After the Virginia Tech massacre, a popular campus game called “Assassin” is prompting warnings from police, reports USA Today. Officers in three places in Illinois and Pennsylvania urged students to halt the games, which involve ambushing other players with sometimes realistic-looking toy guns or other objects. Police worry that players, mostly college and high school students, would be mistaken for real-life killers, endangering themselves and others. “Virginia Tech has heightened everyone’s concern and alerted them to what’s going on in the country,” said Leland Grove, Il., Police Chief Mark Gleason. “It’s just terrible.”
Students themselves in some instances have halted games. “Just out of taste we decided to cancel for this year,” said Trey Keeler, a junior at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, who was overseeing the game played by more than 80 of the 1,060 students. In Assassin, players try to “kill” or eliminate other players while avoiding attacks on themselves. Typically a player is assigned a target, who can be attacked with a designated “weapon” at certain times, usually outside of class or after school. If successful, the player receives a new target; the eliminated player is out of the game.
Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-24-student-assassin-game_N.htm