Draw Something Pro/No.

Categories: artwork

Date: 09 February 2013 22:41:17

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3KlU80T1oY

I do, as may have been noted, like a bit of tablet art (more on that to come including a long ish post about doing artwork for Microsoft on a Surface tablet).

But a short missive to Zynga; Draw Something Pro is a massively missed goal.

Art packages are, rarely, fun. They're fully feature packed at times, slow at others. Occasionally they're strange and frequently they are shaped around User Interfaces that make me stare wide eyed in incredulity that icons could be placed so far away from each other with no concept of how little this aids the user (cough Sketchbook Mobile cough. And to a lesser extent the newest version of Brushes app).

Draw Something? It's an art package I equate with fun. Love it, partially because I play with friends so it's already got a fun aspect to it but the feature set is nicely balanced. Like it a lot (although I do get a little irritated at the lack of slide on the watch animation a -> screen... Hey ho, it's a silly thing and not worth me frowning at but I do end up doing just that...)

Draw Something Pro? An instant download for me. I imagined, in the few short seconds it took up download and install all sorts of possibilities... a zoom function, a draw mode that was unrelated to the game and could be accessed at any time... Maybe colour opacity or a range of brushes. Certainly I hoped for a save function so a picture could be worked and reworked.

And then I clicked on the icon and all I got was a few more colours and an infinite bomb, allowing me to cheat on the words (to all extents and purposes) and... well that was it. At best it meant I could click on additional word choices at the start of a game but, to be honest, I could already do that by exiting the app and restarting. It saved me a couple of button presses and that was it.

A missed goal then. The Pro tag defines an ability to cheat and little else.

I doubt Zynga will read this, I doubt I will ever see a Draw Something Pro worthy of the name. I keep playing as the friends I play with also enjoy the app... But it's not something I can use as an art tool and that makes me sad and frustrated. It could have been so much more... Instead we got more of the same and less of the possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJabHLch7i0