In the university I studied, students organized different games played trough the year. It is a good method to help people socialize and know each other in the first year.
One of these game was called hitman. Every student who wanted to play had to provide a picture of himself and was registered as player. Then each player was given a random photo of another player and a small trumpet in paper that rolls out when we blow in it. So evry player was a hitman and a target of another hitman at the same time.
The hitman had to "kill" the person on the photo that was given to him. Killing was done by blowing the trumpet and touching the person with the rolled out paper.
Of course it was forbidden to kill anybody during lessons. The task was made more difficult by allowing someone to be immune to killing by holding an open umbrella above his head.
The hitman had thus to first locate its target, spy him without beeing recognized as his hitman and find the best moment to kill the target. Witnesses must be present to attest a valid killing. The last target to survive was the winner.
I didn't play the game so I don't know the details, but it was very funny to see these students walking around with open umbrellas, even inside buildings, and all the trumpet noise. It was also funny people talking to each other trying to figure out who is ones hitman. There was enough players to make it very hard to know, even at the end of the game
This is an exemple of game that was socialy usefull and fun. Organizing, providing the equipment and managing the game could be a business. Sell it in a box, one box per player. The umbrellas might be a bit dangerous for the eyes, so funny big umbrellas without metal in it, just for the game use, could be better and even more fun as well as justify the rent fee.
This was more then 20 years ago (this hurts). There are many ways one could imagine to change these rules today in the way the killing is performed. Since most people have today phones with numeric camera capture devices, killing could be changed into taking a picture of the target in a particular condition. For instance one variant could be called paparazzi where the hitman is a team of two players of opposite sex randomly combined that will have to cooperate. The killing could be taking a picture of a stolen kiss on the cheek or a photo bombing which could become a parallel contest. Replace the umbrella by a big colorful hat or anything alike which attracts attention and is funny. Those games should of course always respect the law, culture and rules of the place and require explicit (signed) prior consent of the players. The target should then be implicitly given ownership of the photo by game rules and be able to decide of their use. People should never be/feel constrained to play the game.
So the first fundamental rule of such type of real life games should be respect of the players and social context.
In the virtual worlds (i.e. WoW) one can erase the avatar and create a new one from scratch. In real life this is not possible, and interferences with other activities (family, study and professional) may become devastating by accident or youth naivety. Organizers should take their responsibility very seriously. Otherwise the limit is just imagination. The first aim of such type of game is to be fun and provide good laughs and catalyze social contacts.
In some contexts where ostensible extravagant behavior is not tolerated, i.e. army, business, the game could be changed into assigning a random secret (i.e. word) to each player with the hitman playing then as a spy that has to find out that secret by any means (except water boarding of course, although...). This could be a good game to entertain people and be useful by training their vigilance to what they say and where, etc.
The business idea could then be to provide a web service to manage the game, assign random secrets (i.e. word, object, concept) and a mean for the spy to check his finding with eventually a limited number of tests. This type of game could help socialize but also contribute to train people to hold defense/trade secrets.
Comments
In the university I studied, students organized different games played trough the year. It is a good method to help people socialize and know each other in the first year.
One of these game was called hitman. Every student who wanted to play had to provide a picture of himself and was registered as player. Then each player was given a random photo of another player and a small trumpet in paper that rolls out when we blow in it. So evry player was a hitman and a target of another hitman at the same time.
The hitman had to "kill" the person on the photo that was given to him. Killing was done by blowing the trumpet and touching the person with the rolled out paper.
Of course it was forbidden to kill anybody during lessons. The task was made more difficult by allowing someone to be immune to killing by holding an open umbrella above his head.
The hitman had thus to first locate its target, spy him without beeing recognized as his hitman and find the best moment to kill the target. Witnesses must be present to attest a valid killing. The last target to survive was the winner.
I didn't play the game so I don't know the details, but it was very funny to see these students walking around with open umbrellas, even inside buildings, and all the trumpet noise. It was also funny people talking to each other trying to figure out who is ones hitman. There was enough players to make it very hard to know, even at the end of the game
This is an exemple of game that was socialy usefull and fun. Organizing, providing the equipment and managing the game could be a business. Sell it in a box, one box per player. The umbrellas might be a bit dangerous for the eyes, so funny big umbrellas without metal in it, just for the game use, could be better and even more fun as well as justify the rent fee.
This was more then 20 years ago (this hurts). There are many ways one could imagine to change these rules today in the way the killing is performed. Since most people have today phones with numeric camera capture devices, killing could be changed into taking a picture of the target in a particular condition. For instance one variant could be called paparazzi where the hitman is a team of two players of opposite sex randomly combined that will have to cooperate. The killing could be taking a picture of a stolen kiss on the cheek or a photo bombing which could become a parallel contest. Replace the umbrella by a big colorful hat or anything alike which attracts attention and is funny. Those games should of course always respect the law, culture and rules of the place and require explicit (signed) prior consent of the players. The target should then be implicitly given ownership of the photo by game rules and be able to decide of their use. People should never be/feel constrained to play the game.
So the first fundamental rule of such type of real life games should be respect of the players and social context.
In the virtual worlds (i.e. WoW) one can erase the avatar and create a new one from scratch. In real life this is not possible, and interferences with other activities (family, study and professional) may become devastating by accident or youth naivety. Organizers should take their responsibility very seriously. Otherwise the limit is just imagination. The first aim of such type of game is to be fun and provide good laughs and catalyze social contacts.
In some contexts where ostensible extravagant behavior is not tolerated, i.e. army, business, the game could be changed into assigning a random secret (i.e. word) to each player with the hitman playing then as a spy that has to find out that secret by any means (except water boarding of course, although...). This could be a good game to entertain people and be useful by training their vigilance to what they say and where, etc.
The business idea could then be to provide a web service to manage the game, assign random secrets (i.e. word, object, concept) and a mean for the spy to check his finding with eventually a limited number of tests. This type of game could help socialize but also contribute to train people to hold defense/trade secrets.
Have fun...