The Game Prototype That Had to Be Banned by Its Own Studio

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9:45 Guilt tripping other players with their real life health issues is exactly why you can't trust light blue.

They managed to build the exact opposite of a team building exercise.

If a mobile game studio of all places shelves a game for being too psychologically manipulative, it must have been bad.

In LARP they call this emotional overlap "bleed," and it's very real and good to keep an eye on. You have to be really aware of how the games emotions are spilling onto your real life.

I did not expect “a decade ago” to mean “after fruit ninja and Jetpack joyride”

How to lose friends in 1 day.

I think the reason Among Us does this concept extremely well is because every game is only ~10 minutes long, rather than spanning over the course of multiple days or weeks. So, someone you betrayed in one game is probably gonna be an ally in another, and every game is separate so the betrayal doesn't feel personal. The other important point is that the only time you can communicate with someone is during meetings, so you really can't go and form alliances with other people

Reminds me of a story from my uncle. His bosses had given him the go-ahead for the winner of a game of Diplomacy to be given a paid day off of work. They were able to, however, immediately agree to declare a truce and all get a day off of work.

The answer to this game is to make it a sit-down-and-finish game. You can get over a momentary betrayal, but not one that drags on for days or weeks.

okay Chris but you can definitely give me your energy points, I swear, nothing bad is gonna happen

I really feel like bringing up your health issues and putting guilt on someone because someone betrayed you in a game is the sh**ty thing to do

Honestly I’d love to watch a movie inspired by this. A video game studio descending into chaos when they decide to test their new game. And it turns the whole office into a war zone not knowing who to trust while showing the affects this has on the team as a whole. As friendships and work bonds are tested, and being destroyed. Sounds like a kinda cool idea for a dark comedy.

The moment I heard "they can hand over their action points", my immediate thought was "ah, so now this game is politics ". I know what Diplomacy can do to a gaming group, and it only has seven players. One with sixteen would be madness.

"I betrayed them, because for me its just a game and I didnt think they would be hurt" vs "I betrayed Quinn and printed a t-shirt that says fuck quinn"

As someone who played online mafia for years, it's painfully obvious that introducing a long-term social deduction game into a work environment could really only ever end in disaster.

This has me wondering if you could do the reverse - improve workplace morale and relationships by having players play some kind of cooperative grand strategy game that evolves over the course of days. I'm sure plenty of workplaces have tried it.

This right here is why roleplay is actually larp's most important safety tool. Your friend betraying you feels terrible, your friend's character betraying you is fun. (It also allows a lot of out of character communication for safety and creates a barrier between people and the game)

Oh, that's not a board game, it's a social experiment.

when i first watched this video a couple days ago, i thought to myself, "i don't understand the fuss, i love games like werewolf or town of salem and i've never had lasting damage to my real relationships because of them." but now on second viewing, i realize (as others have mentioned) this game's timeframe gives the players a lot of space, maybe too much space, to dwell on each other's real life character based on in-game actions. a game of werewolf between co-workers that goes on for over a week is very different from one that goes on for an hour or so. i've played social deduction games with friends and classmates in comparable numbers to the tank tactics playtest, and the tensions between players in those spaces frnakly does not need any more time to develop and bubble over.