The core mechanics are simple: players compete to claim manuscript cards by playing the appropriate combinations of research cards and action cards. Each manuscript has a cheeky title and abstract—and more importantly, a citation point value. The person with the highest point total at the end of the game wins.

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Players must applaud and congratulate their peers on every publication (or else they suffer a penalty)—even as they all openly try to sabotage each other by bestowing research mishaps, audits, and budget cuts on their competitors. Trash talk is extremely encouraged, and there’s even a bonus given at the end of the game to the snarkiest commenter.

Some of the action cards force players to answer a trivia question or lose cards from their hands. Bai says he’s not a big trivia buff, but he wanted a mechanism that would reward players for their esoteric knowledge—and provide additional fodder for lighthearted mockery.

This Newscripster got her hands on a “preprint” version of the game with the “Revenge of Reviewer 2” expansion card pack and tested it out with the help of some friends and coworkers. The general consensus was that it was the most fun any of us has ever had reliving our grad school trauma—though the gameplay took longer than the 30–60 min described in the instructions. That also tracks fairly well with how academia often works.

Bai says he’s nearly done workshopping the game and will be launching a Kickstarter campaign this fall to secure the funds he needs to release it.

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