The Assassin Game Analysis

Before the Assassin Game was advertised to the school, the group’s planning included reference to Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and his “Three Rules of Epidemics”. The results from the social experiment revealed to us that while our small idea spread like a fire through the school and proved these laws, there were also some unexpected and unanticipated results dealing with Gladwell’s principles. The entire idea of the Assassin’s Challenge at Odyssey started with Kinzy as she explained how the game worked to our group, who then developed rules for playing it within our school. As it is a game played at different colleges, members of the staff such as Mr. Lin had previously knowledge on the game and assisted in further spreading it through discussions

By the end of the first day, 50 people were signed up, and by the end of the week, 112 people out of the 457 high school population had signed up to participate. The other principle of Gladwell’s that was highly effective in our product was the Power of Context, that interested participants as we anticipated, but also turned a large portion away. One of the fundamental ideas for our choosing of the Assassin Challenge as our product dealt the the Power of Context, as we made the assumption that high schooler’s would be interested in a game dealing with extreme competition and a base of violence without real worry of being injured. While this did happen, a game concerning ideas of violence also turned others away as real killings, making the game a sensitive or disagreeable topic for certain people. There was also the fact that our project was one of many being advertised during the same two weeks, overwhelming the target audience of Odyssey high schooler’s that most groups had. We would have benefitted choosing a different audience, as the context of our situation was already being