Design Study two- Daniel Speers- KIng of the Hill

1) MAP

View King of The Hill in a larger map

2) Communication

This game will involve a GPS tracking system for the “Shark” players and a flare gun to mark the new locations of each Hill. The Hills will be a Projected circle from a video projector displaying a large white ring on the ground and located in the spots marked on the map. Once a team takes a hill it will change colors immediately to either Blue or Red depending on the team that has control of the Hill.

3) Instructions

The boundaries for this game will be Spring Garden, Girard, 6^th st and 2^nd st approximately 1.8 miles in diameter. There are two teams involved in King of the Hill, The Red team and the Blue team. Each team consists of 10 members, five males and four females. The object of the game is to locate the hill and occupy it with all of your team members. The way to capture the hill is by having more team members than the other team for the longest period of time. As soon as the first teammate is inside the designated area a timer begins to count the seconds. If two teammates arrive from the opposite team and outnumber the original team inside the ring a second timer begins and the previous one stops. There is a designated blue timer and Red timer. When a timer reaches five minutes first, the Hill is captured. The contestants are given a fifteen-minute break to discuss what happened and strategize for the next Hill. When the fifteen-minute break is up a flare will shoot into the air from the next Hill. In this round Two “Sharks” are added to the play. Each “Shark”. Has a display of the map and GPS locations of each teams players. When the round begins the “Sharks” are released from the next Hill to intercept the players searching for it. The sharks will be wearing Yellow hats. A shark must tag a player in order to force him to stop. The player is not out but is forced to listen to the shark’s proposition and wait three minutes. The shark will offer the player $25 to quit the game, each time after that the amount will increase $25. If the player decides to continue he is allowed to finish his three minutes and continue to his next Hill. If the player decides to quit he goes to the last Hill collects his cash and is aloud to leave or wait to see the winners. The shark will try and catch one player per round. This will cause confusion and a sense of betrayal in the players who are left. They will be told the player quit the game and left. The team that wins the most hills at the end of the game will split a thousand dollars with who ever is left. The order in which the Hills will activate are Aquamarine, Blue, Green, Yellow, Red. The Red hill will be the location of the final narrative event in which the winning teams will be revealed as well as the players who cashed out and for how much they received.

4) Propose a narrative.

The narrative that is created in this game is an interesting social experiment. It slightly resembles Wolf’s Dilemma in the way it requires trust on the parts of each player to not sell out in order to guarantee themselves money. The players will not be told of the cash prizes offered at the end. It will be a test of a person’s integrity and will power. It will most likely create some sort of dramatic narrative about betrayal and selfishness. If the player is easily swayed by money it will be an easy decision the harms the performance of his team. If a player decides it is immoral or unethical to abandon his team for a small some of money, he will contribute to the win. In a way we are creating a narrative ripe in drama and somewhat epic in scale. It could vary in outcome every time the game is played depending on the interactions of the contestant’s. When the contestants stay till the end and are presented with the money the players who lost and had teammates abandon them will be outraged and the players that did abandon the team that wins will be outraged that they settled for so little when so much more was available.

This design study makes use of the landscape in Northern Liberties and turns it into a physically intense game of strategy speed and teamwork. It changes from a neighborhood into a giant obstacle course. The streets and there layouts will make it difficult for the players to pinpoint exactly were the flares are being launched from. This will force the players and sharks to use natural instinct and use way finding as their mode of navigation. The instructions are designed to create tension allowing the people involved to feel a sense of competition and a small sense of anxiety, which pushes them to succeed. As each Hill is captured the sense that territory is starting to belong to that person will make a subconscious impact that this land is becoming his or hers which will give a person new perspective on the properties inside his realm. The subjective landmarks will stay with them for sometime after the game. Instead of a bench in a park it will be a hotly contested Hill. I feel that this modality of Northern liberties would be fun interesting and good exercise, not to mention if you win, you get some cash.