Acrophobia (game)
1997 online multiplayer word game
Acrophobia is an online multiplayer word game. The game was originally conceived by Andrea Shubert, and programmed by Kenrick Mock and Michelle Hoyle in 1995. Originally available over Internet Relay Chat, the game has since been developed into a number of variants, as a download, playable through a browser, via Twitter or through Facebook.
Background
Created by Andrea Shubert in the mid to late 1990s, she developed a "spiritual successor" called TAG: The Acronym Game for startup gaming company play140.
Gameplay
Players enter a channel hosted by a bot which runs the game. In each round, the bot generates a random acronym. Players compete by racing to create the most coherent or humorous sentence that fits the acronym - in essence, a backronym. After a set amount of time expires, each player then votes anonymously via the bot for their favorite answer (aside from their own).
Points are awarded to the most popular backronym. Bonus points also may be given based on the fastest response and for voting for the winning option.
The public source identifies “Acrophobia (game)” as 1997 online multiplayer word game. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Acrophobia, game and online.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4676391. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “Acrophobia (game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.