Gamify It: Survivor Part 1 — Basic Ideas

Welcome to Matters of Design’s Gamify It, a new series on taking everyday situations and ideas and applying game design principles to either turn it into a game, or improve on it through gamification.

So today, we’re are gonna look at the hit show Survivor and turn it into a playable game. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Survivor is already a game, so what’s the point?” Well its not that simple. You see, creating a game requires both mechanics (the concepts which allows the game to advance) as well as other design features, such as player group size, board size, and much more. Survivor provides a great foundation for the mechanics, but the design is still wonky. How can you replicate an island challenge show? For that, we need to go through the design process and help flesh out some of the details. Without further ado, lets get into it.

Medium of Play

The first step is to determine how the players are going to play this game. There are 3 systems we can use: Video/Digital, Board, and Tabletop/Pen and Paper. Video/Digital Systems use technology such as PC’s and Consoles to play games. These can be useful for a variety of different games, but limit how much physical interaction there is. For a game like Survivor, we want that engagement to not only be present, but the forefront of the game itself. Board games are great because it does require some physical interaction, but there are limitations such as resources needed and space needed. You don’t want to have a huge board to play on, but you need a huge space for this game. We can’t have challenge locations and island locations be the same. With Tabletop games, it allows the players to create their own narrative within a controlled environment. Thanks to a Game Master aka Jeff Probst, players will be able to make decisions, but ultimately it will be up to Probst to decide whether or not it works and how well it does/doesn’t. So our medium of play will be a tabletop game, with a Game Master.

MVP — Minimal Viable Product

Now that we have where we are going to play it, we need to figure out how we are going to play it. For this, we need to look at the core mechanics of how Survivor works. Based on the show and what has remained constant (or relatively constant) over the years, this is what I have determined to be the key mechanics:

• 16–20 “Castaways” (Players) Divided up into 2–4 “Tribes” (teams)
• 3 day cycles*
• Challenges for Immunity (safe from the vote) and/or Reward (improve camp life)
• Team Socializing/Alliance Building
• Tribal Council, where players vote to eliminate one member of their tribe from the game.
• Merge at x castaways left (can be as many as 12 and as few as 9)
• Eliminated players form a jury post merge
• Final castaways (2 or 3) plead their case to the jury
• Jury votes on winner

I have put an asterisk next to 3 day cycles because while this is not an advertised mechanic in survivor, it can provide strategy with timing, but can also be changed at the Game Master’s discretion. Now lets take these mechanics and make them manageable. I have a few problems with some of these mechanics.

• The requirement for a minimum of 16 players is going to be hard to gather for many people. We need to find a way to reduce it down, or be creative with a smaller number of teams
• The challenges cannot be purely based on character stats, but should be played in real life by the players. For this we can use simple puzzles and minute to win it challenges.
• Team socializing is a big part of the game, but often times the other tribe shouldn’t know whats going on at the other beach. One simple way is to divide the players up by half and ask them to remain in a certain part of the room while they socialize.
• We need a catch up/kingmaker/saving grace mechanic as well (this can be through the hidden immunity idols mechanic).
• Survivor has secrets, so you need a way to convey those secrets. Simple notes to the GM can be helpful, just pass them to the GM during socializing time.

Player Requirements

Looking at the player requirements, it becomes difficult to acquire 16–20 players to play a 3 hour game. Lets take a best cause scenario and say we need at minimum 11 players, 10 castaways and 1 Probst. Survivor can range anywhere from 13 rounds to 15 rounds of play, with a merge at around round 6 or 7. If you eliminate one player each round, by round 3 or 4, you would have to have a merge, and by round 8 or 9, you would have final tribal council. Those aren’t bad numbers, but you could do better by adding an extra “Island Twist”. These are special islands where voted off castaways go to get a chance back into the game. There are 2 different island twists, and 1 potential one.

• Exile island: In the show, players would be sent there and return the next round or in time for tribal council. The exiled player wouldn’t be able to strategize with their alliance, but could find a twist, such as a hidden immunity idol at this island. For our game, you could send people to exile after they have been voted off, and can potentially influence the game with an extra jury seat (i.e. all the players on exile can vote as one juror, or one exiled castaway can win a seat on the jury). This means one player gets 1 chance to stay in the game, or act as kingmaker.
• Redemption island: It may be herald as the worst twist in Survivor History, but can be really useful in the context of this game. Eliminated players go to Redemption Island, where they can play in head to head duels to win their way back into the game. This essentially makes the game 9–10 rounds instead of 8 or 9.

Now I said there’s one more island twist, and that is Island of Extinction. It works similar to Redemption Island, but with a few changes:

• Eliminated Players can choose to exit the game or go to island of extinction. They would then sit there until the merge.
• Once the merge comes around, island of extinction players battle to get back to the main game. One player moves on, the others remain on the island.
• This continues during the merge phase, until there are 3 or 2 players left (depending on FTC format). Players on Island of Extinction will battle again to get back into the game. The rest form the jury. At this time there will be 3–4 players left in the game, meaning you have one last challenge before FTC. The last player joins the jury.

The problem is that we don’t know how this will turn out in real life as we have never seen it before, so heed caution. If your pool is greater then 10 people, you can use other twists if you would like (I think the Outcast twist would be awesome).

So we have the foundations for our Survivor Game, now on to build it. You can do this on your own, or wait until the next part where we begin to build the game.

The tribe has spoken, good night folks.