SMU Professor and Three Students Make Hit Card Game With Shakespearean Dirty Jokes

[TexasTowelie]

courtesy Jenna Peck

Assistant professor Tim Cassedy thought he’d spice up the curriculum for his Southern Methodist University students when he told them they could choose the format of their final projects on the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick. He thought giving his class freedom of form would help spur their creativity, but he didn’t think he’d be starting a business with three of his students. Nor did he expect to create a Cards Against Humanity-style game based on Melville’s book, efficiently titled Dick.

“Someone emailed me saying, ‘Hey, can I make a game?’” Cassedy says. “I thought it was such a good idea. I got a stack of print-your-own business cards and printed up a sample game.”

This year Cassedy and his former students-turned-business partners Chelsea Grogan, Jenna Peck and Kate Petsche, teamed up to take another crack at the card game business and released Bards Dispense Profanity, a similar game to Dick, but this time featuring the works of William Shakespeare. Since its release in May the game has gone viral, selling more than 1,000 copies to giggling literature fans across the globe.

“It’s one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me,” Cassedy says. “I imagined that if I ever were in the Washington Post, especially in my capacity as an English professor, it would be because of a scholarly endeavor. I didn’t think I was going to be in the Post in a pop culture way ever.”

Read more: http://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/smu-professor-and-three-students-make-hit-card-game-with-shakespearean-dirty-jokes-8997811