Her new mystery game

“Y’know what, I changed my mind.” Abrams said, interrupting her train of thought. “You’ve peaked my interest with this social game. Tell me more.”

“Well,” May started cautiously. “Like I said, 80% of a group gets an alert that some among them have the power to change them. They’re the Prey. The rest, the hunters, get the power and an assignment to do it. They’re threatened with increasingly nasty changes if they don’t go after the prey, and they’ll be granted some pretty awesome wish fulfillment if they succeed in changing everyone.”

“Hmm...I like it. Built in incentive to pull the trigger. Can we re-assign the app if some won’t do it?”

May shrugged.

“If you like. That’s a good rule of implementation I think.”

“The Hunters and the Prey will all be on a communication network and all be identified by name,” May said. “They’ll also be able to track everyone else included in the game and determine how far away the nearest players are to them. All of that is available to both teams.”

“Mmm...keeps everyone in touch. I get that.”

“When one of the Prey is changed, there will be an alert sent out. The other prey will have to find them using the tracker. When they get close the app will beep until they’ve located it. That way they don’t lose players if they become smaller objects or something.”

May continued.

“Any user can call for a vote once every two hours, which freezes the Hunters’ transformative powers. That will start a conference call on which the players can get together and try to piece together who’s causing the changes. If the majority vote that they believe someone is guilty, that person will undergo a change of their own and be eliminated from the game.”

“Will they know if they got the right man?”

“We’ll be able to toggle that remotely based on what we think the game needs. But any hunters that want to change prey will have to get pretty close to them in order to do it. Within 10 feet. In addition, we’ve set up some specific challenges to each player so they can’t just barricade up in their rooms. Those include everything from odd chores to specific interactions they have to seek out, to things they have to do with other players. If those tasks don’t get completed, they’ll stack up micro changes.”

“How can they tell the micro changes from the ones the hunters make?”

“They’ll get alerted via the app. They’ll also be a lot more limited. Minor changes to one thing or another about them. Any major or multi faceted changes have to come from the hunters.”

“Yeah, how does that work anyway?”

“Hunters will get a three word input. Any change they can fit into three words can be applied to the Prey they elect to change. They can also make changes to themselves to throw off suspicion. They’ll know who the other hunters are too, so they won’t accidentally incapacitate them.”

“What’s to stop the hunters from turning on each other?”

“Nothing, really. That’s part of the fun. But they have good incentives to cooperate. Anyone who doesn’t get caught at the end of the game gets to improve themselves. And we can always step in if we have to.”

“And what do the Prey get if they win?”

“They get little improvements too. Although anyone who’s been eliminated has to live with their changes for a few days. And nobody can change back until the game ends.”

“Uh huh. So this is a game we’re forcing on people, but if they manage to have fun with it after they’ve all changed back, they can play it again. Seems a bit complicated for an app though.”

May shrugged.

“The company wants to sell it as a game. Either as one people can enjoy at their leisure or as one of the shows for the network.”

“Okay...I like. But this is going to take a pretty controlled environment to work. I hope you have a good one in mind.”

“I do indeed!” May said. “I’ve located a college that still has its students on campus. But the faculty is no longer coming into work and the only students there are the ones that can’t attend classes from home. On top of that, it’s the holiday break so the staff is down to a skeleton crew. There’s really only about 25 students there and a couple of building administrators. They basically have free run of the place.”

Abrams admired her for a moment.

“Alright. I’ll admit it. I’m very, very impressed.” He said. “Let’s pull the trigger on this and see what happens.”

He flipped a switch, and the app went out.