Pervasive games

Today we talked about 'Killer' which is a pervasive game that was inspired from a film named 'La Decima Vittima'. The games objective is to assassinate your target using toy weapons as well as avoid the people that are targeting you.

The story to La Decima Vittima involves two main characters that are in a game called The Big Hunt. This involves real assassinations that has been legalised as long as the person is your victim or hunter. When you are a hunter and you kill your target your role is reversed to the victim. If you are able to kill 10 people you are rewarded with 1 million dollars and retire with a title of prestige and honored with many luxuries.

This film was adapted into a short story by Robert Sheckley named 'Seventh Victim' and then adapted into a game by Steve Jackson. This game is often played in college and universities and have set rules of where they can play (be assassinated) to avoid undesired consequences.

     Talking of undesired consequences, there have been many occasions where pervasive games have caused legal issues and fear in the community as people are not aware with what is going on. A good example of this is when a 3 week long game called Street Wars was held in London (rules were based on killer). further details can be found on this story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5211998.stm

In America there was an event held called 'Cruel 2 B Kind'. This resembles the rules of Killer but to avoid the public outrage that London showed, instead of using water pistols, they hurled compliments or nice sentiments at one another.

Pervasive games are enjoyable as there is an overlap between the real world and the game being played. There is a sense, similar to an inside joke where the people that are involved know what is going on but everyone else just remain blissfully unaware or preferably hugely confused.