Encounter (urban street game)
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Encounter — is a Game
It is a game which can rouse your city as well, a game which has brought together virtual reality and real life. It is like when you being carried away by races on the computer monitor would rush out of your apartment to your car to come first in a real race. Or it could be the other way round when you were dashing along the streets of your native town and without pulling up drove into the picture on the monitor to complete your mission in the virtual space.
The rules of "the Encounter" are simple enough. To take part in it each team is making a payment (the team which has taken the 1st place is getting 50% of the total takings for the game). The game runs several cars — crews of "field players" that are in real life. The cars must be fuelled to capacity and the players — equipped with cellar phones and flashlights. The other part of the team is its "brains’, its "headquarters". In the headquarters there are computers linked to the Internet , "coordinators" who are getting tasks at "the Encounter" web-site and passing them over to the players at the "field".
The goal of every mission is to find the code, enter it into the web-site and thus get access to the next task. The code can be hidden in any place and in any way: placed in the basement, drawn on the stone or on the wall, printed in the fresh issue of a newspaper, fixed up a tree, handed over to the "agent". The code can materialize in a set of figures or symbols, a line from Shakespeare, the name of the caretaker from the neighboring street.
Having obtained the code, the crews are letting the headquarters know by cellar phones. Experienced and better equipped field players , for the sake of time economy, are logging the answer into the web-site straight from the car, using a lap-top linked to the Internet.
The participant must fulfill ten missions and the team which is the first to go through all the levels is the winner. The virtually-actual encounter is sometimes running through the whole night — from late evening to the small hours of the next morning.
When the game with these rules was first launched in Minsk, it gained popularity quickly and became a noticeable event of the local life. Townsfolk are exchanging sagas about mysterious nocturnal incidents. Populous teams have been formed, a new steady community of "the players of the night" has emerged. Severe representatives of the road police are grinning with understanding at the sight of the car with "Encounter" sticker. There have been a series of reports on the adventures of the Encounter players in the local papers and on TV, the repute of the founders of the game is rocketing.
This is the game which is changing the metropolis, and it is happening so wherever it appears.
The Founders of the Extreme
Let us admit (just imagine) that you have decided to become the organizer. It is most convenient to play the game in the night of Saturday-Sunday when people want to relax after a week of work and most of the city inhabitants are sleeping in their beds and their cars are parked in the garages or in the car parks. Empty roads, bored policemen, the darkness covering up the codes—the very time for the Encounter. Up to 100 teams can take part in the game at the same time, but usually from 7-8 up to 15-20 teams are participating.
You are nearly the God in the world of "the Encounter", you are in the know of the contents of the coming game as you are its maker.
The game space is the whole of your city, its center and its back streets (could be outskirts and suburbs). A typical level of "the Encounter "is the place where it is dark, where you feel horrified and breath-taken. These may be some old ruins, bunkers and towers, unfinished and abandoned tall buildings where in dark basements the water is squelching under your feet, in the corners you run into the traces of the habitation of the homeless people, where instead of the expected wall you can see the stars and the stairs have no railings and lead nowhere. The organizer is the first to travel this extreme itinerary and it is itself a wonderful adventure for you and your close helpers.
You are the holder of all the mysteries as it is you who is working out the scenario for the ten levels. The invention of the following encounter is and exceptionally creative process: you have to find a staggering object in your environment, to think up a formidable task, to craftily hide the codes, to think over all the accessories, to devise funny situations for your agents and to give them instructions.
You are creating the codes for the teams, loading them into the server. At the time appointed by you the game begins automatically. At the instant of its start you may be drinking beer with your friends, holding negotiations with your partners, singing a lullaby song to your child.
You have done your share: you have created the extreme. And not the one which is on the TV screen , where shows for the lazy are unfolding for them to be able to watch the adventures of other people while lying on the sofa. Your game is for the enthusiastic people of you native town or district. Not too much time will pass before the city of your dream becomes unquestionable reality.
Mission Possible
"Encounter" is available for all those craving for poignant sensations: for the lively, curious, fearless, risky, as well as for the carefree and resourceful—and far advanced in the Internet systems. In the night of the game your age, your social and family status, your education and income do not matter. Before the start all players are equal and the best is determined in the violent fight.
An incomparably high tension is reigning in the headquarters: having forgotten about the time, hunger, tiredness, the brainiest team players , the most competent Web users, the coordinators have formed a group around the computer. To get the task from the Internet and to convey it to "the field", directly to the crews is the simplest thing done by "the brains" of the team. At the minimum, it is necessary to begin with deciphering the text of the task: where, what and how to seek? To guess the allegory and the hints in the description of the mission you may spend a great deal more time than on the very operation of getting the code at the place.
The disclosure of various traps, a hectic search for information, the working out of the strategy, the sharing of the roles among the crews and their "escorting" by mobile communication—all these are the headquarters. The atmosphere here is highly electrifying. One does not do without the exclamations "What a dunce I am!" or, the other way round, "Guys, I am a genius!"
Once, for instance, the teams got a regular appetizing looking apple. What could it mean? It was not at all easy to guess there and then that there was a message with a hint hidden inside the apple( the hints help everyone , likewise they inspire the unlucky ones to further victories if they have got stuck on the third level while the leader is already at the eighth). The message had been rolled up , put into the core of the ball-point, respectively put into the apple through the opening at the place of the graft, the graft being fixed back later with the help of melted wax.
No matter how long the players were running about with the deceitful apple in the pocket, they could not make it to the higher level. The mission is possible when the team gets a hint prepared by the organizer beforehand. Planning the game’s scenario, you, as the game’s organizer, are at the same time making hints for each of the levels, and the team which has lingered at a definite level, is getting a hint from the sever.
Genuine Reality
In the city and its environs the field players, equipped to the full (in the course of the game one may need just anything: beginning with a rubber boat and ending up with a pin) in search of the code are digging up the soil, climbing somewhere, running Marathon races, forcing rivers. These are the very moments, hours and nights which are making the game irresistible. The chase, the chase, the chase!…it’s worth to win a fight than to lose!
Cellar phones in use all the time:
— What’s the news from the headquarters? — Who of our team is on the way to help us? — Which level are our rivals at? — Where is the damned code?!
One of the team players is crawling on the roof, another one is lost in the labyrinth, someone has been out of communication for four hours.
Involved into adventures, even the most bashful ones are learning to overcome the fear of the height, of the unknown, getting rid of their inhibitions. The game is giving everyone a possibility to get to know oneself better, to overcome complexes, to acquire friends, to broaden ones knowledge.
Everyone is Playing
All the fervor of the Encounter can be sensed in one way only — joining the game. It is known for sure: every participant could feel more than once with the skin of his teeth what it is like to get a splash of adrenaline into his blood. And the ablest, the most active, the shrewdest team knows the taste of sheer victory — when, having overcome all the hazards, it emerges first from the dark, heading to the live bonfire where the players are met by the organizer who declares the victory authorized and presents the desired award. Even those participants of the game whose teams did not get any prizes — ragged, drained, dirty — are invariably in raptures after the encounter.
Reckless university students and impressive heads of firms. Housewives and bikers. Respected bankers. A gray-haired manager is explaining his passion for the Encounter in the following way: "We remain children forever, only our toys are getting more costly". Many people like it when they get free from the obligations of the head of the family to currently become characters of an unshot move.
This kind of life is an alternative to everyday routine with its inevitable limitations and a burden of everyday concerns. This property of the Encounter is drawing to it hundreds of most different people.
"Encounter" is a game where there can be anything that is not available in real life.
Like you have to find "the agent " in an overcrowded tram in the evening. And the agent will reveal himself only on condition he happens to travel in the same carriage with the player by holding out his hat, pleading with the passengers to give him some money — as he has not enough of it for the coming wedding.
Agents (the organizer’s people) — are a not unimportant component of the game. The agent has to be found in the city, has to be recognized , say, by a faded photo of his shoes, the photo which has materialized on the monitors in the headquarters. Sometimes the players have to do something droll, absurd, in public, for the agent to respond.
The contact of the players with the agents is often the funniest phase of the game. Supposing the task instruction is to snatch a yellow plastic bag out of the hands of the agent who is somewhere in the street: the bag is the code holder. You can imagine the speechless scene, when the agitated player is snatching the bag out of the hands of a man not in the game, the unsuspecting male who is out to buy some cigarettes in a day-and-night shop. The players must know how to deal with any situation with dignity and to avoid any conflicts or worse aftereffects.
Once the code was written up the agent’s forehead, but the inscription was made with a special felt pen , the traces of which could be seen only in the ultraviolet rays. The teams had "to load" their brain curves, before the discovery was made: you should direct your ultraviolet torch at the agent’s face.
Abundance of emotions and impressions the game is rich in requires an outlet. This is why the played game and its details are being discussed over and over again at parties and on the site forum. The players wish to be together after the final bonfire has burnt out. For this community " The Encounter" is becoming their way and style of life.
The Worldwide Game
The offered project is one of those which are getting a worldwide circulation.
"The Encounter" is taking over the planet of the people. That is why a unified data base of its players has been set up. A client who made a deposit is his native town and left for another town or country (on business, to have a rest, to visit with the friends), if he wishes, can play "The Encounter" there. This is why the car with such a sticker on its glass is going round the world. When our wishes, intentions and actions are moving the Earth round — everything is O.K. with us, the game goes on, it is worth while daring and gaining success.
General questions: E-mail: mia@en-world.org Tel.: + 375 29 2 282 222 Technical support: Tel.: + 375 29 6 585 000 Tel.: + 375 29 7 585 000
